Neurodivergence at UKCP

This is the first blog by members of DiverseMinds, a UKCP special interest group (SIG) for any members – psychotherapists, psychotherapy trainees and students – who identify as neurodivergent. We share a range of lived experiences of neurodivergence, including academic, clinical, personal and professional. We aim to raise awareness more broadly of neurodivergent lives and concerns related to psychotherapy. The group meets monthly, online and is open to all categories of UKCP membership who identify as neurodivergent. 

At the 2001 UKCP conference, the planning committee observed an emerging perspective and highlighted that neuroscience was beginning to shape how we psychologically understand human development. In the years that followed, attention turned to how interpersonal relationships influence the developing brain, with implications for psychological wellbeing, relationship dynamics and the formation of identity, self and mind. 

In the intervening 25 years, the conversation has broadened. The neurodiversity movement is less focused on developmental origins and more on recognising that neurodivergent individuals psychologically experience, interpret and express meaning differently – in contrast to the so-called neurotypical norms that continue to dominate contemporary UK psychotherapeutic culture.  

For a long time, it has not been thought possible to be a neurodivergent psychotherapist: the prevailing paradigm has described us as lacking the capacities – like empathy – that psychotherapists need.  

And this is still happening. Our members have been through training and therapy. We have experienced how these spaces can erase the presence of neurodivergence: psychotherapists and tutors sometimes discounting or ignoring individual experience and instead imposing stereotypes, personal biases and generalisations. We have experienced being othered and shamed, our needs and treatment preferences ignored, and our mental health concerns dismissed. We know what damage this can do.  

But some of us also know the joy of being met where we are with acceptance and understanding; being able to unmask and/or to stim without meeting judgement. Through changes in understanding, and adjustments in training and inclusive practice, we want this experience to become unremarkable, to be seen and heard as individuals. 

For example, Rachael writes about their experience of being a neurodivergent psychotherapist:

‘As an integrative psychotherapist with ADHD, autism and dyslexia, there are positives and negatives. My lived experience being that hypervigilance, hyperfocus and divergent thinking enables pattern-finding abilities, so I quickly spot unconscious processes, enhancing the therapeutic alliance. 

‘Negatives include fatigue, overwhelm and sensory overload. I work best in my own therapy room; so other environments are challenging. Executive functioning difficulties affect time management and administrative tasks. I’ve deconstructed many masking defences, but I’m required to maintain a calm, regulated and socially fluent work identity, meaning it creates dissonance between my professional and private selves. 

‘My professional neurodivergent communication style is direct, which is no problem in my client work, it’s advantageous in creating challenge. But it can be interpreted as abrupt with colleagues, in supervision and in employment.’ 

We hope Rachael’s words resonate with you, whether you are neurodivergent or not. 

We encourage other neurodivergent psychotherapists and counsellors who are making sense of their work and identity to join us in sharing their experiences and making their voices heard.  

Within the DiverseMinds SIG, we are strengthening a professional space where neurodivergent psychotherapists and counsellors can speak from our own lived and clinical expertise and shape the evolution of the field on terms that genuinely include us. Our hope is that this article prompts deeper sector‑wide reflection on the structural assumptions, training cultures, and professional norms that continue to constrain neurodivergent practitioners’ experiences of therapeutic work and our sense of belonging. We are asserting – clearly and collectively – that neurodivergent practitioners are not peripheral to the profession but integral to its future, contributing insight, creativity, and depth that enrich the therapeutic community as a whole.