The Neurodivergent Experience

Mindful Mondays With Ashley Bentley: Two Hemispheres, One Story | How Your Brain Writes Your State

Hosts: Jordan James & Simon Scott
Guest Host: Ashley Bentley (Mindfulness educator)
Date: November 24, 2025

Episode Overview

This Mindful Mondays episode, guided by Ashley Bentley, dives into the profound and often misunderstood relationship between the brain’s hemispheres and the lived neurodivergent experience. Focusing on how our internal stories—our "narratives"—shape nervous system regulation, Ashley blends neuroscience, psychology, and mindfulness, offering practical tools for gently shifting self-perception, cultivating presence, and finding self-compassion. The theme: the mind as a bridge between logic (left hemisphere) and imagination (right hemisphere), and how narrative can be a path to greater self-understanding and emotional regulation.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Mind’s Role in Regulation

• Ashley opens with an invitation to explore the mind as an agent of groundedness and self-soothing for neurodivergent people.
• She frames nervous system regulation not just as a physiological process, but an art form that weaves together breath, body, and—today’s focus—the stories we tell ourselves.
• "[T]he stories you tell yourself shape your state, and your state shapes your choices, and your choices shape your life." (Ashley Bentley, 02:45)

2. Neuroscience of Narrative: Predicting Your Next Move

• The brain doesn’t just predict the future; it predicts your “interaction” with the future—what you do next, moment by moment.
• John Vervaeke’s work is cited: The left hemisphere is “logic and data, facts, spatial orientation”—what is. The right is “imagination, intuition, creativity”—what could be.
• The nervous system acts as a tuning fork between these worlds.
• For neurodivergent people, sensory and emotional input is amplified; inner narratives thus play an even bigger, more active role.

3. The Power (and Limits) of Familiar Stories

• Our background “if... then...” beliefs drive decisions and nervous system reactions:
  • If I say no, they will reject me.
  • If I rest, everything will fall apart.
  • If I don’t mask, I won’t be safe.
• Most of these narratives were shaped unconsciously in childhood—often for safety or survival.
• “The mind will always choose a familiar story over a new possibility, even if the familiar story hurts. And this is not your fault. This is your nervous system trying to keep you alive.” (Ashley, 09:32)

Notable Quote

"In the tiny space between what happens and what you tell yourself about it, your freedom is born." (Ashley, 10:15)

4. Behavior, Identity, and Neurodivergence

• The maxim "behavior follows identity" is especially poignant for neurodivergent people; faster data processing means narratives are more vivid and constantly reinforced.
• Referencing a previous episode on imposter syndrome:
  • The sense of “I don’t belong” is an inherited narrative—"not a personality flaw, it's a story."
• “[Imposter syndrome] is not evidence that you are unqualified. It’s evidence that your nervous system has been taught to brace for rejection.” (Ashley, 12:05)

5. Confirmation Bias and Hope: Re-writing the Narrative

• The mind constantly seeks evidence for its existing beliefs—this is not pessimism, but energy conservation and pattern recognition.
• The flip side: Gently asking questions like “How might this get better?” can shift attention and, over time, reshape how experience is filtered.
• “This is not toxic positivity. It’s simply giving your nervous system a different question to answer.” (Ashley, 14:22)

6. Interpretation, Presence, and The Witness

• Stories shape not just perception but physical state (fight, flight, freeze, fawn).
• The metaphor of two people walking the same rainy lane:
  • One sees frustration; the other sees beauty. The internal story changes the nervous system’s “state.”
• “The moment you notice the story, you become the witness. And the space opens and the nervous system softens.” (Ashley, 18:37)
• “Presence is the place where you stop being the story and begin watching it.” (Ashley, 19:12)

7. Trait vs. State: You Are Not Your Overwhelm

• Introducing the therapeutic lens: “Is this state or trait?”
• Dysregulation, meltdown, or shutdown are nervous system states, not fixed parts of one’s identity.
• “You are not your meltdown. You are not your shutdown. You are not your overwhelm. Those are states, not traits.” (Ashley, 21:13)

8. Cultivating the Witness: Top-Down Regulation

• Mindfulness is about witnessing—creating a gap between stimulus and response.
• The "Witness" is described as “the part of you that steps just one breath back from the moment, not disconnecting and not dissociating, but observing.” (Ashley, 22:44)
• This witnessing is a powerful form of emotional regulation—allowing you to act rather than react.

9. Case Story: Shifting Physical Sensitivity

• Ashley shares her struggle with light sensitivity (wore sunglasses everywhere), and how learning about sunlight’s benefits gently shifted her narrative and, eventually, her experience:
  • “My story had changed, and my body followed. Not by pushing, not by effort, just by gently letting new understanding rewrite an old belief.” (Ashley, 20:50)

10. Practices for Rewriting Inner Stories

• Weekly invitation:
  • Pick a recurring self-story (“I’m too much” / “I don’t belong”).
  • Append: “...and something else may also be true.”
  • This microdosing of new meaning gently expands possibilities, without self-pressure to “fix” everything at once.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Narrative is biology." (Ashley, 05:56)
• "When you change the story, you change the identity. And when you change the identity, you change the state." (Ashley, 11:45)
• "The stories we tell ourselves become the worlds we live in." (Ashley, 13:45)
• "Is this behavior who you are, or simply where your nervous system is at in this moment?" (Ashley, 21:45)
• "You are not the story. You are witnessing the story. You are not the storm. You are the ocean beneath the storm." (Ashley, 25:40)

Meditation & Grounding Practice (23:19–36:50)

(Guided visualization and mindfulness practice)

• Listeners are invited to settle in and become aware of their bodies and breath.
• Metaphoric imagery: Mind as the night sky, thoughts as fireflies or stars, self as an ocean beneath the surface turbulence.
• Emphasis shifts from trying to “fix” thoughts toward gently noticing and allowing them.
• “You are not the thought. You are the awareness holding the thought.” (Ashley, 29:40)
• Practice concludes with an invitation to carry a sense of stillness and gentle self-compassion into daily life.

Final Reflections & Takeaways

• The month’s themes have explored the breath, body, and mind as the “architecture” for coming home to oneself as a neurodivergent person.
• The journey is ongoing: “We’re only just getting started.”
• Listeners are encouraged to tune in next week for a guided meditation on love, acceptance, and forgiveness.
• Closing blessing:

  “May you meet your nervous system with kindness and your mind with curiosity and your body with the tenderness you’d offer a dear friend. And remember, we are all just walking each other home.” (Ashley, 36:50)

Segment Timestamps

• Welcome and theme introduction: [01:37–03:50]
• Science of prediction and the two hemispheres: [03:50–07:40]
• The four ‘if... then...’ beliefs: [08:00–10:10]
• Behavior, identity, and imposter syndrome: [10:10–13:00]
• Confirmation bias and reframing: [13:00–17:05]
• Presence, the witness, and state vs. trait: [17:05–23:19]
• Guided grounding and meditation: [23:19–36:50]
• Closing reflections: [36:50–37:29]

Summary Takeaway

This episode gently challenges the belief that neurodivergence is purely about brain "wiring," revealing instead how deeply internal narratives shape both our moment-to-moment states and long-term self-identity. Through neuroscience, storytelling, and mindfulness, Ashley Bentley shows that with awareness and compassion, we can soften old stories and open new possibilities for regulation, presence, and self-acceptance—one breath, one softened sentence at a time.