Matthew Simpson, LMHC

In My Own Words

How I work—and who I work best with

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I work with people whose brains operate differently — and who've spent years trying to run neurotypical software on different hardware. I have ADHD and autistic traits myself. I'm not approaching this from the outside.

My clinical approach is IFS-informed. What that means in practice: I'm not interested in behavioral change that doesn't address why the behavior is happening. IFS gets at the parts underneath—the shame, the avoidance, the protective strategies that developed for good reasons and outlasted their usefulness. Once those parts have been heard and shifted, external scaffolding—habits, routines, follow-through, boundaries—actually has somewhere to land. That is often the missing link for neurodivergent adults who have already tried dozens of systems that never quite fit.

I'm completing IFS Level 1 Training, deepening clinical work I've been doing with clients for years. I'm also a certified No More Mr. Nice Guy therapist—one of a small number who trained directly with Dr. Robert Glover, not just familiar with the book. A significant portion of my clients are men who recognize themselves in No More Mr. Nice Guy or Nice Gal patterns: conflict avoidance, covert contracts, resentment, approval-seeking, and difficulty asking for what they actually want.

Outside of clinical work, I've spent years as a music producer and audio engineer. My love and dedication to the craft of music production shapes how I think about systems: everything is signal and noise, and the job is usually always about reduction — find the essential thing through experimentation and play, then cut away everything else that doesn't serve. That framework informs how I approach complex systems.

The through-line in this work: the problem is rarely the person. It's almost always the mismatch — between how a nervous system actually operates and the conditions it's been placed in, between a relational pattern and the shame that keeps it locked in place, between what someone knows and what they can actually do under pressure. IFS gives us a way to work with the inner system without judgment. Neurodivergent-affirming care gives us a framework that doesn't pathologize difference. Executive function scaffolding gives the inner work somewhere to land.