Nea Clark ADHD Coaching

I am delighted to share that my article, “The Principles of Neuro-informed Transactional Analysis”, has been published in The Script magazine this morning.

The article begins from a simple but important observation: neurodiversity is already present in our consulting rooms, training groups, coaching practices and organisations. We are working with it, whether or not we name it.

Transactional Analysis has inherited a strong trauma-informed lens, and this has given us deep compassion, relational understanding and a coherent way of thinking about human struggle. But I have begun to wonder whether this lens is always sufficient.

In the article, I explore what it might mean to develop a neuro-informed TA lens, one that can sit alongside trauma-informed thinking and help us recognise sensory, attentional, executive functioning and nervous system differences as central parts of the work.

This is a developing area of thought, and I am very glad to be opening the conversation.

Thank you to the Script editorial team for their support and hard work in publishing the article.

https://platform.itaaworld.com/news/neuro-informed-ta-a-new-framework-for-neurodivergent-clients

Yesterday wasn't just Father's Day. It was also the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.
We have a lovely tradition of marking this day with a small bonfire and celebrating the light.
As the sun lingered in the sky, I stopped for a moment and looked back on the last six months. I reflected on the achievements, the challenges, the friendships and collegial relationships that have enriched my life, and the family. Connections that matter most.
It was a chance to pause, take a look, and reconnect with my deeper purpose. To remember what truly matters, what gives meaning to my work, and what I hope to bring into the world in the months ahead.
Sometimes the longest day offers exactly what we need: a moment of light, perspective, gratitude, and renewed direction

Is it Trauma or ADHD? Most coaches, psychotherapists, and counsellors are confused about.

Still time to register. Friday 2nd May, 5pm BST.
This NATAA panel brings together practitioners who have also lived neurodivergence personally in their own families. Real stories. Real tools. Real TA.
The conversation covers diagnosis, grief, masking, shame, Life Positions, executive function and where AI and immersive technology fit into the future of neurodivergent support.
Speakers: Alexander Landa (Akiva Labs) | Sandra and Antonio Fernandez (ARMEXUS Institute) | Nea Clark PTSTA (P)
Link in bio to register.

https://nataa.net/educational-ta-workshops/

Trauma-informed practice asks what happened to you. Neuro-informed practice asks what is happening in you right now.
I am sitting with a client who cannot settle. They have shifted position three times since they sat down. Their eyes are moving around the room. Their leg hasn't stopped. They look agitated slightly wired, slightly somewhere else and when I ask how they are, the answer comes fast and vague, like they are already half a step ahead of the conversation.
And somewhere in my mind, almost without noticing, a story forms: something is making them unsafe right now. Hypervigilance. A triggered nervous system. The past showing up in the body.
That story might be right.
It might also be the most expensive assumption I make.
Most of us were trained to look backwards. Trauma-informed practice gave us something genuinely valuable a way to read behaviour as communication, to resist pathologising what is actually survival. That matters.
But when our default is always to look back, we stop seeing what is right in front of us. We stop asking what is happening in this brain, in this body, in this moment. And for a client with ADHD, that reach can cost them years.
Executive function collapse looks like avoidance. Time blindness looks like disrespect. Sensory overload looks like emotional withdrawal. Every one of these can be misread as a trauma response and often is.
A neuro-informed mindset asks a different first question.
Not: what happened to you?
But: what is happening in you, right now?
What is the load like today? Where is the friction? What is the environment asking of this brain, and is this brain resourced to meet it?
These are not softer questions. They are more precise ones.
Neither framework is wrong. Both can miss things when over-applied. Trauma-informed work risks psychologising what is neurodevelopmental. Neuro-informed work risks missing the grief, shame, and relational wounds sitting underneath.
The skill is knowing which question to ask first.
If I only ask backwards, I will always find a backwards answer.
That is not bad practice. It is just an unexamined habit.