Identity and Community: The Key to Neurodivergent Wellbeing
Tracks
Monarch - In Person Only
| Monday, August 11, 2025 |
| 1:50 PM - 2:10 PM |
| Monarch Room |
Overview
Yael Clark – Loapac Australia
Speaker
Ms Yael Clark
Director
Loapac Australia
Identity and Community: the key to neurodivergent wellbeing.
Presentation Overview
Three Key Learnings:
1. You will develop a framework to explain why community pride is a fundamental human need.
2. You will gain insight into the various strategies that people with a marginalised identity use to manage their self-image.
3. You will be able to defend choosing community building over intervention/treatment when seeking or giving support to neurodivergent folk.
The past decades have seen an upswell in civil rights movements. While we often celebrate the seismic shifts created by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ activism, we’re also witnessing powerful community formation through digital platforms like TikTok, Discord, and Reddit. These spaces—and their real-life extensions, like conventions—demonstrate how everyday people adopt the same strategies as grassroots activists, seeking healing and justice through connection and solidarity.
Psychological treatment has traditionally focused on “treating” stigmatised people with interventions aimed at increasing conformity to a consensus-based definition of health. We now know that this form of intervention does not lead to thriving; it feeds social stigma and shame. We also know that stigma feeds systemic inequity and discrimination. What was thought to be a psychological problem solvable with psychological restructuring, is actually a social problem that requires social strategies. Drawing on examples from BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and Fat Liberation movements, I will examine how people are harmed by pressures to conform to a neuronormative standard, and the ways in which they reclaim self-worth and dignity.
The place for psychological therapy is to affirm the richly diverse ways in which the human brain adapts to the challenges of life, and to empower individuals to seek equity and access to all that society can offer. Community building—often through informal, peer-led, or creative spaces—can offer deeper healing and more sustainable self-worth than intervention. I invite you to consider the social environments we create for neurodivergent teens and adults, the representation of neurodivergence in media and education, and the power of group identity in shaping wellbeing. This is an invitation to recognise community as a site of transformation, where resistance becomes connection and support becomes liberation. Together, we can champion a model of care that centres dignity, agency, and pride.
1. You will develop a framework to explain why community pride is a fundamental human need.
2. You will gain insight into the various strategies that people with a marginalised identity use to manage their self-image.
3. You will be able to defend choosing community building over intervention/treatment when seeking or giving support to neurodivergent folk.
The past decades have seen an upswell in civil rights movements. While we often celebrate the seismic shifts created by BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ activism, we’re also witnessing powerful community formation through digital platforms like TikTok, Discord, and Reddit. These spaces—and their real-life extensions, like conventions—demonstrate how everyday people adopt the same strategies as grassroots activists, seeking healing and justice through connection and solidarity.
Psychological treatment has traditionally focused on “treating” stigmatised people with interventions aimed at increasing conformity to a consensus-based definition of health. We now know that this form of intervention does not lead to thriving; it feeds social stigma and shame. We also know that stigma feeds systemic inequity and discrimination. What was thought to be a psychological problem solvable with psychological restructuring, is actually a social problem that requires social strategies. Drawing on examples from BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and Fat Liberation movements, I will examine how people are harmed by pressures to conform to a neuronormative standard, and the ways in which they reclaim self-worth and dignity.
The place for psychological therapy is to affirm the richly diverse ways in which the human brain adapts to the challenges of life, and to empower individuals to seek equity and access to all that society can offer. Community building—often through informal, peer-led, or creative spaces—can offer deeper healing and more sustainable self-worth than intervention. I invite you to consider the social environments we create for neurodivergent teens and adults, the representation of neurodivergence in media and education, and the power of group identity in shaping wellbeing. This is an invitation to recognise community as a site of transformation, where resistance becomes connection and support becomes liberation. Together, we can champion a model of care that centres dignity, agency, and pride.
Biography
Yael is an Educational & Developmental Psychologist specializing in OCD and Anxiety in Autistic/ADHD individuals. She consults on neurodiversity-affirming practices, trains health professionals, and serves on the AAPi Neurodiversity Interest Group. She has worked in teaching and therapy since 1991 and is involved in research with leading institutions. As an AuDHDer, mother, and grandmother to neurodivergent children, her work blends professionalism, humour, and lived experience. Yael founded LOAPAC, the League of Autistic Psychologists and Affirming Colleagues. LOAPAC supports the careers of Autistic psychologists and provides a register for the public to search for neurodiversity affirming psychologists.
