I used to think understanding meant finding the answer.
Why am I anxious?
Why do I keep ending up here?
Why can’t I seem to change this?
I believed that if I looked hard enough, eventually I’d uncover the reason — and once I understood it, everything else would fall into place.
Sometimes that happened.
Often it didn’t.
Because life rarely gives us complete explanations.
Sometimes the person who hurt us never apologizes.
Sometimes we don’t remember exactly what shaped us.
Sometimes our brains and bodies are responding to years of accumulated experience instead of one identifiable event.
Sometimes we simply don’t know.
Waiting for complete understanding before we begin living differently keeps us stuck.
Fortunately, that’s not where understanding actually begins.
It begins with noticing.
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Long before we can understand ourselves, we have to learn to notice ourselves.
Noticing sounds simple.
It isn’t. Especially if you’ve spent years surviving.
Many neurodivergent adults describe living on autopilot. Not because they’re careless. Because survival often requires efficiency.
You wake up. Respond to the demands in front of you. Mask. Perform. Solve problems. Manage sensory input. Meet expectations. Collapse. Repeat.
Eventually there’s so much happening around you that very little attention remains for what’s happening within you. You become extraordinarily skilled at responding to life while slowly losing contact with yourself.
You stop noticing the small signals. Your shoulders tighten. Your breathing changes. Your thoughts speed up. Your stomach knots. You say “yes” when every part of you meant “no.” You don’t notice the moment it begins. You notice when you’re already overwhelmed.
The first foundation of SOLA isn’t asking you to become more insightful overnight. It’s inviting you to become more observant — to gently reconnect with the person you’ve had the least time to notice: yourself.
Why Pausing Changes the Brain
One of the things about the human brain is that attention changes experience.
Our brains are designed to conserve energy. Whenever possible, they rely on established neural pathways — patterns that have worked before. That’s usually helpful. Until the patterns we’re repeating no longer serve us.
When we pause, even briefly, something remarkable happens. We interrupt automatic responding. That small interruption gives our brain an opportunity to recruit networks involved in attention, self-reflection, and flexible decision-making instead of simply repeating what has always come next.
The situation hasn’t changed. But our relationship to it has.
The pause doesn’t guarantee wisdom. It simply creates possibility. Sometimes that’s enough.
Facts Before Stories
One of the practices we’ll return to often in SOLA is learning to separate facts from the stories our brains naturally create.
Not because stories are bad. Stories are how human beings make sense of the world. Our brains are constantly creating meaning and connections.
The problem is that our brains don’t particularly enjoy unanswered questions. So they’ll often fill in the gaps long before we have enough information.
Fact: My friend hasn’t responded to my text in three days. Story: They’re upset with me. I must have done something wrong. Maybe they don’t actually enjoy spending time with me.
Fact: I forgot another appointment. Story: I’m irresponsible. I’ll never get my life together. Everyone else seems to manage this.
Fact: My heart started racing during a meeting. Story: Something is wrong with me. Everyone noticed. I’m falling apart.
The facts are rarely what hurt us most. It’s the meaning our brains attach to them.
Your Feelings Are Not the Problem
Here’s where I think we’ve unintentionally hurt a lot of people. Sometimes we’ve treated questioning our story as though it means questioning our feelings.
It doesn’t.
Your feelings don’t become invalid simply because your interpretation changes. If I genuinely believe my friend is angry with me, I might feel anxious. Rejected. Lonely. Those emotions are completely real. My nervous system doesn’t wait for perfect information before responding — it responds to the reality it believes it’s living inside.
If I later discover my friend was caring for a sick parent, my story changes. My feelings were still real. They just
belonged to a different understanding of the situation.
That’s why SOLA doesn’t ask, “Were your feelings justified?”
We ask, “What experience was your nervous system responding to?”
That’s a very different question. Your feelings deserve compassion. Your stories deserve curiosity. Neither deserves immediate judgment.
Curiosity Instead of Judgment
Judgment is trying to reach a verdict. Curiosity is trying to understand.
When we’re judgmental, we treat ourselves like a courtroom. Evidence. Verdict. Sentence. Lazy. Too sensitive. Broken. Overdramatic.
Curiosity approaches ourselves more like a researcher. Interesting — my chest tightened. I stopped making eye contact. I immediately assumed rejection. I wonder why. I wonder where my brain learned that. I wonder what it was trying to protect.
Curiosity doesn’t immediately argue with the story. It simply slows it down. Sometimes the story turns out to be true. Sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, we’ve learned something.
Why This Matters for Neurodivergent Minds
I’ve noticed this especially among neurodivergent adults.
Many of us become incredibly skilled at noticing the outside world. The room. The expectations. The conversation. Everyone else’s emotional state. Whether we’re masking well enough. Whether we’ve forgotten something. Whether we’re “too much.”
Our attention becomes so focused outward that we slowly lose fluency in our own internal experience. We stop noticing the facts. We notice the conclusions.
Instead of “my shoulders just tensed,” we notice “I’m failing.”
Instead of “I’m overwhelmed,” we notice “I’m lazy.”
Instead of “I’ve been masking for six hours,” we notice “I shouldn’t be this tired.”
The story arrives so quickly it feels like the fact. One of the quiet goals of SOLA is helping us slow down enough to separate the two — not because the stories are bad, but because they’re worth understanding before we believe them.
Understanding Doesn’t Require Complete Answers
One of the greatest misconceptions about healing is that we must fully understand our past before we can move forward. I don’t think that’s true.
Sometimes we never receive complete explanations. Sometimes the people who hurt us never acknowledge it. Sometimes our memories remain incomplete. Sometimes there simply isn’t a satisfying answer.
Waiting for certainty can become another way of staying stuck.
Fortunately, understanding doesn’t require certainty. It requires honesty. Enough honesty to notice. Enough curiosity to ask better questions. Enough compassion to stop treating ourselves like a problem to solve.
Understanding isn’t about solving every mystery. It’s about becoming increasingly truthful with ourselves.
A Small Practice
This week, don’t try to change anything. Don’t optimize. Don’t fix. Just notice.
Notice when your shoulders tense. Notice when your breathing changes. Notice when your body becomes louder than your thoughts. Notice when shame arrives. Notice when joy arrives. Notice when you disappear.
Then pause, and ask yourself three questions:
What do I know for certain? Those are the facts.
What meaning is my brain making from those facts? Those are the stories.
What am I feeling right now? Don’t skip this one — your feelings don’t become less real simply because your story might change. They’re information, not evidence.
Treat your feelings with compassion. Treat your stories with curiosity. Over time, your brain begins creating space between what happened and what it assumed happened.
Understanding Begins Here
The first foundation of SOLA isn’t understanding, because understanding isn’t something we force. It’s something we build skills to access.
Every time we pause before reacting. Every time we get curious instead of judgmental. Every time we choose observation over criticism — we strengthen our ability to know ourselves.
Not perfectly. Not all at once. Just a little more honestly than we did yesterday.
Understanding doesn’t begin when we finally have all the answers. It begins the moment we become willing to notice what’s true.