Wiring, not wound - Written for The MAG

This piece was originally written for The MAG, a brilliant free newsletter and community resource for neurodivergent people across Brighton and Sussex. Steve Ashfield created it to make sure neurodivergent people, the organisations that support them and the businesses run by them get the visibility and connection they deserve. You can find the latest edition here: https://themagbrighton.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-mag-extra-edition-three.html

My hometown of Liverpool has a UK study out of John Moores University, published at the end of 2024, that found that neurodivergent people are considerably more likely than neurotypical people to have lived through multiple adverse childhood experiences, and that the combination of the two is what actually drives the poorer mental health and wellbeing outcomes so often reported in this community. In other words, the struggle a lot of us carry isn't caused by being neurodivergent on its own, it's caused by being neurodivergent in a world and a childhood that responded to that wiring with harm, and until fairly recently the research hadn't separated those two things out clearly enough to prove it.

After twenty two years of coaching, and a fair bit of that time spent untangling my own AuDHD and complex trauma, that distinction changed how I work with people. Wiring and wound get tangled together so often that most of us end up trying to fix one with tools meant for the other, and it rarely lands.

Wiring is how your brain and body are built, the sensory sensitivity, the way your attention moves, the need for stillness or noise or silence that other people don't seem to share. It was there before anything happened to you, and it isn't going anywhere, because it was never broken to begin with. Wound is what happened when that wiring met a world that kept punishing it, the years of being told you were overreacting when your body was genuinely in distress, the masking that got so automatic you lost track of who you were underneath it, a nervous system that now fires a threat response at things that were never actually a threat because it learned a long time ago that safety wasn't guaranteed. That's the pattern the Liverpool study is pointing at, and it lines up with what I see consistently in late diagnosed clients, where CPTSD and neurodivergence arrived together and have to be worked with together.

You don't need a clinical background to start telling the two apart. When something feels like too much, it can help to ask whether this is your system doing exactly what it's built to do, or an old alarm sounding because of something it learned to fear once. Neither one needs correcting so much as recognising for what it is, so you can respond to the actual thing in front of you rather than a story about it.

One tool I built for exactly this moment, when everything feels like too much and you can't think straight enough to work out why, is called The Reset. It's a free three step practice to feel it, free it, become it, and I made it available on my website because I think everyone should have something like this in their back pocket, not just my clients.

Feel it means noticing what's happening in your body right now without a story attached, not why you're anxious, just where it lives. Tight chest, held breath, a clenched jaw, whatever it is, you're locating it rather than analysing it.

Free it means giving that sensation somewhere to move instead of holding it in place, a long exhale, a shake of the hands, two minutes outside, anything that lets it pass through rather than trapping it where it sits. This is usually the step people skip, because most of us were taught to push feelings down and get on with things.

Become it means asking, once the intensity has eased even slightly, what you actually need right now and letting yourself have it, quiet, space, a stim you've been holding back, permission to leave the room. This is where you start acting from the calmer version of yourself rather than the flooded one.

You can download The Reset for free at https://www.bennamccartney.com/the-return-the-reset, along with its companion piece The Return, an eight step self enquiry practice for the deeper work once you're regulated enough to do it. Both come in an adult version, The Return also has a teen edition, and a version for younger kids is on its way.

There was nothing wrong with you to begin with. You were running on wiring the world hadn't caught up to yet, carrying wounds that made complete sense given what you'd lived through, and both of those things can be true and both deserve their own kind of care.

I work with neurodivergent adults one to one through intuitive coaching, helping untangle exactly this, what's wiring and what's wound, and what to actually do about each. If that's something you or someone you know could use, you're welcome to find me at bennamccartney.com or email me on info@bennamccartney.com.