Friday 14th – Sunday 16th August 2026 | 10am–6pm BST
Fully online | Optional in-person day on Saturday 15th | in Coldean, Brighton & Hove, UK

Three days. 15+ speakers. One unmissable event.

This year’s theme is Ecosystemic Causes of Mental Health Issues; exploring how environments, systems, and societal structures shape neurodivergent wellbeing. And the line-up is extraordinary.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Dr. Nick Walker Professor at CIIS and foundational voice in neurodiversity theory

• David Gray-Hammond & Tanya Adkin presenting The Ecosystemic Model of Distress

• Erin Ekins queer Autistic author and BBC-featured advocate

• Dr. Nathan Keates University of Sunderland researcher in Critical Neurodiversity studies

• Ava McAuley on masking, the Double Empathy Problem, and mental health

• Lawrence Kampf, Karen Parker, Nikki Smith, Ed Shearer, Amber Dawn, Stacy Badon, and many more

Every speaker brings lived experience, research, and a commitment to neurodivergent-led perspectives.

Can’t catch everything live? No problem.

All talks will be recorded and made available to ticket holders, so you can revisit sessions or catch up in your own time. Ticket holders also get exclusive access to an on-demand library of additional pre-recorded talks that couldn’t fit into the packed schedule.

Tickets start from just £50

This conference is for:

• Autistic and neurodivergent people (diagnosed, self-identified, or still figuring it out)

• Parents and families

• Professionals, educators, and support workers

• Advocates and allies

NeuroHub Community paid members receive a 33% discount on all ticket prices; see below the paywall at the bottom of this post to get your discount code.

👉 Get your ticket now

Don’t let two months slip by. This is a conference built by and for neurodivergent people; rooted in lived experience, centred on the neurodivergent paradigm, and designed to leave you with real insight and genuine community.

The conversation is happening. Be part of it.

Read more

Read The Introduction To NeuroHub

We also have a number of podcasts, but there are two or three I would definitely highlight:

1. The Mycelial Mind (Free) https://neurohubcommunity.org/2026/06/03/mycelial-mind-becoming-connected/?v=7885444af42e

2. Autistic Identity With NeuroHub (Free) https://news.neurohubcommunity.org/s/autistic-identity-with-neurohub

3. Autistic Storytime With David (Paid) https://news.neurohubcommunity.org/s/autistic-storytime-with-david

We are also able to help with research, consultancy, and training. If anyone has questions about the things we do and what we offer, please feel free to reach out to david@neurohubcommunity.org

We exist because so much of society pretends that we don’t, and we’re here to help however we can, in the most accessible way we can.

In this episode of Autistic Identity With NeuroHub, David Gray-Hammond explores the Ecosystemic Model of Distress and Wellbeing; a framework for understanding neurodivergent experience not as a problem located inside the individual, but as something that emerges within a complex ecosystem of interacting environments. Drawing on concepts including the Autistic rhizome, mycelial community, and nested environments, David makes the case for a complete reorientation of how we think about Autistic and neurodivergent wellbeing. This episode closes with an invitation to engage with the neurodivergent-led offerings of NeuroHub Community.

https://neurohubcommunity.org/2026/06/11/welcome-to-neurohub-community/

Topics: Ecosystemic Model, autistic identity, autistic burnout, neurodivergent wellbeing, peer support, neurokin, monotropism, rhizome, mycelial community, systems and power, NeuroHub Community.

What I want to offer here is a different frame entirely. Not the brain as a broken machine, and not distress as a symptom to be treated; Neurodivergent experience as something that emerges within (and is co-produced by) a complex, dynamic, living ecosystem.

An Ecology, Not A Pathology

Ecology teaches us that no organism exists in isolation. The health, behaviour, and survival of any living thing is inseparable from the conditions in which it finds itself. A plant is not simply “healthy” or “diseased” in the abstract, it is healthy or diseased in relation to soil composition, light availability, temperature, the presence or absence of other organisms, water, and a hundred other interdependent variables.

Neurodivergent people are not simply “functioning” or “not functioning”. We are functioning or not functioning within specific environments, under specific conditions, in relation to specific demands, with or without the resources our bodyminds actually need.

This is the core premise of the Ecosystemic Model of Distress and Wellbeing; a framework developed to move beyond the flattened language of diagnosis and symptom, and towards something that captures the genuine complexity of how neurodivergent experience is shaped.

The Three Environments

The Ecosystemic Model understands wellbeing as emerging across three interconnected levels of environment, each embedded within and inseparable from the others.

The first is the bodymind; this is the terrain of interoceptive signals, nervous system states, trauma histories, fatigue, sensory processing, and the way the body meets the world moment to moment. But (and this is critical) just because distress appears in the bodymind does not mean it originates there. The bodymind is a receiver as much as a generator, it is shaped by everything pressing in from the environments around it.

The second is the immediate environment; this is the lived, daily texture of a person’s life, the sensory qualities of the spaces they inhabit, the relationships they navigate, the expectations placed on them, the routines (or absence of them), the demands stacking up across a day. This is the level at which distress most often becomes visible, and where it is most frequently misread as behaviour to be managed, rather than communication to be understood.

The third is the level of systems and power; institutions, policies, services, the structures that determine access to safety, autonomy, and resource. The ideologies embedded in healthcare, education, and social care that decide whose needs are legible and whose are not. This level is the most invisible and the most consequential; it shapes the second level, which shapes the first, which shapes the person, and we rarely name it.

When we look at a neurodivergent person in distress, we are almost never looking at a problem located in that person, we are looking at an ecosystemic consequence.

The Autistic Rhizome

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari gave us the concept of the rhizome; a model of thought, being, and growth that moves not in straight lines from root to branch, but laterally, multiply, in all directions at once, with no fixed centre and no singular point of origin. Unlike the tree (the hierarchical, branching structure that Western knowledge loves, with its single trunk, its organised levels, its clear taxonomy) the rhizome spreads, connects, resurfaces, breaks apart and reconstitutes elsewhere. I find myself returning to this image again and again when I try to describe Autistic experience.

