The Autistic Healer
A Depth-Oriented Desert Retreat for Autistic Therapists
A rare space for Autistic therapists to be held in community, deepen their formation, and make meaning of what they carry.
Join the priority list to be notified when registration opens!
Space will be intentionally limited to 12 Autistic therapists.
Overview
Location: Joshua Tree, California
Anticipated Dates: May 19-23, 2027
Anticipated Investment: $5,995, with payment plans available
Privacy: Prioritized- all rooms are private with private bathrooms
Amenities: 5 pools and 6 hot tubs available; all-inclusive re: meals
Cohort Size: Limited to 12 Autistic therapists (+ partners/carers)
Registration: Opening soon, to the priority list first
This is a planned full-property buyout with private rooms, multiple pools and hot tubs, desert gathering spaces, and room for both community and solitude.
You spend your days helping Autistic clients understand themselves, survive harmful systems, and reclaim what they were taught to hide.
Where is the space for you to explore what it means to be an Autistic therapist?
Many of us moved through years of clinical training with no room to examine how our Autistic identity, history, and ways of knowing shape us as clinicians. Some discovered we were Autistic only after graduate school. Others learned to separate our Autistic selves from our professional selves in order to be respected — or believed.
Consultation groups focus on the client. This retreat centers the therapist.
Set in the desert landscape of Joshua Tree, The Autistic Healer is an intimate, depth-oriented retreat for Autistic therapists who work with Autistic clients — centered on therapist formation, restoration, lived experience, grief, disability justice, and collective meaning-making, with people who understand the work from both sides.
You Belong
This retreat is for Autistic therapists who work with Autistic clients and long for authentic connection and the depth of formation they deserve. It may be especially meaningful if you:
discovered you were Autistic during or after clinical training
support clients through experiences that touch you personally
want to know who you truly are as an Autistic clinician
carry grief, anger, or fear about the treatment of Autistic people
feel pressure to stay composed while your community suffers
desire community with Autistic therapists beyond case consults
If parts of your authentic Autistic Self have been waiting to be seen, this space was made for you.
Why Now
Autistic therapists are practicing within a uniquely painful moment. We support clients frightened by public rhetoric, uncertain about diagnosis, and wounded by systems that claim to help them, while we ourselves are members of the community being discussed, politicized, and spoken over. Our clients look to us for hope while we are also grieving.
This work requires more than endurance. It requires places where Autistic therapists can gather, tell the truth, mourn together, restore their bodies, and remember they belong to something larger than the systems causing harm.
Designed for Autistic Nervous Systems
Structured depth work balanced with spaciousness, beauty, and rest: guided formation circles, small-group dialogue, shared meals, and generous unstructured time for solitude and integration.
Clear schedules, spacious transitions, quiet rooms for sensory recovery. The retreat’s rhythm supports both depth and nervous-system care.
You'll stay at one of five exclusive desert estates in a quiet compound with your own private bedroom and en-suite bathroom — a true place to withdraw, decompress, and return to the group on your own terms.
Everything Included:
5 days & 4 nights of private accommodations
All beautifully prepared, nourishing meals
3 depth-oriented workshops
6 CE hours, pending approval
Excursion to Joshua Tree National Park
Excursion to Integratron sound bath
Pool and hot tub access throughout
Spacious time for rest, reflection, & connection
Scheduled return transport to Palm Springs Airport
Airfare, arrival transportation, and optional private wellness sessions (e.g., massage) are not included.
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The Main Villa & Meeting Area
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Inside the Meeting Area
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Inside the Meeting Area
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Outside Meeting Area w/ Villa View
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One of Four Smaller Villas
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One of Twelve Private Bedrooms
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View from Your Backyard
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View of the Smaller Villas
What We Will Explore
Three depth-oriented workshops — two hours each — on the formation of the Autistic therapist.
Six hours of continuing education (APA, ASWB, NBCC) are planned, pending final approval.
At the center of the retreat is a three-part CE series on the formation of the Autistic therapist.
We will explore how Autistic identity, masking, lived experience, collective grief, disability justice, and professional training shape the clinicians we are becoming — and how to practice with greater consciousness, confidence, ethical clarity, and connection.
Six CE hours are planned, pending final approval.
Workshop themes will include:
how masking and professional socialization have impacted the clinician you’ve become
examining the messages you received about what a “good therapist” looks and sounds like
using the wounded healer archetype to explore how personal and collective wounds live within you
providing room for the grief, rage, fear, and exhaustion of practicing amid escalating ableism
naming what is happening and deepening our connection to disability justice and one another
What You Will Leave With
You will leave more deeply rooted in your Autistic identity: clearer about how your history and values shape your clinical presence, better able to distinguish what belongs to you, your clients, and the collective, more connected to a community of Autistic therapists, and more able to hold grief without becoming isolated inside it.
Your formation matters.
Your grief has a place.
Your way of knowing belongs in the field.
You do not have to carry this work alone.
Your Guide
Dr. Karissa Burnett (she/her) is an Autistic depth psychologist, trauma specialist, neurodiversity advocate, and the founder of Divergent Pathways. Trained in depth-oriented, relational, and spiritually integrative approaches, she brings extensive experience in psychotherapy, psychological assessment, supervision, and consultation centered on Autistic experiences and neurodiversity-affirming care. Her work has been featured in National Geographic and the APA's Monitor on Psychology, and she has provided expert consultation to the ACLU on issues affecting Autistic people.
She created The Autistic Healer in response to a need she has felt personally and witnessed across the field: Autistic therapists are extensively trained to care for others, yet rarely given space for their own formation, grief, belonging, and becoming. She will guide the retreat's workshops and collective meaning-making within a spacious, thoughtfully-curated, and sensory-considerate environment, where you can engage deeply without performing or translating yourself.
Dr. Karissa Burnett (she/her)
Autistic Depth Psychologist
Join the Priority List
Be notified before registration opens publicly, and receive first access to registration and payment-plan options for a small cohort of twelve therapists.