Tending Paths - Katy Higgins Lee, MFT

11/11/2025

For some of us, action is not initiated by routine, obligation or social expectation but by meaning, because of a structural feature of cognition.

The capacity to engage with a task is closely tied to whether that task holds significance within our internal framework. If the task has meaning, action is possible. If the task does not have meaning, the ability to act may be absent, regardless of intention or external pressure.

This is constantly misinterpreted as avoidance, laziness, lack of willpower, emotional immaturity, you name it. However, those interpretations rely on the assumption that motivation is universally produced by the same mechanisms. It is not.

There are multiple motivational architectures. One is compliance based, where action arises from expectation, habit or perceived obligation. Another is meaning based, where action arises from relevance, connection and internal coherence. Many of us operate within the second system.

Here, meaning functions as the cognitive activation switch if you will. When something matters, emotionally, ethically, intellectually or relationally, the brain organises around it. Attention becomes available. Sequencing becomes possible. Movement starts. This is all to highlight that the system is working as designed.

When meaning is absent, the task lacks structure, it cannot be held mentally as there is no accessible entry point. We may understand the task, recognise its importance to others and still be unable to act. So, the issue here is access.

The biggest problem is cultural interpretation, because most social environments assume a compliance based motivational structure. They expect tasks to be completed because they need doing, because everyone has to, which unfortunately creates a misalignment, on account of trying harder does not produce meaning

This is not to say that meaning is not dynamic, because it is and it changes in response to context, internal state, relational safety, how the task sits within identity and whether the outcome feels real.

For example, a task that was once accessible may become inaccessible if the meaning structure shifts. This shift is often understood by the person immediately and somatically, even if they cannot yet articulate it and this is why sustainability cannot be assumed from initial capacity.

A meaning oriented system is consistent to its own organising principle. It is consistent with values, coherence, purpose, internal logic. In contrast, it is inconsistent with arbitrary instruction, unbound routine, tasks performed for the sake of it.

To establish where all of this sits, we could ask:

What does this connect to?

What value does it serve?

How does this fit into my narrative of what matters?

What becomes possible if I complete it?

What becomes compromised if I don’t?

11/11/2025

10/23/2025

A gifted therapist offers something precious to a gifted client: recognition that is felt rather than explained. When both therapist and client share the perceptual intensity, cognitive complexity, existential depth and emotional range that characterize giftedness, the therapeutic field itself becomes more resonant. There’s an unspoken fluency, a shared rhythm of thought, a familiarity with inner multiplicity, a capacity to travel quickly between abstraction and feeling, and an appreciation for the nuanced layers of meaning that even highly skilled non-gifted therapists might miss or misinterpret - not out of negligence, but as a result of qualitative mind differences.

In a shared gifted therapeutic field, the gifted client no longer has to work so hard to translate themselves. They can bring forward their authentic velocity and intensity, their metaphoric leaps, their recursive reflections, their existential concerns, without fear of being “too much” or thinking “too fast” or intellectually traveling "too far". This allows therapy to move beyond quickly beyond the pre-work required to find common ground, and forge ahead into deeper developmental terrain: identity integration, existential coherence and the embodiment of gifted potential in a sustainable way.

However, the very same shared giftedness that creates resonance can also create complexity. If the therapist has not fully integrated their own giftedness - for example, if they carry unexamined shame, grandiosity or avoidance related to their difference - these fragments will inevitably echo in the therapeutic space.

The therapist may unconsciously compete with the client’s intelligence or insight, feel threatened by their intensity, or idealize their giftedness instead of helping them ground it. Alternatively, the therapist may collude with the client’s gifted defenses - such as intellectualization, existential detachment, or over-responsibility - instead of gently inviting the deeper, often neglected emotional, existential, somatic and creative life into awareness.

A gifted therapist who has done their own integration work, meeting both the brilliance and the pain of their difference, hold giftedness as something ordinary and sacred at once. In the therapeutic relationship, they model to their gifted clients what it looks like to live as a whole gifted person, not just as a gifted mind.

From this integrated stance, they discern when a client’s gifted traits are serving wholeness and authenticity, and when they are protecting against pain and vulnerability. They accompany the client not only in exploring and validating their exceptional capacities, but also in finding rest, belonging and tenderness within them.

