My journey to mental health OT
This practice didn't start with a business plan. It started with a breaking point — and a decision that neurodivergent people deserve so much better than what I was seeing.
I was neurodivergent before I had the words for it.
I have had extreme sensory processing differences for as long as I can remember — sound sensitivity, tactile sensitivity, picky eating, poor sleep, visual overstimulation, movement and proprioceptive seeking. Family stories suggest these traits were present as early as infancy.
Growing up, I was labeled a lot of things: "Gifted." "Dramatic." "Snippy." "Emotional." "Bossy." A kid who was "2 going on 16, 13 going on 30" — somehow simultaneously high-achieving and underperforming, thinking and behaving ahead of my age in some ways and struggling hard in others. I changed my college major many, many times. I had high-intensity relationships. I struggled with unexpected changes. I had clusters of medical and mental health symptoms that no medical or educational professional ever connected.
I went through regular medical care in my teens and early 20s. Nobody suggested an evaluation. The signs were there — but in the systems I was navigating, nobody was looking for them.
It wasn't until graduate school that an occupational therapy professor identified me as having sensory processing differences, and classmates began to reflect back what they were seeing. That was the first time someone said: this is a thing, and it has a name, and it isn't a character flaw.
"It wasn't until my mid-20s that I finally received an ADHD diagnosis — along with treatment, medication, and validation that I wasn't broken, but that my nervous system experiences the world differently. This practice is what I wish I would have had as a teenager."
I learned OT one way — and then I had to unlearn it.
I studied occupational therapy from 2013 to 2015. My faculty and professors were knowledgeable, evidence-based, and genuinely excellent educators — they taught us with the best information available at the time. I want to be clear: I am not blaming them. The field was where it was. But when we know better, we can do better. What I was taught was a behavioral approach — compliance-based goals, normalization-focused interventions, working toward neurotypical standards of behavior and function.
In 2021, I came across the work of Penny Williams — advocate, author, and host of the Beautifully Complex podcast — and her Behavior Revolution Summit. It reframed everything I thought I knew. And once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.
The school districts were failing students. Parents were being given misinformation. And I — along with most of the field — had been taught wrong.
I saw it firsthand as a school-based OT in Arizona:
- Police called on students with executive dysfunction and emotional regulation challenges instead of evidence-based, trauma-informed approaches
- Detentions and expulsions for students whose IEPs hadn't adequately addressed their needs
- Restraint used in classrooms — in front of other students
- Students labeled "bad," told to stay away from peers who were having a hard time
- IEP goals that were ableist and potentially harmful
- Students placed in isolation rooms or behavior classrooms without thorough evaluation
- High schoolers without transition plans, whose last real evaluation was in elementary school
- Families spending enormous time and resources advocating for their children — because the systems were failing to do their jobs
And I was experiencing my own version of this at the systems level as a neurodivergent adult: medical gaslighting, late diagnosis, misdiagnosis, the ADHD tax, monthly stress around prescription refills, confusion about coverage despite being a healthcare professional, periods of profound burnout.
"Neurodivergent kids deserve better. And neurodivergent adults deserve to have someone finally acknowledge what too many of them already know: the people and systems that were supposed to help them often caused harm instead."
Where OT is going — and why it matters.
Neurodiversity-affirming occupational therapy is not a niche. It is a shift in the entire foundation of the field — from deficit-based to strengths-based, from normalization to empowerment, from changing the person to changing the environment.
The progress is real. The field is moving toward:
- Abandoning compliance-based goals — like forced eye contact — in favor of supporting authentic communication and bodily autonomy
- Accepting all forms of communication — AAC, gestures, vocalizations — and eliminating goals aimed at reducing stimming, which is self-regulation, not a problem
- Modifying environments instead of requiring individuals to endure them — adjusting lighting, noise, sensory load
- Teaching children they have rights — to refuse, to set boundaries, to consent — rather than to comply with neurotypical norms
- Using identity-first language — "autistic person" rather than "person with autism" — in alignment with what the autistic community has asked for
But we have a long way to go. Systemic change is slow. Clinicians need ongoing education to unlearn ableism and translate affirming philosophy into actual practice. Autistic adults and those with lived experience need to be centered in research and treatment design — especially when that research shapes how we treat children.
The clients who find us have often spent years being told they're the problem. They're not.
They are doing the most. And the systems around them are doing the least.
Sensory Life Assessment & Wellness exists because I decided in 2021 that I was going to be part of the solution — for the kids I work with, for the adults navigating systems that weren't built for them, and honestly, for myself too. This work is personal. It always has been.
I also want to be honest about something that sometimes gets lost in the advocacy work: I genuinely love this. I have a deep appreciation for minds of all kinds, and working with neurodivergent individuals brings me real joy. The creativity, the honesty, the way neurodivergent people see the world — I find it endlessly fascinating and deeply meaningful. This isn't just about fixing broken systems. It's about getting to spend my days with people I genuinely love working with, doing work that actually matters.
My mission is to advocate and educate through my role in academia, while empowering individuals and families to advocate for themselves. I serve as Arizona's representative to the AOTA Representative Assembly because I believe that change has to happen at the systems level — not just in individual therapy sessions. I teach at Northern Arizona University because the next generation of OTs needs to learn this differently than I did.
And I show up to every session as someone who has been on the other side of this — who knows what it feels like to move through a world that wasn't designed for you, and who genuinely believes that understanding yourself is the first step to everything else.
"My mission is to advocate, educate, and empower — with the added bonus of healing myself, too."
— Julia Colman, OTD, OTR/L, BCP, CCTS-IEducation & credentials
B.A. Psychology
The Ohio State University, 2012
Master of Occupational Therapy
Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, 2015
Doctor of Occupational Therapy
University of Wisconsin–Madison, 2019
Board Certified in Pediatrics (BCP)
American Occupational Therapy Association, 2023
Certified Clinical Trauma Specialist — Individual (CCTS-I)
Trauma-informed care certification
AOTA Representative Assembly — Arizona
AZ RA Representative for the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA)
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