NDP Episode 159: What This Neurodivergent Dude Gained From Therapy

What is your experience with therapy? Have you tried it? Wanted to try it? Hesitant to try it? Overwhelmed? Did you have a bad experience?

 I have noticed some neurodivergent people have had negative experiences with therapy. Here I want to clarify my own story about how both therapy and neurodivergence are helping me heal and become the person I want to be.

Briefly, I have been in therapy, counseling, or coaching (I use the general term therapy to describe all of these forms of help) for thirteen years. I began my healing journey after a divorce and retiring from my career to be a stay-at-home dad. I have seen over a dozen specialists over those years and continue to see a therapist today. 

Recently, my current therapist suggested I complete several autism and general neurodivergence self-assessments. I was surprised to discover I scored quite high as autistic. This began a new type of healing for me where I considered for the first time that, perhaps, there was nothing wrong with me that required fixing. 

But I also realized that my psychoanalytic journey is also extremely helpful. Just not in the way I thought it would be.

Therapy helped me build a practice

My practice grew out of therapy, although I didn’t realize I was building it. Over the years, I tried all of the things that were supposed to help. Journalling, meditating, exercising, and a healthy diet were all components supposed to make me feel better. More generally and ambiguously, having a good mindset and being mindful were also supposed to help. 

I realize now that my problems stemmed from expecting immediate and specific results. Despite having convinced myself I was being patient, I wasn’t. But I practiced enough of these techniques regularly enough (ish) that I started to see changes.

I didn’t associate changes in my moods and beliefs with anything I was practicing 

Getting out of my head and into my body changed everything

Somewhere along the line, I realized I understood everything intellectually but that I wasn’t seeing any real change in myself. I eventually stopped trying to intellectualize the lessons and started experiencing them somatically and emotionally in my body. This is when things started to shift. When I started learning about neurodivergence things took off.

Less intellectual, more somatic

My practice now consists of several elements. Here’s a list of things I do daily-ish (I included links to older episodes on some topics):

• Meditation 
• Awareness
• Mindfulness
• Exercise
• Mindful eating
• Journalling.  I developed this habit before meditation and it is probably one of the most critical elements in understanding my emotions and values.

These are things that work for me, and they can work for you, but you must develop your own, personal practice. A good therapist, counselor, or coach can introduce you to the tools and help you design a practice that works. I’m sure there are other ways, but these tools are readily available and have worked for lots of people. 

Therapy taught me how to build my practice to build a new life for myself. Therapy might be able to do the same for you. I’m sure there are other ways. I think the most important things I have learned are that:

If you are enjoying this content, please tell your friends.