Autistic cognition is not arborescent. It does not move in tidy, sequential, hierarchically organised flows, rather, it branches unpredictably. It forms dense, passionate connections between things that are not supposed to connect. It loops back, goes underground, it resurfaces somewhere unexpected. The monotropic tunnel, that intense, all-absorbing focus that pulls the whole attentional system into depth, is a rhizomatic movement. It is the mind finding its own path through terrain that was not designed with it in mind.

To pathologise this as deficit is to measure a rhizome by the standards of a tree and declare the rhizome broken. The Autistic rhizome does not need to be straightened, it needs an environment that knows how to grow alongside it.

Mycelial Communities

Beneath every forest is a mycelial network; a vast, underground web of fungal threads connecting root system to root system, tree to tree, organism to organism. The forest is not a collection of isolated individuals competing for resources, it is a community, networked at the root level, sharing nutrients, transmitting signals, supporting one another through stress and scarcity. This is what neurodivergent community actually is, when we allow it to be.

When Autistic people, ADHDers, PDA folks, Dyspraxic people, people with dissociative and psychotic experience, those marked by trauma and marginalisation; when we find each other, something mycelial happens. We do not simply exchange information, we recognise each other at a level that bypasses the social scripts that fail us everywhere else. We form neurokin bonds, transmitting something vital; the knowledge that we are not alone in our experience, that the problem was never us, that our ways of being in the world have value and coherence and dignity.

The mycelial metaphor is networked, not hierarchical; there is no central hub through which all connection must pass. It is distributed, resilient. When one node is damaged, the network finds another path. This is what peer support looks like when it’s done right, this is what the NeuroHub Community is trying to build.

Nested Environments And The Conditions For Becoming

The Ecosystemic Model draws on nested environment frameworks (the understanding that no level of experience exists independently of the levels surrounding it). The bodymind is nested inside the immediate environment, the immediate environment is nested inside systems and power. Change at one level sends ripples through all the others. This has profound implications for how we think about wellbeing and support.

If someone is in Autistic burnout, we cannot address that burnout by targeting only the bodymind; by teaching more coping strategies, more regulation techniques, more masking skills dressed up as resilience. Burnout is an ecosystemic consequence, it emerges from the accumulated injury of living in an environment that demands the constant misperformance of one’s actual neurocognition. To address it at only the level of the individual is to keep scooping water out of a flooding boat while refusing to look for the hole.

We have to look at the immediate environment. What demands are being placed on this person? What sensory conditions are they navigating? What relationships are supporting or depleting them? What expectations are being communicated about how they should present, communicate, process, perform?

Then we have to look further still; what systems are generating those demands? Whose standards are being normalised as the baseline of acceptable functioning? Which institutional logics are rendering this person’s needs invisible, pathological, or inconvenient?

Neurodivergent distress is a signal from the ecosystem that something in the relationship between this person and their environment is wrong.

The Right Conditions For Growth

Ecology also teaches us this; every organism, given the right conditions, will do what it is built to do. The rhizome spreads, the mycelium networks, the tree reaches toward light. Not because it is trying hard, nor because it is choosing to succeed; because the conditions are right. Neurodivergent people do not need to be fixed. We need the right conditions.

We need environments where monotropic depth is allowed, not perpetually interrupted. Where sensory needs are taken seriously rather than dismissed. Where communication differences are met with curiosity rather than correction. Where the full range of neurodivergent experience (including the parts the mainstream finds inconvenient or frightening) is understood as legitimate expression of a different neurology navigating a world that was not built for it.

We need communities that function like mycelial networks; lateral, distributed, nourishing, held together by genuine recognition rather than institutional management. We need systems that stop treating neurodivergent distress as evidence of individual deficit and start treating it as evidence of environmental mismatch; an ecosystemic signal that demands an ecosystemic response.

A Different Question

The medical model asks; what is wrong with this person?

The Ecosystemic Model asks; what conditions is this person living inside, and what does this ecosystem need to change?

That is a complete reorientation of how we understand wellbeing, distress, and what it means to support a neurodivergent life. The forest is not just the trees, it is the soil, the roots, the mycelium, the light, the water, the climate, the organisms in relationship with one another across time. Neurodivergent wellbeing is no different.

It grows (or fails to grow) in relation to everything surrounding it.

Please check out our Professional Gateway subscription for access to our resource bank, our latest course on Supporting Autistic People, and our upcoming Autistic Mental Health Conference on August 14th to 16th 2026.

Supporting Autistic People Course

Professional Gateway

Autistic Mental Health Conference

This resource has been a long time coming; not because the need wasn’t there, but because getting it right mattered more than getting it out quickly. What you’ll find here is a substantive, community-grounded exploration of what it actually means to support Autistic people well.

What The Resource Is Built On

The webinar and handbook are structured around our six-point framework; a way of mapping the terrain of Autistic experience that doesn’t start from pathology. The six points are:

1. Autistic Experience

2. Sensory and Emotional Landscape

3. Autistic Burnout

4. Identity, Language and Disability Models

5. Trauma and Safety

6. Learning From The Autistic Community

These aren’t arbitrary categories. instead, each one represents an area where mainstream professional understanding has historically been thin, distorted, or missing entirely; and where that gap has had real consequences for Autistic people navigating support systems, workplaces, education, and healthcare.

Why This Framework, And Why Now

There is no shortage of training on autism, buthat has been in short supply is training that takes Autistic experience seriously as a starting point. Not as a problem to be addressed once the professional framework has been established.

The six-point framework begins from a different premise; that understanding Autistic people requires understanding the ecosystemic mismatches that shape their lives. Distress doesn’t arise because Autistic people are broken, it arises because environments, built for a different neurology, governed by a different set of unspoken rules, consistently fail to account for what Autistic people actually need.

Take Autistic burnout as an example; this is still poorly understood even among professionals who work with Autistic people daily. It isn’t exhaustion from a hard week, it’s a systemic collapse, often precipitating a profound loss of skills, capacity, and sense of Self, that emerges from sustained pressure to mask, adapt, and function within environments that don’t fit. Getting this wrong has serious consequences, getting it right changes the kind of support that gets offered.

