Dear Micha,
Wow, I’ve had coaching and therapy from a lot of different (and brilliant) people over the years but our first coaching session completely blew my mind. Being held explicitly as an autistic person within this society is a very unique experience, something I don’t think I’ve fully accessed other than with my other autistic friends.
From start to finish it was so clear how your lived experience and knowledge of neuodivergence had shaped every layer of our session together. Starting with who I am on a good day and a bad day not only gave you unique insight into the way my brain works, but it helped me to notice where I was on that spectrum today, it gave me a whole load of language I can use to express myself and it gave me immediate useful solutions for any time in the near future where I might be heading into an anxiety spiral. I feel like every coach, regardless of someone’s neurotype, should do this up front. One of my reticences around receiving coaching is that I can often end up going too deep and unpacking things that make it difficult for me to function - but knowing that we’d already laid out the warning signs of this together, along with some easy ways to respond to that, made me feel so reassured that this process will be held with care.
What’s more is that I could share so much more freely about what a bad day looks like for me knowing that you likely had shared lived experience. Telling someone that I have disordered eating or suicidal thought patterns is often unhelpfully met with shock or concern so I tend to play down those aspects of my brain. In reality those things are just me struggling with the executive functioning required for daily life, and you acknowledging that without trying to delve deeper meant we actually arrived at much simpler solutions to these things than I might’ve previously.
In addition, within dialogue, I can often find it hard to structure my thoughts. With standard coaching, where it's often a continuous flow of open questions, I can find I frequently get lost down a rabbit hole simply because my brain is whirring through a whole range of things to say, or my coach will push me down a rabbit hole (often with a neurotypical lens on the issue) even though it’s probably not that big a deal to me. The fact you invited me to first brain dump everything that’s drawing my energy and focus at the moment onto a visual Miro board before choosing any coaching topics was huge. Getting to see everything that matters to me and then make a conscious choice about what to bring into our coaching arrangement means I can feel much more confident that we are going to have valuable conversations together.
Lastly, the structure you offered, both in terms of how the session ran and how we then populated content for our next coaching sessions, was so soothing for my brain. I ended the session energised and I’m already excited about our next conversation because I know what we are going to be focussing on together, and what’s most important/relevant about that problem for me.
It’s really sad that most spaces are not held in a way that makes neurodivergent people feel this way. It’s so easy to see how so many of us retreat from socialising, retreat from speaking, and retreat from getting the help we need because even just being understood is hard work and we are often left depleted from the kinds of interactions that other people find energising. So thank you for making me feel really seen and understood, reigniting my energy for the work I do and making sure I’m looking after my needs in the process.
Ray
Micha runs Thought Patten Studio, supporting neurodivergent people through coaching and providing teams with training and facilitation to help them work better together.
This letter is part of the holding space together series. A collection of letters to and from people who are part of the Holding Space community - if you want to be part of this space you can join an upcoming cohort