Cathartic Collaborations

31/01/2026

Burnout isn’t always a collapse.
Sometimes it’s clarity.

The moment you realise:

You’ve been praised for how well you hide.

You’ve been holding it all together — at a cost.

You’ve been showing up for a version of your work that doesn’t fully include you.

And in that moment…

You stop pushing.

You stop polishing.

You stop performing congruence… and begin embodying it.

This is the beginning of reorientation.

Not a productivity plan.

Just a quiet return to your rhythm.

To your needs.

To your enoughness.

Because reclamation isn’t a single act.

It’s a practice.

It might look like:
✨ Journaling through the noise
✨ Cancelling that one thing
✨ Whispering “I don’t need to prove myself today”
✨ Noticing where you feel safe enough to soften

This is what the Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing is being built for:
Not to fix you.
But to walk with you as you remember your own rhythm.

🌿 Join the interest list for our upcoming supervision space — for neurodivergent professionals ready to reorient from the inside out: link in bio!

27/01/2026

We talk about sustainability like it’s just about time management.
But for neurodivergent allied health professionals, sustainability is systemic.

We need:
✨ Congruence — our values reflected in our work.
✨ Capacity — honoured, not stretched.
✨ Care — not just offered, but received.

This is the equation I use when I’m re-evaluating how I work.
Because burnout isn’t inevitable. It’s often a signal of misalignment.

What might need to shift in your work ecosystem to support your sustainability?

Check out my latest blog post: Not a Map, But a Compass: Reclaiming Neurodivergent Professional Identity Beyond the Binary of Brokenness - Link in bio!

26/01/2026

Traditional supervision wasn’t built with us in mind.

If you’re a neurodivergent allied health professional, you might know this feeling:
You show up for supervision hoping for reflection…and leave feeling like you had to perform professionalism.⠀

You’ve been taught to smooth the edges.
To self-monitor.
To "just adapt" a little more.⠀

But what happens when the space that’s meant to support you…
asks you to leave parts of yourself at the door?

Many of us learned to mask even in supervision.⠀
Often we’ve never been shown what congruent, neuroaffirming supervision could look like.

I’m currently creating The Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing - a spacious model for neurodivergent professionals who are tired of over-adapting and ready to reconnect with their own rhythm.

Join the EOI list: link in bio!

24/01/2026

We’ve been taught that professionalism means neutrality.
Tone-neutral. Emotion-neutral. Identity-neutral.

In my neuroaffirming practice, congruence is an anchor.
Not perfection. Not performance.
But a quiet alignment between who I am and how I show up.

Congruence looks like:
✨ Naming my needs with care
✨ Holding space from a place of grounded presence, not forced regulation

Because real safety, the kind that honours neurodivergent nervous systems, doesn’t come from smooth delivery or emotional containment.
It comes from relational integrity.

What’s one way you’ve practised congruence in your practice this week — even in a small way?

Check out my latest blog post: Not a Map, But a Compass: Reclaiming Neurodivergent Professional Identity Beyond the Binary of Brokenness - Link in bio!

20/01/2026

Check out what's new at Cathartic Collaborations in our January newsletter!

The Ripple Begins With You... What would it feel like to tend to your professional growth without abandoning your neurodivergent needs in the process? The Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing Supervision Program is a six-month journey for neurodivergent professionals who are seeking not ju...

20/01/2026

Neurodivergent professionals…
What if the real work is in returning?
To your values.
To your needs.
To your natural rhythm.

🧭 That’s why I created the Compass Check-In — a free resource for neurodivergent practitioners who are tired of over-adapting, and ready to reorient - Link in bio!

It’s a soft, daily ritual to choose one small act of congruence.
✨ A moment of clarity between sessions.
✨ A nervous system pause after a hard meeting.
✨ A practice of coming home to yourself, gently.

🌱 Save this post for the days you feel untethered or consider sharing it with a neurodivergent colleague.
⠀

19/01/2026

There was a time I thought I was the problem.
I had the qualifications, the insight, the tools:
but in my body, I was always bracing.

Every framework I was handed asked me to fragment:
Be professional here. Regulated there.
Human, somewhere out of sight.

It took burnout, grief, and a deep return to self to realise:
nothing was “wrong” with me.
The models I was taught didn’t know how to hold all of me.

The Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing wasn’t a business idea.
It was a question that kept aching:
How do I build a life and practice that doesn’t require me to abandon myself to succeed?

What emerged was a relational, nervous-system-aware, identity-anchored approach:
something that speaks not just to insight, but to integration.
Not just to performance, but to permission.

Because burnout doesn’t only come from workload.
It ripples from misattunement. Identity suppression.
From systems that reward output over sustainability.

The Ripple Framework of Neurodivergent Flourishing is a spacious model for neurodivergent professionals who are tired of over-adapting and ready to reconnect with their own rhythm.