Or take identity, language, and disability models. The language we use to talk about Autistic people is never neutral, it carries assumptions, about who gets to define the experience, about what counts as a problem, about what the goal of support should be. Professionals who haven’t engaged with the ongoing debates within Autistic communities about identity-first language, about the social model of disability, about the difference between accommodating a person and trying to change them; those professionals are operating with significant blind spots, regardless of their expertise in other areas.

The point of the six-point framework isn’t to replace professional knowledge. It’s to ensure that professional knowledge is in service of Autistic people rather than organised primarily around neurotypical comfort.

Learning From The Community

The sixth point, Learning From The Autistic Community, is worth dwelling on, because it’s the one that tends to make the most difference in practice.

Autistic communities have been producing nuanced, precise, hard-won knowledge about Autistic experience for decades. Much of what professionals are now beginning to recognise (the significance of masking, the role of sensory experience, the relationship between late diagnosis and mental health, the dynamics of PDA profiles) was articulated in Autistic spaces long before it appeared in professional literature.

Appropriate support isn’t possible without that knowledge. Not because lived experience is a substitute for other forms of expertise, but because professional frameworks that develop without sustained contact with Autistic perspectives tend to develop in ways that serve systems more than they serve people.

This resource is built with that in mind; the frameworks come from community knowledge as much as from research. The aim is to produce professionals who can genuinely collaborate with Autistic people, who listen well, who don’t assume, and who understand enough about Autistic experience to know when a situation calls for something other than standard practice.

Access

The Supporting Autistic People webinar and handbook are available now, on-demand, through the NeuroHub Professional Gateway:

Get Access

Whether you’re a practitioner, educator, manager, or anyone else whose work involves Autistic people, this is where to start.

Join The NeuroHub Heartbeat Community

And if you want to go deeper, there’s a live webinar, today, on Monday 8th June at 6pm BST. More on that below.

What Is The Six-Point Framework?

The Six-Point Framework takes an ecological approach to Autistic wellbeing; understanding distress not as something located inside an individual, but as the product of nested environments that interact with and respond to one another. It’s non-pathological, practically grounded, and rooted in Autistic-led knowledge.

The six points are:

• Autistic Experience: the theoretical foundations for how Autistic people experience the world

• The Sensory & Emotional Landscape: how Autistic people navigate sensory environments and emotions

• Autistic Burnout: understanding burnout as a crisis of chronic disconnection

• Identity, Language, and Disability Models: how autism is framed, and why that framing matters

• Trauma & Safety: Autistic trauma and what it means to feel safe

• Learning From The Autistic Community: why connecting with Autistic community is central to good support

What You Get

The course includes a full handbook and supporting resources, all grounded in NeuroHub Community’s ecosystemic model of distress and six-point framework. It’s designed for professionals, families, and Autistic people who want a framework that actually reflects the complexity of Autistic lives.

Supporting Autistic People: £9.99

Sign Up

There’s more? The Client Assessment Toolkit For Autism Professionals bundles a complete set of structured HTML assessment and planning tools alongside the course; designed for mentors, support workers, counsellors, and practitioners working one-to-one with Autistic and neurodivergent people.

Course + Toolkit bundle: All Part of The Course

Get Access

Live Webinar: Today, June 8th, 2026 At 6pm BST

If you’d like to explore the framework in a live, interactive session, David is running a webinar this Monday evening. It’s included with the course, so if you’ve already purchased access, you’re in.

Get access and join the webinar:

Join The Webinar

This framework underpins everything we do at NeuroHub — our peer mentoring, our wellbeing work, our training. If you’ve ever wanted to understand the thinking behind our approach, this is the place to start.

The on-demand version of this course will then be bundled with our Professional Gateway subscription for £25 a month or £230 a year, giving you access to hundreds of pounds of professional resources, plus new resources as they are developed and published. You can sign up for the gateway here:

Join The Gateway

With warmth,

David Gray-Hammond

Founder, NeuroHub Community Ltd

neurohubcommunity.org | Click Here To Join Our Online Community Space

And if you want to go deeper, there’s a live webinar on Monday 8th June at 6pm BST. More on that below.

What Is The Six-Point Framework?

The Six-Point Framework takes an ecological approach to Autistic wellbeing; understanding distress not as something located inside an individual, but as the product of nested environments that interact with and respond to one another. It’s non-pathological, practically grounded, and rooted in Autistic-led knowledge.

The six points are:

• Autistic Experience: the theoretical foundations for how Autistic people experience the world

• The Sensory & Emotional Landscape: how Autistic people navigate sensory environments and emotions

• Autistic Burnout: understanding burnout as a crisis of chronic disconnection

• Identity, Language, and Disability Models: how autism is framed, and why that framing matters

• Trauma & Safety: Autistic trauma and what it means to feel safe

• Learning From The Autistic Community: why connecting with Autistic community is central to good support

What You Get

The course includes a full handbook and supporting resources, all grounded in NeuroHub Community’s ecosystemic model of distress and six-point framework. It’s designed for professionals, families, and Autistic people who want a framework that actually reflects the complexity of Autistic lives.

Supporting Autistic People: £9.99

Sign Up

There’s more? The Client Assessment Toolkit For Autism Professionals bundles a complete set of structured HTML assessment and planning tools alongside the course; designed for mentors, support workers, counsellors, and practitioners working one-to-one with Autistic and neurodivergent people.

Course + Toolkit bundle: All Part of The Course

Get Access

Live Webinar: June 8th, 2026 At 6pm BST

If you’d like to explore the framework in a live, interactive session, David is running a webinar this Monday evening. It’s included with the course, so if you’ve already purchased access, you’re in.

Get access and join the webinar:

Join The Webinar

This framework underpins everything we do at NeuroHub — our peer mentoring, our wellbeing work, our training. If you’ve ever wanted to understand the thinking behind our approach, this is the place to start.

The on-demand version of this course will then be bundled with our Professional Gateway subscription for £25 a month or £230 a year, giving you access to hundreds of pounds of professional resources, plus new resources as they are developed and published. You can sign up for the gateway here:

Join The Gateway

With warmth,

David Gray-Hammond

Founder, NeuroHub Community Ltd

neurohubcommunity.org | Click Here To Join Our Online Community Space

And if you want to go deeper, there’s a live webinar on Monday 8th June at 6pm BST. More on that below.

