Cathartic Collaborations

Yesterday, I had the privilege of recording a pre-recorded online session for Neurodiversity Affirming Therapy Conference Australia 2026, alongside my dear friend and colleague, Vera Yeo.

This feels especially meaningful because my connection with Vera has grown through the kind of conversations that remind me why this work matters. Our friendship has blossomed through shared interests and shared values.

Together, we recorded:

From Survival to Self-Leadership: Reclaiming Personal Power Within Neurodivergent Lives

So much of this session reflects the spaces we often find ourselves in together...wondering, questioning, making meaning, and gently pulling apart the systems that have taught neurodivergent people to survive by becoming less of themselves.

For many neurodivergent people, the struggle has never simply been about “functioning better.”

It has been about surviving systems that require constant adaptation, masking, self-suppression, and disconnection from our own needs just to get through.

Over time, survival can become the baseline.

The body learns to brace.
The mind learns to scan.

This session explores what it can mean to move beyond survival.

Not through more optimisation.
Not through pushing harder.
Not through becoming more productive, palatable, or compliant.

But through:
Recognising how environments shape functioning
Shifting from external expectation toward internal alignment
Reclaiming personal power without ignoring systemic harm

And redefining leadership entirely.

Not as productivity.
Not as performance.

But as the quiet, courageous practice of authoring a life that actually fits.

I am so grateful to Vera for the wisdom, warmth, and steadiness they brought to this conversation, and for the friendship that continues to grow alongside our shared commitment to neuroaffirming and trauma-informed care.

🎫 Tickets: https://events.humanitix.com/neurodiversity-affirming-therapy-conference-australia-2026-the-power-of-community-in-social-change

🔗 Event info: https://www.ndaffirmingtherapyaus.org

LOAPAC-Neurodiversity Affirming Psychologists Australia

Many neurodivergent professionals have been handed maps.

Maps shaped by diagnosis, professionalism, rigid expectations, and other people’s ideas of what success is supposed to look like.

But maps can become a problem when they assume there is one right way to be.

One right pace.

One right presentation.

One right way to work, relate, cope, or belong.

This live webinar, The Compass: Self-Discovery & Identity, offers a different framework.

Instead of asking how to fit yourself more neatly into a predetermined path, we’ll explore what it means to orient around your own values, needs, strengths, boundaries, and sense of meaning.

Together, we’ll reflect on:

🧭 why a compass is more helpful than a map

🧭 what happens when we lose orientation and default to pressure, performance, and masking

🧭 how to begin moving with more alignment and less self-erasure

This is for neurodivergent professionals who are tired of over-adapting, questioning their fit, and wanting a more neuroaffirming way to navigate work and life.

If this resonates, I’d love to have you there: Link in bio.

Last Saturday, I attended the Student Voice Conference 2026 run by Australian Council for Student Voice Ltd. at QUT (Queensland University of Technology), where I presented on Neurodivergent Student Experiences and the Hidden Labour of University Success.

The topic is one that feels deeply important to me.

Much of the conversation around student success focuses on outcomes: grades, retention, progression, completion, and employability.

What is often overlooked is the invisible work that sits beneath those outcomes.

For many neurodivergent students, success is not simply about attending class and completing assessments.

It can involve navigating sensory overwhelm, executive functioning demands, inaccessible systems, uncertainty, social expectations, self-advocacy, burnout, and the ongoing labour of translating environments that were not designed with them in mind.

The hidden labour of success is rarely reflected in transcripts, course evaluations, or institutional reporting.

Yet it shapes the student experience every day.

After the presentation, I joined a discussion about what it takes to create meaningful and sustainable change within education systems.

The conversation quickly turned to the familiar barriers: funding constraints, policy, bureaucracy, competing priorities, political pressures, and institutional structures.

Those barriers are real.

But I left reflecting on something else.

Sometimes we become so focused on explaining why change is difficult that we stop talking about how change actually happens.

As a neurodivergent person, I've often observed that systems tend to welcome feedback until that feedback requires genuine transformation.

We say we want innovation, but often within the safety of existing structures.

We say we value student voice, but are sometimes less comfortable when those voices challenge our assumptions about what learning, success, support, or inclusion should look like.

One of the most powerful forms of change is empowering students, particularly neurodivergent students, not only to participate in systems but to help reimagine them.

Many neurodivergent students bring perspectives that are uniquely valuable because they have spent their lives noticing friction points, questioning assumptions, and finding alternative ways forward.

Too often, the goal becomes helping students adapt to the education system.

Perhaps we should also be asking more about how the education system can learn from its students.

Because the future of education will not be shaped solely by those maintaining existing structures.

It will be shaped by those willing to imagine something different.

And many of those people are already sitting in classrooms.

Check out what's new at Cathartic Collaborations this month:

June Newsletter - Ripple Launch & Free Webinar We're so excited to share that... Registrations are now open for the Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing Supervision Program! This program was created for neurodivergent professionals who are tired of trying to hold everything separately. Identity. Burnout. Connection. Environmental misma...

