6 Key Ways to Engage a Brain-Based Approach to Support Trauma and Neurodiversity
- Jun 30, 2022
- 7 min read
Updated: 12 hours ago
Julene Siddique is a recognised Thought Leader in Arts & Health. She's the Founder of Musical Nutrition Ltd. which brings together Neurological, Cognitive, Somatic/Sensory and Social aspects of Music for mental health and neurodiversity. As a composer, she creates psychological landscapes with orchestral music for Interactive Music-Wellness events.
Rates of neurodiversity and mental health diagnoses are rising at an unprecedented rate. Autism, AuDHD, and ADHD diagnoses continue to increase. While most people are trying to see specialists for medication and/or psychological support, many still find that, despite receiving help, they struggle with day-to-day ups and downs and overwhelm. I’ve also had many clients who initially told me they were simply resigning themselves to “life being hard.” But what I’ve found is that behind many of these struggles is a lack of understanding of how to work with their neurology, a lack of brain-based support, and a lack of meaningful praxis.
Talking therapies and medication, although helpful, are not enough. They are pieces of the puzzle, but not the full puzzle. All of our thoughts and emotions live in our bodies. All of our behaviours are linked to neural pathways in our brains. To truly address thoughts, emotions, and behaviour, we’ve got to involve both the body and the brain, as well as psychological support and medication when appropriate.
Within the context of neurodiversity, brain-based support is crucial. While much of this is now supported by research, this article aims to give people and families some actionable insights to help them better support themselves and their families.
1. Find it in the body: Making the somatic choice
Whether I’m working with a client with Autism, ADHD, or AuDHD, the key thing is always learning how to make the shift away from getting caught up in their anxious thoughts and/or emotional triggers to being able to stop and notice, ‘Where is it in my body?' Learning to track their thoughts and emotions as body sensations and noticing where and how they show up in the body becomes a crucial step in a) not getting lost in their anxieties/emotional triggers and b) the first step in learning how to somatically release their anxiety through the body. And that’s where the big healing happens. The reality that is now being backed by science and research is that in conditions such as Autism/AuDHD, when there are intense anxieties, you can’t ‘talk your way out of it’. Our thoughts and emotions are living in our bodies, and our bodies are one of the most powerful ways we can release them and build our capacity for natural healing and resilience.
2. Self-intervention is self-regulation
Within my company, Musical Nutrition, mental health and well-being are not just about how you improve on a clinical scale. They’re also about how your day-to-day experience of life improves. In my Resilience and Growth program, I take my clients through a process of “self-intervention.” That means noticing what’s happening in the moment and then being able to use a practice or tool to change your state at will.
That is self-regulation: the ability to notice when you are triggered, anxious, or upset; recognize what’s happening in the moment; and bring yourself back to homeostasis. The creative, somatic, and brain-based approaches I work with, besides involving broader methods, also include short practices people can use in their daily lives to improve their everyday lived experience. And that’s when things really change, as people move out of struggle and into self-empowered wellness. That’s the change I love to see, when someone is feeling better and has the tools to truly live better.
3. Dual-hemisphere bi-lateral stimulation
Within the context of neurodiversity there are specialised methods for employing Bi-Lateral Stimulation. Engaging whole brain functioning/bi-lateral stimulation is a crucial piece for balancing and integrating brain function (which can often become unbalanced in neurodiversity contexts). My Resilience and Growth program works with specialist forms of bi-lateral stimulation for Autism/Neurodiversity, but here are some simple things you can do at home.
March to music. Move the opposite hand and foot while marching to music. You can also simply walk outside while swinging each arm a little more toward the opposite leg.
Two-handed writing and drawing. Spend a little time writing with both hands or drawing a picture using both hands.
Drum with both hands on a drum or table. Lift one hand and then the other, tapping on the table or drum. You can slowly work toward making the rhythm more complex and improving your coordination.
These simple at-home activities can help improve whole-brain functioning, contributing to a stronger, more balanced brain. You may be less likely to become triggered or overwhelmed when your system is strong. Try some simple bilateral activities to strengthen your system at home.
4. Work with your sensitivities for resilience
I’ve worked extensively with high sensitivity levels in autism cases. High sensitivities and sensory needs can mean that a person becomes overwhelmed quickly and/or experiences intense emotions very quickly. When your sensitivities aren’t trained, life can be full of ups and downs or constant overwhelm.
In my Resilience and Growth program, I train people to use their sensitivities for resilience, manage them, and use them at will. In the same way that you can tune into a negative feeling, you can also tune into a positive feeling and become more resilient. It’s about learning how to manage your sensitivity and use it to your advantage rather than allowing it to take over your life with overwhelming ups and downs.