What Is The Six-Point Framework?

The Six-Point Framework takes an ecological approach to Autistic wellbeing; understanding distress not as something located inside an individual, but as the product of nested environments that interact with and respond to one another. It’s non-pathological, practically grounded, and rooted in Autistic-led knowledge.

The six points are:

• Autistic Experience: the theoretical foundations for how Autistic people experience the world

• The Sensory & Emotional Landscape: how Autistic people navigate sensory environments and emotions

• Autistic Burnout: understanding burnout as a crisis of chronic disconnection

• Identity, Language, and Disability Models: how autism is framed, and why that framing matters

• Trauma & Safety: Autistic trauma and what it means to feel safe

• Learning From The Autistic Community: why connecting with Autistic community is central to good support

What You Get

The course includes a full handbook and supporting resources, all grounded in NeuroHub Community’s ecosystemic model of distress and six-point framework. It’s designed for professionals, families, and Autistic people who want a framework that actually reflects the complexity of Autistic lives.

Supporting Autistic People: £9.99

Sign Up

There’s more? The Client Assessment Toolkit For Autism Professionals bundles a complete set of structured HTML assessment and planning tools alongside the course; designed for mentors, support workers, counsellors, and practitioners working one-to-one with Autistic and neurodivergent people.

Course + Toolkit bundle: All Part of The Course

Get Access

Live Webinar: June 8th, 2026 At 6pm BST

If you’d like to explore the framework in a live, interactive session, David is running a webinar this Monday evening. It’s included with the course, so if you’ve already purchased access, you’re in.

Get access and join the webinar:

Join The Webinar

This framework underpins everything we do at NeuroHub — our peer mentoring, our wellbeing work, our training. If you’ve ever wanted to understand the thinking behind our approach, this is the place to start.

The on-demand version of this course will then be bundled with our Professional Gateway subscription for £25 a month or £230 a year, giving you access to hundreds of pounds of professional resources, plus new resources as they are developed and published. You can sign up for the gateway here:

Join The Gateway

With warmth,

David Gray-Hammond

Founder, NeuroHub Community Ltd

neurohubcommunity.org | Click Here To Join Our Online Community Space

The Re-Storying Autism Video Course & eBook has been permanently reduced from £100 to £39.99.

This isn’t a sale. This isn’t a limited-time offer. We’ve lowered the price for good, because we want this resource to reach more Autistic people, more families, and more professionals; without cost being the barrier.

Why We Need To Re-Story How We Think About Autism

The stories we tell about autism matter. They shape how Autistic people are treated in schools, healthcare settings, and workplaces. They influence whether an Autistic person grows up believing they are broken, or whether they come to understand themselves as a person whose needs simply weren’t met.

For decades, the dominant narrative has been one of deficit. Autism has been framed as a disorder to be corrected, a set of behaviours to be extinguished, a puzzle to be solved. These stories did not come from Autistic people; they came from a world that pathologised difference and mistook non-compliance for dysfunction.

The cost of those stories has been enormous. We see it in the rates of Autistic burnout, mental health crisis, and trauma, and in the adults who spent childhoods being trained out of who they were. We see it in the persistent gap between how Autistic people describe their own lives and how the clinical literature describes them.

Re-storying autism means returning to the source; learning from Autistic community, centering lived experience, and building an understanding of autism that starts with identity rather than impairment. It means recognising that sensory difference, monotropic focus, and non-linear ways of learning are not symptoms; they are ways of being in the world.

When we change the story, we change what becomes possible. For Autistic people, that difference can be everything.

What’s Included?

Re-Storying Autism is a neuro-competent, on-demand video course built around NeuroHub Community’s Six-Point Framework for supporting Autistic people. It includes:

• 7 pre-recorded lessons across three learning modules

• A full eBook PDF companion

• Lifetime access; learn at your own pace, in your own time

The course covers:

• Identity, language, and disability models

• Sensory and emotional landscapes

• Autistic play and ways of learning

• Burnout and the crisis of connection

• Trauma, safety, and emotional environment

• Learning from Autistic community

It’s grounded in Autistic-led knowledge, identity-first values, and the understanding that supporting Autistic people well means rethinking the stories we’ve inherited about what autism is.

Who Is It For?

This course is for families who want to understand their Autistic loved ones more deeply; professionals who want to move beyond deficit-based frameworks; and Autistic people who want to hold the same compassion for themselves that they extend to others.

Get Access Immediately

Re-Storying Autism Video Course & eBook

£39.99 (permanently reduced from £100)

Purchase The Course

If you’ve been thinking about this course for a while, now is the time.

With warmth,

David Gray-Hammond

Founder, NeuroHub Community Ltd

neurohubcommunity.org | Click Here To Join Our Online Community

Sunday 8th June 2026 | 18:00 BST

What Is This About?

This resource explores the Six-Point Framework that underpins all of NeuroHub Community’s peer mentoring and wellbeing work. Developed by myself, David Gray-Hammond, MCMA from a decade of lived and professional experience, the framework takes a genuinely non-pathological, ecological approach to Autistic wellbeing.

The six points cover:

Autistic Experience: the foundations of how Autistic people experience the world

The Sensory & Emotional Landscape: navigating sensory environments and emotions

Autistic Burnout: understanding burnout as chronic disconnection

Identity, Language & Disability Models: how framing shapes Autistic identity

Trauma & Safety: what it means to feel safe as an Autistic person

Learning From the Autistic Community: why community connection is central to wellbeing

Currently On Sale

The course resource is available right now at a reduced price; grab it ahead of the webinar and come prepared:

Supporting Autistic People | £9.99

Want to go deeper?It also contains the Client Assessment Toolkit For Autism Professionals; a complete set of structured, ready-to-use assessment and planning tools built directly on the Six-Point Framework:

Get the course and join the live webinar

Questions?

You’re welcome to chat with David directly on WhatsApp (+447346808637) or email us at admin@neurohubcommunity.org.

See you on the 8th.

Warm regards, David Gray-Hammond CEO, NeuroHub Community

June is here, and with it comes **Autistic Pride Month** — a time to celebrate who we are, deepen our understanding, and build the community that sustains us. This month is packed with things to read, watch, join, and look forward to.

