Understanding, not correction.
Rather than directing candidates' future clients toward neurotypical standards of functioning, CNAS is built around a different stance — one we teach candidates to hold themselves.
- Validates the neurodivergent experience as real, legitimate, and worthy of understanding
- Prioritises awareness and self-knowledge over goals and performance
- Recognises the strengths and gifts that co-exist with challenges
- Creates safe space to explore who someone is, without shame or pressure
- Supports client-led choices, at the client's pace, in the client's language
Whoever you support, however you got here.
- Professionals transitioning into neurodivergent-affirming support roles
- Those who prefer an interactive, community-based learning environment
- Practitioners with existing coaching or therapeutic experience seeking focused ND specialisation
- Neurodivergent individuals wishing to support others from lived experience
- Those who've completed foundational coaching training and want a condensed, practice-focused pathway
By the end of CNAS, you'll be able to…
Six sessions, one connected arc.
Delivered live on Zoom, combining facilitated discussion, video resources, experiential exercises, and breakout conversations — with reflective assignments and supported volunteer-client practice between sessions.
Presenting Issues: Understanding the Neurodivergent Landscape
The opening session builds the foundational knowledge candidates need to understand and contextualise neurodivergence — the breadth of the spectrum, how it presents in adults, and how cultural, gendered, and systemic factors shape both experience and diagnosis.
Practice: a paired interview exercise exploring ND presentations through conversation, not assessment.
Emotions and the Nervous System
Many neurodivergent adults have spent years being told they're too much or not enough. This session explores how emotions are processed differently — physiologically and psychologically — centred on two often-transformative concepts: alexithymia and interoception.
Practice: introducing alexithymia and interoception with clients in a conversational, non-clinical way.
The Physical Domain
Neurodivergence doesn't stop at the brain. This session explores the overlooked connections between neurodivergence and physical health — particularly significant for women, who remain underrepresented in ND research and often face delayed or inaccurate diagnosis.
Practice: applying the OSCAR coaching framework with a volunteer client, with reflected feedback.
Masking and the Social World
Masking isn't simply a behavioural strategy — it's a survival response that shapes neural pathways, undermines authentic identity, and can lead to profound burnout. We also explore rejection sensitivity, demand avoidance, and where neurodivergent adults find genuine belonging.
Practice: exploring the Masking Inventory conversationally, and practising compassionate session endings.
Executive Functioning and Internal Family Systems
Two complementary maps of the inner world — one cognitive, one psychological — aimed at the same goal: understanding without shame. Both replace "what's wrong with me?" with "what is this part of me trying to do?"
Practice: Parts Mapping and the language of IFS in conversation with a volunteer partner.
NVC, ND Coaching Essentials and Integration
The final session closes the circle — bringing a language of connection (NVC), and a group-built set of coaching essentials each participant carries forward, examining how OSCAR, IFS and NVC all serve the same purpose: meeting neurodivergent people as they are.
Practice: translating a stuck exchange into NVC language, and a closing group circle.
No exams — just reflection, practice, and presence.
How you're assessed
- Completion of session reflections and assignments — written or recorded, candidate's choice
- Evidence of volunteer client practice sessions across the programme
- A final integrative session reflection or coaching resource
Course materials
All materials are provided at no additional cost, including session guides, video links, reflection tools, and access to the Natural Wellness Academy portal and Webinar Library.
Core texts (provided)
- Unmasking Autism — Dr Devon Price
- Self-Care for Autistic People — Dr Megan-Anna Neff
- A Beginner's Guide to Polyvagal Theory — Deborah Dana
Recommended, optional
- How to Survive with Adult ADHD — Dr James Kustow
- No Bad Parts — Dr Richard Schwartz