Energy Regulation & Unexpected Behaviors: Normalizing Responses in Neurodivergent Students

Neurodivergent students often experience energy dysregulation and display unexpected behaviors that can be misunderstood. When we launched our Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative for school counselors and school psychologists in the Fall of 2025, emotional regulation was one of their top areas of interest. They expressed their desire to help educators and families normalize emotional reactions as human responses, and to remove the shame many neurodivergent students internalize when their energy levels don’t match what’s expected in traditional classroom settings. They even came up with their own set of neurodiversity-affirming mantras - see poster image to the right - including “Normalize dysregulation - it’s a human thing.”

We invited Emily Kircher-Morris, a national leader in the field of neurodiversity, to bring her immense expertise on emotional and energy regulation to our group. Emily, a licensed professional counselor who began her career as a classroom teacher and also served as a school counselor, hosts The Neurodiversity Podcast; is the author of several books, including Neurodiversity-Affirming Schools: Transforming Practices So All Students Feel Accepted and Supported (2025); and travels the country helping educators adopt strategies to better support neurodivergent and twice-exceptional students. 

After explaining the neurology of energy regulation, Emily offered strategies to support students such as co-regulation, sensory tools, and accommodations that help, as well as suggested resources that make a difference. 

Why are Energy and Emotional Regulation an Important Topic for Neurodivergent and 2e Learners? What the Literature Says.

Educators lean on school counselors to help with students’ social-emotional and behavioral needs, which often result from perceived challenges with emotional regulation (Cholewa et al., 2016). Emotional dysregulation sometimes leads to perceived unexpected behaviors that complicate the educational journey of neurodivergent learners, in particular those who are autistic and/or ADHDers (Laurent & Fede, 2021). Emotional volatility is also a trait commonly identified with twice-exceptional students (who experience both advanced abilities and neurodivergent conditions such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia) and addressing social-emotional characteristics is a critical part of a comprehensive plan to ensure these uniquely wired learners have the opportunity to thrive (Carpenter, 2021; Reis et al., 2014). In particular, 2e learners share common traits with students identified as gifted such as challenges with frustration tolerance, as well as emotional and mental intensity, creating a complicated emotional regulation profile (Rizzo et al., 2025). However, focusing on emotions alone may be too abstract; a focus on energy regulation provides a more concrete foundation for neurodivergent students to understand their own individual needs (Laurent & Fede, 2021). 

In addition, emotional regulation differences likely result from an interplay between the person and their environment rather than from the person alone, especially when neurotypical expectations create a mismatch due to sensory, social, and perceptual experiences (Griffin et al., 2026). The 2e profile creates even more complexities in assessment of individual needs and interventions, when emotional responses and behavioral manifestations are interpreted as within the student’s control and don’t take into consideration a misalignment between the child’s environment and capabilities (Ronksley-Pavia & Clark, 2025). This all leads to the need to rethink our approaches to emotional and energy regulation for neurodivergent and 2e learners, with a greater emphasis on creating responsive educational environments and strategies that help students learn about their needs, leading to increased self-regulation and self-advocacy (Rizzo et al., 2025).

Understanding Neurology and Energy Regulation

Emily emphasized that the ability for a person to regulate their energy and emotions emerges as part of their development process. As she said, “It’s built over time and is not something students are born knowing how to do.” That’s because emotional regulation depends on brain development, such as the pre-frontal cortex coming online to manage executive functions and attention as well as the amygdala’s ability to accurately detect threats and develop appropriate and timely fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. Being autistic, an ADHDer, or both, impacts these functions and developmental timelines. 

Emily underscored that energy regulation goes beyond just the students’ obvious emotions. For example, sometimes these students may look calm, even while experiencing internal turmoil. Other areas of regulation relate to sensory over and under-responsivity, autistic inertia that impedes starting a task (or, alternatively, creates unstoppable momentum that puts a student into potentially an unhealthy mode of overdrive), and cognitive energy discrepancies when a brain is overactive but the body is out of gas, or vice versa. 

Understanding this neurological basis for various expressions of energy regulation can help educators and parents better understand students’ experiences and development, and how their brains may be interacting with their environments, to focus on supporting the child rather than blaming them for responses beyond their control. 

What Works? Helping Students with Energy Regulation

Emily presented strategies to support children when they feel dysregulated, ways to adjust the environment that support everyone’s ability to regulate their energy, and how to help students learn more about what they need to match their energy to the demands at hand.

Emily emphasized that “in the moment supports” when energy and emotions are heightened rely on giving students time and space to process their emotions – without making demands. She highlighted the value of parallel regulation, where the adult remains calm and present without escalating the situation. This is a time when co-regulation between a trusted adult and the child are paramount. She suggested using simple breathing exercises, offering choices instead of instructions, and providing alternative communication methods like visual tools or dry erase boards. She warned against teaching coping skills during a crisis but rather advised practicing them during moments of calm. 

Emily talked the group through environmental modifications and strategies to support energy regulation. Classroom fidgets that are available to everyone are an easy and effective option, but do require thoughtful implementation with a focus on boundaries, patience, and practice. In addition, Emily encouraged educators to think of time as a factor of environmental modification. Sometimes creating urgency motivates students and other times removing urgency gives them the space to process their experiences, energy, and emotions. For example, using games with time limits as a way to energize students or providing extensions to assignments to alleviate stress, are environmental modifications that can be used to help students manage their energy and emotions. 

