Blog

Enjoyment needs to be taken more seriously – especially when it comes to supporting adult therapy clients with ADHD. To mark Neurodiversity Celebration Week 2024, ACT trainer and Senior Psychologist for ADHD Ireland Aisling Leonard-Curtin describes a common vicious cycle with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and suggests some exploratory questions that avoid problematising an individual’s need for stimulation and instead encourage a new and nourishing relationship with enjoyment.

What are the keys to maintaining self-care while working as a therapist? How can supervision practice centre a commitment to practitioner wellbeing? Sarah Worley-James is a supervisor, trainer and manager of a university counselling service. She marks Self-Care Week 2023 with a look at three key elements that can support supervisees to consider their own needs as well as their clients’ – context, variety, and valuing ourselves.

When supporting neurodivergent clients, increasing numbers of practitioners are looking to bridge a gap left by many counselling and therapy trainings. Ruth Williams, a psychotherapist specialising in neurodivergence, including autism and ADHD, has seen both the damage done by ill-informed therapy and the transformative power of attuned, informed, flexible practice. She shares some of the reasons therapists seek specialist supervision in the area of neurodiversity – including the experiences of neurodivergent supervisees.

A link between anxiety and neurodivergence is widely observed and commented upon by mental health professionals – yet often narrowly understood. To mark the start of Mental Health Awareness Week 2023, neurodivergent therapist Angela Kelly asks us to centre an appreciation of the lived experience of being an individual who learns, thinks or processes differently in a world designed for the neuromajority, including the impact of invalidation trauma.

How can we better support our neurodivergent clients to explore and make sense of their inner world? What contributions from neuroscience and insights into the mind-body union might help us? Drawing on Somatic Processing and the concept of Interoception, Psychotherapist and Brainspotting therapist Stefan Walters shares some specific questions that can help neurodivergent clients – including individuals who may have learned to cope through masking or dissociation – begin to process and relate to their own experience.

Cooking, as a therapeutic intervention, encourages us to respond with creative instinct and purposive focus, left and right brain working together. Ahead of World Autism Awareness Day on April 2, attachment-informed psychotherapist Charlotte Hastings explains how her Kitchen Therapy practice was inspired by her work with neurodivergent young people and informed by Winnicott’s concept of ‘indwelling’.