ADHD & Neurodivergence
For many people, the question of whether their brain might work differently arrives later in life than it should have. Maybe you were the kid who was told you were lazy, distracted, too sensitive, too intense, too much, or just somehow always falling short of what other people seemed to manage easily. Maybe you spent years suspecting something was different and only recently found words for it. Maybe you have been masking so long you are not sure what is underneath.
ADHD, autism, sensory processing differences, learning differences, and other forms of neurodivergence describe brains that work in ways that don’t fit the narrow set of expectations the world tends to organize itself around. These differences are not deficits to be fixed. They are different ways of being in the world, in a society that often does not make room for them.
Many of our clients arrive after years of being told something was wrong with them, sometimes by family, school, or their environement. The work of unlearning those messages and meeting your own brain with curiosity rather than judgment is often a long process.
What this can feel like
People navigating neurodivergence often describe some version of the following:
- Exhaustion from masking, performing, or managing how you come across to others
- A long-running sense that other people seemed to know how to do something you could not quite figure out
- Rejection sensitivity, where small misalignments in relationships can feel disproportionately big
- Difficulty with executive function, organization, transitions, or sustained focus on tasks that do not engage you
- A nervous system that can feel overwhelmed or under-stimulated, sometimes within the same day
- Burnout that does not resolve with rest the way it seems to for other people
- A sense of being “”too much”” in some moments and “”not enough”” in others
- Grief about the version of yourself you tried to be in order to fit
- Real joy and capacity when you are working with how your brain actually works, rather than against it
Why diagnosis comes late for so many
Diagnostic frameworks have largely been shaped around the behavior of a narrow set of children, mostly white, mostly boys, mostly middle-class. People whose neurodivergence did not fit that template often slipped through. This is part of why late diagnosis is common in Black and brown communities, in girls and women, in queer and trans folks, and in adults who learned to mask early and well.
Many of our clients have lived for years with a quiet sense that something was different without anyone naming it. For some, naming it brings relief. For others, it brings grief, anger, or a complicated mix of both, as the years of being misunderstood become more visible.
What this work is about
Your brain is not a productivity problem to be solved. It is part of who you are. We are interested in what it has cost you to spend so much energy trying to seem neurotypical, what kinds of environments allow you to thrive, what your particular brain is good at, and what becomes possible when you stop trying to override yourself.
We also know neurodivergence does not exist in isolation from everything else that shapes a life. Being neurodivergent as a Black or brown person, as a queer or trans person, as a person living with disability or chronic illness, in a family navigating immigration or religion or class, in a workplace that was not built with you in mind, all of this shapes the experience. For many of the people we work with, the cost of moving through these compounded layers is part of what brings them to therapy.
What this work can look like
Therapy with us is not about making you more neurotypical. It is about coming home to yourself.
In practice, this might include making space for grief about the years you spent trying to be someone else, understanding how your brain actually works and building routines and supports that fit it, working with rejection sensitivity and chronic shame, addressing burnout, untangling what is yours from what was placed on you, and honoring the strengths your wiring brings.
Many of our clinicians are themselves neurodivergent, and our team has done ongoing work to ground ourselves in approaches that honor the way different brains actually function. What you bring is welcome here, including the parts that took the longest to find.
