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In this final episode of Season 3, we celebrate one year of the Neurodivergent Faith podcast—34 episodes of stories, courage, and connecting with God and with each other. I reflect on the themes and wisdom listeners have shared over the year, highlighting their vulnerability, bravery, and generosity in walking this journey of neurodivergence and faith.

We hear from listener voices that have encouraged, challenged, and inspired me, and explore the threads of hope, persistence, and belonging that emerge from their experiences. I also share a vision for an online space where neurodivergent adults can gather monthly to pray, engage scripture, and encourage one another—and invite you to join if God leads.

This episode is a moment to pause, give thanks, and honor the tears, courage, and openness that have made this journey meaningful.

#NeurodivergentFaith #FaithAndNeurodivergence #ChristianPodcast 
#PodcastAnniversary #ListenerVoices #NeurodivergentVoices

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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In this final episode of the Masking and Spiritual Formation series, Josh is joined by Sunita Theiss for a thoughtful and deeply honest conversation about masking as performing belonging—especially within faith and community spaces.

Together, they explore masking as a survival strategy shaped by culture, neurodivergence, and the longing to be safe and included. Sunita reflects on her own experience of masking as constant internal recalibration in environments not designed for her, and how this effort—often mistaken for extroversion—came at the cost of exhaustion and diminished authenticity. They also name how cultural context can complicate the recognition of neurodivergence and normalize over-functioning.

The conversation turns toward faith spaces, where masking can take the form of performing spirituality: suppressing bodily needs, hiding stims, or conforming to unspoken expectations of how devotion, participation, or “maturity” should look. When belonging is tied to performance, faith can quietly become conditional—experienced as something we must earn rather than receive.

Josh and Sunita reflect on the spiritual costs of this dynamic: compartmentalization, shame, and the erosion of grace. They invite listeners to consider the difference between fitting in and truly belonging, and to imagine communities shaped not by productivity or sameness, but by enoughness, care, and ordinary faithfulness.

To connect with Sunita: https://www.instagram.com/sunitatheiss/  https://sunitatheiss.substack.com/ https://sunitatheiss.com/

#MaskingAndSpiritualFormation  #NeurodivergentFaith #Neurodivergent #AutisticAdults #ADHDFaith #ActuallyAutistic #NeurodiversityAffirming #EnoughAsYouAre #DisabilityAndFaith #ChurchBelonging

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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In this second episode of the Masking and Spiritual Formation series, Josh is joined by Harrison Litzell for a thoughtful and honest conversation about masking and belonging in faith communities. Together, they explore how masking shows up in churches and spiritual spaces—and how unexamined expectations might unintentionally require performance, conformity, or self-erasure. And, how does masking in a faith community translate to our own individual connection with God?

Rather than framing masking as something to eliminate, this conversation makes space for nuance. When and why do people mask in faith communities? How can churches become places where masking is not demanded, yet is also respected as a survival strategy? And what does it look like to create spiritual spaces where people are free to show up as they are?

Whether you are neurodivergent, a faith leader, or someone longing for more honest community, this conversation offers language, compassion, and hope for communities where no one has to hide themselves in order to belong.

#MaskingAndSpiritualFormation #NeurodivergentFaith #AutisticMasking #NeurodiversityAffirming #Belonging #SacredCommunity #FaithCommunities #ChurchAndNeurodiversity #ActuallyAutistic #AutisticAdult #AutisticVoices #NeurodivergentCommunity

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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What if we don't have to pretend to be something we aren't in order to be loved?

In this opening episode of a short series on Masking and Spiritual Formation, Josh explores the practice of masking—what it is, why neurodivergent people develop it, and how it quietly shapes our inner lives. Drawing from lived experience, research on autistic masking, original music, and poetry, this episode names masking as a survival strategy rooted in safety and belonging—while also acknowledging the spiritual toll it can take over time.

You’ll hear reflections on autistic masking, including compensation, repression, and assimilation; a personal story of discovering just how much effort masking requires; and an invitation to consider what authenticity, integrity, connection, and grace might look like when we no longer have to perform our way into belonging.

Whether you are neurodivergent yourself, love someone who is, or are curious about the spiritual lives of masked selves everywhere, this episode offers a spacious beginning.

#Masking #NeurodivergentFaith #SpiritualFormation #AutisticVoices #Neurodivergent #ActuallyAutistic #SacredBelonging #AutisticMasking #Unmasking #Authenticity #BelovedAsYouAre

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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In this episode, my friend Kristina Coombes joins me for an exploration of stimming across all our senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, interoception, proprioception, and the quiet wisdom of the vestibular system. Together we name stimming not as something to suppress, but as a faithful way of tending our nervous systems, a practice of stewarding our energy with compassion and clarity. We wonder aloud about the movements that help us stay present, the rhythms that regulate us, and the possibility that these small, honest motions might even become prayer.

And as we talk, a gentle shift begins: an invitation to see our own stimming—and the stimming of those we love—with new eyes. Not as distraction or disorder, but as communication, as care, as expression, and as an embodied path toward wholeness.

