The clinical training of an MFT does not typically cover how to work with neurodiversity differently than we are taught to work with everyone else. But neurodivergent individuals require different treatment and different strategies to manage symptoms. Families with one diagnosed member often have others in the mix, and as MFTs, it is important that we learn how to identify undiagnosed neurodivergence and work with it from a systems-based, non-pathologizing lens.
With increased research and the growing number of adults recognizing their own neurodivergence, our clients need us to catch up. This workshop introduces The Way In, a clinical intervention developed for working with neurodivergent individuals, couples, and families.
Grounded in structural family therapy models and sensory integration theory, the model reframes how clinicians understand and respond to the lived experience of neurodivergence. When clinicians learn to view patterns of interaction, roles, and boundaries through a sensory lens, they begin to see what is actually driving the dynamics in the room. That shift in understanding changes how they intervene and helps neurodivergent clients make sense of how they show up in their relationships and why safety feels so elusive in their family systems.
Participants will learn to identify the key ways neurodivergent clients present differently in session, help clients develop language for their own sensory and neurological experiences, build accommodations into their lives and family systems, and understand how neurodivergence plays out across family systems, not just within the individual.
Clinical case examples will be used throughout to illustrate what this work looks like in practice.