Cathartic Collaborations

Cathartic Collaborations Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Cathartic Collaborations, Education, Brisbane.

Neurodivergent šŸ§  Queer šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ AMHSW + PhD Researcher | Supervision | Consultation | Training | Speaking
Disrupting neuronorms & reimagining practice, research and systems.
šŸŽ™ļø Divergent Dialogues
šŸ‘‡ Explore services, research & resources

There is a particular space I keep finding myself in: something no longer fits, but the alternative is still taking shap...
05/10/2026

There is a particular space I keep finding myself in: something no longer fits, but the alternative is still taking shape.

A familiar way of working might have stopped making sense. Or an idea might be rich with connections, but still need a form that others can understand and use.

Cathartic Collaborations is where I bring lived experience, research and practice into conversation. I work with practitioners, researchers, teams and organisations to understand what is happening and give emerging neuroaffirming possibilities a workable form.

That means making room for complexity. Paying attention to whose knowledge gets heard, which assumptions shape a situation, and how relationships, access and systems affect what is possible.

It also means moving with the work. Understanding can inform a decision, a framework, a resource or a different way of working. Trying something can reveal more of what we need to understand.

This approach shapes my supervision, consultation, training and speaking. The question, context and form of the work change.

At its centre is a commitment to grounded, meaningful neuroaffirming change, with attention to autonomy, participation, capacity and sustainability.

Explore how we can work together through the link in bio.

Sometimes the work begins with a clear question. Sometimes it begins with the sense that something no longer fits.Throug...
05/10/2026

Sometimes the work begins with a clear question. Sometimes it begins with the sense that something no longer fits.

Through Cathartic Collaborations, I work with practitioners, researchers, teams and organisations to make sense of complexity and give emerging neuroaffirming possibilities a workable form.

There are four ways we can work together:

Supervision: space to reflect on complex practice, professional identity, ethical and relational tensions, and sustainable ways of working.

Consultation: collaborative thinking around a particular question, idea, resource, project or system, through focussed sessions or separately scoped project work.

Training: shared learning that connects neuroaffirming understanding with how people think, relate and respond in everyday work.

Speaking: presentations that make complex ideas accessible, question familiar assumptions and open new possibilities.

Across each pathway, I bring lived experience, research and practice into conversation, with attention to people, relationships, access and systems.

Explore services, booking or enquiry options via the link in bio.

Hello, Iā€™m Caitlin (she/they), the person behind Cathartic Collaborations.Iā€™m a Neurodivergent Accredited Mental Health ...
05/10/2026

Hello, Iā€™m Caitlin (she/they), the person behind Cathartic Collaborations.

Iā€™m a Neurodivergent Accredited Mental Health Social Worker, supervisor, consultant, trainer and speaker, and a PhD candidate.

Across my work, I care about integrity, equity and access. I want ideas to become useful in practice, with room for different ways of thinking and participating.

You can explore supervision, consultation, training and speaking through the link in bio.

This is one of the questions Iā€™ve found myself sitting with while reflecting on conversations from my PhD interviews.The...
04/10/2026

This is one of the questions Iā€™ve found myself sitting with while reflecting on conversations from my PhD interviews.

The same behaviour could potentially be understood very differently depending on which framework is being used to interpret it.

And when one diagnostic lens becomes the dominant explanation, there is a risk that experiences sitting at an intersection become misunderstood, oversimplified, or attributed to one part of a person while other important context disappears from view.

For Autistic people, that context might include trauma, ADHD, mental health, culture, gender, sexuality and the ways these experiences interact rather than simply coexist.

This feels particularly important in neuroaffirming therapy.

Because whole-person care may not only be about recognising the different parts of someoneā€™s experience.

It may also mean becoming curious about the relationships between them.

About what changes when experiences overlap.

About which meanings become visible when we resist separating someone neatly into individual clinical categories.

And about what we might miss when one framework becomes the explanation for everything.

A question Iā€™m continuing to sit with:

What might we understand differently if we looked at the intersections first?

