Trainer: Liam Spicer

Overview
 

This advanced workshop presents a compassionate, research-informed, and neurodiversity-affirming approach to applying EMDR and Schema Therapy with Autistic and ADHD adults. As increasing research highlights the high rates of trauma, burnout, misdiagnosis, and systemic invalidation experienced by Autistic and/or ADHD people, clinicians require trauma informed, integrative and transdiagnostic treatment approaches for this population group.  Autistic and ADHD adults frequently navigate chronic shame, masking pressures, sensory overwhelm, internalised ableism, and relational wounds, all of which shape emotional development, schema patterns, and trauma-processing capacities. This workshop responds to these needs by offering a model grounded in current evidence, lived-experience insight, and affirming clinical practice.

Participants will learn how to adapt assessment, formulation, and treatment planning using both the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model and a schema/mode framework. We will explore emerging research on alexithymia, interoception, aphantasia, sensory systems, and executive functioning differences, and how these factors influence trauma responses, therapeutic engagement, and emotional processing. Participants will learn grounding, stabilisation, and nervous-system support strategies that align with each client’s sensory preferences and neurobiological profile. Practical, accessible adaptations to both EMDR and Schema Therapy will be demonstrated, including flexible approaches to preparation, bilateral stimulation, imagery rescripting, creative and sensory-based mode “parts” work, pacing adjustments, assessing and working with dissociation, and methods for reducing shame and internalised ableism.

Through demonstrations, case examples, guided reflection and updates in the most recent research clinicians will build confidence in working transdiagnostically with the wide range of mental health concerns common among Autistic and ADHD adults such as trauma, anxiety, chronic depression, relational wounds, identity distress, grief, and emotional dysregulation. Attendees will leave with a deeper conceptual map, enhanced practical skills, and increased confidence in delivering EMDR and Schema Therapy in a way that is affirming, inclusive, and effective for Autistic and ADHD adults.