Addressing trauma to support cognitive functioning

Dr. Julie DeVito, a Consulting Psychologist and Integrative Health Coach at The Neurodivergent Collective, offers her insights on the benefits of addressing trauma to enhance cognitive functioning in neurodivergent clients.

INTERVIEW

Filmed with Dr. Julie DeVito, PsyD | Consulting Psychologist + Integrative Health Coach

CAN ADDRESSING TRAUMA SUPPORT COGNITIVE FUNCTIONING?

We have a very holistic approach here at The Collective, and when you hear people talk about a top-down approach that’s referring to top meaning from the brain down to the body. So a cognitive (approach), looking at your thoughts and really helping to process and examine thoughts and how that affects the rest of your body versus bottoms-up, which is more of a, like a somatic therapy, which looks at how the body holds onto trauma for example, and how that can impact the brain.

So bottom-up meaning from body to brain. There are different types of therapy approaches, which I think can integrate very well with one another. It’s important that, I integrate both of those in working with clients. When we talk about executive functioning, that’s the cognitive part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which manages decision making, and organization that oftentimes if we don’t first treat the impact in the body of trauma, we’re not able to really impact change in the cognitive functions. So it’s important to integrate both of those.