I remember the first time I felt an emotion. I was 24 years old and receiving trauma-focused body work sessions. I started feeling the energy of grief: a heavy feeling primarily in my lower torso, an ache across my chest, and a bittersweet sensation along the center-line of my torso. This was a revelation to me at the time. This was what feeling emotions, that thing I'd often heard others talk about, was like! And not only that, but emotions correlate with a sensation in you

The feeling of being an outsider, of speaking a different language, is more than a fleeting discomfort for many sensory neurodivergent individuals; it's a deeply ingrained experience, a constant undercurrent in a world that often feels out of sync.

While many of us understand the idea of sensory overwhelm, it can be hard to grasp how debilitating or traumatic it can be to the nervous systems of sensory neurodivergent people over time. Below, we’ll explore this first of the 6 key ways autistic and other sensory neurodivergent people experience trauma to learn what it’s like, how it impacts neurodivergent people, and how we can change our environment to reduce the impact.

Through my own healing journey and psychotherapeutic work with clients, I've come to realize that trauma is often at the core of what we're addressing when we work with neurodivergent people. Trauma is any experience that overwhelms our nervous system and leaves us feeling unsafe, dysregulated, or disconnected from ourselves. It can be a single incident, like a car accident or a natural disaster. Or it can be ongoing, like...