The Neurodivergent Therapy Space

The Neurodivergent Therapy Space đŸ’«Neurodivergent Therapist | Somatic Trauma Therapist | Training Practitioner - Trauma, Autism, ADHD đŸ’«
(1)

If you’re autistic or ADHD and certain sensory experiences feel overwhelming, more exposure isn’t always the answer.Some...
20/02/2026

If you’re autistic or ADHD and certain sensory experiences feel overwhelming, more exposure isn’t always the answer.

Some nervous systems process sound, light, touch and busy environments differently.

When something registers as threat, your body moves into fight or flight.

Each spike drains your internal battery.

The goal here is not to keep “pushing through” and let’s face it, sometimes we have to because of the society we live in
 but, when we don’t have to


It’s about looking at what accommodations you can put in place to reduce sensory overwhelm.

For me, I won’t eat with others without either earplugs or background music/tv. Because it is too overwhelming.

What accommodations can you put in place?

For therapists and professionals wanting to understand this more deeply, DM me the word: Training

18/02/2026

Ig

A snippet of my podcast with yesterday!

We explored why trauma impacts neurodivergent people so much, wha trauma is and how it impacts our body


And, why I challenged the traditional therapy models and created a neuro affirming practice!

Full episode out in April đŸ„°

17/02/2026

Why it’s so important to ensure the therapist you choose IS neuro-affirming and why traditional therapy can unintentionally cause more damage!

You can run meetings, communicate with others, lead teams
But you get home and you have zero capacity for anything!High ...
16/02/2026

You can run meetings, communicate with others, lead teams


But you get home and you have zero capacity for anything!

High masking doesn’t mean you’re fine.

It means you’ve learned how to perform.

And performing all day has a cost.

Neuroaffirming therapy isn’t about polishing the mask.

It’s about helping you feel safe enough to ask for accommodations, come out of burnout, and feel content being you.

ADHD brains tend to process emotion intensely and quickly. There’s often less of a buffer between feeling something and ...
13/02/2026

ADHD brains tend to process emotion intensely and quickly.

There’s often less of a buffer between feeling something and being flooded by it. When you add years of being corrected, misunderstood, interrupted, or labelled “too much,” “too loud,” “too sensitive,” it makes sense that the nervous system becomes highly attuned to rejection.

RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria) can be a common experience for ADHD people because of this.

The brain learns to scan for social threat.
To anticipate it.
To try and prevent it.

There’s also research showing that rejection is processed in the same area of the brain as physical pain. So when rejection “hurts,” it genuinely does. On a physical level. In the chest. In the stomach. In the throat.

So the urgency to fix it, remove it, is your body trying to protect you!

Many autistic people relate to this too, especially those who have experienced chronic misunderstanding, exclusion, bullying, or years of masking.

When you’ve repeatedly felt like you got something “wrong,” even subtle shifts in tone or energy can feel loaded.

RSD isn’t a formal diagnosis. But the experience is very real.
And the work isn’t about toughening up.
It’s about building internal safety.

And gently separating present moments from old wounds ❀‍đŸ©č

The difference between traditional therapy and therapeutic interventions for autistic or ADHD individuals lies in the ap...
11/02/2026

The difference between traditional therapy and therapeutic interventions for autistic or ADHD individuals lies in the approach.

Traditional therapy often encourages you to sit with and process uncomfortable or challenging parts of yourself, aiming for change or resolution. However, when that change does not happen, it can lead to further distress, making you feel as though you are beyond help, as if you are something to be fixed but ultimately unfixable.

In contrast, therapeutic interventions from an AuDHD perspective understand that certain parts of you, like sensory sensitivities, difficulty in busy environments, or struggling to sit still, are not problems to be overcome. Instead, we work through the rumination, the self doubt, the self esteem, the boundaries, the internalised beliefs, the negative self talk and the trauma ❀

At the same time, we focus on helping you accept and accommodate the natural aspects of yourself, so you can love and care for yourself the way you would your loved ones ❀

I don’t normally post twice in a day but as I was reflecting on my stories, I felt this needed a space on the main grid ...
10/02/2026

I don’t normally post twice in a day but as I was reflecting on my stories, I felt this needed a space on the main grid 🧡

There’s something incredibly special about this work and it gets me every time!

No matter how many times I witness it, I never get used to the moment when a shift happens.

When you’ve sat alongside someone through some really dark, painful places
 and then slowly, gently, they begin to shift, their internal sense of themselves begins to soften, from a place of self hatred or a place of feeling like they are always wrong/in the wrong/ can’t do things right


To a place of self love and self acceptance
 and for some people, theyv never had that feeling before.

It gets me every time.

I’m always left feeling emotional, proud, and genuinely so happy for them.

And it’s such a privilege to be trusted with someone’s inner world. To be allowed to walk beside them while they do the bravest work of their life.

So today I’m celebrating client wins and feeling genuinely elated 🧡

These moments are a quiet reminder that therapy with the right therapist works đŸ€

Therapy isn’t easy.
But it is so, so worth it đŸ«¶

10/02/2026

This is just one example of how the old school model of therapy and the beliefs around what self care should look like caused me more harm.

The reality was, I was great at self care. Not that I knew it then. But I did know the things that brought me a huge amount of pleasure and helped me disconnect from ruminating thoughts, stress, work, and unprocessed trauma.

Self care for many of us isn’t a bubble bath and a cup of tea (although I do love both). That’s just not how my body rests.

I can only “rest” when I’m doing something
 doesn’t make sense, right?

