Closing the Series: Coming Home to the Body

Neurodivergence is often discussed through the lens of cognition—how autistic and ADHD minds process information, attend to stimuli, organise thought. But lived neurodivergent experience is profoundly embodied. It’s the exhaustion of sensory overwhelm, the disconnection from hunger and fullness cues, the difficulty naming internal states that shows up as alexithymia, the nervous system dysregulation that precedes emotional awareness. This closing session turns attention inward—to the somatic, interoceptive, and parts-based dimensions of neurodivergent life.

Dr. Megan Anna Neff brings a unique synthesis to this territory. As a clinical psychologist who discovered her own AuDHD at 37, she intimately understands the journey from disconnection to embodied awareness. Her work integrates clinical training, research literacy, and lived experience in ways that bridge the gap between what therapists learn in graduate school and what actually helps neurodivergent clients develop sustainable relationships with their bodies.

The session begins with interoception—the often-impaired capacity to sense internal bodily states. For many neurodivergent people, signals of hunger, thirst, pain, temperature, and arousal register dimly or not at all. This isn’t metaphorical disconnect; it’s neurological difference in how internal sensory information gets processed. The clinical implications are vast: how do you practice “listening to your body” when your body’s signals are scrambled or silent? How do you develop emotional regulation skills premised on catching feelings early—when you only notice emotion after it’s already flooding your system?

Alexithymia—difficulty identifying and describing emotions—appears in roughly 50% of autistic adults, yet most therapeutic approaches assume emotional literacy as a starting point. Neff explores what changes when you recognise that for many neurodivergent clients, the problem isn’t avoiding feelings but genuinely not having access to clear emotional information. This requires completely different interventions than traditional emotion-focused therapy.

The session also examines sensory processing differences beyond the usual clinical focus on avoiding overwhelming environments. How do neurodivergent people learn to work with their sensory needs rather than constantly fighting against them? How do you support clients in discovering which sensory inputs are regulating versus dysregulating? How do you help someone who’s spent decades masking their sensory experience begin to trust their own responses again?

Neff brings parts-based approaches—particularly Internal Family Systems—into conversation with neurodivergent embodiment. Many neurodivergent people naturally think in multiplicity, experiencing distinct “modes” or internal states that feel like different selves. Rather than pathologising this (as dissociation, fragmentation), parts-based frameworks can honour it as a valid way of organising internal experience. The session demonstrates how parts work can help neurodivergent clients develop compassionate relationships with aspects of themselves they’ve been taught to suppress: the part that needs to stim, the part that can’t make eye contact, the part that shuts down under pressure.

What makes Neff’s approach powerful is her distinction between coping-based embodiment and restorative embodiment. Much of what neurodivergent people learn is suppression: don’t stim, don’t show distress, push through exhaustion, mask discomfort. These strategies ensure short-term functioning but destroy long-term wellbeing. Restorative embodiment means learning to trust internal signals again, to honour rather than override nervous system responses, to build self-knowledge from somatic truth rather than imposed should’s.

This isn’t about teaching neurodivergent clients to “get better at” interoception or emotional awareness through sheer effort. It’s about working with neurological differences to develop personalised strategies: external tracking when internal sensing is unreliable, somatic experimentation to identify patterns, parts work to understand why certain protective strategies persist. It’s about cultivating self-trust in systems where that trust has been systematically undermined.

As the series’ closing session, this brings the conversation full circle—from paradigmatic frameworks and social context back to the irreducible felt experience of living in a neurodivergent body. You’ll leave with grounded approaches for helping clients develop embodied self-knowledge, integrate fragmented internal experience, and build sustainable practices of self-attunement that don’t require forcing themselves into neurotypical patterns of body awareness.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Explain how interoceptive differences, sensory processing variations, and alexithymia influence emotional regulation and self-concept in neurodivergent individuals
2. Recognise signs of embodied dysregulation and employ grounding techniques that restore a sense of internal safety
3. Integrate parts-based and somatic approaches to help clients map internal experiences and cultivate compassionate self-awareness
4. Differentiate between coping-based embodiment (e.g., masking or suppression) and restorative embodiment grounded in self-trust
5. Support clients in translating embodied insight into therapeutic and relational growth, fostering coherence between internal and external worlds

About Megan Anna Neff

Dr. Megan Anna Neff is a neurodivergent psychologist, writer, and founder of Neurodivergent Insights, where she creates resources that weave together research, clinical wisdom, and lived experience. After discovering she was Autistic and ADHD at 37, Megan Anna became deeply curious about how late-identified neurodivergence reshapes not just self-understanding, but also relationships, systems, and wellbeing—a curiosity that now shapes her forthcoming book on AuDHD. She is the author of Self-Care for Autistic People and The Autistic Burnout Workbook, and co-hosts Divergent Conversations, a podcast exploring the nuance of neurodivergent life. Drawing from both her clinical training and her experience in a cross-neurotype family, Megan Anna is passionate about expanding the conversation around neurodivergence beyond stereotypes—toward something more honest, human, and hopeful.

© nscience 2025 / 26