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  "path": "/links/neuro-affirming-practice-is-not-a-framework-its-a-way-of-being",
  "publishedAt": "2026-05-02T04:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://jonathanstephens.us",
  "tags": [
    "Neuro-affirming",
    "Neurodivergence",
    "Communication",
    "Leadership",
    "Practice",
    "Definition",
    "Situational Leadership",
    "Autism",
    "Competence",
    "Double Empathy Problem",
    "Education",
    "Low Demand",
    "Neurodiversity",
    "Profound And Multiple Learning Disabilities",
    "Sensory",
    "Training"
  ],
  "textContent": "> So what does neuro-affirming practice actually look like?\n>\n> Neuro-affirming practice is about being human with others, with empathy and attunement.\n>\n> I think it looks like arriving without an agenda, following someone’s lead, not strategically, but out of genuine curiosity about their inner world. It looks like understanding that every person is already a meaning-maker: that meaning lives in bodyminds, in rhythm, in sensation, in a turning towards or a turning away — long before it lives in words or can be communicated through any other means.\n>\n> As Milton’s Double Empathy Problem helps to clarify (2012), the difficulty in communication arises in the relational space between people with different lived experiences. For those with intellectual disabilities and profound and multiple learning disabilities, this places responsibility on the practitioner; it is something that needs to be held with humility and an awareness of privilege and power.\n\n> Being neuro-affirming is about being human, it is about being kind, compassionate, having empathy, letting go of presumed competence, recognising your privilege, and really being with people and accepting them as they are.",
  "title": "Neuro-Affirming Practice Is Not a Framework. It's a Way of Being."
}