Music Therapy for Autistic People

I offer individual music therapy for autistic adults and teenagers in Berlin and online. This work is grounded in a neurodiversity-affirming perspective — the starting point is not that something needs to be fixed, but that you deserve support that actually fits how you think, feel, and experience the world.

Sessions are flexible, low-pressure, and shaped around your sensory needs, communication preferences, and goals. No musical experience is required. Learn more about music therapy and how it works, or read about online sessions if you are outside Berlin.

A Neurodiversity-Affirming Approach

Neurodiversity-affirming therapy begins from the position that autism is a natural variation in human neurology. The goal is not to help you appear more neurotypical, suppress your natural responses, or conform to social norms that were not designed with you in mind.

The goal is to understand yourself more fully, build genuine self-acceptance, and find ways of navigating the world that support your wellbeing on your own terms. That might mean exploring what sustainable living looks like for you, finding language for experiences that have been hard to articulate, or simply having a space where you do not have to perform.

Music therapy is particularly well suited to this kind of work because it does not require verbal fluency or emotional transparency on demand. It offers a different channel, one that many autistic people find more natural, less effortful, or simply more honest.

Unmasking and Identity

Many autistic people spend years, sometimes decades, learning to suppress or disguise their natural ways of being in order to fit in. This is often described as masking, and while it can be adaptive in certain contexts, it comes at a significant cost. Persistent masking is exhausting, erodes sense of self, and is closely linked to anxiety, depression, and burnout.

Therapy can offer a space to begin putting that down. Not all at once, and not in a way that feels unsafe, but gradually and at your own pace. Music is particularly useful here because it is a domain where many autistic people feel they can be more fully themselves. Making music, listening to music, and talking about what it means can be a way of accessing and expressing parts of yourself that have been hidden or suppressed.

This might involve exploring what your authentic preferences and responses actually are, separate from what you have learned to perform. It might involve processing the grief or anger that can come with recognising how long you have been masking. Or it might simply involve practising being in a space where no performance is required.

Late Diagnosis and Reframing Your History

A late or recent autism diagnosis often brings a complicated mix of feelings. Relief at finally having language for lifelong experiences, grief for the years spent without that understanding, and the significant task of reframing your own history. Many people describe looking back at their lives and seeing everything differently: the friendships that were exhausting, the jobs that were overwhelming, the ways they blamed themselves for things that were never their fault.

Music therapy can offer a space to work through that process without rushing it. Songs tied to specific periods of life can serve as anchors for memory and emotion. Creative work can give form to experiences that are hard to put into words. Conversation can move between the personal and the analytical, at whatever pace feels right.

There is no correct way to respond to a late diagnosis, and no timeline for processing it. This work simply aims to offer support as you find your own.

Sensory Processing and Wellbeing

Sensory experience is central to how many autistic people move through the world, and central to music therapy. Sound, rhythm, texture, and space are all sensory dimensions that can be engaged with intentionally in sessions.

For some people, this means exploring how certain types of music support regulation, helping to move from a state of overwhelm toward one of calm, or from flatness toward engagement. For others, it means developing a more conscious relationship with their own sensory responses: understanding what activates them, what settles them, and how to use that knowledge practically in daily life.

Sessions are adapted to your sensory needs. Online sessions put you in full control of your environment. For in-person sessions, preferences around sound levels, lighting, and physical setup are discussed in advance and respected throughout. There is no expectation to maintain eye contact, sit in a particular way, or manage your responses for my comfort.

Emotional Regulation and Alexithymia

Many autistic people experience alexithymia — difficulty identifying, naming, or describing emotions. This is not a deficit; it is a different relationship with emotional experience. But it can make traditional talk therapy feel frustrating or inaccessible, particularly when the therapist repeatedly asks "how does that make you feel?" and the honest answer is "I genuinely don't know."

Music offers an indirect route. Rather than asking you to name an emotion directly, we might listen to something and notice what it does in your body, your attention, or your energy. We might use music to map different internal states, or to explore what regulation and dysregulation actually feel like for you specifically. Over time, this can build a richer vocabulary for your own emotional experience.

Emotional regulation work in sessions might include building personalised playlists for different states, identifying music that helps with transitions, or exploring the difference between music that validates a feeling and music that helps shift it.

