Four Principles of Neurodiversity-Affirming Care - an excerpt from Neurodivergent Psychedelic Healing
Guiding others through psychedelic healing is sacred work. Whether as trained therapists, ceremonial space-holders, licensed facilitators, or underground guides, it’s more than witnessing or administering medicine, it’s about co-creating the set and setting in which transformation can unfold. This work calls for deep trust, presence, and attunement with those you serve.
If you're reading this, you likely already strive to meet each client where they are. This book invites you to go further: to adapt your practice with kindness and with intention, grounded in the lived realities of neurodivergence.
Neurodivergence refers to natural variations in cognitive style, perception, and processing, such as Autism, ADHD, sensory differences, or other divergent ways of experiencing the world. Neurodivergent clients may engage with the psychedelic experience in ways that differ significantly from typical clients. What they often benefit from most is a responsive, respectful, and open-hearted approach.
Rather than needing a flawless facilitator, neurodivergent clients tend to thrive in relationships grounded in collaboration, nonjudgment, curiosity, and flexibility. These are qualities that help repair the ruptures many have experienced in therapeutic, medical, educational, familial, and social systems that pathologized their ways of being.
Presence Over Perfection
It is not necessary to implement every recommendation in this book to offer neurodivergent-affirming care. What matters most is staying rooted in inclusive values while remaining mindful of how stereotypes can cloud perception. Each client is a unique individual who may resonate with some, all, or none of the traits described here. Some may not identify with diagnostic terms at all. Others may have needs they don’t yet know how to express.
At the core of this work is a simple invitation: to meet each person with presence through collaboration, nonjudgment, curiosity, and flexibility, and to discover together what support feels right for them.
Collaboration: Co-Creating Safety
The most effective accommodations arise through ongoing conversation (not a checklist). While some neurodivergent individuals arrive with clear preferences, many will not. Some may not know what they need until they are deep in the experience, and then they might not know how to ask for it. Such behavior reflects the nature of neurodivergence, not a lack of self-awareness.
Ways facilitators can support collaborative adaptation:
● Check in ahead of time: “What makes you feel safe? What types of environments do you find overwhelming?”
● Create an open invitation: “You don’t have to know right now. If something isn’t working for you, let me know and we’ll explore adjustments together.”
● Offer multiple options without pressure: “Some people like to lie down with an eye mask, others prefer to sit up or move around or lie on the floor. We can see what feels right in the moment.”
By normalizing adjustments, facilitators reduce the sense that accommodations are burdensome, creating a space where clients feel empowered to speak up.
Collaboration nurtures agency and helps clients feel like partners in their healing.
Nonjudgment: Making Room for Difference
Psychedelic states often amplify individual differences, especially in communication, emotional expression, and sensory experience. Some neurodivergent clients may:
● Go inward and become nonverbal
● Express emotion through movement, vocalization, or stimming
● Intellectualize emotions rather than express them outwardly
● Experience emotional processing in nonlinear or delayed ways
Practices that support nonjudgment:
● Understand that deep silence or minimal expression doesn’t always mean something is wrong
● Let go of expectations for a specific kind of “breakthrough” moment
● Respect that avoiding eye contact may support emotional regulation
● Believe the client’s words, even when their facial expressions appear neutral or mismatched with tone
Creating room for these variations alleviates the pressure to perform or conform, paving the way for a more authentic connection.
Nonjudgment invites authenticity and releases pressure to meet unspoken expectations.
Curiosity: Neurodivergence as a Lens, Not a Limitation
Facilitators who stay curious create space for neurodivergent brilliance to unfold. Rather than viewing neurodivergent traits as challenges to manage, they can be honored as different ways of relating to perception, meaning, and emotion.
Seeing neurodivergence as a lens means recognizing that Autistic, ADHD, and other neurodivergent minds often perceive the world in richly detailed, deeply felt, or unconventionally patterned ways. These perspectives are not deficits, they are distinct and valid modes of experience that can reveal insights others might overlook.
Examples of strengths neurodivergent clients may bring:
● Heightened sensory awareness: Deep, embodied connections to music, movement, nature, and energetic flow
● Analytical thinking: Insight-rich meaning-making and layered reflections
● Nonlinear or non-hierarchical cognition: Innovative interpretations of psychedelic symbolism
● Cognitive variations such as aphantasia or synesthesia: Unique internal landscapes
Questions that invite curiosity:
● “What kinds of things catch your attention or interest right away?”
● “Are there sounds, textures, or movements that help you feel calm… or tend to be overstimulating?”
● “When something feels intense or overwhelming, what helps you calm down?”
● “Do you notice where emotions live in your body?”
● “Do you tend to notice patterns that others might miss?”
● “What makes it easier, or harder, for you to feel safe and present?”
By focusing on how each person experiences the world through their own perceptual and cognitive lenses, facilitators create a more welcoming space for growth. Honoring neurodivergent ways of sensing, thinking, and processing supports a more inclusive and empowering journey.
Curiosity turns difference into dialogue and invites insight to emerge in unexpected ways.
