Thrival Coaching

02/07/2026

Change can feel overwhelming—especially when it shifts how you understand yourself or someone close to you.
This episode explores what’s happening beneath that experience and how to navigate it without judgment.

When understanding shifts, the internal process can feel uncertain. This episode explores how turbulence forms and how to move through it with grounded clarity.

16/03/2026

A diagnosis related to neurodivergence can feel overwhelming.
Parents may feel grief or guilt. Adults may revisit long-held stories about themselves. Yet a diagnosis is information — it describes patterns of lifelong traits. It does not determine identity or potential.
In this episode of Neurodivergence Matters, Stephen Harrison explores how framing shapes direction. The distinction between identity and pathology matters, and expectations influence outcomes.
The episode also introduces practical tools that support a strengths-based perspective and help people move from fear toward understanding and support.

A neurodivergence diagnosis can bring shock, grief, or relief. This episode explores how strengths-based framing, identity vs pathology, and practical tools can help parents and adults move from fear toward clearer direction.

19/02/2026

What does neurodiversity really mean?

It’s about recognising brain differences as natural human variation, not deficits to fix. In this conversation, I unpack the difference between neurodivergent and neurodiverse, clarify misconceptions about autism diagnosis, and explore why language matters.

Curiosity-led learning creates dignity. Awareness not diagnosis creates space.

A grounded exploration of neurodiversity, clarifying how it differs from mental illness, why language matters, and how curiosity-led support creates more neuroinclusive environments.

09/02/2026

Giving feedback can feel harder than it needs to be. Sometimes it’s not the message—it’s how and when it lands.

This episode looks at why feedback can feel unsafe for neurodivergent people, and how clearer, more respectful approaches can make conversations easier and more supportive.

It’s about understanding, not fixing.

Feedback can easily trigger defensiveness or overload, particularly for neurodivergent people. This episode explores how feedback can be delivered in ways that reduce harm, support regulation, and increase understanding across work, relationships, and family life.

14/01/2026

Meetings can be exhausting—especially for neurodivergent people.

Often, the challenge starts before the meeting even begins: managing cognitive load, masking, unclear expectations, fast conversations, and sensory overload. None of this is intentional, but it has a real impact on who gets heard.

In this episode of Neurodivergence Matters, I share practical ways to make meetings clearer, calmer, and more inclusive—without making them longer or more complicated.

These are small shifts with a big payoff for everyone involved.

🎧 Listen here:
https://accessmedia.nz/episode/012ab8bc-46be-4467-a65c-e2fefe4ed395

If you facilitate meetings, work in teams, or support neurodivergent people, I hope this offers something useful.

Meetings are one of the most common—and most exhausting—workplace experiences for neurodivergent people. Ambiguity, fast turn-taking, sensory overload, and hidden rules can turn even short meetings into a draining exercise in masking and survival. In this episode, Stephen Harrison explores why m...

04/01/2026

🧠 New Episode Out Now: Myths & Evidence
Have you ever heard someone say, “We’re all a bit like that,” when talking about neurodivergence?

In the latest episode of Neurodivergence Matters, I explore some of the most persistent myths about neurodivergence — from vaccines causing autism to ADHD being “laziness,” and even the idea that autistic people lack empathy. I unpack why these ideas keep showing up, what science actually tells us, and how a better understanding can lead to more compassion and real change.
Access Radio NZ
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👉 Listen here: https://accessmedia.nz/episode/f56f1e16-29c1-45d2-90b2-106e22bf2f27

Whether you’re neurodivergent yourself, parenting or working with neurodivergent people, or simply curious, this episode brings grounded insight, evidence, and a strengths-based view on topics that matter.

💬 I’d love to hear: what myth have you encountered most often? Share in the comments.

Neurodivergence is surrounded by myths—some dismissive, some harmful, and some stubbornly persistent despite substantial scientific evidence. In this episode of Neurodivergence Matters, Stephen Harrison explores where these myths come from and why they continue to shape public attitudes toward aut...

17/12/2025

Yesterday’s episode of Neurodivergence Matters is a personal one.

🎙 From Brain Surgery to AuDHD: How Neurodivergence Shaped My Life and Coaching

In this episode, I share my own story — not as a coach or interviewer, but as a human being.

I talk about:
• Surviving life-saving brain surgery
• Living with anxiety, hyper-vigilance, and a brain wired to spot threat
• Later understanding my lived experience through the lens of AuDHD
• How these experiences shaped my values, my coaching approach, and my deep respect for neurodivergent lives

This episode isn’t about labels.
It’s about meaning, resilience, and learning to work with your brain rather than against it.

If you are neurodivergent, support someone who is, or work with people navigating change, I hope this story resonates.

If something in this episode connects with your own journey, I’d genuinely welcome hearing from you.

🎧 Listen here:

What happens when you’re parenting a neurodivergent child, quietly struggling yourself, and the systems around you don’t yet have language for your brain? In this honest conversation, I share my own story—from being reported for abuse because my child screamed for hours at bedtime, through ear...

09/12/2025

Kia ora koutou katoa,

🎧 Now playing: Neurodivergence Matters

Thrival Coaching’s new radio show / podcast is live. This series shares practical, compassionate, strengths-based conversations to support neurodivergent people — and the families, leaders, and professionals who walk alongside them.

Expect real stories, useful strategies, and grounded hope.

Listen now and share with someone who’ll benefit.

This new show blends lived experience, coaching practice, and current thinking on neurodiversity to make sense of conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more.
Each episode discusses practical steps that people can use at home, at work, and in relationships and is designed for both neurodivergent people and the people around them. You’ll get tools for communication, energy management, masking and burnout and feedback that doesn’t backfire to make a real difference.
Listen to the fortnightly show at 2.30pm on Wednesdays and repeated at 10.30am Sundays. Or catch the podcast on the links below.
https://tinyurl.com/yy9z5h7r
https://open.spotify.com/show/6HOUsQm5o5tx09BHOJa1Vt
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/neurodivergence-matters/id1858144214

05/11/2025

Big day! I recorded the first three episodes of my new radio show, Neurodivergence Matters.
We start airing in December 2025, and I’ll share links once the podcast is live on Spotify and Apple.
Got ideas you want covered, or someone we should interview? Drop them in the comments!

31/10/2025

Enjoying a wonderful, mindset-rejuvenating session with Dale Beaumont. A day of very useful principles, practices, habits and practical tools and ideas to build on.