Autistic Burnout

Autistic burnout is distinct from general burnout. It typically follows a period of sustained effort to function in environments that are not designed for autistic people. Things like masking constantly, managing sensory overload, navigating social demands that require significant cognitive effort. The result is often a profound depletion: loss of skills and capacity that were previously manageable, difficulty with basic functioning, and a deep need for withdrawal.

Recovery from autistic burnout is not about pushing through. It requires reducing demands, identifying and removing sources of chronic overload, and rebuilding a life with more sustainable parameters. Therapy can support that process by offering a low-demand space to think through what happened, what you need, and what a more sustainable way of living might look like for you specifically.

Sessions during burnout are adapted accordingly. They can be slower, less structured, and more focused on simply being present without expectation.

Communication, Social Experience, and Relationships

Autistic communication styles are different, not deficient. But navigating a world built around neurotypical social norms can be genuinely tiring and isolating. Particularly when the difficulty is consistently framed as your problem to solve.

Therapy here is not about teaching social skills or practising neurotypical behaviour. It is about understanding your own communication style, what kinds of social environments feel sustainable versus depleting, and how to build relationships that do not require you to constantly translate yourself.

For some people this might involve processing specific experiences like a difficult friendship, a workplace dynamic, a family relationship. For others it is more about developing clarity around what they actually need from connection, and how to seek it more deliberately. Music can support both: as a subject of shared meaning in relationships, as a space to process social experiences, or simply as something to do together that does not require conversation.

Work, Study, and Executive Functioning

Many autistic people navigate significant challenges around work and study. Not because of a lack of capability, but because conventional workplace and academic structures are often poorly matched to how autistic people think, focus, and operate. Rigid schedules, open-plan environments, unclear expectations, and constant social demands can all create chronic difficulty that is rarely attributed to the environment rather than the person.

Therapy can offer space to examine those dynamics honestly. The space to understand what is hard, what accommodations might help, and how to advocate for yourself in contexts where that is difficult. It can also support executive functioning more directly: music-based approaches to focus and task initiation, working with rhythm and structure to support sequencing and planning, and exploring how sound environments affect your concentration and output.

If you're interested in more self-directed work, I've built a space with these ideas in mind. The Sensory Intelligence Lab is a web app with journaling prompts, custom soundscapes, interactive music composition tools, ear training exercises, and playlist building. Music therapy tools I use in my practice, available to you at any time.

Working with Music in Sessions

Sessions draw on several approaches depending on what is most useful for you at a given time. These might include:

• Listening and playlist work: Building intentional playlists for regulation, transitions, focus, or emotional processing. Exploring what specific music does for you and why.
• Verbal processing with music as anchor: Using songs, albums, or musical experiences as starting points for reflection and conversation. Particularly useful for accessing emotional material that is hard to approach directly.
• Songwriting and composition: Using creative work to give form to experiences, feelings, or parts of identity that resist verbal expression. Projects can be as structured or as open as you prefer.
• Improvisation: Exploring sound freely as a way of expressing internal states without the need for language or narrative. This is always optional and introduced gradually, never on demand.
• Creative projects between sessions: Prompts and exercises to continue the work outside of sessions — listening with specific intentions, sound experiments, or longer creative projects that connect to your therapeutic goals.

You will never be required to perform, share creative work, or engage with music in a way that feels uncomfortable. Everything is optional and paced by you.

Who This Work Is For

This may be a good fit if you are:

• An autistic adult or teenager looking for affirming, flexible therapeutic support
• Recently or late-diagnosed and processing what that means for your sense of self
• Experiencing autistic burnout or recovering from a period of significant overload
• Tired of therapy that tries to make you more neurotypical
• Struggling with emotional regulation, alexithymia, or identifying what you feel
• Navigating masking, identity questions, or the tension between authenticity and safety
• An autistic person who also identifies as queer or LGBTQIA+ and wants affirming care
• Someone who connects more easily through music than through words alone

In Berlin and Online

Sessions are available in person in Berlin and online for English-speaking clients across Europe and internationally, including the United States. Online sessions offer the advantage of being in your own environment, which many autistic clients find significantly reduces sensory and social demand.

A sliding scale is available. Cost is not intended to be a barrier to accessing support.

Getting Started

The first step is a free 30-minute consultation — a conversation to talk about what brought you here, what you are hoping for, and whether working together feels like a good fit. There is no pressure and no assessment involved. You do not need to arrive with a clear articulation of your goals. We can figure that out together.