Flexibility: Making Space for What Arises
Healing is rarely linear. This is especially true for neurodivergent clients, whose internal rhythms may not match traditional timelines or models.
Examples of flexibility in practice:
● Welcoming movement instead of assuming stillness
● Supporting nonverbal communication, including writing, gestures, or AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication)
● Adjusting music, lighting, or physical setting when sensory needs arise
● Modifying dosage expectations based on individual sensitivity
● Allowing more spacious integration timelines when insights take time to emerge
Many neurodivergent clients experience delayed processing and may uncover insights slowly or in waves. Facilitators who meet these challenges with patience and curiosity offer a container that honors the full arc of healing.
Flexibility also reflects trauma-responsive care, recognizing that nervous systems self-protect in diverse ways, and healing may unfold through spirals, pauses, or unexpected channels.
Flexibility honors rhythm, respects uncertainty, and keeps the path open.
Beyond the Core: Other Guiding Values That Deepen Neurodivergent-Inclusive Care
The four principles outlined above form the foundation of this book. They offer a grounded, relational approach that honors neurodivergent ways of being. And while these are central, they do not stand alone.
Other values often rise alongside them in the practice of neurodivergent-affirming care. These values may not be named throughout every chapter, yet they quietly shape how facilitators attune, adapt, and relate.
Autonomy and Informed Consent
For many neurodivergent people, past experiences of being overridden, dismissed, or coerced have left lasting imprints. Centering autonomy means honoring each person’s right to lead their own process, choose their own pacing, and shape their own meaning. Informed consent is a living, relational practice, not a single moment of agreement, but an ongoing process of shared understanding.
Emphasizing the informed part means helping clients understand the structure, norms, possibilities, and expectations of the psychedelic process. This might include explaining what kinds of experiences may arise, how touch or silence will be handled, or what integration support can look like. Many neurodivergent clients benefit from extra clarity, visual aids, or repeated check-ins to support full comprehension.
Expanding autonomy also involves recognizing subtle power dynamics. In psychedelic states, a client may appear open or agreeable while internally feeling uncertain or overwhelmed. Checking in with humility and offering clear, consistent invitations rather than relying on assumptions or creating pressure reinforces a sense of agency. Facilitators who prioritize consent help counteract histories of institutionalization, silencing, or forced compliance that many neurodivergent individuals carry.
Transparency
Predictability creates safety, especially for Autistic clients. Offering clear, honest information about what’s happening, what might happen, and what choices are available helps reduce anxiety and supports self-trust. Transparency allows clients to orient themselves and make informed choices in altered states.
This value also involves being upfront about your own style, boundaries, uncertainties, and the limits of your role. For clients who’ve experienced gaslighting, confusion, or unclear rules in past therapeutic or educational settings, directness can be deeply regulating. Transparency builds the scaffolding for trust through consistency, clarity, and repair when needed.
Presence
Attunement cannot be faked. Being fully present, emotionally, energetically, and somatically, can have more impact than any technique. For clients who have felt unseen or misread, presence is healing in itself.
Neurodivergent individuals often pick up on subtle cues, even when they don’t name them. A facilitator’s emotional congruence matters. Presence doesn’t mean constant engagement, it means responsive, regulated attention. It means slowing down enough to truly notice. For some clients, silence with presence is safer than talking with distraction. In this work, your quality of presence often becomes the medicine.
Liberation and Dignity
Psychedelic spaces can become sites of de-pathologization and reclamation. Facilitators who understand the wider systems that shape identity, such as ableism, racism, gender bias, and colonialism, can help create healing environments rooted in justice and mutual respect. Every person deserves to be met with dignity.
Liberation begins when someone is no longer seen as a problem to fix. Dignity means honoring each person’s bodymind as wise and complete, even in the midst of struggle. Neurodivergent clients may carry shame from years of being misunderstood or minimized. Many people with disabilities have been infantilized, treated as if they cannot think for themselves, make informed decisions, or be trusted with autonomy. This legacy of paternalism can make it especially difficult to feel respected or empowered in healing spaces.
Psychedelic work that holds space for complexity, contradiction, and nonconformity becomes a place where deeper freedom is possible. Not just personal insight, but the radical affirmation of one’s full humanity.
The Invitation: Expanding the Healing Container for All
The practices in this book are not only for neurodivergent clients. They are spacious, compassionate ways of working that often benefit everyone.
Clients across neurotypes appreciate:
● Clearer communication
● Predictable structure and sensory-conscious environments
● Permission for silence, movement, or nonverbal expression
● The reassurance that their way of being is welcome
Regardless of neurotype, many people struggle to articulate needs in altered states. Creating a space rooted in empathy, responsiveness, and collaboration supports a wider range of healing experiences.
● To be collaborative means engaging in shared discovery rather than relying on assumption
● To be nonjudgmental is to welcome diverse ways of sensing, thinking, and healing, as well as varied beliefs, insights, and modes of engagement
● To be curious involves approaching each person’s experience as a unique window into meaning, sensation, and transformation
● To be flexible is to honor each unfolding journey without forcing a particular shape
When facilitators embody these values they help expand access to healing and redefine what healing can look and feel like.