Last time, Donna and Kirsty each explored the question of diagnosis and landed in a similar place: it is deeply individual, and what sits underneath a behaviour or a label often matters more than the label itself. This episode is the continuation, a looser back and forth rather than a structured discussion, each sharing their own lens on what came up.
Donna's starting point is that a diagnosis can be accurate and still miss the point if it does not meet the need underneath it. That need might be a core wound, something biological, a nervous system pattern, or all of these at once. She described this as the reason she is building a village model of support rather than working in isolation, because one person rarely holds every piece a family needs.
Yes, you can get a diagnosis, you can get a label, but are we really meeting the needs that are underneath.
She gave an example of working with a parent's own nervous system first, sometimes clearing core wounds, sometimes looking at retained reflexes or other body work, because a steady, regulated adult changes what is possible for a child who is struggling with their own biology.
Kirsty shared her own family's experience. One child has an ADHD diagnosis with ASD traits secondary, the other has the reverse. Both were diagnosed around age six, largely so the family could access funding and supports, even though by then the hardest years were already behind them and she already knew something was going on.
- Gut health was addressed early, since it was clearly part of the picture
- Sensory needs, hypervigilance, and difficulty winding down were worked with directly
- The Moro reflex was addressed, though integration still took time
- Osteopathy and kinesiology were part of the wider toolkit
- A low demand environment and finding what genuinely lit her children up made a real difference
- Animal companions became a significant, ongoing source of support for the family
Both children have changed massively since those early diagnoses, and Kirsty questioned whether they would receive the same labels today. They remain sensitive, quirky, and very much themselves, which is exactly the point: the diagnosis described a moment, not a fixed identity.
Both spoke against the two extremes, refusing either to pathologise a child completely or to insist everything is simply a superpower. Kirsty used the example of a child with Level 3 autism who cannot communicate and is clearly distressed. That child is intrinsically whole, and also genuinely struggling in their body, and both things are true at once.
What Kirsty checks for
Diet, supplements, referrals, testing, and whether an occupational therapist, myofunctional therapist, or organic acids or stool testing might help. She does not diagnose, prescribe, or treat, but follows what the person's own body and energetic field points toward.
What Donna looks for
Where the parent's nervous system needs support first, so a regulated adult can be present for a child whose own biology is struggling. Sometimes that means core wound work, sometimes body work, sometimes simply listening without an agenda.
Donna traced this back to her early career as a learning disabilities nurse in the UK, working with intensive interaction in what was then called challenging behaviour. Rather than asking someone to come into her world, she went and joined them in theirs, and only then did they become comfortable enough to meet her partway.
"Out beyond the fields of right doing and wrongdoing, there's a field, and I'll meet you there."
The Rumi line Donna returns to again and againShe described her different positions on this journey, sometimes walking behind a parent, sometimes beside them, sometimes in front, changing depending on what the moment calls for, and being honest when her own triggers mean she needs to pause rather than performing a professional calm she does not feel.
Donna shared the moment that shaped her stance on diagnosis: two parents in tears, being pushed from different directions to seek a diagnosis for their child. Her position was, and remains, that her role is to create environments that meet the child's needs and to genuinely listen to the parents, not to decide the answer for them.
She told the story of a four year old who was still biting, a pattern that traced back to toddlerhood as a body memory of what had once got him out of a stressful situation. Rather than punishing the behaviour, she found him a small hedgehog toy to keep in his bag, something to reach for instead. He stopped biting. The environment and the people around him, not the child, were the harder problem to shift.
Who do we want the diagnosis for? Are we doing this for the family and the child, or because it means we don't have to look at ourselves?
Kirsty named what makes this genuinely hard: there is no clean formula, no situation A leads to response B. Motivations matter, context matters, and a diagnosis that helped one family may not fit another, particularly where discrimination is still a real risk depending on circumstance.
They agreed that a diagnosis can be a useful starting point, but it can also become a shell that limits further growth if it hardens into a fixed belief about who someone is, rather than a description of where they are right now.
Donna closed with a concept from Gabor MatΓ©: choice points. As we change, we can notice whether the people around us are changing too. If they are not, that is simply data, not a verdict, and we always have a choice between staying with what is not changing or moving on. There are no fixed rules for when to do either.
I am a child of developmental trauma, but I don't need to be anyone's frozen picture of me. I've changed, and I'm not the child of developmental trauma anymore.
Kirsty reflected that compassion does not have to mean staying stuck in victimhood, and that she and Donna have been able to evolve alongside each other precisely because they keep listening rather than needing to be right.
Donna is based in Pukekohe, Aotearoa New Zealand, and works both locally and online. She calls herself The Relationship Facilitator because her modality, Relational Flow, moves across every kind of relationship: adult attachment work, couples, parenting, and children's big messy behaviours.
Curious where to start? Book a free Zoom coffee chat with Donna.
DonnaStichbury-TheRelationshipfacilitator.as.me/ChatwithDonna
Kirsty Denny of Kirsty Marie Energy is an energetic kinesiologist and home educating mother of neurodivergent children. She uses kinesiology to work with the layers of subconscious stress and conditioning that can impact our ability to align to our truest expression.
When it comes to working with nervous system health and healthy attachment, she believes that it all matters, the physical, the emotional and the spiritual, with healthy relationships with ourselves and others as the bedrock.
