Most people arrive in therapy hoping I’ve got the answer. That somewhere in my training, or my experience, or my head, is the thing that will sort this out, and the work is getting me to hand it over.
I haven’t got it. You have.
That isn’t me dodging the job. It is the job.
Where did I learn this?
I didn’t learn it in a therapy room. I learned it as a teacher, years before I trained as a counsellor.
I trained in a child-centred approach, and one idea sat at the heart of it: children learn what they discover for themselves. Not what they’re told, not what they’re made to repeat back, but what they work out from the inside. Tell a child the answer, and they retain it until the test. Let them find it out for themselves, and it’s theirs for good. The research has said the same for decades.
That principle followed me into the therapy room and never left. Adults are no different. The realisation you reach yourself changes you. The one I hand you is a nice idea you’ll have forgotten by next week.
The spider and the web
Someone I worked with for several months arrived tangled in a relationship that had taken over far more of their life than it had any right to. We spent month after month looking at relationships, past and present, all over the place. We weren’t hunting for an answer. We were just looking.
Then one day they came in with an image they’d made themselves.
When they’d first arrived, they said, they’d been like a spider cowering in the corner of its web, frightened of everything that touched it, because every vibration was a mystery and any mystery might be a threat. Now it was different. Now it was as though they sat above the web, looking down. When something set the threads trembling, they knew at once what it was: a real danger, or something they could deal with without a second thought.
I didn’t give them that picture. They built it. And they’re the one living differently now, because of it.
Why I won’t just tell you what to do
I’ve offered that spider to other people since. It’s a good image, and sometimes it helps. But it has never reorganised a life the way it reorganised the life of the person who created it. And the reason is simple: they made it, and everyone else was handed it.
That’s the whole thing in one story. A truth you arrive at yourself is a different thing from the same truth passed across the room, even when the words are identical. The first rearranges how you see your life. The other is just something your therapist said.
So when you come to me wanting the answer, and I don’t reach into my pocket and produce one, that isn’t me holding out on you. It’s me refusing to rob you of the thing that would actually make a difference in the long term.
My commitment isn’t to give you answers. It’s to help you find your own. They’re already in there. My work is the conditions that help you to reach them.
We’re living through a genuinely messy time for neurodiverse children and their families. Messy, because for decades, autism was understood as an illness, something broken, something to be managed. All the systems and institutions built around that understanding share the same basic premise: diagnose, then train the child to be acceptable in society. Train them to mask. Make allowances. Fit them in.
Then, over the last twenty years, the concept of neurodivergence arrived. Autism, ADHD, OCD, PDA and plenty of other presentations began to be understood not as illnesses, not as problems to fix, but as different ways the brain can function. Different ways of thinking, different ways of experiencing the world. The argument shifted: we should accommodate these children, not make them feel like outsiders.
The messiness comes from the fact that the people and institutions working with neurodiverse children are often still soaked through with the older medical model. A child might attend a school, trying hard to secure accommodations, only to step into a CAMHS assessment still rooted in diagnosis and compliance. Individual teachers, psychologists, and psychiatrists: some work from a neurodivergent framework; others still work from a medical one. The child and the parent are left trying to work out which lifeline to grab.
The medical model focuses on behaviour and fitting in. The neurodivergent model focuses on identity, authenticity, and accommodation. These are not minor differences in approach. They lead somewhere quite different.
What masking actually costs a child
The practical outcome of the medical model, for a neurodiverse child at school, is that they spend the day masking. They walk into a noisy form room where the social dynamics are chaotic and unpredictable. They’re overwhelmed within minutes. They don’t understand the social banter, the shifting roles, the unspoken rules that neurotypical children navigate without thinking. They’re looking for clarity and predictability, and all they get is noise.
But they’ve learned to hold it together. To sit there. To get through. And then they come home.
At home, they can’t mask anymore. The exhaustion tips over. Something as simple as sitting at the table for a meal is too much. The meltdown happens here, with the people who love them most. And parents are understandably confused: how can this be the same child who held it together all day at school?
Over time, the costs run deeper. A child who has to perform constantly, who is never simply allowed to be, begins to internalise the message that something is wrong with them. That they are the problem. They may start to withdraw, to isolate, to disengage from the world. And who could blame them?
