CPD Training

The Neuroaffirming
Therapy Room

A suite of CPD courses for therapists and counsellors who want to work with neurodivergent clients with genuine understanding — not just awareness. Rooted in evidence, shaped by lived experience, and designed for real clinical practice.

NCPS Quality Checked  ·  CPD Provider  ·  Delivered via Google Meet
Delivered by an MNCPS (Acc.) Psychotherapist
Lived Experience — AuDHD Late Identification
Anna Freud & NHS England Autistic Trainer
MSc Creative Psychotherapy
CPD Certificates Issued

CPD that changes how you see, not just what you know

There is a lot of neurodiversity awareness training out there. Most of it tells you facts. Very little of it changes what actually happens in the room — how you hear a client, how you adapt your approach, how you sit with difference without trying to normalise it.

The Neuroaffirming Therapy Room is a suite of CPD courses built for therapists and counsellors who want to do better by their neurodivergent clients. Not in a box-ticking way. In a way that genuinely shifts practice.

Each course is led by me — an AuDHD psychotherapist with lived experience of late identification, an MSc in Creative Psychotherapy, and a clinical practice built entirely around neurodivergent people and their families. What I teach, I know from the inside.

  • Small cohort sizes — space to reflect, discuss and ask the questions you don't ask in larger trainings
  • Interactive, experiential delivery via Google Meet — not a webinar you watch passively
  • Participant handout materials included with every course
  • CPD certificate issued on completion — accepted for NCPS, BACP and most professional bodies
  • Grounded in current research and real clinical examples — no jargon, no deficit framing
  • Delivered in a genuinely neuroaffirming way — you won't just learn about neuroaffirming practice, you'll experience it

Choose your course

Course 02

Understanding Persistent Drive for Autonomy

A neuroaffirming clinical framework for PDA

PDA is widely misunderstood — including within the therapy profession. This course builds a clear, neuroaffirming clinical framework: PDA as a nervous system response, the implications for the therapeutic relationship, and how to adapt your practice for clients who experience persistent drive for autonomy.

Learning outcomes

  • Understand Persistent Drive for Autonomy as a neurological profile, not a behavioural difficulty
  • Recognise PDA presentations in clinical settings and avoid common therapeutic mismatches
  • Apply low-demand, autonomy-supportive adaptations to session structure and therapeutic contracting
  • Reflect on the language and framing used around PDA in clinical documentation

Course 03

Late-Identified & Self-Identified

Working therapeutically with adult autistic and ADHD clients

Late and self-identification brings its own particular terrain — diagnostic grief, identity re-authoring, internalised ableism, and the strange relief and loss of finally having a name for yourself. This course equips therapists to hold that complexity well, drawing on existential, person-centred and IFS frameworks.

Learning outcomes

  • Understand the distinct experience of late and self-identification in adulthood
  • Support clients through diagnostic grief and identity re-authoring with confidence
  • Recognise and work with internalised ableism in the therapeutic relationship
  • Apply relevant frameworks — existential, person-centred, IFS — to this client group

Course 04

The Spiky Profile in Clinical Practice

Psychoeducation as a therapeutic tool

Neurodivergent people often present with wildly uneven profiles — exceptional in some areas, significantly challenged in others. This course explores how to use the spiky profile model as a therapeutic tool: helping clients make sense of their own landscape, work with fluctuating capacity, and move away from deficit-focused self-understanding.

Learning outcomes

  • Understand and apply the spiky profile model within clinical sessions
  • Use psychoeducation as a strengths-based therapeutic intervention, not a diagnostic exercise
  • Support clients in understanding fluctuating capacity without shame or comparison
  • Adapt therapeutic expectations and pacing to reflect genuine neurological variability

Course 05

The Double Empathy Problem

Rethinking autistic social difference in the therapy room

Damian Milton's Double Empathy Problem fundamentally reframes autistic social difference — and has profound implications for clinical practice. This course unpacks the theory, the evidence, and what it actually means when an autistic client sits across from a non-autistic therapist. A course that tends to shift things permanently.

Learning outcomes

  • Understand the Double Empathy Problem and the evidence base that supports it
  • Critically examine assumptions about social communication deficit in autistic clients
  • Reflect on the cross-neurotype dynamic within the therapeutic relationship
  • Apply DEP-informed adaptations to therapeutic communication and relationship-building

Course 06

Coming Soon

The sixth course in the suite is in development

The sixth course in The Neuroaffirming Therapy Room suite is currently being developed. Register your interest below and you'll be the first to hear when it's announced — including early bird pricing.

✦  By booking a place on any course you agree to the CPD Terms & Conditions, including the cancellation and refund policy. Places are confirmed on receipt of payment. A CPD certificate and any course materials will be sent to you ahead of your cohort date. Questions? leanne@wholethreadtherapy.co.uk

What actually happens on the day

All courses are delivered live via Google Meet in small cohorts — not recorded webinars, not slide decks you watch alone. But the delivery goes further than that: every course is itself a genuinely neuroaffirming experience. Low demand throughout, movement breaks built in, multiple ways to contribute that don't require you to speak if you don't want to, and a pace that follows the room.

You won't just leave knowing more about neuroaffirming practice. You'll have had a felt sense of what it's like — as a participant — to be in a genuinely neuroaffirming learning environment. That experience tends to shift things in a way that information alone doesn't.

The flagship Course 01 runs as a full 6-hour CPD day. All other courses are delivered in a single shorter session. All include participant handout materials and a CPD certificate on completion.

  • Delivered via Google Meet — you just need a stable internet connection
  • Small cohort sizes — space to actually think and contribute
  • Live delivery only — not pre-recorded
  • Low demand throughout — multiple ways to participate, no pressure to speak
  • Movement breaks built into every session
  • Participant handout materials included
  • CPD certificate issued on completion
  • Accepted by NCPS, BACP and most professional bodies — check with yours if unsure
  • Can't make a cohort date? Register your interest and I'll let you know when the next one opens

Training that changes what happens in the room.

Book your place on any open course directly from the course card above, or register your interest in upcoming courses. If you have a question before booking — about content, suitability or anything else — just get in touch.

Get in Touch
NCPS Quality Checked Provider