Neurodivergent Adults
A life built around your wiring, not against it.
Adults with ADHD, autism, AuDHD, and those who are still figuring out what their experience is.
What this looks like in your life
You have been managing for a long time. The version of yourself that the world has been able to work with, you have built carefully, by hand, over years. You learned what to suppress. You learned what to hide. You learned what to perform. The cost has been quiet because it has been familiar, and it has been familiar because it has been the price of being acceptable in rooms that were not designed for the way you actually work.
Maybe you have a diagnosis. ADHD, formally, from years ago. Autism, recently, after your child or someone you know was diagnosed and you recognized yourself. AuDHD, after you realized that both pieces had been true and that the contradictions you have been living with had a name. Maybe you do not have a diagnosis but you have spent years suspecting, reading, watching videos, finding pieces of yourself in other people's descriptions. Maybe you have a diagnosis that does not feel quite right and you are not sure what to do with that.
What you have probably noticed, regardless of where you are with formal language, is that the strategies that got you here are running out. The masking takes more energy than it used to. The sensory load has stopped being manageable. The executive function workarounds are not working. The relationships you built around your adaptations are starting to ask for things the adaptations cannot give. Something in you is telling you that the way you have been doing this is not sustainable, even though you have been doing it well enough that most people would not know.
You are not late to recognizing this. You are not making it up. You are not too high-functioning for this to be real. The fact that you have been managing is not evidence that you should keep managing the way you have been.
What I notice clients carry
Most neurodivergent adults who come in are not arriving as projects to optimize. They are arriving with several years of accumulated weight that they have not had language for, or have only recently found language for, and they are trying to figure out what to do with all of it.
Some are carrying the grief that comes with a late diagnosis. The recognition that the life you have been living could have been different if you had been understood earlier. The anger at being misread, misdescribed, called difficult or lazy or too sensitive or not trying hard enough. The slow reckoning with what the masking has cost you in your relationships, your career, your sense of who you actually are.
Some are carrying the work of unmasking. Figuring out, slowly, what your actual preferences are, what your actual sensitivities are, what you actually find restorative and what you find depleting. This is not a single decision. It is a long process of getting to know yourself outside the adaptations you built to be acceptable. Some of what comes back is welcome. Some of it is uncomfortable. Some of it requires changes in the relationships and contexts you were operating in.
Some are carrying years of having their experience dismissed by clinical systems. Women who were told they could not have ADHD because they were "too high-functioning." Adults who were diagnosed with anxiety or depression for years before anyone considered that the underlying neurotype might be different. People of color whose neurodivergent presentation got read through cultural lenses and missed. Late-diagnosed adults who have had to do their own research because the systems built to identify them missed them.
Some are carrying the cost of being neurodivergent in environments that were not built for it. The energy expended on sensory regulation in offices, classrooms, family gatherings. The cognitive load of social translation. The fatigue that comes from doing ordinary things with extraordinary effort. This is not in your head. It is real, it is measurable in the body, and the page does not pretend otherwise.
And some are carrying the compound version of all of this. Neurodivergent and queer. Neurodivergent and bicultural. Neurodivergent and a woman whose presentation was missed for decades. Neurodivergent and Black or Latino or Indigenous and never given the diagnostic consideration that other populations received. These do not stay in separate categories. They layer, and the work has to be able to hold all of it at once.
How I think about this work
I do not approach neurodivergence as a disorder to manage or a set of symptoms to reduce. I approach it as a way of being in the world that has its own structure, its own strengths, its own real costs, and its own legitimate needs. The work is not about teaching you to behave more neurotypically. It is about helping you build a life that fits your actual wiring.
This does not mean ignoring the real challenges. Executive function is a real challenge. Sensory overload is a real challenge. Social fatigue is a real challenge. Burnout from years of masking is a real challenge. These are not minor. The work involves taking them seriously and figuring out what to do with them, not pretending they are not there.
It also does not mean pretending that being neurodivergent is only a gift. Some of it is. Some of it is genuinely costly, especially in environments that do not accommodate it. The cultural framing of neurodivergence-as-superpower can minimize what it actually costs to live this way in a world that is not built for it. I take both seriously. The capacity and the cost.
I do not require formal diagnosis to do this work. Some of my clients have diagnoses. Some are in the process of being evaluated. Some are self-identified and have done years of their own research. Some are still figuring out what their experience even is. All of these are welcome. The diagnostic system has missed too many people, especially women, people of color, late-presenting adults, and high-masking clients, for the absence of formal diagnosis to be a reason to delay therapy.
What I do require is that you and I can work together honestly about what your experience is, what is working in your life, what is not, and what would need to be true for more of it to work. The rest, we figure out.
What the work looks like
We start by getting clear on what your actual experience is, not the version that you have been performing for the people in your life. This may take time. Many adult neurodivergent clients have lost track of what is underneath the masking, and the early work is sometimes just locating themselves again.
We work at a pace that the nervous system can handle. Sensory overload is real, social fatigue is real, and a therapy session that pushes too hard or moves too fast can be its own kind of depletion. I take this seriously. The work happens at the pace that lets it be useful, not the pace that lets it look productive.
We work with what unmasking is actually surfacing. The preferences that have been suppressed. The sensitivities that have been overridden. The needs that have not been allowed to be needs. The relationships that worked when you were performing a different version of yourself and do not work the same way now. The work is to figure out, slowly, what your life can look like when more of you is in it.
We work with the cultural and identity layer when it is part of the picture. Neurodivergent and bilingual, neurodivergent and queer, neurodivergent and a person of color, neurodivergent and a woman whose experience was missed for decades. These are not separate from the neurodivergent work. They are part of it.
We work with the executive function and sensory regulation pieces when they are what you need. Strategies, accommodations, the practical work of building a life that does not depend on you operating at full capacity all the time. This is part of the work, even when it is not the deepest part.
And we work with the larger question of what you want your life to be, now that you have a more accurate understanding of how you actually work. This is not the same as setting goals. It is the work of figuring out what is actually available to you and what you actually want, when the conditions for wanting it have been compressed for a long time.
Not sure if this is the right fit?
The first call is free and fifteen minutes long. We can talk about what is bringing you here, what the work would look like, and whether this practice is the right place for you.