Something I know from the inside
I understand something of this from my own experience. At ten, I was the annoying child who was top of the class but couldn’t sit still. In the earlier years of primary school, there had been art, movement, creative work, and I’d been fine. But by the final year, it was pencils and desks all day. I still carry a small mark on the palm of my hand from where I stabbed myself with a pencil out of sheer restlessness. I can see it as I write this.
The teachers didn’t know what to do with me. I was put on a very strong sedative as I moved into grammar school. This was the mid-sixties; ADHD wasn’t yet a concept. But the diagnosis of anxiety led to heavy medication, and the medication suited the school rather better than it suited me. I went from a restless, engaged, bright spark to a daydreamer staring out of the window. Compliant. Invisible. Easy to manage.
When I came off the medication, I’d already learned the lesson. On the few occasions I allowed my real self into the classroom, it didn’t go well: too loud, too much, too cocky. So I daydreamed my way through secondary school. That was masking. And it cost me my education, more or less. I wasn’t interested in what they were putting in front of me; I was interested in music, drama, art, and poetry. My mother understood this, and I’m grateful to her for protecting those interests and allowing me to follow them. They became my life.
I’m not claiming a diagnosis. I’m saying it feels familiar. And that familiarity matters to how I work now.
Forty years of watching the same mistake
Forty years ago, I worked in an extraordinary therapeutic educational environment where the curriculum followed each child’s special interests and emotional needs. That approach was gradually lost to UK education for children we’d now describe as neurodiverse, squeezed out by behavioural frameworks driven by cost and accountability. I struggled to work in mainstream education, where compliance was consistently held above the individual needs of the child.
For the last eight years, I’ve been in private practice as a psychotherapist. It’s a genuine relief to work again in a way that puts the child’s needs first.
What a relational space actually offers
What I offer is not strategies. It’s not tools for managing behaviour, techniques for fitting in, or new ways of masking what’s going on. It’s a relational space. A space where a child doesn’t have to conform to any particular way of being.
There’s no diagnosis required, and no diagnostic category changes how I meet a child in the room. I meet the person, not the label.
What it looks like in the room
One child spends most of the session blowing bubbles while we talk. Another’s eyes light up the moment they spot the spinny office chair: they can have it, and they know it. Children bring their favourite soft toy, or a precious object from home. One liked to stand on their head in the corner before settling. Another bounced a ball around the room throughout every session.
In the therapy room, a child learns that they have agency. They can affect the space they’re in. They can decide whether the light is on or off. They can get up and walk about whenever they want. They can make noise, hide under the table, lie stretched out across all the cushions. And whatever they do, I’m still there, listening, giving them space in the way they want to use it.
For some children, it takes time to get used to that. Some never quite manage it; they’re so conditioned to compliance and controlled spaces that the freedom itself is overwhelming. But when a child really is being themselves in the room, it’s a remarkable place to be. I’m seeing a side of them that many other people don’t. And just by allowing them to be fully themselves in that space, something changes. I don’t know what that is, and they don’t know what that is. But we both know that it’s giving them something.
Children who arrive in crisis, who’ve been suspended, excluded, and had the riot act read to them, often end up in a completely different place after a sustained period of this kind of work. I haven’t taught them any skills. I’ve just allowed them to work out for themselves what overwhelms them, what helps them feel connected, and what safety actually feels like.
Why parents are part of the work
The room alone doesn’t do it. What happens in the therapy space needs to connect with what happens at home. At a minimum, parents need to understand that I’m not working towards compliance. I’m not reinforcing the institutional approach. I’m working in a different direction entirely, and home needs to be on board with that.
The main thing I work on with parents is regulation and co-regulation. A child comes home from school having masked for most of the day. They’re exhausted. They need demand reduction. They need to be allowed to be messy, noisy, and a bit uncontrolled, within boundaries. If you can give them that, and you can stay calm while you do it, you’re giving them what they need. They need you to be calm so they can be calm. They need you to be warm so they can feel safe. That’s co-regulation, and it’s one of the most powerful things a parent can offer.
If you’re reading this as a parent
Whatever stage you’re at, whether you’re trying to keep your child in school, trying to get them back into school, or simply exhausted from the sheer energy of keeping going with something that doesn’t seem to be working, this kind of relational support exists.
