Guidance Towards Neurodiversity Affirming Care

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These guiding questions are intended to help you in your journey toward becoming a neurodiversity-affirming therapist. Neurodiversity-affirming care is person-centered and changes over time as people and systems change in order to support each client’s full humanity within the context of multiple intersecting oppressive systems.

  1. How do I prioritize a client’s wants and needs, including access, agency, safety, and joy in their daily life? 

  2. How do I integrate various forms of expertise into my work, including professional and neurodivergent people who experience other forms of discrimination (e.g., racism, transphobia). 

  3. How do I foster a neutral or positive neurodivergent self-identity in clients who want that? 

  4. How do I support all forms of communication that are preferred by a client (e.g., gestures, intonation, posture, AAC, facial expression, scripting)? 

  5. How do I consider the ways in which “challenging behavior” may be due to a client’s unmet needs (e.g., hunger, sensory, safety, self-determination?)   

  6. How do my assessments avoid pathologizing neurodivergent traits and include a meaningful summary of relevant strengths? 

  7. How does my work help reduce stigma from others and remove environmental barriers for neurodivergent clients in everyday life? 

  8. How do therapy goals focus on supporting neurodivergent clients in becoming their best neurodivergent selves rather than continuing the harmful narrative that they need to be ‘fixed’? 

  9. How do I support a client in expressing their preferences for terminology, activities, and modes of communication?  

  10. How do I support a client in self- and co-regulation, including acceptance of stimming? 

  11. How do I actively work to counteract the systemic harm that has been inflicted on clients, often by people claiming to help them? 

  12. How do I elicit and respond to ongoing feedback (verbal or nonverbal) regarding our interactions and activities? 

                         WMU Resiliency Center Neurodiversity Working Group November 20, 2023

                         Image by Kathryn Kehrer