When You Assume...

One of the worst feelings in the world is having someone assume they know your capacity.

It doesn’t really matter which direction that assumption goes. Whether someone believes you could “push harder if you just tried”  or assumes you already are pushing yourself to your limit and need to slow down— the impact is the same. 

You’re no longer trusted to know yourself.

That moment is usually framed as concern. It rarely feels like care.

That’s where neuroaffirming work begins — by releasing the assumption that we know someone else’s limits better than they do.

By understanding that capability and capacity are not the same thing.

In my work with clients, I don’t assume I know their capacity because capacity is contextual. It depends on energy, safety, support, meaning, timing, and a dozen invisible variables. 

If I see someone diving headfirst into work and burning the candle at both ends, will I notice it? Of course. 

Will I name it? If it’s clinically relevant. 

But will I assume their behavior is a spiral toward unmanageability? No. Absolutely not.

I’m not inside anyone’s nervous system but my own. 

And when I really interrogate what I gain by naming my fear to someone else, it’s usually this: relief from my own discomfort.  Sometimes I even get the “satisfaction of being right.” Proof that my “pattern recognition skills are working”. Yuck. That's not very client centered of me, is it? 

What do I stand to lose?

Trust within the therapeutic relationship.

A client’s sense of agency.

Their willingness to stay curious about themselves instead of bracing for correction.

And once that trust fractures, everything else becomes performative.

I learned this most viscerally in substance use settings. I could see the pattern because I had lived the losses over and over again. The same phrases. The same logic. The same pathway to devastation. 

When I heard those phrases, panic would flood my body. That cape-wearing part of me would activate — the part that believed I could intervene, say the right thing, stop a moving freight train. “You don't understand”, I would want to tell them – “this is what they all say”. 

But the reality was more complicated.

Clients could feel that I didn’t believe in them. It was never about them — it was their addiction I didn’t trust — but that distinction doesn’t translate somatically. When I assumed the role of “expert,” my fears often unintentionally became the signature they needed on a permission slip to give up. People know when they’re being doubted. And it doesn’t feel good.

The work is learning how to hold belief and risk at the same time — without letting either one dominate the room.

So instead of assuming expertise, I learned to assume the role of mirror.

“Here’s what I’m hearing you say” lands very differently than “you’re on a fast track to relapse/burnout/destruction, etc.” Because the truth is: I don’t actually know.

Which brings me back to neuroaffirming care (p.s. the co-occurence between neurodivergence and substance use is pretty high). Neurodivergent people can feel when concern is actually a statement disguised as a question. We've got a pretty good bullshit meter. We can sense pity. We can feel judgment before it’s spoken.

So instead of pretending I don’t have concern, I name it — and I own it.

“Hey, I notice you’re waking up at 5am and working until 10pm. What do you make of that? When I put myself in your shoes, I feel tired — but I know that’s my stuff. How does it feel for you?”

When I feel the urge to swoop in and fix, to offer strategy, to optimize — I treat that as a cue to check myself. I come back to my own mantra: I’m a mirror, not a magic 8 ball. I wait to be invited into solutions instead of solving a problem someone didn’t know they had.

So I stay a mirror.

I stay curious.

I stay with the person in front of me, instead of racing ahead of them.

Because belief regulates nervous systems better than warning ever will.