Making Sense, Making Choice: Relationships and Autistic Adult Clients

2.5 hr Live Online CPD Workshop or 🎥 Buy The Recording | All Tickets £35

About this event

When autistic adult clients recognise the relational trauma woven through their histories, this understanding brings profound self-integration and clarity about self-concept and social contexts. This cohesive awareness becomes the foundation for therapeutic work about expressing their authentic self whilst navigating relational risks — with insight-informed intentional choices that create safer, more fulfilling connections now and in the future.

Autistic adults who discover later in life that they are autistic often carry decades of relational experiences marked by misattunements that left deep wounds, as well as outcomes such as abuse, exploitation, deception, and exclusion. These experiences were felt deeply, even if they were not always articulated, named, or recognised at the time.

Many clients now notice, when looking back, how relational risks shaped their lives — sometimes leading to avoidance, sometimes to painful impact, and sometimes to moments of endurance or survival. Most timelines hold a mixture of these.

With the knowledge of being autistic, clients are now able to revisit these histories with anew interpretive lens. This process is not a backward glance; it is a meaningful way ofunderstanding their own life, making sense of interpersonal dynamics and the impact upon them. Recognising subsequent implications for them back then are opportunities forprocessing and meaning-making. Insights can be gained about how those experiences continue to shape relational life in the present. And may form the basis for work about living in relationships now with greater clarity, self-understanding, and agency.

Takeaways - Tools you’ll walk away with

1 Appreciation of how historical understanding of relationships connects with present and

future relational agency in individual autistic lives.

2 Understanding that late-discovered autistic adults experiencing and reinterpreting their

relational histories can introduce opportunities for self-cohesiveness and integration.

3 Insights that could inform your therapeutic approaches for walking alongside clients in the ongoing pursuit of authentic, sustainable relationships.

How might this workshop impact your practice?

For therapists, discerning relational phenomena accurately and relevantly contributes to synthesis of client and therapists engagement of the narratives in ways aligned with meaningfully recognising, seeing, and knowing. This discernment validates the client’s lived story and informs therapeutic work that attends to both past, present, and future relational life.

About your Speaker: Vauna Beauvais. MSc Psychotherapy, PGCert Autism, PGCDip Counselling, Certified Transactional Analyst. UKCP Registered Psychotherapist

Vauna is an autistic person and UKCP registered psychotherapist who has been seeing clients for over 25 years. For the last 5 or 6 of those years she has seen only neurodivergent clients. Early into focusing her work solely with that client population, Vauna became aware of how engaging in meaningful therapeutic experience and direction for neurodivergent clients means a rethinking of what the work is and how it is done.

She has a special interest of deconstructing what is therapeutic for neurodivergent clients, and why it is so. The creation of Vanguard Neurodiversity Training came about as a result of offering a way to share those insights, and intention of supporting other therapists.

Vanguard neurodiversity training offers spaces and online learning events for counsellors and therapists working therapeutically with neurodivergent adult clients.

Who It’s For

This workshop welcomes those with an interest in the subject of relational trauma and neurodiversity, including both Neurotypical and Neurodivergent people working as Counsellors, Psychotherapists, Psychologists, Social Workers, Family Therapists, Coaches, and Teachers.

What to Expect

Format: Workshop, Slides, breakouts, group discussion, Q&A, experiential activity

Vibe: Interactive, introspective, empowering, philosophical, lively

A video of the event will be sent to you the week after the LIVE event

Event Details:

🗓️ Date: Friday, November 14th 2025

⏰ Time: 12:00–2:30 UK

📍 Location: Zoom (link sent upon ticket purchase)

💵 Cost: £35

🎟️ Reserve your spot now — Space is limited to keep the group intimate and safe.

🎥 ON DEMAND - Buy The Recording: Purchase a ticket and you will receive the recording and a CPD certificate

(Please note: CoPratice tier membership includes free access to the recording)

What's included?

1 year access to the online Video Recording and a CPD Certificate of Attendance

Course Delivery

Live online on Zoom or Via a Video Recording send out the week after the workshop

Accessibility

For any accessibility requirements, please get in touch with the organiser at events@counsellors-staffroom.co.uk, who will be happy to make arrangements with you before the event

Refund Policy

Regrettably, all bookings are non-refundable in the event of cancellation in advance by you or your non-attendance on the day

Booking conditions:

1. Tickets are sold via Eventbrite only

2. Cancellation by you - All bookings are non-refundable

3. Behaviour:

We all have a part in creating a positive, welcoming space in our events. This means being open to hearing when our behaviour or language may not have landed well with others, and contributing in ways that help keep the atmosphere respectful and supportive. If behaviour is disruptive or inappropriate, we may remove you from the event to protect the group. For more on how we work together, please see our Community Guidelines.

If you have any questions about this workshop, feel free to email events@counsellors-staffroom.co.uk