Nea Clark ADHD Coaching

Still time to register. Friday 2nd May, 5pm BST.
This NATAA panel brings together practitioners who have also lived neurodivergence personally in their own families. Real stories. Real tools. Real TA.
The conversation covers diagnosis, grief, masking, shame, Life Positions, executive function and where AI and immersive technology fit into the future of neurodivergent support.
Speakers: Alexander Landa (Akiva Labs) | Sandra and Antonio Fernandez (ARMEXUS Institute) | Nea Clark PTSTA (P)
Link in bio to register.

https://nataa.net/educational-ta-workshops/

Trauma-informed practice asks what happened to you. Neuro-informed practice asks what is happening in you right now.
I am sitting with a client who cannot settle. They have shifted position three times since they sat down. Their eyes are moving around the room. Their leg hasn't stopped. They look agitated slightly wired, slightly somewhere else and when I ask how they are, the answer comes fast and vague, like they are already half a step ahead of the conversation.
And somewhere in my mind, almost without noticing, a story forms: something is making them unsafe right now. Hypervigilance. A triggered nervous system. The past showing up in the body.
That story might be right.
It might also be the most expensive assumption I make.
Most of us were trained to look backwards. Trauma-informed practice gave us something genuinely valuable a way to read behaviour as communication, to resist pathologising what is actually survival. That matters.
But when our default is always to look back, we stop seeing what is right in front of us. We stop asking what is happening in this brain, in this body, in this moment. And for a client with ADHD, that reach can cost them years.
Executive function collapse looks like avoidance. Time blindness looks like disrespect. Sensory overload looks like emotional withdrawal. Every one of these can be misread as a trauma response and often is.
A neuro-informed mindset asks a different first question.
Not: what happened to you?
But: what is happening in you, right now?
What is the load like today? Where is the friction? What is the environment asking of this brain, and is this brain resourced to meet it?
These are not softer questions. They are more precise ones.
Neither framework is wrong. Both can miss things when over-applied. Trauma-informed work risks psychologising what is neurodevelopmental. Neuro-informed work risks missing the grief, shame, and relational wounds sitting underneath.
The skill is knowing which question to ask first.
If I only ask backwards, I will always find a backwards answer.
That is not bad practice. It is just an unexamined habit.

Trauma-informed or Neuro-informed?
Something I keep coming back to and I think we need to talk about it more honestly as practitioners.
I am sitting with a client who cannot settle. They have shifted position three times since they sat down. Their eyes are moving around the room. Their leg hasn't stopped. They look agitated slightly wired, slightly somewhere else and when I ask how they are, the answer comes fast and vague.
And somewhere in my mind, a story forms: something is making them unsafe. Hypervigilance. A triggered nervous system. The past showing up in the body.
That story might be right.
It might also be the most expensive assumption I make.
Most of us were trained to look backwards. Trauma-informed practice gave us something genuinely valuable and I am not arguing against it. But when our default is always to look back, we stop asking what is happening in this brain, in this body, today. And for a client with ADHD, that can cost them years.
Executive function collapse looks like avoidance. Time blindness looks like disrespect. Sensory overload looks like emotional withdrawal. Every one of these can be misread as a trauma response and often is.
A neuro-informed mindset asks a different first question.
Not: what happened to you?
But: what is happening in you, right now?
Neither framework is wrong. Both miss things when over-applied. The skill and the humility is knowing which question to ask first.
If I only ask backwards, I will always find a backwards answer.
That is not bad practice. It is just an unexamined habit. And I think we owe it to our clients to examine it.

Sensory economy - Do you understand your sensory system?
She thought she was getting ill.
Every Tuesday afternoon, she'd come home from work and go straight to bed. Exhausted in a way that sleep didn't fix. Some days irritable for no reason she could name. Some days she'd just sit, staring, unable to start anything, unable to want anything. Her GP found nothing. She started wondering if it was depression.
It wasn't depression.
It was the open-plan office. The fluorescent lights. The colleague who ate crisps at 2pm. The thirty-seven conversations happening at once. The cold air from the vent directly above her desk. By Tuesday afternoon, her nervous system had been running on overdrive since Monday morning — and nobody had told her that was even possible.
Here's what most of us were never taught: sensory input doesn't just pass through us. It accumulates. And for an ADHD brain — a brain that often can't filter what comes in — that accumulation has a cost. It shows up as fog. As exhaustion. As snapping at someone you love. As sitting in front of a task you know how to do and being completely unable to begin.
We call it laziness. We call it mood. We call it a bad day.
It's a depleted nervous system that never got the chance to recover.
Understanding your sensory economy — what fills you, what drains you, how much you can hold before the system tips — isn't self-indulgence. It's the foundation everything else is built on.
She didn't need to push harder. She needed to know herself better.
We just finished our second group coaching session. Brilliant group, we learnt so much from each other.

Four innovators share how their lived experiences with Autism and ADHD shape their personal and professional worlds. Through TA, relational depth, and emerging immersive technologies, the panel explores moving from fear and overwhelm to inclusion, regulation, empowerment, and thriving—both in real and digital spaces.

Workshop Objectives:
• Explain core TA concepts that illuminate the emotional experiences of neurodivergent individuals and their families.
• Explore using regulation and executive function skills when working with neurodivergent clients.
• Learn concrete ways to Integrate inclusive, tech enhanced, and immersive tools—including metaverse options—into therapeutic, coaching, and educational work.

📅 Date: May 2nd, 2026, 12:00–2:00 pm ET
💻 Location: Via Zoom (and recorded)
📍 Fee: $35 suggested donation
🌟CEs available with APA & NBCC

🔗 More info and to Register here:
https://tinyurl.com/nataa-workshop

This weekend, the audience was wonderful. They did not just attend the workshop; they brought it alive. I had the privilege of holding a workshop on the hidden wound of neurodivergent families at the UKATA conference.
We explored what happens when neurodivergence creates a painful gap within families. Sometimes family members do love each other, but they cannot fully understand each other. Their nervous systems, communication styles, sensory needs, emotional rhythms, and expectations may be so different that the relationship becomes full of misunderstanding.

One of the most painful parts is the gap between:

the relationship we hoped for,
and the relationship that is actually possible.

For many neurodivergent people, there can be a long grief in this. The grief of not being understood. The grief of not being met in the way we needed. The grief of wanting depth, closeness, repair, and recognition from people who may not be able to offer it in the way we long for.

In the workshop, we worked through a five-step process for recognising this gap, grieving it, and beginning to build a more realistic relationship.

What moved me most was the way people shared and listened to each other. There was such honesty, tenderness, and respect in the room. Their reflections brought the material alive in a way that no theory could have done on its own.

It reminded me again that neuro-informed work is not only about strategies. It is also about grief, acceptance, repair, and learning to relate to ourselves and others with more truth.