Cathartic Collaborations

There can be an unspoken expectation that people most affected by harmful systems should also be the ones who explain them, challenge them and repair them.

Again and again.

Advocacy may be treated as an endless responsibility:
educate the workplace
correct the language
name the ableism
explain the access need
make the system understand.

For neurodivergent people, this labour can be particularly demanding.

It may require translating an embodied experience into language a system considers credible. It may involve navigating power differences, anticipating misunderstanding and deciding how much of yourself feels safe to disclose.

That is not a small task.

Advocacy matters. Systems change matters.

But sustainable advocacy cannot depend on the continued depletion of the people already carrying the effects of those systems.

Sometimes advocacy is public and collective.

Sometimes it is a boundary quietly held.

Sometimes it is changing how you supervise, teach, document, lead or respond.

Sometimes it is offering someone language that helps them realise the problem was never only theirs.

You do not have to prove your commitment through exhaustion.

Your capacity is not separate from the work.

It shapes how the work can continue.

A small ripple can still interrupt a pattern.

A private conversation can still shift a relationship.

A changed process can still alter what becomes possible for the people who come next.

You are not responsible for transforming every system you enter.

What is one form of advocacy that feels sustainable for you right now?

You are welcome to share, save this for later, or simply let the question sit with you.

We’re inviting Autistic people or people with an Autistic family member to join an advisory committee for an exciting project.

The project is called FitSkills. Autistic young people aged 13 to 25 are supported to exercise in a community gym alongside a trained peer mentor - an allied health university student.

Over the next two years, the program will expand across Bendigo, Albury–Wodonga, Shepparton, and Mildura.

By joining the advisory committee, your insights and lived experience will help shape how the program is designed and delivered.

Meetings will be held online, with flexible ways to contribute. Your time will be remunerated.

Follow the link to register your interest! https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=2CbumsKXrU-JAJZzX23HP_zDSmwvAhFOjBPnCgdGfWBUNVM0WDZQOVJPRThQSFAwWU5OWUo1MDZHMS4u

We’d love to hear from you, particularly if you are interested in exercise or live in a regional area.



[Image description: A promotional graphic from La Trobe University and the Olga Tennison Autism Research Centre inviting Autistic people, or people with an Autistic family member, to join an advisory committee for a new project. The text reads: "We're seeking Autistic people or people with an Autistic family member to join an advisory committee for an exciting project! Enquire within, details in post." Beside the text is a photo of two adults seated together in conversation at a small round table in a bright room, smiling and engaged in discussion. One person is speaking with expressive hand gestures while the other listens attentively. The image conveys collaboration, inclusion, and lived-experience leadership.]

For many neurodivergent professionals, supervision does not begin with ease.

It may begin with assessment.

Is it safe to speak directly here?

Will my processing style be misunderstood?

Will this become another space where I am expected to appear calm, polished and certain before I am allowed to be seen as competent?

Supervision can support growth, reflection and ethical practice.

But when it is built around correction, hidden expectations or a narrow image of professionalism, it can reproduce the same conditions that make workplaces unsafe.

Neuroaffirming supervision offers a different kind of container.

It looks beyond the individual response and asks what is happening in the wider context:

What demands are present?

What power dynamics are shaping this?

What sensory or relational factors are involved?

What part of the difficulty belongs to the environment or system?

This does not mean removing accountability.

It means making accountability more accurate.

When supervision understands context, difference and capacity, reflection becomes less about performing the right answer and more about developing ethical clarity.

What helps you feel safe enough to reflect openly in supervision?

You are welcome to share or simply notice what your nervous system recognises.

Recording today’s Tree: Regulation and Sustainability webinar, which is part of the Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing: Supervision Program, left me reflecting on how often regulation is spoken about as though it is a destination.

As though, with the right tools, routines or mindset, we might eventually become consistently calm, productive and unaffected by the conditions around us.

But regulation is not a fixed achievement.

It is an ongoing relationship with our bodies, our capacity, our environment and the season we are moving through.

Sometimes it looks like noticing that our shoulders are tense.
Sometimes it is recognising that a task is more draining than the calendar suggests.
Sometimes it is asking for clarity, using sensory supports, leaving work on time or allowing something to be good enough.
And sometimes it is acknowledging that the problem is not a lack of resilience.

It is an environment that expects living, responsive humans to function like machines.

One of the strongest reminders from today was that our bodies are always offering information.

Pain, fatigue, restlessness, overwhelm and the need to withdraw are not inconveniences to productivity.

They are messages about what we may need.

We should not have to reach burnout or crisis before those messages are taken seriously.

Sustainability is not about doing everything perfectly.

It is about creating more moments where we can notice, respond and choose ourselves.

A reflection to carry with you:
What has your nervous system been trying to tell you lately?

If you’re interested in learning more about the Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing: Supervision Program - Link in bio.

