How to be Neuro Affirming when no one ever taught us How?

When outdated information isn’t updated in the systems that support us, the clinics we work in, the schools, the conferences, the educators, the universities…. it hugely restricts access to neuro-affirming support. Not due to a lack of neuro affirming service providers, but because to learn how to practice neuro-affirming ways in our work we have to

a) independently seek professional development that teaches us how

b) unpack our own conditioning and ableism

c) re-orient and change our ways often without supervision and guidance

Independently seeking professional development is honestly the easiest part given we’re no longer in the era of expertise coming from text books and professors. We have highly qualified, experienced and knowledgeable neurodivergent people sharing everything we need to know about the neurodiversity paradigm, often for free in the form of posts, reels, videos, stories and other social media goodies. (Honestly, the best thing to have come out of social media IMHO!)

Not sure who to follow? Find me on your social media outlets and check out who I engage with and follow your nose from there.

Read their books, subscribe to their channels, pay for their programs and content if you can, because if we want neurodivergent people to have capacity to continue teaching us, which literally changes our children’s future, we need to provide tangible support.

Unpacking our own conditioning and ableism is hard, I’m not going to lie. In fact this is probably the hardest part of all given we really don’t realise a lot of our flawed thinking exists until we realise it exists.

For most of us, by virtue of our age, we are deeply conditioned by the behavioural paradigm. This means we have neuro-normative standards, that we see deviation from these standards as problematic and our intent is to support ourselves and our children to meet those standards.

We see this as therapeutic, but through a neuro-affirming lens this is assimilation.

“Preparing our kids for the real world” is not it.

The behavioural paradigm is riddled with black and white absolutes (how very autistic of it!!) Right or wrong, positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy, good or bad. But a neuro-affirming lens gives vision to all of the nuance, all of the diversity, all of the ways in which so much can be true and co-exist. Gender, sexuality, culture, capacity, neurotype, lifestyle, community, they are living constructs that breathe and sing and alter themselves and deserve to be listened to, not defined.

As for internalised ableism, this is often most profound in those of us unaware of our neurotypes or needs. We see behaviours in others and recognise (consciously or otherwise) or own childhood experiences of suppressing or overcoming those needs and therefore see them as something that should be overcome. It’s much harder to recognise that the so-called overcoming of needs can be traumatic to the body, brain and nervous system, and can be a cause of ongoing pain.

“I had to (insert word here) when I was a kid and I turned out OK” is not it.

And for those of us who do gain clarity around our neurotype, there is a whole world of unpacking and unlearning to do before we go and write a book on ‘ADHD strategies for the classroom’ or ‘beyond the label of OCD’. If we rush this process we pass our internalised ableism on into books, that people trust because of our lived experience, and the cycle of internalised ableism continues under the guise of truth.

(Please, if you create resources, be aware of your own flaws, I am constantly evaluating my own.)

Re-orienting our methods can be tricky, it can be instinctive, it can be a joy, it can lighten the load and it requires trial and error. All of this is best served with supervision, but how do we access that? And how do we know that our supervisor is neuro-affirming and self evaluative of their own flaws?

It’s hard to trust frameworks in this generation of ‘the changing of the frameworks’. And it’s hard to find supervision that is accessible.

I’ll be offering a free 90 minute webinar on Monday September 8th, 7-8.30pm AEST called ‘How To Be Neuro-Affirming When no one Ever Taught us How’. This will include a replay to all registrants with permanent access, a 60 minutes discussion on this topic and a 30 minute QandA in which you can ask me anything (if you’re there live!)

I’ll be giving everyone who attends a discount code for the next round of ‘Autism: Dispelling the Myths and Understanding the Culture’ which runs for 6 weeks and begins on Sept 15th. Joining this program will also give you half price access to consultations and supervision session with me for the remainder of 2025.

This is an excellent program if I do say so myself. I’ll tell you more about it later.

For now register for the free webinar and go from there. :)

REGISTER HERE