Neurodivergent Clinicians: The Plot Twist Therapy Didn’t Know It Needed
Why it matters, what changes, and why it’s not remotely the same as “regular therapy,” no matter what the brochures say.
There’s a particular relief that happens when a neurodivergent person sits down with a neurodivergent clinician. It’s the moment your nervous system whispers, “Oh—finally, someone who won’t try to house-train my brain.”
Because neurodivergent brains don’t just think differently.
We feel differently.
We process differently.
We relate, interpret, and build meaning according to logics most therapy models weren’t designed to recognize—let alone honor.
For many neurodivergent folks, the first half of life was a parade of well-intentioned adults determined to fix us and a horde of neurotypical kids ignoring or bullying us. If you were lucky, you found your weirdos, and maybe they even stuck with you. How we experienced childhood is HUGE when it comes to how we experience adulthood, and for many, there just simply wasn’t enough of the good, helpful stuff.
If you were diagnosed as a kid, you were often handed interventions designed to normalize you—behavior charts, social skills groups, sticker economies, “quiet hands,” color-coded binders, and the occasional pep talk about “meeting your potential.” These approaches were usually built on compliance, not understanding. Research on early intervention and masking (e.g., Hull et al., 2017; Mandy, 2019) shows that many of these systems unintentionally taught children to override their internal cues, suppress natural expressions, and prioritize adult comfort over their own nervous systems.
If you weren’t diagnosed until adulthood, the story is different but equally exhausting. You were probably labeled “gifted,” “sensitive,” “quirky,” “lazy,” “dramatic,” “too much,” or “not living up to your potential”—right up until the world demanded consistency you simply couldn’t fabricate. Without a framework, you internalized these mismatches as personal failings. The professionals you encountered along the way often misread your overwhelm as anxiety, your shutdowns as depression, your sensory needs as “overreacting,” and your executive dysfunction as a moral problem (hello again, DSM-5).
Different trajectories, same outcome: being measured by the wrong metrics using tools built for the wrong nervous systems.
But a neurodivergent clinician approaches your brain as a pattern, not a problem—something with internal coherence, beauty, intensity, and need. As autistic scholars like Dr. Devon Price (2022) and ADHD experts like Dr. Russell Barkley (2021) have pointed out, neurodivergent brains operate on different motivational, sensory, and relational systems. Not worse. Not broken. Different neurobiologies require different support.
Working with someone who gets that in their bones—someone who knows the terrain from the inside, not the manual—changes everything.
Below is what that difference might actually look like.
1. We Don’t Need Your Brain to Walk in a Straight Line. Zigzags Welcome.
Your brain is a constellation, not a straight line. It leaps. It loops. It spirals itself into revelations. Most clinicians are trained to redirect, “slow down,” or “stay on track.” Neurodivergent clinicians? We’re tracking the multiverse right alongside you. We can appreciate if you want to set an agenda, but WE probably don’t need you to, so don’t feel bad for taking the scenic route. This is not chaos to us. It’s pattern recognition on overdrive. And as Dr. Nomi Kline (2020) notes, nonlinear cognition is often associated with enhanced creativity, associative reasoning, and emotional insight—not dysfunction.
We don’t try to tame it. We help you harness it.
2. Masking? Yeah, We See That Before You Finish Your First Sentence.
You don’t have to spend 20 minutes convincing me you’re “fine.” I can see the micro-pauses, the justification loops, the fawning, the “I’m totally okay except for my entire internal collapse” tone of voice. Research on autistic and ADHD masking (see Hull et al., 2017; Livingston et al., 2020) shows it’s often automatic, chronic, and deeply tied to survival. It’s not a personality flaw—it’s adaptive intelligence.
And you won’t have to perform it here.
3. Your Intensity Doesn’t Scare Us. We’ve Lived Through Our Own.
Your emotional depth, rapid-fire thoughts, sensory sensitivity, and Big Feelings™ aren’t diagnoses. They’re nervous systems operating on a high-gain setting. People with ADHD and autism often live with what Dr. Mona Delahooke (2022) calls “heightened neuroception”—the nervous system’s ability to detect and react to internal and external cues.
To some clinicians, that reads as “too much.” To us, it reads as “alive.”
4. Burnout? We Know the Kind You Can’t Fix With a Weekend Off.
Not “corporate burnout.” Not “oops, I worked a few too many late nights” burnout. I mean the neurodivergent burnout described by Botha & Frost (2020)—the cellular-level collapse that comes from chronic masking, emotional labor, and constant self-correction. We probably recognize it before you do. And we don’t tell you to “rest a little more and add planner stickers,” because this is a nervous-system-long overhaul that is probably going to include a lot of unmasking work and deep-dive into those parts of you that are there to protect the part that feels chaotic, not a spa day.
