By Anna Venables, MTAT
Holistic therapists have a unique way of understanding people.
We notice the subtle things that can easily be missed when the focus is solely on words, symptoms or behaviour.
We register a racing mind that struggles to stay with a question. We attune to an uneasy breath. We notice a shift in muscle tension. We are skilled at working with the body and often land the right words at the right moment.
But what if, in our quest to understand and help, we sometimes ask too much of an already overloaded nervous system?
For a dysregulated ADHD brain, when the prefrontal cortex is struggling to stay ‘online’, even a simple question can become another task to process or perceived as a demand. ‘What happened?’ ‘How are you feeling?’ and ‘What do you need?’ asks for attention, working memory, language expression and decision-making: executive function skills that may be hardest to access at that moment.
For an autistic person exhausted from masking and tipped into sensory overload, more words, choices and attempts to help them explain can add to the load they are trying to escape.
For someone trauma-experienced and hypervigilant, repeated enquiry and re-telling of personal story can feel less like support and more like pressure to make sense of something before their nervous system feels safe enough to do so.
The presentations may differ: shouting, rapid speech, pacing, tears, shutdown, withdrawal and ‘I don’t know’, but the common thread is the same.
We may be asking the nervous system to do more when it has less capacity available.
Sometimes, the most therapeutic thing we can do is stop talking.
Bessel van der Kolk captures why:
‘When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signalling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it’(p.77.)
Talking still matters. Timing matters more.
Sometimes we need to remove the demand for explanation long enough to give the nervous system another route into regulation.
Van der Kolk again describes this beautifully:
‘bottom-up regulation involves recalibrating the autonomic nervous system… we can access the ANS through breath, movement, or touch’ (p.76.)
And this is where the ear became particularly interesting.
The ear provides an accessible, low-demand, body-based route in to the ANS. With over 200 auricular acupoints and a rich supply of sensory cranial nerves, gentle touch, palpation and sustained ear seed pressure can provide sensory input into pathways involved in emotional and attentional regulation, without relying on lengthy verbal processing.
Why MTAT Connecting Protocol?
MTAT Connecting Protocol grew from this very need to support regulation before reasoning or explanation.
In fact, its evolvement was propelled by a convergence of my own personal and professional needs that became impossible to separate or ignore.
A personal need, through my own lifelong experience of unwanted ADHD and Mom in a neurodivergent family where dysregulated nervous systems collide and conflict quickly escalates.
An educational need, as a Specialist SEMH Teacher supporting children and parent/carers trying to navigate environments and systems that do not fit their children’s unmet SEN needs.
And a therapeutic need, shaped by almost thirty years in reflexology and auricular therapy and my work within NHS substance misuse and mental health services. I understand how mental health, trauma, OCD and AuDHD related dysregulation shows up in the body and its miniature blueprint on the ears and feet.
MTAT Connecting Protocol seeks to address these needs.
Rather than simply asking, “Which point treats this symptom?”, it gives practitioners a sensory-aware, neuroaffirming and relational framework for asking: What is this nervous system telling me right now?
Does this person need Regulate, Relate, Rewire or Restore protocol or a dynamic combination selected for the individual?
MTAT fills the gap between recognising dysregulation and knowing what to do next.
Through precise acupoint location, palpation and sensory aware ear seeding intervention, practitioners can adapt their response to the individual with accuracy for best treatment outcomes.
Importantly, this work does not have to end in the treatment room.
Families can learn ear seeding in partnership, giving them a practical, accessible low-verbal way to support one another with or without a diagnosis, alongside medication and clinical pathways and at the times regulation is needed most.
For practitioners, MTAT Connecting Protocol is not about becoming an expert in every presentation of neurodivergence. It is about feeling more confident in what you already notice, more curious about what the nervous system may be communicating and then knowing how to respond.
Is this client, parent or child overwhelmed, shut down, restless or hypervigilant? Do they need a sensory check in prior to protocol choice or support with co-regulation?
MTAT combines a sensory-aware, neuroaffirming SEMH framework integrating the unique sensory nerve pathways of the ear. This offers a practical, low-verbal route into regulation when talking feels like too much, or when help itself is beginning to feel like pressure
Regulation before explanation. Attunement before enquiry. Connection before cognitive demand.
Explore MTAT Connecting Protocol approach further through my free training on auricular therapy for ADHD and emotional regulation.
Link here: Free 25 Minute Training for Parents & Carers | MTAT Connecting Protocol
Contact www.mtat.uk
Reference: Van der Kolk, B.A. (2015) The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma. London: Penguin Books, pp. 76–77.
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