David Gray-Hammond, CEO, NeuroHub Community Ltd*

FREE EVENT THIS MONTH: Autistic Stim & Glim Party

Thursday 18th June | 4:00pm BST | Online | FREE

To celebrate Autistic Pride, we’re throwing an online **Stim & Glim Party**; a space to stim freely, share your glimmers, and spend time with people who just *get it*. No masking required. No judgment. Just your NeuroKin, celebrating everything that makes us proud to be Autistic.

This event is **completely free** to all members of the NeuroHub Online Community Space. Not a member yet? Grab your free membership and join us! 🎊

RSVP to the Stim & Glim Party

RSVP Here

Big News: A New Book Is Released

I have a new book, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with you. As many of you know, my writing comes from lived experience; the kind that doesn’t flinch and doesn’t apologise.

This latest title continues that tradition. You can find out more and order using the link below.

Find Out More & Order

View Book

From The Blog This Month

Autism & How To Solve The NEET Problem

25% of young people in the UK are currently classed as NEET — Not in Education, Employment, or Training. David’s latest piece unpacks why undiagnosed Autistic young people are likely a significant and invisible part of that statistic, and what systemic change is desperately needed. It’s a sharp, data-grounded read that speaks directly to lived reality.

Read: Autism & How To Solve The NEET Problem https://neurohubcommunity.org/2026/05/31/autism-solving-the-neet-problem/

The Mycelial Mind Podcast | Episode 1: Beginnings

NeuroHub’s brand new podcast is here. The Mycelial Mind: NeuroKin Conversations explores community, identity, and wellbeing through an ecological lens — grounded in both philosophy and practical application. Episode 1 features David, Helen Edgar, and Adele Murray asking a deceptively simple question: *what is community?*

Give it a listen, and share it with someone who needs it. 🍄

Listen

And don’t forget to listen to our premium podcast episode My Bodymind Is A Warzone on Autistic Storytime With David.

Listen

Courses You Can Enrol In Now

Whether you’re navigating your own neurodivergence or supporting others, our courses are built on a decade of lived experience and community-led knowledge.

Accessing Healthcare for Neurodivergent Adults | £14

A 3-part live course with Q&A, led by David and former nurse Adele Murray. Practical, grounded support for navigating a healthcare system that wasn’t built with us in mind. Live sessions run in July 2026.

Community members access this course for | FREE | even on a free membership.

Enrol

Supporting Autistic People | £27 Now Reduced To £14

A course built on NeuroHub’s Six-Point Framework for Autistic wellbeing; a non-pathological, ecological approach that takes both lived experience and systemic context seriously. Includes a live webinar on 8th June 2026.

Enrol

Autism Diagnosis 101

Everything you need to understand the diagnostic process; the criteria, the emotions, the practicalities, and what to do if you disagree with the outcome. Pre-recorded video lessons launch 24th July 2026.

Enrol

For Professionals: The Professional Gateway

If you work in healthcare, education, social care, therapy, or workplace support, the Professional Gateway Subscription gives you unlimited access to our full library of neurodivergent toolkits and resources, including all future releases, for just £25/month or £230/year.

The library currently includes 15+ resources covering Autistic burnout, substance use, CAMHS, advocacy, psychosis, monotropism, and much more; with a combined individual value well over £300.

Explore The Professional Gateway

Join the NeuroHub Online Community

If you haven’t joined our online community space yet, June is a perfect time to start. It’s where the real conversations happen; peer support, shared resources, early event access, and a 33% discount on conference tickets.

Membership is free to get started, and the community is growing every day.

Join The Community

Save The Date | 2026 Autistic Mental Health Conference

Friday 14th Sunday 16th August 2026 | Online + In-Person (Brighton & Hove)

Our flagship event is three months away and the speaker line-up is already exceptional. This year’s theme is Ecosystemic Causes of Mental Health Issues; exploring how environments, systems, and societal structures shape neurodivergent wellbeing.

Confirmed speakers include Dr. Nick Walker, Tanya Adkin, Dr. Nathan Keates, Erin Ekins, and many more. Forty-minute talks, lightning sessions, pre-recorded contributions, and a full in-person day on Saturday with stalls, food, and entertainment in Brighton & Hove.

Tickets from £50.** NeuroHub Community members receive a **33% discount** contact our admin team for your code.

Book Your Place

Support NeuroHub’s Work

NeuroHub exists because of this community. If our work has been useful to you, or to someone you care about, there are a few ways to help us keep growing:

• Share our content with someone who needs it

• Make a one-off or regular donation via our Support Us page https://neurohubcommunity.org/support-us/ or GoFundMe https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-grow-neurohub-community-for-autistic-adults

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Thank you for being part of this community. Happy Autistic Pride Month; may June bring you glimmers.

David Gray-Hammond

CEO, NeuroHub Community Ltd

neurohubcommunity.org

Drawing on the frameworks he’s developing with Tanya Adkin at NeuroHub Community, David explores three ways of understanding his own life: as tragic, as oppressed, and as an involuntary soldier in a war for equality he never chose to fight; and asks what it would mean to put the weapon down sometimes and just breathe.

This episode is for anyone who is tired of fighting battles that should never have been theirs to fight.

Click Here To Leave A Tip For David

Professional Gateway

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Over the past few weeks we’ve developed three brand-new interactive assessment and planning tools grounded in the Six-Point Framework; tools designed to sit inside your sessions with clients, not in a folder you never open. A comprehensive global assessment record. A burnout recovery planning tool built around genuinely small, achievable steps. And a neurodiversity-affirming harm reduction planning tool that takes substance use seriously without judgement.

All three are now live inside the Professional Gateway.

If you’re already a subscriber, they’re waiting for you. If you’re not; this might be the moment.

Explore The Gateway

What Is The Professional Gateway?

The Professional Gateway is NeuroHub’s subscription for people who work with neurodivergent people; mentors, support workers, counsellors, social workers, OTs, educators, and anyone else who wants practice that actually reflects what Autistic and neurodivergent people need.

