The Neurodivergence Skills Workbook for Autism and ADHD: Cultivate Self-Compassion, Live Authentically, and Be Your Own Advocate (The Social Justice Handbook Series)

Being newly diagnosed with ADHD this book has helped understand how my brain works. The questions/activities make me dig deep into myself.

As a clinician who diagnoses neurodivergence and works therapeutically with many ND families, I have read a great many good books on these topics. However, as a late diagnosed multiply neurodivergent gifted dyspraxic AuDHD-er, none of the other books were actually written specifically for me. Reading this book felt like finally arriving home after an outrageously long drive, down all the wrong roads on difficult terrain, and then pulling into your own driveway, to discover that someone has left a soft lamp on, lit the fire for you and you are home now. Profound gratitude to Jennifer Kemp and Monique Mitchelson for this beautifully woven tapestry of science and lived experience.

As a newly diagnosed autistic I have found this workbook to be incredibly helpful. I am working with the first two chapters so far and have found them to be great in helping me see my strengths. It also gives me a good way to have conversations with my family who don't know much about autism. I am on page 42 and have been working in the book daily, sometimes a couple of times per day. I see a lot of myself in these pages. There are of course things that don't relate to me. There is new terminology that is helpful in describing what I have experienced most of my life. My mom recognized many of the things in me as she flipped through the book. If you are neurodivergent or suspect that you are this book helps you with a framework beyond deficits and helps you to see your strengths, challenges, and how to work with them and how they affect you mentally, emotionally, and physically.

As a therapist who specializes in ADHD and Autism, I found that this workbook for the group I was running was very effective. I had feedback from my group members that it has been very insightful, validating, and useful for all the information that was in the book. It is well written. They cover a broad spectrum of characteristics of what ADHD/Autism is. The book has great interactive activities and really makes a person stop and think about what they can do to help themselves. There are some great techniques in this book as well. The only thing I would like to add is about sensory processing.

This buck is one of the best resources I have found since receiving my diagnosis. It meant so much to me to be able to read something designed by people who had both lived and professional experience. I have been looking for a resource that was customized to the needs of AuDHD. I would recommend taking a look at the sample first to make sure that the workbook Approach and format are a good fit for you. I am taking my time with this and appreciate it is something that I cannot rush through. I feel like I’m getting to know myself. I can’t recommend this highly enough.

First off, I think this is an excellent resource for understanding ADHD/Autism, it even brings to light many of the smaller areas it may affect people lives that you may not realize. I think this would be a great resource for people living with an ND family member or partner to help you better understand and empathize with them...However, when it comes to directly offering support for those struggling with ADHD and/or Autism, I feel like the 'workbook' aspects trends to be far less effective me and others. It relies on a lot of conventional wisdom and tried and true techniques, but that also means if you've had difficulty getting support in the past with a lot of other resources, while this is a great compilation of existing information, it won't bring anything dramatically new to the table, that would make it useful where other process failed.So in short, if you've just been diagnosed with either, give the book a try, you'll probably learn something! But if you've had trouble with workbooks, handout, or just unstructured support in the past (you need solid steps) this is probably NOT the resource for you!What do I mean by this? Well let's start with the first part of this books title "Cultivate Self-Compassion",This book approaches that idea by basically helping you see how ADHD/autism affects your life, and encourages you to "not try to conform to others expectations", a great sentimate, but how does it expect you to go about this? The same way most other resources approach the topic of 'self-acceptance. Self affirmations, and writing down positive traits, For a lot of people this may be enough, but if you've been struggling with self acceptance for a decent period of time, this is likely the first suggestion you've gotten. And it never really moves past that or offer alternatives to help break through the years or decades of condoning, if this process does not work you're just out of luck.A similar issue is found in the general work book parts for other things like self advocating, some good general advice is given, but the work book parts still just have you circling traits and self reporting a lot of stuff, without any real granular feedback, (or prompts to help with those of us with memory issues)It feels very much like "the answer was inside you all along" style support, where they just help you to see what's already there, But lack the structural foundation that many of us ADHD people need to even fill some of them out properly.As for the next idea of "living authentically" the book further pushes the self reporting idea by asking you direct and fairly vague questions like, "Consider how you may have developed this way of thinking?", Or "how does it make you feel when X?", "Think about a time you felt X"? And for both some basic examples are given, But the lacking in structure to the question can make these extremely diffract to understand or answer for some ND people. We just lack the insight needed to even begin trying to answer,The book even acknowledges this difficulty with the section on Alexithymia, But that's another one of the sections the book just mentions in an informational sense, rather than offering suggestions/compromises need for utilizing this book let alone navigating the issues it causes in daily life, even though it's clearly a widespread issue in the ND communityI still think the author did a great job compiling existing info and wring new ideas for this book,it's just super frustrating that at times it written in such a way that it's not accessible to some of the people who would need it most, (need for structure, memory issues, having trouble with open-ended questions)And even when read as a reference book, to look for suggestions on how to manage various effects of adhd/autism, it feels like since it tries to cover so many topics, none of them get much room for variations, or detailed steps.But again, I still think it's a GREAT resource for those who are new and just learning about the condition, I've been digging into it for years, and it brought up stuff I learned literally in the last 3 months!You can never please or appeal to every person, so they probably made the right choice setting it up the way they did,I was not really able to get anything new out of this book personally, as I've already done a ton of research, and the workbook's approach taken here is just 100% incompatible with my brain.Also my main goal was looking for tips of self-acceptance/self-companion, and I feel that was glossed over steps wise, in favor of acceptance through understanding,But I can still clearly be how it could be helpful to others, and I'm glad it exists!

Autistic therapist here who works with a lot of autistic clients. I absolutely LOVE this workbook. It captures concept after concept I've discussed with clients in session in clear and judgement-free ways. Love it so much that I'm back here buying my third round of copies because it has been that useful to me and my clients.