To connect with Kristina, visit:

https://www.meetup.com/neurodivergent-women-of-faith/

https://www.meetup.com/coffs-harbour-faith-based-support-group-meetup-group/

#StimmingAndStewardship #NeurodivergentFaith #EmbodiedSpirituality
#NeurodiversityAffirming #SacredEmbodiment
#FaithAndNeurodiversity #AutismAcceptance #ADHDAwareness #NeurodivergentCommunity #PodcastEpisode #ChristianPodcast #Stimming

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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This is part three of a conversation on executive function with Neurodiverse Couples Coach, Robin Tate. We wade into the territory of organization—how systems help some of us stay grounded, and how easily life unravels when those systems are disrupted. Together we name the relational ache that surfaces when shared routines aren’t honored, and the grace that comes when we build in margin, contingency, and the courage to pause and reassess.

We also turn toward time—how some of us feel its passing with uncanny accuracy, and how unplanned pauses can send our nervous systems into chaos. 

Threaded through it all is a deep compassion for the neurodivergent experience within faith communities. We lift up language that blesses rather than pathologizes, practices that honor our bodies and brains, and the sacred invitation to notice—like Moses at the burning bush—the "disruptions" that just might hold revelation.

#NeurodivergentFaith #ExecutiveFunction #NeurodiversityAndFaith
#TaskInitiation #NeurodivergentChristian #ADHDFaith #AutisticChristian #NeurodivergentCommunity

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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In this first-ever live gathering of the Neurodivergent Faith community, listeners came together from different states and countries to practice something both simple and deeply brave: honest gratitude in all circumstances.

Rooted in the invitation of 1 Thessalonians 5:18, we explored what it means to give thanks in our circumstances—not pretending everything is easy, but naming the places where God meets us in our real lives. Each participant shared two reflections: one challenge they’re navigating as a neurodivergent follower of Jesus, and one thing they’re genuinely grateful for—whether a gift of their wiring, a spiritual practice that’s helping them connect with God, or the support they’ve found along the way.

What unfolded was holy ground.
Strangers became companions.
Stories braided into one another.
People said they felt understood—some for the first time in a faith space.
There was laughter, tenderness, and more than a few tears.

In this episode, you’ll hear our voices, our hopes, our courage.
You’ll hear gratitude in all its textures—messy, joyful, painful, true.
And you’ll sense the quiet, steady presence of God in the middle of it all.

#NeurodivergentFaith #NeurodivergentChristian #NeurodivergentBelonging #NeurodivergentCommunity #NeurodiversityAndFaith #GratitudeInAllCircumstances #GiveThanksInAllCircumstances #PodcastCommunity #LivePodcastEpisode #ChristianPodcast #NeurodivergentStories #NeurodivergentSupport

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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This episode is the second part of a conversation on executive function with Neurodiverse Couples Coach, Robin Tate. In it, we explore the tensions many of us know so well—wanting to begin, yet feeling unable to start…attention pulled in different directions… wanting to discern what matters most, yet sensing every task weighted with equal urgency.

Robin offers language and compassion for the invisible barriers: demand avoidance, inertia, overstimulation, the weight of expectations that settle into shame. Together we name these not as flaws, but as part of the sacred profile of how a neurodivergent mind moves through the world.

This episode is an invitation to see executive function not as a hurdle to holiness but as part of the beautifully varied way we navigate life with God—and with one another.

#NeurodivergentFaith #ExecutiveFunction #NeurodiversityAndFaith
#TaskInitiation #NeurodivergentChristian #ADHDFaith #AutisticChristian #NeurodivergentCommunity

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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Josh continues the conversation with researcher and podcast host Jon Machnee (Christianity On The Spectrum) to explore the autistic experience of faith.

With a recognition that autism is incredibly heterogeneous, they dialogue together about broad trends in characteristics autistic people tend to lean towards as well as away from in their expressions of Christianity. 

Listen to Christianity On The Spectrum here: https://christianityonthespectrum.podbean.com/

#NeurodivergentFaith #ChristianityOnTheSpectrum #AutisticChristianity #FaithAndNeurodiversity #AutismAndChurch

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.

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In this conversation, Josh sits down with researcher and podcast host Jon Machnee (Christianity On The Spectrum) to explore how the autistic experience can widen our understanding of life with God and one another.

Together, they reflect on Jon’s personal story and the origins of his work, the gifts autistic people bring to the Body of Christ, and the challenges that arise when church life is built around neurotypical expectations. Jon also begins to unpack the idea of “autistic Christianity”—denoting distinctive characteristics in the way many autistic people approach faith. 

Listen to Christianity On The Spectrum here: https://christianityonthespectrum.podbean.com/

#NeurodivergentFaith #ChristianityOnTheSpectrum #AutisticChristianity #FaithAndNeurodiversity #AutismAndChurch

To connect further, find Josh on Facebook, Instagram or email at: [email protected]. Or, for personal encouragement on your own journey of neurodivergence, consider booking a spiritual direction session with Josh through Patreon.