Explore how paid family leave impacts maternal mental health through film and discussion, and learn about advocacy efforts supporting Montana families.
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This session examines how community organizing strengthens perinatal mental health, using the Roots Birth Story to show how lived experience, parent-led initiatives, and cross-sector collaboration can reduce isolation, build supportive networks, and create sustainable, community-centered perinatal programs.
This session teaches providers how to apply Motivational Interviewing and Motivational Enhancement techniques with pregnant and postpartum individuals, offering practical strategies to foster motivation, address ambivalence, and support positive health and parenting outcomes in brief, client-centered encounters.
Session Description:Â
While all couples are vulnerable to the myriad of experiences and possibilities navigating the perinatal period, neurodivergent individuals and couples commonly interface with increased challenges during this time. These difficulties can be related to emotional cycles within self and other, sensory experiences, executive functioning, maladaptive coping strategies, social misunderstandings, and the plethora of co-occurring chronic health conditions tied to neurocomplexity.
This presentation is an opportunity to learn more about various neurodivergent experiences (with an emphasis on autism and ADHD) as it relates to couples navigating the perinatal period. This will include explorations around internalized ableism and misdiagnosis, the role of alexithymia and rejection sensitivity dysphoria, and the added complexities that neurodivergent experience brings to partnership and relational dynamics.
Alongside strengthening our neurodivergent lens, this presentation offers neuroaffirming ideas and approaches to support these experiences. We will look at and practice somatic regulation strategies, tools from Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, and resources designed to explore sensory experiences and nervous system capacity. This presentation will be relevant to mental health therapists and providers who want to learn about the various “neurodivergence convergence” cycles that Caitlin has identified in her work with couples, such as: the “caretaker olympics,” the paradox of pattern recognition and predictability, and the contagious emotional experiences that influence rejection and sensory combustion.
Learning Objectives:Â
- Participants will be able to identify key characteristics of Autism and ADHD.
- Participants will understand the wheel of traits, differentiating that autism is contextual and intersectional in contrast to linear and hierarchical.
- Participants will have access to a plethora of evidence-based and/or vetted resources for neurodivergent experiences and understanding.
- Participants will learn ways to support neurodivergent parents navigating the perinatal period.
- Participants will become more curious and interested in neurodiversity.