What we’ve been told rest is, is vegging out on the sofa and doing nothing and sometimes that might be what we need.

But deep rest, the kind where you’re resting your nervous system and the inner workings of your body, is actually about doing something that takes you away from the chatter in your brain and brings you into the here and now.

For me, that looks like:

🧡 gardening
🧡 being outdoors
🧡 designing my home space
🧡 coffee in the garden with the birds whilst looking at what I’d like to plant next

Sitting still causes me distress because my body resting means it needs to move, not all the time, but that is what self care is for me.

What does rest and self care look like for you?

Interoception means the body registers and processes signals differently. For some autistic and ADHD people, the signals...
09/02/2026

Interoception means the body registers and processes signals differently.

For some autistic and ADHD people, the signals don’t arrive early or clearly. They might come late, quietly, or all at once or they might not come at all.

Hunger might not feel like hunger, it might feel like nausea or dizziness.

Tiredness might not feel like tiredness, it might show up as excess energy, overwhelm, irritability or shutdown.

Needing the toilet might not register until it’s suddenly urgent.

Pain might be missed completely
 until it can’t be ignored anymore.

From the outside, this can be misunderstood. It can look like poor self-care, being dramatic, not listening to your body, or “you should know better by now”.

But what’s actually happening is the signals are being processed differently.

Do you relate?

06/02/2026

Ableism in traditional therapy isn’t usually obvious.
It’s quiet, subtle, and often well-intentioned.

It shows up when behaviour is assumed to mean the same thing for everyone.
And that’s what therapists have been taught for years.

đŸ«„ Lack of eye contact gets read as shame or trauma
đŸ«„ Fidgeting is labelled anxiety
đŸ«„ Shutdown is treated as a trauma response
đŸ«„ Lateness becomes avoidance or resistance, or given a “deeper meaning”

For many autistic and ADHD people, these aren’t problems to fix.
But when we come to therapy and all of this (and more) is assumed, it can make us feel completely broken.
Like we can’t even do therapy “right”.

When therapy relies on one narrow model of what’s considered healthy or the “correct” way of being, it becomes another place where people are misunderstood, pushed, and harmed.

That was my experience.
And it’s how I knew I wasn’t the only one.

It’s why I created the Neurodivergent Therapy Space, and why I’m so passionate about offering training through this lens. Therapy should adapt to the person, not the other way around, and behaviour should never be assumed to mean one fixed thing.

This is why updated, research-backed, neuroaffirming therapy matters.

Because autistic and ADHD people deserve spaces where we are not pathologised, reduced, or forced into a box.

Being an auDHD woman, collecting things is often viewed, from old-school research, as just “normal stereotypical girl st...
05/02/2026

Being an auDHD woman, collecting things is often viewed, from old-school research, as just “normal stereotypical girl stuff”.

Which is why so many women and girls are missed, and why barely any research has been done on autistic women and girls.

So here are a few of the things I collect:

Cute mugs ☕ (if you have been following me for a while, you will know how much I love a new mug), but
 they have to be a certain shape, otherwise the tea just doesn’t taste right.

Clothes!!! I LOVE clothes!! Not just clothes, but different versions and different styles.

I have everything ranging from hippie styles to mountain climber styles, and everything in between! I get all the accessories that go with that style too!

Jewellery! I love jewellery 🙌

Plants. Watching them grow, moving them around, noticing what they need (and also forgetting what they need đŸ€Šâ€â™€ïž).

Home things and garden things đŸ„° plants, furniture, rugs, lamps, textures, cushions, small details
 and I often collect kitchen items but won’t use them.

Books that I don’t always read, but I love having them on the shelf or just randomly around my house.

Miniatures. Tiny things. I was obsessed with Sylvanian Families, miniature train sets, and Polly Pockets.

All these things tie into my special interests, so I can spend hours and days redoing things in my house, and I often cannot rest until it’s “done”, which can cause real problems if I suddenly get it into my head at 7am that I need to redo my hallway and I’m meeting a friend at 12pm!! 😬

None of this looks like what research says autistic interests are “supposed” to look like.

So it was easy to miss.
But it was always there.

Would love to hear some of your collections đŸ„°đŸ„°

Ableism in schools isn’t always loud, it’s not always in our faces! It shows up in policies, praise, rewards, and expect...
04/02/2026

Ableism in schools isn’t always loud, it’s not always in our faces!

It shows up in policies, praise, rewards, and expectations that were never designed with neurodivergent nervous systems in mind (actually a lot of systems in schools were designed for the adults not the children)

Many school systems are still working from outdated models of compliance and punishment.

Models that haven’t caught up with what we now know about regulation, safety, and behaviour as communication.

So children learn quiet lessons:
That rest is failure.
That needs are inconvenient.
That coping matters more than safety.
That belonging is conditional.

Attendance rewards, public celebrations, behaviour charts, and “just try harder” narratives don’t teach anything other than compliance and self abandonment.

For some, they reinforce shame, masking, and burnout.

A safe school doesn’t teach children to push through at all costs.
It teaches them to listen to their bodies, recognise dysregulation, take breaks, move, and ask for help when things feel overwhelming.

Inclusion isn’t about tougher children.
It’s about informed systems, it’s about building a safe and trusting relationship with each and every child. Understanding that each and every child is different and has different needs and requirements.

Just because Zoe in year two can focus on Maths for 45 minutes, doesn’t mean she can do the same in Literacy. And that’s the same for every child accross the board right?

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