Founded in 1982, the North West Regional Psychotherapy Association is an independent association of psychotherapists, counsellors and psychoanalysts of different backgrounds, training and clinical strengths.
We are a not-for-profit association run by volunteers who organise talks, seminars and workshops on Zoom for the second Monday of the month. Events are free to members and only £7.50 per event for non-members. Membership of NWRPA costs just £30 a year. Join at any time of year and your membership lasts for 12 months. Membership is open to qualified counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists, psychiatrists and other professionals practicing or teaching in related fields. We meet online and have members from across the UK and overseas, so you do not need to be located in the north-west. NWRPA represents high quality, good value, CPD! Whilst most members are in practice, qualified or retired practitioners and those approaching graduation from accredited or registered (e.g. BACP, UKCP, BPS, HCPC, GMC) face-to-face practitioner training programmes are also invited to apply for membership.
NEXT MEETING
Monday, December 8 at 7 PM GMT
Unmasking at the Intersections: Understanding late-diagnosed AuDHD and queerness
Jo McCormick
For many neurodivergent individuals, a diagnosis is not the beginning of their journey, but a beginning, and an experience of hard-won validation and clarification, decades into a life of “otherness.” When late-diagnosed autism and ADHD (AuDHD) co-occur with queer identity and other identities such as working-class background, for example, this sense of otherness can be compounded, creating unique and often-overlooked barriers to care, work, study, relationships and more.
In this session, researcher, advocate and communications expert Jo McCormick draws from early PhD findings, non-profit work, work with neurodivergent and queer people in corporate environments, and their own lived experience to explore the duality of late-diagnosed AuDHD. We will move beyond singular diagnoses to examine the practical, everyday intensity of navigating life at these intersections, how two distinctly diagnosed conditions interact and ‘sit atop’ one another, sometimes causing misunderstanding in clients and clinicians alike.
Jo will shed light on the challenges of unmasking, the difficulty of “disentangling societal masks and mirrors,” and the specific ways these layered identities impact a person’s interaction with assessment pathways, therapeutic interventions, healthcare services, and workplace support (like DSA and Access to Work). This talk will provide practitioners with a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the lived realities some of their multiply marginalised clients face, and hopefully ways they can be more open to accommodating different approaches, for the better.
Jo McCormick (they/them) is a graduate psychologist and PhD candidate researching neurodiversity in queer-led family structures. This academic work is grounded in their lived experience as a gender-non-conforming, queer adult who was late-diagnosed with autism and ADHD (AuDHD).
Based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Jo is a trustee of Stim Café, a non-profit providing social spaces for neurodivergent adults, and a lived-experience consultant for The Retreat, York, which offers assessments and support to neurodivergent adults and young people. Jo’s work, as a researcher, advocate, and communications specialist, is a “protest against the erasure of queer, disabled and neurodivergent people (and other marginalised communities)”. Jo’s mission is to leverage their ‘lived-and-learned’ expertise to help practitioners and organisations better understand and support multiply marginalised individuals. They believe improving the experience of one community truly opens the door for everyone’s lives to improve.