Two-day advanced clinical training
Live online | 10 CPD hours

Dates: 15-16 January 2027

Early bird: £250 - book by 06/12/2026
Standard: £300 - book by 10/01/2027
Full price: £360

This is a live, interactive clinical training rather than a recorded webinar.

Across the two days, participants will engage with teaching, current research, clinical discussion, experiential exercises, differential formulation and case-based work.

Full attendance across both days is required for the CPD certificate.

QUESTIONS: admin@jkltherapycentre.com
JKL Therapy Centre: jkltherapycentre.com

What happens when trauma theory meets neurodivergent experience?

Autistic, ADHD and AuDHD people may experience increased exposure to bullying, exclusion, chronic misunderstanding, relational rupture, coercion, boundary violations, sexual and interpersonal trauma, sensory overwhelm and repeated experiences of having their internal reality questioned or invalidated.

Yet recognising this increased vulnerability presents clinicians with another challenge.

Not everything that looks like trauma is necessarily a trauma response.

Shutdown may resemble dissociation. Sensory hyperreactivity may be interpreted as hypervigilance. ADHD emotional intensity can be understood as dysregulation arising from trauma. A need for predictability may be read as a safety behaviour. Autistic social differences may be interpreted as relational withdrawal. Masking can conceal significant distress while also functioning as adaptation, protection and survival.

And sometimes trauma and neurodivergence cannot meaningfully be separated at all.

This creates a complex clinical question:

What changes when trauma theory meets neurodivergent experience, and what needs to be reconsidered in assessment, formulation and therapy?

This advanced two-day training explores trauma through a neurodivergent-informed clinical lens.

Rather than asking clinicians to decide whether a presentation is either trauma or neurodivergence, we will consider how neurodevelopment, sensory experience, regulation, relationships, environment, identity and traumatic experience may interact within the same person.

The training is organised around two connected clinical questions:

Day One: What are we actually seeing?

Day Two: What do we do differently in therapy?

DAY ONE: UNDERSTANDING, ASSESSMENT & FORMULATION

The first day focuses on developing a more nuanced understanding of trauma in autistic, ADHD and AuDHD people.

We will examine what current research tells us about trauma exposure, PTSD and complex trauma in neurodivergent populations, while also considering where the evidence remains developing, limited or contested.

The central clinical task will be differential thinking.

How do we understand experiences that could plausibly be conceptualised through several different lenses?

What looks like hypervigilance may involve sensory processing. What appears to be avoidance may involve overwhelm, demand or the need for recovery. Shutdown may involve autistic overload, trauma-related freeze, dissociation – or an interaction between them.

Rather than searching for a single explanation, we will explore how to construct formulations capable of holding complexity.

Topics will include:

• what current evidence tells us about neurodivergence, trauma exposure, PTSD and complex trauma

• distinguishing trauma responses from neurodivergent communication, sensory and regulation differences

• recognising areas of genuine overlap between trauma and neurodivergence

• shutdown, freeze, dissociation and neurodivergent overwhelm

• masking, camouflaging and adaptation as protection, survival and relational strategies

• rejection sensitivity, shame, chronic invalidation and experiences of relational threat

• diagnostic overshadowing and the risks of attributing distress solely to either neurodivergence or trauma

• developing formulations that consider neurodivergence, trauma, relationships, environment and context together

Participants will work with clinical material where the formulation is deliberately not obvious, asking:

Is this trauma? Is this neurodivergence? Is it both? And what information might we still be missing?

DAY TWO: WORKING THERAPEUTICALLY

If our formulation changes, our therapeutic practice may need to change too.

Day Two moves from understanding into intervention.

We will consider what trauma-informed practice actually looks like when the person in front of us has a neurodivergent nervous system, rather than simply applying established trauma interventions to autistic or ADHD clients.

This includes questioning some assumptions embedded within conventional therapeutic practice.

What happens when grounding increases sensory distress rather than reducing it?

What if slowing down makes internal sensations more overwhelming?

What if identifying bodily sensations is difficult because interoceptive processing works differently?

What if open-ended questions increase cognitive load?

What if therapeutic silence is experienced not as reflective space but as uncertainty or relational discontinuity?

And what happens when a therapeutic intervention intended to create safety inadvertently reproduces experiences of being controlled, misunderstood or expected to regulate in a neurotypical way?

We will explore:

• sensory-aware trauma practice and the role of sensory environments in safety and threat

• adapting stabilisation and grounding rather than assuming standard techniques will regulate everyone

• pacing, predictability, processing time and cognitive load

• interoception, embodiment and working with different experiences of the body

• consent, autonomy and collaborative therapeutic decision-making

• relational safety, rupture, repair and co-regulation

• interpersonal, emotional, psychological and sexual trauma

• boundaries, coercion and vulnerability within intimate relationships

• working with shame without reinforcing neurotypical expectations of communication or relational functioning

• adapting trauma-informed interventions in ways that are concrete, affirming and clinically useful

Clinical cases will allow participants to move from formulation to therapeutic decision-making, considering not only what might be happening, but what they would actually do differently in the room.

The training will conclude with case discussion, ethical considerations, limits of competence, referral pathways and practical tools for ongoing clinical work.

WHO IS THIS TRAINING FOR?

This is an advanced clinical training designed for qualified psychotherapists, counsellors, psychosexual and relationship therapists, clinical psychologists and other experienced practitioners working therapeutically with neurodivergent adults and relationships.

It assumes familiarity with neurodivergent-affirming practice.

We will not spend the training introducing autism or ADHD. Instead, we will work with the clinical complexity that emerges when neurodivergence, trauma, embodiment, sexuality, intimacy and relationships intersect.

The training will be particularly relevant for clinicians who find themselves asking:

Is this trauma, neurodivergence, or both?

Am I adapting the therapy – or expecting the client to adapt to therapy?

How do I work with trauma without inadvertently pathologising neurodivergent experience?

YOUR TRAINER

Justyna Kulczyk-Lewinska (she/her), MSc, BSc, PgDip

Psychosexual & Relationship Psychotherapist | Sexologist
Advanced Couple Psychotherapist | Clinical Supervisor | Trainer

COSRT Accred. PST & RT 4134 | COSRT Registered Supervisor
BACP Registered no. 406103 | UKCP Registered no. 2011186678
SNCPS (Acc.) no. NCPS7864

Justyna is a psychosexual and relationship psychotherapist, sexologist, advanced couple psychotherapist, clinical supervisor and trainer specialising in the intersections of neurodivergence, relationships, sexuality and intimacy.

She is the creator of NST – Neurodivergent Systems Therapy, and her clinical and teaching work explores how established psychotherapeutic, trauma and relationship models can be critically reconsidered and adapted when working with autistic, ADHD and AuDHD people rather than assuming neurotypical development, communication and regulation as the clinical norm.