For £25 per month (or £230 per year, saving you £70), you get unlimited access to everything we’ve created, everything we add in the future, and everything in between.

Right now, that includes over £250 worth of resources, all in one place, all included:

• The Global Assessment Tool: a full six-domain assessment tool for use in session

• The Burnout Recovery Planning Tool: including lilipad steps and integrated recovery planning

• The Substance Use Harm Reduction Plan: the newest addition, just released this week

• The Circles of Control: A Neurodivergent Energy & Boundaries Toolkit (£5.99)

• Sustainable Advocacy Toolkit for Neurodivergent Professionals (£24.99)

• Sustainable Advocacy Toolkit with Facilitator Guide (£14.99)

• Understanding Autistic Wellbeing (£14.99)

• Autism: Not A Disorder (£19.99)

• Autism & Substance Use Webinar and eBook (£19.99)

• A Guide To Autism and Psychosis (£9.99)

• CAMHS In Crisis: Writings on the Failure of CAMHS (£7.99)

• Empowering Advocacy: Neuro-Affirming Support for Your Autistic Young Person at School (£19.99)

• Embracing Monotropism & Supporting Autistic Young People with Transitions (£8.99)

• Mindfully Divergent Grounding Pack (£50.00)

• Neuro-Affirming Wheel of Life & Journal (£9.99)

• Autistic Burnout: A Family Guide (£8.99)

• Re-Storying Autism eBook (£9.99)

• The Re-Storying Autism Video Course — a multi-part framework for families and professionals

• The Resource & Research Pack (£24.99)

• The 2025 Autism & ADHD Diagnostic Services Report

• The CAMHS Survey 2024 Final Comprehensive Report

That’s not a list of things you might get around to. That’s a professional library you can draw on every single week. We’ll even be adding training webinars and more!

Why Now?

The three new 6PF (six-point framework) tools change what the Gateway is. Before, it was a growing library of knowledge resources. Now it’s also a live professional toolkit; tools you can open with a client in front of you, complete together, and export as a polished record at the end of the session.

No software. No login for clients. No data going anywhere you haven’t decided it should go. Just a browser, a conversation, and a structured framework that already understands neurodivergence. Refresh the page, and the data is gone,m it’s not stored anywhere, guaranteeing privacy!

We’re going to keep adding and developing. That’s the point of the subscription; every time we build something new, Gateway subscribers get it automatically. The price stays the same. The library keeps growing.

Join The Professional Gateway

£25 per month

£230 per year: save £70 and get instant access to everything

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If you have questions about whether the Gateway is right for your role or organisation, reply to this email - davi@neurohubcommunity.org - and we’ll help you figure it out.

Thank you for the work you do.

The NeuroHub Team

neurohubcommunity.org

NeuroHubCommunity is a self-funded social enterprise. We operate off of the income we generate ourselves and the donations of individuals. If you are in a position to give a small donation, you can do so by clicking the button below.

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What changed everything was a quiet shift in how I thought about it. I stopped trying to fix my brain and started designing around it. None of what follows relies on willpower, because willpower is the first thing to go when you’re tired, overwhelmed, or having a low day. It relies on structure instead. And structure, I’ve learned, is a form of self-kindness.

Here’s how I do it.

Three accounts, each with one job

I have three current accounts, and crucially, I’ve named them. Not “Account 1” or a string of numbers, but Business, Bills, and Spending Money. There’s a savings account too, named Tax 25-26, so I know exactly which year it covers.

Naming them matters more than it sounds. When everything is labelled by purpose, the money stops being one anxious lump and becomes a set of clearly defined jobs. I’m not guessing what I can afford. Each pot already knows what it’s for.

My income lands in Business. From there it cascades, and the rest of the system is really just the steps of that cascade.

Reading the future by scrolling into the past

This is the trick I’d most want another neurodivergent person to steal.

When I get paid, I open my banking app and scroll back exactly one month. Then I read forwards, day by day, through everything that left the account: the 7th, the 8th, the 9th, and so on, across the next two weeks. As I go, I flick between the banking app and my calculator and add it all up. When I press equals, I know precisely how much needs to stay put so every bill is covered.

I don’t have to remember my outgoings, which is the part my brain finds genuinely hard. Last month’s statement remembers them for me. I’m just reading what already happened and trusting it to repeat.

Once I know the figure, I subtract it from what’s in the account, and whatever’s left gets transferred onward to Bills. Then I do the exact same scroll-and-total in Bills for household costs like council tax and water. I leave enough to cover those, plus a bit of breathing room of around £100 a week for food, petrol, and the bits of life that come up. Anything beyond that moves to Spending Money or into savings.

Why I cover two weeks, not one

I get paid weekly, but I always make sure my bills are covered for a fortnight in advance. Sometimes a month, if I can.

This isn’t over-caution. It’s a buffer for the reality of being a person. If I’m paid late, or I’m unwell one week and earn less, the bills are already handled and I’m not thrown into panic. I built that cushion in deliberately, because future-me deserves to be protected from a bad week. That single decision has taken a huge amount of background fear out of my life.

The savings tweak that quietened the guilt

My savings goals are named too, and they’re specific: holiday, beauty treatments, a new fence for the garden. Naming them means I know what the money is for, so it can’t quietly become “spare cash” the moment I’m bored or low.

But here’s the part I’m proudest of. I’ve hidden the balance of that account in my app. I can tap in and see it whenever I genuinely need to, but it isn’t glaring at me every time I open my phone.

Before I did this, I had a guilty, almost punishing relationship with savings. If I could see the money sitting there, a voice would start up telling me I didn’t deserve it, that I should get rid of it, that I should spend it down as quickly as possible. Hiding the number turned that voice off. Out of sight, the money simply gets on with the job I assigned it, and I get on with mine. If that voice is familiar to you, please know it’s common, it’s not the truth about you, and a small practical change like this can genuinely loosen its grip.

Tax doesn’t get to ambush me

The day I started treating tax as something to prepare for rather than dread, it stopped being frightening.

Every month I move 20% of my income straight into that named tax savings account. I keep it in an interest-earning account, so it’s quietly working while it waits. By the time my accountant tells me the figure, the money is already there.

