Neuroinformed Psychology and Trauma Informed Practice: learn how to weave both together when working with neurodivergent clients.

Most of us have been trained primarily through a trauma-informed lens. This learning remains essential and valuable. However, as increasing numbers of neurodivergent clients enter counselling and psychotherapy, practitioners can sometimes find themselves feeling uncertain, disoriented or ineffective in the therapy room. Interventions that would ordinarily make sense may not seem to reach the client, and familiar explanations may not fully account for what is happening.

This workshop introduces a neuro-informed way of thinking about therapeutic practice. It explores how neurodivergent processes, including sensory overwhelm, executive function differences, emotional intensity, communication differences, attention regulation and the effort of masking, may influence a client’s experience of themselves, relationships and therapy.

A central focus of the workshop will be the distinction between trauma-informed and neuro-informed practice. The two approaches may use some similar interventions, such as pacing, regulation, safety and reducing overwhelm, but the reason for the client’s difficulty may be different. A client may be responding from fear and protection, from sensory or cognitive overload, or from an interaction between trauma and neurodivergence. Understanding this distinction can help practitioners avoid interpreting every difficulty through a trauma framework alone.

This is not a workshop about abandoning trauma-informed practice. It is about widening the practitioner’s frame, so that neurodivergence can be understood and worked with directly rather than simply noticed in the background. We will explore how to hold both perspectives together, how to think more clearly about what may be driving a client’s experience, and how to adapt therapeutic work in ways that are respectful, practical and clinically meaningful.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to distinguish key elements of neuro-informed and trauma-informed practice, recognise when neurodivergent processes may be affecting therapeutic work, and begin to identify how their therapeutic responses may need to be adapted.

Participants will leave with a clearer framework for understanding neurodivergent clients in the therapy room, practical guidance for holding trauma and neurodivergence together, and increased confidence in working in a way that is not only neurodiversity-aware, but genuinely neuro-informed.

Description supplied by the event organiser.