Every Wednesday, I take my son to his swimming lesson. It’s our time. Just us. He sits in the front seat, a massive treat when you’re only 5. And for those 20 minutes, it’s gloriously uncomplicated. No demands from his sister. No safeguarding. No having to accept “that’s just the way it is” because his AuDHD PDA sister is at capacity and can only take so much.
Last Wednesday, he couldn’t stop talking.
He’d started his new group at school that morning. Something I’d explored before Christmas specifically for him – a space for siblings of neurodivergent children. Because here’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve been sitting with: neurotypical siblings can fly under the radar.
Not forgotten. Never forgotten. But somehow taken for granted. Because he doesn’t melt down, doesn’t find everyday tasks impossibly hard, doesn’t need the same level of scaffolding and support his sister does, it’s easy to assume he doesn’t need as much consideration. As much thought. As much of, well… me.
But back to the car. He was buzzing.
“We went to the sensory room, Mumma! And we talked about our feelings!”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Which feelings did you talk about?”
“All of them, Mumma. It was SO great.”
I had to swallow hard. Keep my eyes on the road.
All of them. When did we stop feeling all of them?
Permission to Feel
This 5-year-old boy was absolutely thriving because someone had given him permission to feel. All of it. In a safe space with other kids who got it. And it stopped me in my tracks.
When did we lose that? That pure, unfiltered permission to feel all the feelings and have someone witness them without judgment?
Somewhere between 5 and adulthood, we learned to compartmentalise. To perform. To save the “appropriate” feelings for work and save the rest for… when? After hours? Never?
We learned that being professional means being controlled. That vulnerability is weakness. That feelings are something to manage, not experience. But what if that’s exactly what’s breaking us?
A few months ago, I had a call with a charity. I was trying to get support for my daughter, navigating systems, explaining her needs, advocating hard while being met with bureaucracy and barriers. By the time I hung up, I was emotionally drained. Properly done.
And I had to jump straight onto a work call with a supplier. My manager was on it too.
I thought I could switch gears. Put on the professional mask. Be my usual bubbly self and no one would know what I’d just dealt with.
But I couldn’t quite pull it off. And my manager noticed. She called me straight after. Not for a work debrief. To check in on me.
I could have performed then. Could have said “I’m fine, honestly, let’s crack on.” But I just… couldn’t.
So I didn’t.
Reaching Out
I was honest. “That call with the charity this morning was really hard. It caught me unaware and I’m struggling a bit.”
And here’s what happened: she saw me. She heard me. She acknowledged me. She didn’t need me to perform. She didn’t need me to pretend I wasn’t carrying something heavy. She just needed me to be honest about where I was at.
I didn’t have to hide my feelings. I could feel them and still be professional. Still be competent. Still kick ass at my job.
And you know what? After that meeting, I went on to have a brilliant, productive day. Because I wasn’t spending energy managing the gap between what I was feeling and what I was projecting.
Looking back at that moment, here’s what my manager did that made all the difference:
- She noticed. She paid attention to the shift in my energy, even on a routine supplier call. She didn’t ignore what she was seeing or assume I’d be fine.
- She reached out immediately. She didn’t wait for our next 1:1 or hope I’d bring it up. She picked up the phone straight after the call.
- She made it about me, not the work. She didn’t open with “So, about that call…” She opened with genuine care about how I was doing.
- She created space for honesty. She didn’t ask in a way that invited the polite lie. Her tone, her timing, her approach – all of it said “you can be real with me.”
- She didn’t try to fix it. She didn’t offer solutions or try to problem-solve my feelings. She just listened and acknowledged what I was carrying.
- She led with empathy and emotional intelligence. She understood that struggling in one moment doesn’t mean you can’t function in the next. She didn’t suggest I take the rest of the day off, but she did make sure I was going to take time that day to reset. To look after myself. Not because I couldn’t do my job, but because she knew I’d do it better if I wasn’t running on empty.
- She trusted me to still do my job. She saw my humanity and my competence as coexisting, not competing.
That’s not complicated leadership. But it’s rare, and it changed everything about that day.
This isn’t soft skills. This is productivity.
Psychological Safety
When people feel psychologically safe enough to say “I’m struggling” or “That was hard” or “I need a minute,” they don’t fall apart. They don’t become less effective. They become more present. More engaged. More able to actually do their jobs well. Because they’re not using half their bandwidth to perform being fine.
Emotional intelligence isn’t about being touchy-feely. It’s about recognising that humans have feelings, and pretending we don’t doesn’t make us better workers, it makes us exhausted ones. Vulnerability isn’t unprofessional. What’s unprofessional is creating cultures where people have to lie about their humanity to be taken seriously.
My son thrived in that talking group because he was given permission to feel all of them. In a safe space. With people who understood.
What if our workplaces operated the same way? What would it look like? I keep thinking about that question: how do we show up as adults for our 5-year-old selves? What would it look like if workplaces genuinely made space for people to feel all the feelings?
It would look like managers who don’t need you to perform being fine when you’re not. It would look like cultures where “I’m struggling today” doesn’t equal “I’m not capable.” It would look like psychological safety that’s not just a buzzword in a values document, but an actual, lived experience.
It would look like recognising that bringing your whole self to work doesn’t mean oversharing or trauma-dumping, it means not having to lie about being human.
A Workplace Culture Worth Building
My son came home from that group glowing. Not because they’d fixed anything or solved anything. But because he’d been seen. He’d been heard. He’d been given permission to feel all of it in a space that could hold him.
That’s not a luxury. That’s fundamental. And if a 5-year-old can access that kind of safety and thrive because of it, why can’t we?
The workplaces that get this, that create genuine psychological safety, that make room for emotional intelligence, that understand vulnerability is strength – those are the ones where people don’t just survive: they thrive. Just like my boy in the front seat on a Wednesday, buzzing about feeling all the feelings.
That’s the workplace culture worth building. That’s what showing up for our 5-year-old selves actually looks like.
When was the last time you felt safe enough at work to feel “all of them”? What would need to change for that to be possible?
Amie Meslohi leads on crafting compelling brand narratives and purposeful content that reflect the organisation’s commitment to inclusive leadership and culture. She also writes and speaks about workplace inclusion from lived experience - including as a working parent to a neurodiverse child, highlighting why supporting neurodivergent families matters not only for individual wellbeing but for future-proofing businesses.