My practice provides trauma therapy for neurodivergent clients while also supporting them with understanding their sensory needs, helping with pacing/burnout issues, communication differences, etc. Neurodivergent clients with complex trauma often had to grow up learning to ignore their body’s signals. High-masking individuals especially would have needed ways to filter out the pain and distress of trauma, sensory overwhelm, the multitude of experiences of rejection, and a lifetime of feeling different or like an outsider. As a result, these clients are left with dysregulated nervous systems that over time exacerbate symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, pain, autoimmune conditions, etc.

Often times these clients have tried traditional talk therapy and not found much benefit. This is because speaking at the narrative level of our experience often does little to change what is happening at the nervous system level of our experience. That’s why people can know the story of their lives, understand it, but still feel no different as a result. For neurodivergent clients especially, working directly with the nervous system to become more calm and connected to their bodies is imperative for them to be able to actually feel different. ‘Bottom-up’ approaches like somatic therapies are incredibly well suited to neurodivergent clients for this reason.