Yesterday Chris Wells and I had the joy of presenting together at the Critical Autoethnography Conference 2026.The confe...
02/10/2026

Yesterday Chris Wells and I had the joy of presenting together at the Critical Autoethnography Conference 2026.

The conference itself was such a thoughtful space to be in. I left with a lot still moving around in my brain. There was something really special about the generosity with which people shared their work, the diversity of perspectives and ways of knowing in the room, and the genuine support people offered one another.

It also felt like a bit of a full-circle moment presenting alongside Chris after getting to spend the past week together in person.

Our presentation grew from our work exploring podcasting as neuroqueer collaborative autoethnography, and Iā€™m very grateful to all of the other contributors whose voices, thinking and experiences made that work possible.

One of the things I keep returning to is the beauty of recognition.

There is something powerful about hearing another neurodivergent person speak about their world and finding part of yourself reflected back. Podcasting can create spaces where knowledge is not only communicated, but felt, recognised and made relational. Where voice, conversation, humour, uncertainty, connection and lived experience are allowed to matter.

Representation is not simply about seeing neurodivergent people present. It is also about encountering ways of thinking, communicating, relating and knowing that feel familiar.

Sometimes hearing someone else articulate an experience gives us language for something we have carried quietly for years.

And sometimes it simply gives us that wonderful moment of: you too?

Very grateful for the conversations, connections and ideas this conference created, and for getting to share this particular piece of work together.

Iā€™m so excited to see The Palgrave Handbook of Neuroinclusive Social Work officially published.It feels incredibly meani...
02/10/2026

Iā€™m so excited to see The Palgrave Handbook of Neuroinclusive Social Work officially published.

It feels incredibly meaningful to have contributed my chapter, Neuroqueering Professionalism in Social Work: Relational Ethics and the Art of Unbecoming, as well as collaborating on Capturing Context: Neuro-inclusion/Exclusion in International Social Work alongside Jenni Guthrie, Mary Ayim, Lill Hultman, Elle L. Winterwood, Vesle Krey, Agnieszka M. Fearne and Ilse Noens.

A huge thank you to the editors, Hanna Bertilsdotter-Rosqvist, Lesley Deacon and Jenni Guthrie, for the enormous amount of work, care and coordination that went into bringing this handbook together.

Thereā€™s something especially joyful about seeing neurodivergent, neuroqueer and critical perspectives represented in social work education, and about contributing to a text that will help shape how people think about practice, professionalism, knowledge and systems.

Very grateful to have been part of it, and very excited to see it out in the world.

Link to handbook in comments.

I think a lot of neurodivergent people have been taught to read changes in capacity as inconsistency.One day, something ...
30/09/2026

I think a lot of neurodivergent people have been taught to read changes in capacity as inconsistency.

One day, something feels easy. You are focused, creative, connected and able to move through complex work without too much friction.

Then another day, the exact same task feels much heavier.

It is very easy to turn that difference into a judgement about yourself.

I have done that plenty of times.

But capacity is not something we carry around in a fixed amount. It is constantly responding to what is happening in and around us.

Sensory load matters. Sleep matters. Hormones matter. Illness, grief, uncertainty, masking, relationships, accumulated demands and recovery all matter too.

Sometimes the task has not changed at all.

But the conditions have.

That does not remove the reality of deadlines, responsibilities or workload. But it gives us a more useful place to start than assuming we have somehow become less capable.

Instead of treating every dip in capacity as something to correct, I am trying to notice what it might be telling me.

Sometimes I need more clarity. Sometimes I need fewer decisions. Sometimes I need less sensory input, more time, a different pace, or actual recovery rather than another attempt to push through.

For me, that shift matters.

Fluctuating capacity is not necessarily evidence that something is wrong.

Sometimes it is information worth listening to.

What has your capacity been responding to lately?

This is the kind of reflection we keep coming back to inside the Ripple Framework Supervision Programā€¦learning to work with our capacity, rather than constantly overriding it. If that feels relevant to where you are, youā€™re welcome to explore: Link in bio.

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