My name is Emma, and I am responsible for tending the Divergent Therapy woodland. I am a humanistic psychotherapeutic practitioner, researcher, neurodivergent person, partner and parent.

Divergent Therapy brings together my professional training, lived experience, research, therapeutic interests, activism, and long-standing commitment to neuro-affirming practice.

My work is shaped by the belief that people make sense in context.

Distress is rarely just an individual problem. It is often connected to relationships, environments, bodies, nervous systems, histories, systems, expectations and the repeated adaptations people have had to make in order to survive.

I have been supporting people in different forms since my early teens, beginning with work in a nursing home and later supporting neurodivergent people from the age of sixteen.

Since then, I have worked across a range of care, support, educational and therapeutic contexts, including housing, homelessness, neurodivergence, learning disability, mental health, school-based autism support, coaching, and therapeutic residential community work focused on attachment and relational care.

I have also held management roles within therapeutic and support settings.

My academic background began with an undergraduate degree in psychology in the early 2000s, where my dissertation explored autism and emotion recognition.

Many years later, I returned to formal study through the MA in Psychotherapeutic Practice, Humanistic, at University of Wales Trinity Saint David.

During my psychotherapy training, I completed a placement with New Pathways, where I received specific training around trauma and sexual violence.

My placement work also involved supporting clients navigating the overlap between trauma, neurodivergence, masking, safety and self-trust.

I am a member of the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society.

Together, these experiences have shaped the way I understand people: not as isolated individuals with problems to be fixed, but as people whose distress, adaptations and strengths make sense within the conditions they have lived through.

My research and therapeutic interests centre on neurodivergence, masking, burnout, trauma, identity, thresholds, regulation, ecological understandings of distress, and the conditions that support or disrupt self-trust.

I am especially interested in what happens before distress becomes visible: the hidden effort, narrowing capacity, masking, sensory load, relational strain and early signals that are often missed when someone still appears to be coping from the outside.

This interest has shaped the way I think about therapy. 

I am not interested in asking people to become more acceptable, productive or polished.

 I am more interested in what becomes possible when people are understood with greater accuracy, context and care.

This work is also personal.

I come from a neurodivergent household, live in a neurotype-aligned relationship, and parent two neurodivergent children.

Neurodivergence is not only something I research or work with professionally. It is part of the texture of my everyday life, relationships, parenting, thinking, regulation, humour and way of moving through the world.

My own lived experience includes neurodivergence, masking, burnout, and the slow process of rebuilding a more sustainable relationship with my own rhythms.

I do not assume my experience is the same as anyone else’s, but it has shaped my sensitivity to the cost of living against yourself, and to the importance of safety, pacing, self-trust and fit.

Apparently, this began early.

Challenging uncomfortable or ill-fitting rules has been a lifelong pattern. I have spent much of my life noticing and questioning rules that seem neutral on the surface but carry hidden assumptions about bodies, behaviour, comfort, professionalism, communication or belonging.

Sometimes these things, including the dreaded dress code, may look small from the outside, but they can matter deeply when they affect sensory safety, dignity, access, identity or the ability to remain present.

Outside the therapy room, I am someone who loves to hyperfocus and parallel play with special interests that are both constant and ever-changing.

Kitchen discos are one of my favourite ways to regulate.

I have a passion for live music, and I am drawn to extreme sports, although enthusiasm and ability are not always equally matched.

I am also endlessly fascinated by watching our leopard gecko, Toothless, bask on his warm rock. There is something oddly comforting and mirror-like about his solitary ease.

It is a running joke in my family that my favourite hobby is staring into space or at a wall.

I like to think of this as deep processing, nervous system maintenance, or simply a highly underrated form of being.

I care deeply about nature, movement, family, research, music, humour, and the small ordinary things that help life feel more liveable.

And tea. Lots and lots of tea.