Rebecca Rae-Hodgson

Chronically Resilient Occupational Therapist

Rebecca, otherwise known as The Chronically Resilient OT, is a neurodivergent and chronically ill Occupational Therapist based in Aotearoa/New Zealand who brings both clinical expertise and lived experience to her values-driven private practice. Drawing from years of professional expertise combined with lived experience, Rebecca is focused on supporting other health professionals through supervision, mentoring, consultation and training, with a focus on neurodiversity-affirming practice, wellbeing, environmental supports, and self-understanding. She aims to help people work through the hard stuff as well as find the moments of joy and celebrate the big and little wins, while finding ways to build their resilience and strength, balanced with self-compassion and rest.

Striving to learn more about the beautifully unique ways in which people interact with the world, recognising our strengths and what we have to offer as well as figuring out, and doing something about, the areas in which we might need support or accommodations.
 
Her approaches & areas of interest include: strengths-based, person-centred, recovery oriented, neurodivergence-affirming and trauma-informed practice with a focus on -
- Lived-experience informed supervision and mentoring
- Identity exploration and neurodivergence, building self-understanding and self-advocacy
- Exploring values, goals, interests, habits, roles and routines
- Supporting sensory modulation, emotion regulation and executive functioning
- Nature connection, different kinds of rest, mindfulness and self-compassion
- Chronic illness self-management and building self-efficacy, including the complex intersectionality of neurodivergence and chronic illness.
 
Rebecca has an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a graduate Masters of Occupational Therapy. She was a disability support worker for many years before becoming an Occupational Therapist and has also facilitated peer support groups, provided mentoring and supervision to disability support workers and worked as a Dialectical Behaviour Therapy skills teacher and care coordinator in a residential mental health setting. She has certificates in Education Support and Disability as well as a Postgraduate Certificate in Mental Health and Addictions, and has recently completed supervision training. She is a lover of lifelong learning and does lots of continuing professional development and reading in the areas of chronic illness, sensory processing, neurodivergence and neurodiversity affirming practice, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, recovery approaches, trauma, nervous system regulation and supervision.
 
Over the past few years, she has presented at national Occupational Therapy conferences in Australia and New Zealand, the Yellow Ladybugs Conference in 2025, served as a guest lecturer at multiple Australian universities and appeared as a guest on multiple podcasts. Conferences in 2026 include the Autistic Burnout Network Conference and the Neurodiversity Affirming Therapy Conference Australia.
 
Hobbies and interests include: board games, books (especially fantasy and historical fiction), dogs, gentle nature walks, gardening, allergy friendly baking, making DIY cleaning and body products, crochet and cross stitch, and singing (especially Disney and musicals).