Educators and parents can help students understand what they need to manage their own energy. Emily discussed the importance of metacognitive reflection and awareness rather than strict accountability for behavioral responses. She suggested that everyone should frame potential interventions as science experiments to reduce resistance and feelings of failure. Emily explained the difference between enabling and accommodating support, highlighting that accommodations become effective when students are actively involved in the process and when there is a clear plan for gradually reducing support as they become more independent. As an example, adults often expect students to make eye contact to show they are ready to learn and are engaged in communication; however, eye contact is notoriously uncomfortable for many neurodivergent people. Rather than assuming that either students don’t want to make eye contact at all under any circumstances or that students are required to make eye contact, she suggested talking directly with each student to understand their goals: “Would you like to make eye contact? Or would you like to learn to self-advocate for the way you communicate?” and then set small experiments to move the child in the direction of their needs. 

Emily’s Mantras

Throughout her talk, Emily shared bite-sized pieces of wisdom – or what we might think of as “Emily’s Mantras” – that frame students’ experiences with energy regulation. Keeping these phrases in mind can help educators and parents reframe their thinking about self-regulation. 

• Separate compliance from personal rebellion. 

• Notice patterns not incidences.

• Focus on capacity versus compliance.

• Use fewer words - you cannot talk a kid out of dysregulation.

• Time - separate “No” from “Not now.”

• Shifts come in small ways and small conversations

Suggested Resources

Emily shared the top resources she recommends to educators to learn more about and support the development of students’ energy and emotional regulation, as well as a few that the REEL team has found helpful.

• Creating Neurodiversity Affirming Schools Podcast. This limited edition series features Emily and her co-author, Amanda Morin, talking through core aspects of their best-selling book, with several episodes that go in-depth energy regulation and emotional regulation.

• Intensive Intervention Practice Guide: Teaching Self-Regulation Skills to Students with Disabilities. This 2022 guide from the National Center for Leadership in Intensive Intervention outlines the meaning and purpose of self-regulation, as well as how it varies by age and application within Multi-Tiered Systems of Support.

• Zones of Regulation Podcast Episode. The Zones of Regulation have been a popular tool for understanding energy regulation for decades, and have been recently updated through a neurodiversity-affirming lens. Emily hosted a podcast episode to learn more about these updates.

• Whole Body Learning Podcast Episode. Whole body listening is another emotional regulation concept that teachers have long used to set expectations for how students’ bodies should be in the classroom. This concept has been updated as a tool to help a student consider how their body learns best, rather than imposing an outside norm on each student. This episode of Emily’s podcast explores this important change. 

• Interoception Resources. Interoception describes the body’s ability to recognize and properly interpret its own internal senses, such as hunger, thirst, temperature, the need to go to the bathroom, etc. Many neurodivergent people experience interoception differently than commonly understood – and these differences can invisibly impact their emotional and energy regulation capacity. Emily recommends educators and parents explore Kelly Mahler’s online resources and courses to expand their understanding of how interoception may impact children’s self-regulation experiences.  

• Effective Strategies for Educators: Talking to Parents About Student Challenges. The Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative members asked questions about how to talk to parents in relation to their child’s neurodiversity and twice-exceptionality, since sometimes emotional dysregulation expressed as unexpected externalizing behaviors is the first sign that the child needs more support. This article from REEL offers guidance to educators about how to initiate these conversations, which can feel daunting.

• Sensory Audit Tool. Sensory differences are often unseen factors in a child’s ability to regulate their energy and emotions. Neurodivergent and twice-exceptional learners are more likely to be hypersensitive and/or hyposensitive – sometimes simultaneously – to sound, textures, lighting, smells, and touch. A sensory audit can help educators and students identify and ameliorate sensory triggers that may unduly create misunderstood emotional and energy responses. 

This talk was hosted as part of REEL’s Neurodiversity/2e Collaborative for School Psychologists

and School Counselors made possible by generous funding from the Jockers Family Foundation and the Mary A. Crocker Trust. 

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References:

Carpenter, A. Y. (2021). Twice-exceptional students. In T. L. Cross & J. R. Cross (Eds.), Handbook for counselors serving students with gifts and talents (2nd ed., pp. 305–323). Routledge.

Cholewa, B., Goodman-Scott, E., Thomas, A., & Cook, J. (2016). Teachers’ perceptions and experiences consulting with school counselors: A qualitative study. Professional School Counseling, 20(1). https://doi.org/10.5330/1096-2409-20.1.77

Griffin, B., Gosrani, R., & Eccles, J. (2026). Beyond comorbidity: Evolutionary insights into the concomitance of Neurodivergence, major depressive disorder, and anxiety disorders. Evolutionary Applications, 19(3). https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.70221

Laurent, A. C., & Fede, J. (2021). Leveling up regulatory support through community collaboration. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 6(2), 288-305. https://doi.org/10.1044/2020_persp-20-00197 

Reis, S. M., Baum, S. M., & Burke, E. (2014). An operational definition of twice-exceptional learners: Implications and applications. Gifted Child Quarterly, 58(3), 217–230. https://doi.org/10.1177/0016986214534976

Rizzo, L., Pinnelli, S., & Minnaert, A. (2025). Twice-exceptional students: A systematic review to outline the distinctive characteristics through a multidimensional lens. Frontiers in Education, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2025.1696805

Ronksley-Pavia, M., & Clark, C. (2025). Compounded disadvantage: Issues in addressing the educational requirements of twice-exceptional students in schools. Education Sciences, 15(12), 1593. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15121593