The Neurodivergent Practitioner: Accentuating Positives and Overcoming Challenges

The limited research into neurodiversity in sport and exercise psychology on athletes, coaches, and psychologists highlights sparse awareness and support for neurodiverse individuals. This was reported within evidence-informed practice and case studies. This concerns an autistic supervisee and supervisor on the Qualification in Sport and Exercise Psychology Stage 2 pathway and is shared among other publications. Because of limited research on autistic practitioners, this case study aimed to highlight the perspectives, experiences, opinions, and recommendations of a supervisor and supervisee. The supervisee shared how their experiences potentially link with existing literature while highlighting the importance of working relationships and the challenges each have faced and outlining unique experiences, opinions, attitudes, and decisions both have made at this stage in their relationship and beyond. Both offer recommendations regarding what could be done so autistic psychologists feel more welcomed by the community, what support is available, potential guidelines for autistic individuals, what future research, and the decisions and choices supervisors may need to take going forward to best support autistic supervisees. In doing so, we stress the need for individualizing work, paralleling the normal modus operandi of quality psychology support.