For years I watched capable people struggle with high stress, self-doubt, avoidance and emotional reactions that other adults misread as defiance, disengagement or a lack of effort. I was certain there was more beneath the behavior. I did not have the clinical language to explain it.

Training as a clinician gave me that language. Behavior is very often a response to stress and to a nervous system trying to protect someone. But it also sharpened the problem rather than solving it, because I kept meeting people who could describe exactly why they reacted the way they did and still could not change what was happening on an ordinary day.