I’ve paired this with one tiny habit that saves me enormous mental effort. The moment a receipt lands in my inbox, I forward it to my accountant. No filing, no “I’ll sort it later”, no shoebox of guilt. It’s gone the second it arrives, while I’m already looking at it. Doing things the moment they appear, rather than trusting myself to come back, is one of the most reliable strategies I have.

Naming the “ADHD tax”

I have mixed feelings about the term ADHD tax. I don’t love that it describes something real; the extra money so many of us lose to impulsivity, late fees, forgotten subscriptions, and dopamine-driven spending. I’ve lost plenty to it and given myself a hard time over it.

But having a name for it has been surprisingly powerful. When I’m about to buy something, I can now pause and ask; is this an ADHD tax transaction, or do I actually want this? Just labelling the impulse creates a gap between feeling it and acting on it. And in that gap, I often find I’m fine without the thing.

Protecting my attention, not just my money

A lot of my old overspending wasn’t really my decision. It was advertising doing what it’s designed to do.

So I removed the worst offenders from my phone. I keep Facebook and Instagram off it, because the adverts there are relentless and eerily well-targeted. I’ve come off those apps before having spent a hundred pounds on things I never wanted, and felt tricked and ashamed afterwards. Now, if I use social media at all, I use it on a computer, where the ads sit politely off to the side instead of leaning into my face.

I also pay for ad-free YouTube. I worked out what I tended to spend because of the ads versus the cost of the subscription, and for me the subscription wins. That maths won’t be true for everyone, so do check it for yourself. I’m not suggesting you spend money to save money unless the numbers actually add up.

I keep an eye on subscriptions generally. They hide in your Apple or Google account, under your profile or in settings, and it’s worth a look every so often to catch the things you signed up for a year ago and no longer use. I’m easily pulled in by free trials, so I’ve trained myself to cancel the trial before it ends, the moment I start it, rather than waiting for it to quietly turn into a charge.

Beating the annual ambush

The scroll-back method has one blind spot. It only shows me what went out last month, so the big yearly costs (car insurance, road tax, the TV licence) never appear.

My fix is simple. When one of those is coming, I put a reminder in my Google Calendar a week ahead: “make sure there’s £150 in the account for the TV licence.” That’s it. The calendar holds the thing I’d otherwise forget, and the cost lands softly instead of knocking me sideways.

The real point

None of this is about discipline. It’s about building a system honest enough to account for how my brain actually works, on good days and bad ones. The accounts do the remembering. The buffers absorb the wobbles. The hidden balances quieten the unkind voices. The calendar catches what I’d drop.

If you’ve spent years believing you’re simply bad with money, I’d gently offer this; maybe you were just using tools that were never built for you. You’re allowed to build your own.

This article was written by a member of our online Heartbeat community, following conversation in one of our three, weekly zoom connection sessions. If you would like to join, or to support our work, you can use the buttons below to do so. Please remember to share this article and subscribe.

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Right now we have a fundraiser going to try and raise funds to make the work we are doing more viable and enable us to support our community in more meaningful ways.

That is why i’m asking, if you have the capacity, we would really appreciate a donation to our fundraiser. Any and all amounts are appreciated, please don’t donate if it will harm you financially.

Click the button below to donate. You can also click the other button to get on our waiting list for one-to-one peer mentoring and/or mindful living sessions with us. We hope to hear from you soon.

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We also have plans to set up a NeuroHub Dungeons And Dragons Group as another recreational activity alongside our Book Nook reading group. If you are interested in that, please sign the form below to let us know!

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You can order on Kindle or paperback right now! Early orders help us move up the bestseller list and get greater visibility.

The book offers realistic and honest information on the effects and risks of drugs, ways to reduce the risk from using them, and common co-occuring conditions in Autistic substance users.

It is grounded in the principle that criminalisation and pushes for abstinence create harm in a world where people inevitably will experiment with and use drugs.

This book is perfect for anyone with an interest in Autistic substance use! From professionals looking for a book to recommend to clients, to Autistic substance users themselves and those who love and care for them!

Click the button to pre-order!

Purchase Handbook

Please spread the word and help this book reach lots of people it can help!

NeuroHub Community does not paywall it's content anymore, but any and all donations to our work to build communities and improve Neurodivergent wellbeing are appreciated.

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Top Left: Girl in glass is a piece about masking and how it feels trying to push your self to a form that doesnt fit. Sometimes parts of you escape, the concept of self is distorted, your needs and comfort is minimised. (Melanie Martinelli)

Top Right: “SunDark”, Charcoal and chalk on paper, 9” x 12”, 2025 (Miss Mossy)

Bottom Left: Capturing the Aurora (big special interest) in October 2024 - Brue River Estuary, Somerset (Kyra Chambers)

Bottom Right: Now is when I need to speak, out loud and present. I existed yesterday and will exist tomorrow again, but now I am here. (Megan Reilly)

All fantastic artistic expressions of the Neurodivergent world we occupy. Knowledge is not only passed through word of mouth or writing. Sometimes the most impactful things we learn come from what we see with our own eyes.

NeuroHub Community Journal is currently looking to publish articles on Autistic Pride and Autistic Mental Health. If you would like to write something, please submit at the link below.

We no longer offer paid subscriptions to our Substack, and all of our content is now free to access. If you would like to donate to our work, you can do so at the button below, or you can purchase a subscription to our online community space on the Heartbeat app, also linked below.

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Not perform or mask, not translate ourselves into something more palatable for a world that was never really designed with us in mind. Just be; bodies moving however they need to move, minds lighting up around the things that bring genuine joy, surrounded by people who get it without explanation.

That’s exactly what we’re building on 18th June at 4pm BST, when NeuroHub Community hosts our first ever Autistic Stim & Glim Party.

What’s a Stim & Glim Party?

Glad you asked.

Stimming, self-stimulatory behaviour, if you want the clinical term, though we prefer just stimming, is one of the most natural things an Autistic person can do. It regulates our nervous systems, expresses our emotions, and helps us process the world. It is not a problem to be corrected. It is not something to be ashamed of. It is part of how we exist.

