How to Choose the Right Therapist When You’re Neurodivergent

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Most people spend more time researching a restaurant than they do choosing a therapist.

A quick search, a glance at qualifications, a check that the fee is within budget, and a decision is made. For the general population, that approach sometimes works out. For neurodivergent people, it is much more likely to result in a therapeutic relationship that feels wrong from the start, and a quiet conclusion that therapy simply isn’t for them. Especially where so much therapy hasn’t landed before, and the person has no more to go on than they had all the other times.

The pain point is straightforward. Most people have a generic checklist for choosing a therapist: qualification, regulation body, modality, cost, availability. What that list almost never includes are the questions that matte...

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Neurodivergent and Facing a Promotion? What to Know Before You Say Yes

Neurodivergent And Facing A Promotion? What To Know Before You Say Yes

You got good at your job. Really good. You mastered the technical side, built credibility, delivered results. And now someone is suggesting it is time to move up.

So why does that feel less like an opportunity and more like a threat?

If you are autistic, ADHD, or AuDHD, the answer might be simpler than you think. Most promotions eventually require managing people. And most neurodivergent professionals have not yet had the support to fully understand who they are in relation to others, let alone how to lead them.

Don’t get me wrong. Most managers and leaders are not taught to manage or lead. But as a ...

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What If Your Environment Is The Problem? A Neurodiversity Coach’s Perspective 

What If Your Environment Is The Problem? A Neurodivergence Coach's Perspective 

You have tried harder. You have created routines, written lists and set reminders to stay on track. You have taken on an excessive level of responsibility, worked beyond standard hours, and pushed through sensory overload and social exhaustion.  Yet, something still doesn’t seem to be working. 

Here is what may not be obvious: you might not be the problem, your environment might be.

As a neurodiversity specialist therapist and coach, and as someone who is AuDHD, I often meet clients who arrive believing they are ‘broken’. They are not. More often, they a...

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The Power of Setting Boundaries: How They Go Beyond Assertiveness

The Power of Setting Boundaries: How They Go Beyond Assertiveness

You know how to say no. You are able to hold your ground in difficult conversations. You don’t let people walk all over you at work, and you are not afraid to speak up when something isn’t right. 

So why do you still feel exhausted and depleted? 

This is one of the most common challenges I see in high performing neurodivergent clients. They arrive confident in their assertiveness, yet remain puzzled about why they do not feel significantly better. They have read the books, practiced ‘I’ statements and had the difficult conversations, and still feel worn out. 

As a ...

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You Aren’t Falling Apart: Emotional Overstimulation, Nervous System Dysregulation and Burnout in Neurodivergent Adults 

You Aren’t Falling Apart: Emotional Overstimulation, Nervous System Dysregulation and Burnout in Neurodivergent Adults 

Have you ever noticed how a single problem can make your whole life feel like it’s falling apart? One setback and suddenly work feels overwhelming, relationships feel fragile and even getting out of bed seems monumental. After more than twelve years as a Neurodiversity Coach and Therapist, supporting neurodivergent people, and through my own experience as someone who is AuDHD, I have learned that this sense of total collapse is often a perception of the experience, rather than the reality. Yes, the challenge that you’re facing may be real. Yes, it may be painful. But, most of you are functioning ...

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A Neurodivergent Therapist’s Guide to an Authentic, Low- Stress Holiday

A Neurodivergent Therapist’s Guide to an Authentic, Low- Stress Holiday 

If you have clicked on this article, chances are you are already feeling it, that creeping sense of dread as Christmas approaches. The weight of expectations about what the festive season should look like. The mental rehearsal of family dynamics, sensory overwhelm, small talk with distant relatives, and the pressure to appear joyful when you are actually counting down the hours until you can retreat back to your own space. 

I have always found it strange how, on Christmas Day, people suddenly behave differently, and no one ever mentions it. It becomes a sort of social murder mystery: who is genuine, and who is performing?

Here’s the truth: if part of you doesn’t want to follo...

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Why Neurodiversity Doesn’t Explain Every Challenge: Insights from a Neurodiversity Coach and Therapist

Why Neurodiversity Doesn’t Explain Every Challenge: Insights from a Neurodiversity Coach and Therapist

Not all  challenges we experience as neurodivergent individuals can be attributed to our neurodivergence. 

As both a neurodivergent person and a Neurodiversity Specialist, I am careful not to ascribe every difficulty to neurodivergence alone. Doing so risks overlooking critical factors, elements that are often essential to understanding why certain strategies or interventions have failed. 

Neurodiversity provides a powerful foundation for understanding ourselves, yet it is not exhaustive. Where medical professionals have identified additional factors, or where other complexities are evident, it i...

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Do We Need More Language to Explain Neurodiversity, or Less?

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Every so often, a new term takes the stage in neurodiversity discourse. Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination. Pathological Demand Avoidance. Time Agnosia.

And every time, the same debate erupts: Are we creating helpful frameworks for understanding, or are we just pathologising normal human experiences? Are we giving people language to describe their reality, or are we encouraging them to pathologise themselves? And don’t we have enough words already for the exact same things?

I think ...

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Why Your Workplace Should Care About Trauma

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Have you ever wondered why some people seem to struggle more than others with workplace stress or conflict, even when nothing “big” has happened? Trauma is not about what happens to us, it’s about how we process it and the impact it has on us later on. 

70% of people will experience something as being traumatic in their lifetime and that means consequences down the line for our mental wellbeing. Autistic people and those with other neurodivergent conditions (ADHD, Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, Dyscalculia and related) have neurodevelopmental differences that compound this and 80% of neurodivergent people will in any case have a co-occurring everyday mental health condition such as anxiety, depression and OCD.

...

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Doesn’t Everyone Have Autism And ADHD Now?

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I think I’ve heard this statement (it’s never meant as a question) in every possible format now: on the socials, from personal contacts, in the backlash from the recent Panorama investigation into how clinics are diagnosing the condition (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001m0f9) and in workplaces.

Most uncomfortably and personally, I endured a version of it in the form of a 30 minute verbal attack by my Uber driver whose starting and finishing position on the subject pretty much boiled down to: “You don’t have ADHD, you just say you do because it looks good for your clients – ‘Oh, look I can be like her. She has it’”.

I sometimes wish people wou...

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