In this sense, the gifted therapist’s inner work is not ancillary - it is the foundation of their capacity to help their gifted clients. The more deeply they have made peace with their own gifted complexity, the more their presence itself becomes regulating and freeing for gifted clients. Integration, on both sides, becomes a shared, living process - one that restores the gifted experience to its full humanity.

Our Gifted Psychology 101 for Psychologists Course with Jennifer Harvey Sallin is opening registration now! If you're a gifted psychologist, therapist, social worker, counselor, or otherwise trained in psychology and would like to join a cohort of gifted professional peers around the world for 6 months of giftedness integration, learning and professional development, learn more and apply at --> www.intergifted.com/gifted-psychology-training

Starting in January 2026, we have two cohorts - one for the Americas-Europe and one for Europe-Asia/Australia. We have up to 3 partial scholarships per cohort, for therapists from countries with unfavorable exchange rates or in other legitimate financial need.

10/06/2025

I’ve been taking a break from posting for more than a month, but this trend caused such a visceral reaction in me that I had to say something.

Video description: Katy, a middle-aged white woman with brown medium-length hair and clear-framed glasses, speaks directly to the camera.

10/03/2025

For the first time in quite a while, I have space for a couple of new therapy clients!

(I’ve had a waitlist for a number of years, but I have made my way through the list and still have some space!)

I work with individual adults and couples, with a focus on neurodiversity-affirming therapy.

I’m only able to work with clients who are in California, but can do either telehealth or in-person in my office in downtown Santa Rosa.

My work is influenced by the Neurodiversity Movement and Neurodiversity Paradigm, The Theory of Positive Disintegration, Neuroqueer Theory, Brainspotting, Somatic/Movement Therapies, Mindfulness, Ecotherapy, Expressive Arts, Trauma Theory, Anti-Racism, Attachment Theory, and Mythology.

Check out my website site for more info. (Link in comments.)

10/03/2025

Free event with Andrew Reichart, AMFT.

FREE ONLINE EVENT: One hour Q&A on how to view the world through a Neurodiversity-affirming lens, and what this means for people & society.

10/02/2025

AuDHD Parent + PDA Child = A Beautiful, Exhausting Dance 🧠💙

You understand your child's need for control because you feel it too. You see their overwhelm because you live it daily. You recognise their masking because you've perfected the art yourself.

Being an AuDHD parent to a PDA child means you're fluent in the same language, but that doesn't make it easier. Sometimes it makes it harder.

The beautiful parts:
• You truly GET why demands feel threatening
• You can spot their overwhelm before anyone else
• Your sensory needs align, you both need the calm space
• You understand stimming, special interests, and the need for routine
• Your empathy runs deep because you've been there

The exhausting parts:
• Their meltdown triggers your own nervous system
• You're masking your own needs to support theirs
• Executive function struggles meet executive function struggles
• Your ADHD brain forgets the PDA strategies when you're dysregulated
• You're advocating for them while your own needs go unmet

The guilt:
"I should be better at this because I'm neurodivergent too."
"Why can't I regulate when they need me most?"
"Am I passing on my struggles to them?"

The truth:
You're not failing. You're two beautifully wired nervous systems trying to find safety together. Some days you'll be the regulated one. Some days they will be. That's the dance.

The glimmers:
• You see their authentic self, not their behaviours
• You know accommodation isn't "giving in"
• You model that neurodivergent is not broken
• You're raising them to embrace their differences

You're exactly the parent they need. Perfectly imperfect and wonderfully wired. 🌼

09/21/2025

Most gifted or multi-exceptional clients don’t arrive in therapy confused about why they’re struggling.

They’ve already mapped the terrain. They’ve connected the dots. They’ve read the books. Listened to the podcasts. Sat with the spirals.
They’re not lacking insight. They’re drowning in it.

What they need is something else entirely.
✨ A somatic anchor — for nervous systems running on overdrive
✨ An existential container — for meaning-making and grief
✨ A relational mirror — to unlearn being “too much”
✨ A creative space — for the parts that don’t speak in words
✨ A flexible rhythm — that spirals with them, not against them

Giftedness often intersects with trauma and other forms of neurodivergence. That means healing isn’t linear. It’s layered. And therapy must stretch to hold that complexity — not flatten it to fit the model.

🌿 Let’s move beyond the one-size-fits-all framework. Because for some of us, insight isn’t the beginning. It’s the bind.

📖 Read the full blog: Link in bio.