Registrations are now open for the Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing Supervision Program!

This program was created for neurodivergent professionals who are tired of trying to hold everything separately.

Identity.

Burnout.

Connection.

Workplace mismatch.

Meaning.

The constant effort of trying to keep going in systems that often do not fit.

The Ripple Framework offers a different way of making sense of these experiences.

Across six modules, we explore:

🧭 Compass – Self-Discovery & Identity

🌳 Tree – Regulation & Sustainability

🌉 Bridge – Connection & Communication

🪹 Nest – Environment & Systems Change

🌟 Star – Meaning & Systemic Impact

🌀 Integration – Living the Ripples

This is more than content.

It is a structured, neuroaffirming journey that includes:
- 6 self-paced learning modules
- live group sessions
- live webinars
- practical tools and worksheets
- peer community

If you’ve been looking for a way of understanding yourself and your work that feels more spacious, more integrated, and more sustaining, this may be for you: Link in bio.

Yesterday I attended the Yellow Ladybugs Conference, and it was really beautiful to be in a room with so many of my neurokin.

There is something deeply grounding about being around people who understand parts of your experience without needing a full translation. The shared language. The sensory awareness. The humour. The moments of recognition.

And of course, getting to dress up in an 80s theme made it even more fun.

This year’s conference theme, Reclaiming the Past to Shape the Future, really resonated with me as a late-diagnosed autistic person. So many of us grew up unseen, misunderstood, unsupported, or trying to make sense of ourselves through frameworks that were never built with us in mind.

To reflect on the experiences of autistic girls and gender-diverse people who grew up in the 80s, and in the decades that followed, is to acknowledge how many stories were missed. How many needs were misread. How many children were told, directly or indirectly, that their way of being was too much, too difficult, too sensitive, too intense, too strange, or not enough.

For me, so much of the work I do now is about contributing to a better future for the younger generation.

A future where autistic children do not have to spend decades unravelling shame that never belonged to them.

A future where they are recognised earlier, supported more meaningfully, and surrounded by adults who understand that difference is not deficiency.

Being at events like this reminds me that this future is not just an abstract hope. It is something people are actively building.

When you see so many people come together with a shared purpose, including autistic people, parents, educators, clinicians, advocates, researchers, and allies, it becomes easier to believe that change is possible.

Not quick change. Not perfect change. But real change.

The kind that gathers slowly through stories, relationships, advocacy, research, practice, community, and people refusing to let the next generation inherit the same challenges.

I left feeling grateful, reflective, and hopeful.

And maybe also a little more committed to keeping the 80s accessories in rotation.

We’re often taught to look for transformation as something obvious.

A clear before and after.
A completed process.
A final point of arrival.

But neurodivergent flourishing is rarely that linear.

It often happens in quieter ways.

A boundary becomes easier to recognise.
A pattern has language now.
A moment of self-blame softens into context.
A familiar survival strategy is met with more compassion.
A small choice begins to feel more aligned.

Integration is not about becoming finished.

It is about beginning to live what we have been learning.

Because the work is not to master ourselves into consistency.

It is to return, again and again, to what supports dignity, capacity, connection, and change.

Check out my latest blog post: Living the Ripples: Integrating Neurodivergent Flourishing at Work — link in bio.

I’m in a season of showing up with more trust in my own way of being.

Allowing quietness, depth, curiosity, warmth, awkwardness, and meaning to coexist...instead of trying to smooth them into something more socially seamless.

This year at Yellow Ladybugs conference, I’ll be hanging out with Laetitia from Understanding Zoe as my conference buddy (and silver sponsor for the conference), which feels like a lovely way to stay connected, grounded, and a little more spacious in the conference environment.

So this is me arriving a little more as I am.

Open to connection.
Honouring my capacity.
Letting the right conversations find their way to me.

If you see me at Yellow Ladybugs conference, you’re very welcome to come and say hi.

For many neurodivergent professionals, it is not just one thing.

It might be:
- staying connected to who you are
- regulating and avoiding burnout
- communication and relationships
- unsupportive environments or systems
- meaning, purpose, or direction
- trying to hold it all together

These experiences can feel personal. Isolating. Like you should be coping better by now.

That’s what I’ll be exploring in my upcoming free live webinar:
From Survival to Flourishing: An Introduction to the Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing Supervision Program

This session will introduce the full Ripple Framework, a neuroaffirming way of understanding identity, regulation, connection, systems, meaning, and integration as interconnected parts of flourishing rather than isolated deficits to fix.

You’ll leave with:
- a clearer sense of the six ripples
- language that reduces self-blame
- a more systemic and compassionate lens on what you may be carrying

If you’ve been craving something that helps your inner world, relationships, burnout, and systems context make more sense together, this is for you: Link in bio.