A very sweet thank you to Brianna Thomas from AuDHD IRL podcast for sending me this gorgeous little package, including this quote bag and the cutest card 🥹💛 It was such a thoughtful and lovely surprise.

I joined Bri on the AuDHD IRL podcast for a conversation about multi-exceptionality. We explored how strengths and support needs can coexist, why capability does not necessarily mean coping, and how giftedness can sometimes mask disability, while disability can also obscure giftedness.

At its heart, the episode is about recognising the whole person and making space for someone to be both deeply capable and genuinely in need of support.

You can listen to the episode here: link in comments

Whose knowledge is recognised as credible?

Whose language becomes theory?

Whose interpretation is treated as truth?

These questions sit beneath much of my thinking about autistic mental health and beneath the research I am doing through my PhD.

Autistic experiences have often been interpreted from the outside. Our lives may be translated into symptoms, behaviours, risks or outcomes before the meaning of those experiences has been fully heard.

But an autistic person is not simply a collection of observable traits.

We carry sensory knowledge.

Embodied knowledge.

Relational knowledge.

Pattern-based knowledge.

Knowledge formed through surviving, adapting, masking, questioning and making meaning.

Lived experience does not replace professional or academic knowledge. It changes the conversation by revealing where existing frameworks may be incomplete.

For me, neuroaffirming autistic mental health research means treating autistic perspectives as foundational, not supplementary.

It means asking questions that are spacious enough to hold context, complexity and contradiction.

It means remembering that research is never only about what we look at.

It is also about how we look, who is invited to interpret, and whose reality is allowed to reshape the frame.

One practical shift in neuroaffirming practice is to pause before moving into strategy, and ask:

What is this person’s nervous system trying to protect them from?

So often neurodivergent people are offered tools before our experience has been properly understood.

We are taught grounding strategies when the environment is still overwhelming.

We are given communication goals when our communication has not been respected.

We are encouraged to build tolerance when what we may actually need is less exposure, more predictability, clearer consent, or a different sensory context.

A neuroaffirming lens does not assume that distress, avoidance, shutdown, anger, withdrawal, or “non-compliance” are problems to eliminate.

It asks what function they are serving.

What is being protected?

What demand has become too much?

What sensory, social, emotional, or cognitive load has gone unnoticed?

What would make this feel safer, clearer, more collaborative, or more possible?

This does not mean we never offer strategies.

It means the strategy comes after attunement.

Because support that skips context can become another demand.

And support that listens first can become a doorway back to safety, agency, and trust.

For many neurodivergent professionals, it’s not one single thing.

It might be:

- pressure to keep pushing past your limits
- guilt when you try to rest
- sensory, emotional, or cognitive overload
- too much ambiguity or mental load
- carrying too much for too long
- not having enough recovery, support, or space

These patterns are so often individualised, when many of them are deeply shaped by burnout culture, inaccessible systems, and the ongoing expectation that we adapt endlessly to environments that do not fit us.

That’s part of what we’ll be exploring in my upcoming live webinar:

The Tree – Regulation & Sustainability

This session is about regulation, rest, nervous system support, and sustainable practice. It’s a space to reflect on what helps you stay rooted, what pulls you into strain, and how you might begin to build a different relationship with your own capacity.

You’ll leave with practical tools, language shifts, and a reflective framework you can use for yourself and/or in your work with others.

If you’ve been craving a way of thinking about sustainability that feels more human, more spacious, and more neurodivergent-affirming, this is for you: Link in bio.

Explore regulation, sustainability and the latest ripples from Cathartic Collaborations:

July Newsletter Promotional graphic for “The Tree: Regulation & Sustainability,” a live online webinar with Caitlin Hughes. The design features a soft green background, a large illustrated tree with visible roots, and a photo of Caitlin on the right. Event details read: 5 August 2026 at 10:00 am. Additional tex...

A myth about autistic mental health I want to challenge is that our distress is always treated as inevitable.

As though overwhelm, shutdowns and meltdowns are simply “part of being autistic” rather than meaningful responses to the conditions we are living inside.

Of course, autistic people can experience mental health challenges.

But when those challenges are only understood through a deficit-based lens, something important gets missed.

We miss the impact of masking.

We miss the exhaustion of constant sensory and social translation.

We miss the grief of repeated misunderstanding.

We miss the cost of being expected to adapt without being accommodated.

We miss the way systems can create distress and then locate the problem inside the person.

Autistic mental health needs more nuance than that.

It needs support that can hold lived experience, nervous system safety, sensory realities, communication differences, trauma, identity, relationships, and context.

It needs professionals who can ask not only, “What symptoms are present?”

But also:

“What has this person had to survive?”

“What environments are shaping this distress?”

“What would safety, autonomy, and support make possible?”

Because autistic distress is often a sign that something around us needs to change.