5. Healing through growth
There is nothing “wrong” with you. When you let go of “fixing problems,” you can start to acknowledge what is really there without judgement. Then you can allow it to speak and give it the space it needs to send you the messages and learnings you need to grow from your experiences and challenges.
In the context of neurodiversity, my job is to help people grow into who they are and work with their brain type. Safety, non-judgement, compassionate understanding, somatic sensory integration, and self-knowledge are key. Learning to work with their unique sensitivities and bodily sensations, as well as what their difficult feelings are trying to tell them, is essential. That’s when we come into contact with the ability to learn in a way that can lead to genuine growth.
Healing that leads to life change, meaning moving from a bad place into a good place, happens through growth.
So, start creating the conditions for growth. Don’t judge yourself. Listen to your body and to what your emotions are telling you. If you have sensory needs, listen to, respect, and prioritise them. Know that pain can point to where a problem may be. If you ask the problem to speak, it may tell you and even teach you some profound and potentially life-changing things.
6. Creative sensory practices
There is an incredible power to creativity. Especially when you start to understand that emotions are not linear, they are associative. We associate emotions with people and experiences and it’s generally not a linear thing. A key characteristic of Neurodiversity is that they process information differently. So we need to work with that, not against it. Creativity uses a different part of the brain than just asking someone to describe what they went through. Neurodivergents often ‘feel different’. They often feel the need to ‘figure it out’. You don’t need to prove anything, explain anything or figure anything out. Healing only asks you to acknowledge, give life and give a voice to what’s there. Creativity and sensory language allow us to work with the unique aspects of your brain. In Resilience and Growth, through a creative-sensory process we help neurodivergents to work with their brain, address any/all sensory discoordination, balance their system and learn ways to self-sooth and self-restore from overwhelm. By working with creativity and the senses we can allow neurodivergents to process information in a different way, restore their systems from overwhelm and help them to uncover and harness their unique gifts.
The therapies of the future are based in the brain, body, and creativity
We can’t afford a partial solution, and our clients deserve better than a partial solution. If people are still struggling after they’ve worked with us, then we haven’t done our job. We can’t afford for this work to be one-dimensional. One-dimensional therapy is a job half done.
Although talking therapies and medication are supportive, I would argue that the therapy of the future is holistic and integrative. It engages neurological support, psychological support, brain training, and behavioural intervention, and it is built on “learning through doing.” The brain only learns something new when it is asked to do something new.
Experience-based, brain-based therapies give people techniques and tools that help them learn how to do things differently and how to be different. By working with creativity, we stop prescribing and put the power back in patients’ hands to reimagine themselves and their lives.
The brain, body, and creativity therapies of the future offer an empowered, non-judgemental approach. We’re not judging people for their challenges or conditions. We’re looking at how these things show up in them and their lives. When you look at that holistically, you can create a space of non-judgement and deep listening to hear and understand where those challenges are coming from and give people the most appropriate tools for healing, resilience, and growth. I believe that is the foundation of genuine personal transformation and life change.
That is truly where any form of healing or therapy should take us: into a positive transformation. That kind of positive transformation is built on insights from lived experience, learning through self-knowledge, and brain training that leads to real evolution.
We can do it. We have the science to do it; we just need to start restructuring our practices to accommodate more integrative ways of working. My Resilience and Growth program is pioneering this approach, and we’re learning every day how to improve. I hope many more practitioners make the move toward a more integrative approach.
I also hope that these six simple steps can help more people understand that they have the power to change and live better, happier lives. The power is, in fact, in their hands; they just need to learn the tools and methods that can help them access that agency.
The knowledge of transformation is the knowledge of hope. When you think nothing can change, you become hopeless. Seeing genuine transformation creates hope. Transformative healthcare is the healthcare of hope, and I truly believe that is worth fighting for.
Read more from Julene Siddique
Julene Siddique, Composer, Therapist, and Thought Leader
Julene Siddique is a Composer, Creative Therapist, and Thought Leader innovating across therapies, wellness, and music entertainment. As a Classical Composer trained at The Royal College of Music and a Therapist trained in Neurologic Music Therapy, Neuroscience Coaching, Neuro-Art, and Trauma-Informed Expressive Art Therapy, Julene creates unique Neuro-Creative Experiences designed to transform Mind, Brain, and Behaviour. She founded Musical Nutrition, which provides creative therapies for mental health and neurodiversity, but also interactive wellness entertainment. She developed 'The Musical Nutrition Method' so Neurological, Cognitive, Somatics/Sensory and Social Aspects of Music could be applied across therapy and performance settings.
