What Is Neurodiversity?

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CBT often fails neurodivergent clients because core models weren’t built with their needs in mind.

Therapists lack specialist training, leading to inappropriate goals and unhelpful or harmful therapy.

Adapting existing CBT models is insufficient; new, co‑created approaches are needed.

Neurodiversity‑affirming training improves safety, outcomes and equity in psychological therapy.

By Elizabeth Stamatelatos

CBT is one of the most widely used and evidence-based psychological therapies. Yet for many neurodivergent people, it does not feel safe or helpful. This tension is increasingly visible. As one social media quote puts it: “CBT is not affirming at all at its core and most autistic leaders and agencies worldwide openly oppose any behavioural therapies for us.”

Views like this are not isolated, and they cannot be ignored.

Much of CBT’s evidence base and many of its core protocols were not developed with neurodivergent experiences in mind. As a result, some people experience it as an approach that tries to ‘normalise’ difference—that is, to encourage individuals to mask, suppress or change their natural ways of thinking, feeling, or behaving to appear more typical—rather than understand distress.

Techniques such as thought balancing and the concept of cognitive distortion can feel invalidating—sometimes described within the autistic community as a form of ‘self-gaslighting,’ particularly when experiences of rejection or discrimination are very........

© Psychology Today