An Interview With: Dr. Kristen Zaleski, PhD, LCSW | Chief Clinical Officer

Reshaping Therapy for Neurodivergent Adults in 2025

The Neurodivergent Collective really came out of, I think a psychological awakening the United States is having that we have been doing therapy wrong for a large number of humans living on this earth that don’t have what we call neurotypical brain wiring. Diagnoses like Obsessive Compulsive disorder, autism, ADHD… these are beautiful brains that wire a little bit differently, and traditional psychotherapy models don’t have the effectiveness that we were taught in school that they did. And so The Neurodivergent Collective is really just trying to create a path forward where we are hopefully leading the way and showing other treatment centers how to affirm humans beyond the books that we learned in school.

How is The Neurodivergent Collective Reshaping Therapy?

Instances of this is DBT, which is a heavily researched intervention for borderline personality disorder and trauma. We teach a module in there are called interpersonal effectiveness, which is great for neurotypical brains, but for a lot of people who maybe get overstimulated or dysregulated by too much social intimacy, it’s not a great module. It’s not what we would call affirming in their care. And so The Neurodivergent Collective is rethinking how we do DBT so that we are meeting the brains and bodies of these individuals without saying, there’s something wrong with you or you’re doing this wrong. Same concept with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR eye movements is the evidence-based way to treat trauma with EMDR, but with clients we have found that are diagnosed with autism or ADHD, eye movements actually dysregulate them more and it’s harder to do effective work. So we are still doing the bilateral stimulation that you require, but instead of eye movements, we’re doing audio tones or vibrating paddles in their hands. And it’s so much more effective. 

How Do See Your Clinical Team Leading the Change?

I feel like we need to shout from the rooftops to therapists across the nation that when you have the biology in front of you that might not be neurotypical, we need to be a bit more creative in how we’re healing them. So The Neurodivergent Collective is leading the way in hopefully thought, intellectual thought, about how to be affirming. And we have a great group of occupational therapists, dieticians, executive functioning coaches that are rethinking things like eating disorders. ARFID comes out of a discomfort with food. It’s not like anorexia or bulimia where someone wants to be thin. It’s that they just can’t have the relationship with food like other people want them to. Meeting them where they are and helping design their life, so they’re still getting nutrition, health from how their body, their nervous system wants to eat is important. And I don’t know that we’ve always been providing that care. I think we’ve been operating in a way of this is wrong and this is right. And so again, just trying to rethink and reshape how we’re affecting clients’ lives and helping them design the life for the body and brain that they have. And it’s been an immense learning curve and something we’re really excited to continue doing and learning.