I work with a small handful of children in person in Bude, North Cornwall. If that’s within reach, I’d be glad to talk. If it isn’t, the thing to look for is a therapist who is neurodivergence-aware and comfortable with unmasking: someone who isn’t going to teach your child to perform differently, but is willing to sit with them as they are, and trust that to be enough.
That kind of space is rare. But it exists, and it’s worth finding.
You’ve been here before. You tried therapy, it didn’t quite feel right, and now you’re left wondering what that means. Was it your fault? Are you too complicated, too resistant, too broken for it to work? Did you do it wrong somehow, or is therapy simply not for you? Finding the right therapist is harder than anyone tells you, and when it doesn’t work out, the easiest person to blame is yourself.
It probably isn’t any of those things. The fit was wrong, or the approach was wrong, or the level of work was wrong for where you were at the time. That matters more than most people realise, and nobody tells you this when you’re starting out.
I’ve had several different therapists over forty years, for many different reasons. Some felt right. Some were limited in their helpfulness. And some have been an absolute haven. The difference was rarely about their qualifications or experience.
The right therapy for the right season
At a very raw time, a bereavement counsellor handed me a paper assessment form. I started ticking boxes, felt something in me resist, screwed it up and threw it in the bin. She didn’t seem to mind. I carried on seeing her for a few weeks because I desperately needed some support, and she provided it.
But that was containment, not the deeper work. She was right for that occasion. What I needed then was someone steady to sit with me while things were very raw. Most people aren’t told there’s a difference between that kind of support and longer-term relational work. If therapy felt surface-level or the changes didn’t stick, it may simply be that you were offered crisis support when what you needed was something slower and more relational, or the other way around. That’s not failure, it’s simply a mismatch.
When the approach gets in the way
On a couple of occasions, my partner and I saw a sex therapist together. In each case it wasn’t particularly helpful. It felt more like being in a remedial class at school, being handed homework to get us back up to scratch. The therapist wasn’t really relating to us as a couple; we were being put through a process rather than being understood for who we were and what the issues actually meant on a deeper level.
We later found tantra groups where we were encouraged to explore massage, mindfulness and breathing. We were getting to know our own bodies and what we needed, rather than following someone else’s protocol. The difference was simple: in one setting we were a presenting problem to be corrected; in the other, we were two people trying to understand ourselves.
That distinction seems important. A therapist who is more interested in applying their model than in understanding you will leave you feeling processed. You might not be able to name it at the time, but you’ll feel it.
What a good fit actually feels like
I’ve been seeing my current therapist for over three years. I cycle to her each fortnight with a few thoughts going through my head, but I never arrive with an agenda. Stuff just spills out. She knows my background, elements of my childhood, my relationships, the highs and lows of life past and present. She knows about the imagery of my inner child and parts of my experience where feelings are more vivid than factual detail. Each session takes us on a journey inwards.
As we come to a close, she asks what I’m doing afterwards. It started as a way of reminding me to ground myself before getting back into ordinary life. Now she knows the answer: I will find a café, order a hot coffee and something comforting to eat, and spend at least an hour alone. No social contact, no talking, no scrolling. Just sitting with whatever happened in the room, letting it settle.
That question, “What are you doing after this?”, is a small thing. But it tells me everything about how she sees me. She is thinking about me as a whole person, not just the fifty minutes. She wants to know I’ll be alright when I walk out the door.
That is what a good fit feels like from the inside. You arrive without a plan, something moves anyway, and afterwards you need to be alone because you’re full.
So what are you actually looking for?
Not credentials. Not a long list of models and modalities. Those things matter less than you’ve been led to believe.
Start with the profile. Does something in it connect with you? Does this person seem interested in people, or in problems? If nothing lands, move on.
If something does, there’s often a phone call. Notice how you feel during it. Do you feel heard, right there in those ten minutes? That’s information.
If you get to a first session, notice what happens in the room. Do you feel like a person or a case? Are they following you, or leading you through their process?
And pay attention to the hour after. Do you need to sit quietly and let things settle, or are you left with a vague sense of discomfort and unfinished business? Both can be useful information, but they’re different kinds.
The felt sense of a session is data. Your body is registering something your mind hasn’t caught up with yet.
If therapy didn’t work before, you probably knew something was off. You just didn’t know you were allowed to trust that feeling. You are.