Glimmers are the opposite of triggers; those small, specific moments that spark a sense of safety, delight, or aliveness. The particular texture of something. A sound that feels just right. A piece of music that does something inexplicable to your chest. The way light hits a surface at a certain time of day. Glimmers are deeply personal, often overlooked, and in a world that is frequently overwhelming, they matter more than we sometimes give them credit for.

So we’re throwing a party built around both. A space to stim freely, whatever that looks like for you, and to share and celebrate the glimmers that make life worth living.

Why Autistic Pride?

Autistic Pride isn’t about pretending everything is fine, and it isn’t about glossing over the very real barriers, injustices, and challenges that Autistic people face every day. It’s about something more nuanced than that.

It’s about refusing to accept that our neurology is a defect. It’s about recognising that Autistic community, NeuroKin, as we like to call it, has genuine value, depth, and beauty. It’s about celebrating who we are on our own terms, rather than measuring ourselves against neurotypical standards we were never built for.

Pride, for me, is not triumphalism. It’s dignity, and the quiet insistence that we belong here, exactly as we are.

The Details

Date: Wednesday, 18th June 2026

Time: 4pm BST (British Summer Time)

Where: Online, in the NeuroHub Community Space

Cost: Completely free to members of our Heartbeat community

This event is open to all members of the NeuroHub Online Community Space. Membership is free or paid, just sign up, RSVP, and come along. No requirement for paid membership.

RSVP here

Bring your stims. Bring your glimmers. Bring whatever version of yourself shows up on the day.

We’ll be there; and we can’t wait to celebrate with you.

NeuroHub Community is a neuro-affirming space built by and for neurodivergent people. Find out more at neurohubcommunity.org.

We do not charge for membership to our substack anymore, but really appreciate donations and paid community memberships. Click the buttons below to do either.

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You can pre-order on kindle right now! Pre-orders help us move up the best seller list and get greater visibility.

The book offers realistic and honest information on the effects and risks of drugs, ways to reduce the risk from using them, and common co-occuring conditions in Autistic substance users.

This book ius perfect for anyone with an interest in Autistic substance use!

Click the button to pre-order!

Pre-Order

Please spread the word and help this book reach lots of people it can help!

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been building a body of writing at NeuroHub that attempts to do exactly that. Below you’ll find four articles that approach Autistic mental health from the inside out, as a lived reality shaped by systems, environments, and a world that was not designed with us in mind.

We’ve also got two unmissable events coming up, one free, one the biggest thing we do all year, and we’d love to see you at both.

New from the NeuroHub Blog

The Essential Guide to Autistic Mental Health

If you’re looking for somewhere to start, whether you’re Autistic yourself, supporting an Autistic person, or working in a professional context, this is it. This piece offers a grounded, accessible introduction to Autistic mental health that centres the world we actually live in, rather than a clinical abstraction of it.

Read the article →

Autism and Mental Health: The System Wasn’t Built for Us

The numbers are stark. Autistic people experience mental health difficulties at significantly higher rates than the general population, yet routinely find themselves excluded from, failed by, or actively harmed by the very services that are supposed to help. This article examines the systemic reasons why; and what genuinely supportive, Autistic-informed mental health provision could look like.

Read the article →

Autism, Complex Mental Health, and the Right to Be Fully Human

Complex, co-occurring mental health experiences aren’t the exception for Autistic people; they’re the rule. So why does so much of the support on offer fail to account for that complexity? This piece explores what it means to approach Autistic mental health holistically, and argues that anything less is a denial of our full humanity.

Read the article →

Lilipadding, Monotropic Split, and Autistic Burnout

Co-authored with Tanya Adkin

This is one of our longest and most practical pieces to date; a 12-minute read that’s worth every minute. If you’ve ever wondered why Autistic and monotropic people are so vulnerable to burnout, or felt like you were running on empty no matter how hard you tried to manage your capacity, the frameworks of monotropic split and lilipadding offer something genuinely useful; not a productivity hack, but a path toward sustainable living that actually works with how our minds operate.

Read the article →

FREE EVENT — Autistic Stim & Glim Online Party

Thursday 18th June 2026 · 4pm BST · Online · Free

Autistic Pride Day is coming, and we’re celebrating it the way it deserves to be celebrated, with our NeuroKin, stimming freely, and sharing the glimmers that make life worth living.

The Stim & Glim Online Party is a free, joyful, low-pressure online gathering for Autistic people. Come as you are. Bring your stims. Share your glimmers. Be around people who just get it.

This is a space made by and for Autistic people; no masking required, no performance expected. This event is 100% free to all members of our online community, or you can access it for £10. I recommend joining the community and getting the free ticket!

Register your free place →

2026 Autistic Mental Health Conference

14–16 August 2026 · Hybrid (Online + In-Person, Brighton) · Tickets from £50

In partnership with Autistic Inclusive Meets

This year’s conference is built around a theme that sits at the heart of everything we do at NeuroHub: Ecosystemic Causes of Mental Health Issues, because Autistic mental health cannot be understood in isolation from the environments, systems, and structures that shape our lives.

Across three full days (10am–6pm BST), you’ll hear from a rich line-up of neurodivergent-led voices: lived experience speakers, researchers, and practitioners who approach Autistic mental health from the inside. The programme includes 40-minute talks, lightning sessions, and pre-recorded contributions, all recorded and made available to ticket holders after the event.

Online access is available for all three days. Saturday 15th August also offers an optional in-person day in Coldean, Brighton & Hove, with stalls, food, and community alongside the live sessions.

NeuroHub Community members receive a 33% discount on all ticket prices. Contact our admin team for your discount code.

Get your ticket →

For The Professionals: Upcoming Training & CPD

We believe Autistic voices should lead the conversation about Autistic lives. Everything we produce at NeuroHub, our writing, our events, our community, exists to make that possible.

We are excited to let you know that our six-point framework for Supporting Autistic People is releasing as a course and toolkit, pre-orders and access to the live webinar can be purchased now for 50% off, meaning it costs just £9.99 for access to the full offering.

Thats:

• The six-point framework toolkit

• Live webinar

• Circles of control toolkit

• Sustainable advocacy toolkit

All available for £9.99 if you pre-order it now.

Click Here To Pre-Order —>

David & the NeuroHub Team

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