Join the EOI list: link in bio!

17/01/2026

For years, I thought I was doing it “right.”
Professional. Composed. Adaptable.
I knew how to translate my inner world into something legible. Palatable. Strategic.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped recognising myself beneath the scripts.
My tone stayed steady, even when my nervous system screamed.
My posture stayed open, even when I wanted to fold in.

It wasn’t a lie.
It was survival.
It was performance as protection.

And in systems that reward compliance over congruence, I was praised for it.

But praise doesn’t mean alignment.
And being “good at your job” doesn’t mean you’re okay.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your professionalism is actually a performance of safety, you're not alone.

🧭 That’s why I created the Compass Check-In — a FREE resource and soft daily ritual for coming home to yourself - Link in bio!

13/01/2026

For many late-identified neurodivergent professionals, internalised ableism doesn’t arrive in loud, obvious ways.

It slips in through the cracks.
Quiet. Strategic. Even helpful… at first.

It sounds like:
✨ “Just double-check that email again — be extra clear.”
✨ “Don’t bring that up in supervision — you’ll look incompetent.”
✨ “Be flexible. Be calm. Don’t be difficult.”

And sometimes it says:
“You’re not really neurodivergent. You’re just disorganised.”
“You don’t need accommodations — you just need to try harder.”
“Other people are managing. Why can’t you?”

This is how internalised ableism speaks when it’s been absorbed over decades.
It doesn’t always show up as self-loathing.
Sometimes, it’s disguised as “professionalism.”
Sometimes, it feels like competence.
But really… it’s shame in a well-cut costume.
And it keeps us small.
Keeps us apologising for being who we are.

But naming these scripts?
That’s how we begin to soften them.
To interrupt the inherited scripts of adaptation.
To move from performance… into presence.
You don’t have to rewire everything overnight.

Just begin by noticing:
What’s one internalised message you’ve been carrying… that no longer serves you?

Check out my latest blog post: Not a Map, But a Compass: Reclaiming Neurodivergent Professional Identity Beyond the Binary of Brokenness - Link in bio!

13/01/2026

I’m less interested in whether Autistic Barbie is “good” or “bad,”
and more interested in what our reactions to her reveal.

Because every response I’ve seen makes sense when you understand the histories autistic people carry.

For some, this Barbie feels like recognition. A soft moment of being seen in a way they never were as children. For others, it lands uncomfortably, brushing up against old experiences of being defined, simplified, or turned into something palatable for others. And for many, both of those feelings exist at the same time.

This is happening inside systems that have rarely been kind to autistic people. So of course there’s skepticism. Of course people notice the machinery of branding and profit. Naming that doesn’t erase the meaning individuals still make. It just tells the truth about the context we’re in.

What matters to me most, though, is how this lands in real bodies and lives. Whether it reduces shame. Whether it opens conversations. Whether it gives someone language, or comfort, or a sense of belonging they didn’t have before. Those impacts are not abstract. They’re relational.

There’s also something important about remembering that Children don’t experience representation as theory. They experience it through play. Through imagination. Through the quiet reassurance of seeing something familiar reflected back at them before they even have words for why it matters.

A Barbie isn’t going to dismantle ableist systems. But symbols don’t have to be solutions to have impact. Sometimes they ripple. Sometimes they show us where visibility still hurts, and where it gently heals.

So I’m not especially interested in asking autistic people to take sides on this.

I’m more interested in leaving room for all of it.

The joy.
The discomfort.
The ambivalence.

Because maybe the most affirming thing we can do here is allow autistic people to decide for themselves what this represents...without needing to justify, defend, or resolve it.

And that, to me, matters.

10/01/2026

Internalised ableism often starts with the pressure to be palatable.

But now… I’m done trying to be palatable.

I want to be congruent.

I want to be whole.

So I’ve been rewriting the internal scripts I was taught:

✨ “Too sensitive” → sensory aware

✨ “Too rigid” → seeking safety and rhythm

✨ “Too inconsistent” → living in cycles, not straight lines

As a late-identified neurodivergent professional I used too internalise these stories and healing has come from reauthoring the meaning I make of my experience.

We get to rewrite our definitions.

We get to reclaim our rhythms.

We get to decide: “This, too, is valid.”

What’s one internalised story you’re ready to rewrite?

Check out my latest blog post: Not a Map, But a Compass: Reclaiming Neurodivergent Professional Identity Beyond the Binary of Brokenness - Link in bio!

10/01/2026

A reflective essay on masking, internalised ableism, & professionalism as performance - how neurodivergent practitioners can reorient toward congruence, not compliance.

A reflective essay on masking, internalised ableism, & professionalism as performance - how neurodivergent practitioners can reorient toward congruence, not compliance.