In April 2025, I had the privilege of presenting my research at the 83rd International Council of Psychologists Conference at Erasmus University College in Rotterdam. The conference theme centred on human rights, dignity, social inclusion, and justice, providing a powerful context in which to discuss the role coaching psychology can play in challenging institutional ableism.

My poster presentation, “Breaking Barriers: Addressing Institutional Ableism Through Coaching Psychology for Autistic Women,” drew upon my Master’s research exploring autistic women’s experiences of workplace coaching. While workplace coaching is increasingly recognised as an important intervention for supporting autistic employees, very little research has explored how autistic women themselves experience this process.

My research sought to address that gap.

Through a phenomenological approach, participants shared rich accounts of navigating workplaces that were often shaped by neurotypical assumptions about communication, professionalism, productivity, and success. Their experiences highlighted not only the personal challenges they faced but also the structural barriers embedded within organisational cultures.

Three overarching themes emerged from the research:

• The lived experience of autism in the workplace.
• The need for genuinely autism-inclusive organisational cultures.
• The importance of recognising intersectionality when understanding people’s experiences.

Collectively, these findings pointed towards a broader conclusion: many of the challenges experienced by autistic women do not arise from autism itself, but from institutional ableism embedded within systems, policies, and cultural expectations.

This has important implications for coaching psychology.

Rather than viewing coaching solely as a means of helping individuals adapt to their environment, coaching can also provide a space to question the assumptions that shape those environments. It can help individuals develop self-understanding and confidence while simultaneously encouraging organisations to reflect on their own practices, cultures, and definitions of success.

Coaching psychology therefore has the potential to become more than an individual intervention. It can become a catalyst for organisational learning, cultural change, and social justice.

Presenting this work within an international conference dedicated to human rights brought a new perspective to my own thinking. Across three days, psychologists from around the world shared research and lived experiences addressing climate change, war, genocide, migration, gender-based violence, forced marriage, systemic oppression, and social exclusion.

Although these topics differed significantly from my own research, a common thread connected them all: the recognition that psychology cannot remain isolated from the social and political contexts in which people live. Whether addressing discrimination, conflict, exclusion, or inequality, psychology has a responsibility not only to understand suffering but also to contribute to reducing it.

Several keynote speakers left a lasting impression. Professor Saths Cooper’s reminder that how we treat the most marginalised members of society says more about us than it does about them resonated deeply with the themes emerging from my own research. Equally powerful were Professor Halleh Ghorashi’s reflections on epistemic justice, identity, and the importance of ensuring that those whose voices have historically been overlooked are recognised as legitimate producers of knowledge.

Those conversations reinforced my growing belief that coaching psychology has an important role to play within wider movements for equity and inclusion. Coaching is not simply about helping people perform better within existing systems. It can also help expose the assumptions those systems are built upon and support the creation of environments in which diverse ways of thinking, communicating, and existing are genuinely valued.

Presenting this research internationally was a privilege, but it also strengthened my conviction that coaching psychology has the potential to become a discipline that actively contributes to social change. By listening carefully to lived experience, questioning deficit-based narratives, and challenging institutional ableism, coaching psychology can help create workplaces and communities where neuro differences are recognised not as exceptions to accommodate, but as valuable expressions of human diversity.

I remain incredibly grateful to everyone who contributed to the research, attended the poster discussion, and engaged in thoughtful conversations throughout the conference. The experience reinforced my commitment to developing coaching psychology as a discipline that places dignity, justice, and inclusion at the centre of practice.

I was honoured to receive the Best Roundtable Presentation Award at the 2025 Division of Coaching Psychology Conference for a session exploring a question that sits at the heart of my work:

What happens when coaching unintentionally reproduces the very barriers it seeks to help people overcome?

Coaching is often presented as a neutral process. We talk about goals, performance, resilience, productivity, growth, and success as though these concepts are universal and value-free. Yet every coaching conversation takes place within a broader social, cultural, and political context. The assumptions we hold about what constitutes a “good life,” meaningful progress, or successful functioning are rarely neutral. They are shaped by dominant societal narratives.

One of those narratives is ableism.

Ableism refers to the privileging of certain ways of thinking, communicating, behaving, learning, working, and existing, while positioning other ways as deficient, problematic, or in need of correction. While overt forms of ableism are often recognised, more subtle forms can become embedded within professional practices, including coaching.

During the roundtable, participants explored a case example and engaged in reflexive discussion about how ableist assumptions can quietly shape coaching goals, interventions, and outcomes. Together, we considered questions such as:

• Who decides what “success” looks like?
• When does adaptation become pressure to conform?
• Are we helping clients flourish, or helping them fit into systems that were never designed for them?
• What assumptions sit beneath concepts such as productivity, motivation, communication, professionalism, and resilience?

These questions become particularly important when working with autistic individuals, people with ADHD, and other neurodifferent clients. Traditional coaching approaches often emphasise linear goal progression, behavioural modification, productivity enhancement, and performance optimisation. While these approaches can be helpful, they may also inadvertently reinforce the message that the client must change in order to be accepted.

Many neurodifferent individuals have spent years receiving explicit and implicit messages that they are “too much,” “not enough,” “too sensitive,” “too intense,” “too disorganised,” or simply wrong. Coaching that focuses solely on adaptation without questioning the systems that create these pressures risks reinforcing internalised ableism and further disconnecting individuals from their authentic ways of being.

The discussion also explored the potential for coaching psychology to become more than an individual change methodology. Coaching psychology has the capacity to act as a vehicle for social change by helping people critically examine the narratives that shape their identities, challenging deficit-based assumptions, and creating spaces where difference is not merely tolerated but genuinely valued.

This requires a shift from asking:

“How can this person function more effectively within the system?”

towards also asking:

“What aspects of the system need to change?”

Such an approach aligns with broader movements within psychology that recognise the importance of context, power, identity, and social justice. It invites coaches to move beyond individualistic explanations and to consider the wider structures that influence wellbeing, opportunity, and belonging.

The conversations that emerged during the session were thoughtful, courageous, and deeply encouraging. Participants shared reflections from their own practice, challenged assumptions, and explored what anti-ableist coaching might look like in action.

Receiving the award was a genuine honour, but the most meaningful aspect of the session was the collective willingness to engage with these complex questions. The discussion reinforced my belief that coaching psychology has an important role to play in creating a more inclusive future—one that recognises human diversity not as a problem to be solved, but as a valuable part of what it means to be human.

Thank you to everyone who attended, contributed, and helped create such a rich and reflective conversation. The work of challenging ableism is ongoing, and I look forward to continuing the dialogue together.