5. We Build Systems for Real Humans, Not Productivity Cyborgs.
Most productivity tools are designed for imaginary people with:
infinite bandwidth
consistent motivation
stable energy
low sensory load
no trauma responses
zero executive function variability
In other words: robots. And not the fun kind.
Research from Barkley (2015), Brown (2019), and Dodson (2020) consistently shows that ADHD brains require externalized structure, novelty, emotional engagement, and contextual support—not shame-based self-discipline. We create systems that work with your nervous system, not against it.
6. We speak the language of “too muchness.”
You don’t have to:
dilute your enthusiasm
tone down your emotions
sanitize your thoughts
make your intensity “digestible”
I’m fluent in sensory overwhelm, hyperfocus, deep empathy, existential dread, nonlinear logic, and the “I know this feels irrational but it is Extremely Real in my body” experience. No translation required.
7. What others call quirks, we see as raw talent.
Your creativity, pattern recognition, sensitivity, hyperfocus, intuition, emotional intelligence, imaginative cognition aren’t “quirks,” they’re neurobiological assets (see Garnett & Attwood, 2021). They just don’t thrive in environments built for smaller, flatter, quieter versions of you. Our work is about giving those capacities room to function at full wattage.
8. We honor your complexity instead of reducing you to symptoms.
Symptoms are survival strategies in disguise. Behaviors are adaptations, not flaws. As trauma-informed researchers like Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, Dr. Stephen Porges, and Dr. Jennifer Freyd have shown for years, human behavior is always context-dependent. I’m not here to “fix” you. I’m here to help you unmask, unlearn, and rebuild without losing yourself in the process.
So what’s it like to work with me?
Working with me means reclaiming the parts of you that were muted, minimized, or mislabeled—without burning out or breaking yourself to fit someone else’s template of “acceptable.” I’m here to help you take back the strengths you tucked away for survival, not to make you smaller, neater, or more “manageable.”
You deserve a space where your brain makes sense.
Where your depth isn’t “too much.”
Where your sensitivity is honored, not critiqued.
Where your intensity isn’t pathologized.
Where your complexity is celebrated instead of dissected.A space where you can be seen without performing.
Where you don’t have to translate your inner world into something “reasonable.”
Where you don’t have to apologize for existing at full volume.
My therapeutic approach is rooted in neuroscience, shaped by my own lived neurodivergent experience, and informed by years of working with people whose polished external lives conceal rich, tangled internal worlds—attachment wounds, chronic disconnection, identity shifts, the push-pull of conflicting parts, and the heavy weight of shame, doubt, and “shoulds.”
And just to be clear: I’m not the clinician who sits back, nods twice, and asks, “How does that make you feel?” I mean, I will ask you that, but I’m also direct, curious, collaborative, and deeply engaged.
Together, we’ll sort what’s yours to keep, what needs to go, and what you’ve been carrying that never belonged to you in the first place.
I draw from EMDR, parts work, and other integrative, evidence-based modalities—blending depth with creativity, neuroscience with nuance, and clarity with compassion. Our work isn’t about checking boxes or performing “good client” energy. It’s about building something real, sustainable, and aligned with who you actually are.
Therapy Can Help You:
build self-understanding without shame
advocate for your needs without apology
navigate social and relational dynamics with more ease and less masking
create internal and external systems that actually match your brain
craft a life organized around your strengths—not your struggles
FAQs
“Is therapy for neurodivergence just lists and calendars?”
Absolutely not. Unless your kink is bullet journaling, in which case… congrats, we can work with that. Neuroaffirming therapy is about understanding your patterns, nervous system, and lived reality, not forcing you into color-coded compliance.
“Is being neurospicy a disability?”
Sometimes. Maybe. Yes. It depends. No. Sometimes not. It depends on context, supports, environment, and how your nervous system interacts with the world. Neurodiversity is a framework, not a value judgment. For some people, disability is the most practical word/context available to get the support they need in highly structured, standardized environments.
“How does working with a neurodivergent therapist help?”
Because the micro-cues, the masking, the overwhelm patterns, the shutdown cycles, the “I know what I should do but my body won’t do it”—we see those at first glance. Lived experience + clinical training = a different kind of attunement.
“What the fuck is an unmasking intensive?”
Unmasking Intensives are focused, short-term therapy experiences designed to help neurodivergent adults safely explore and release the social, emotional, and behavioral “masking” strategies they’ve carried for years. These intensives combine targeted psychoeducation, somatic and emotion-focused work, and structured reflection to identify where masking began, how it has protected the person, and where it has started to cost them—professionally, relationally, and internally.
Across a series of concentrated sessions, clients map out their masking patterns, reconnect with authentic preferences and needs, and build a compassionate roadmap for moving through the world with less performance and more truth. The work is gentle but direct: helping clients understand that masking wasn’t a flaw, it was an adaptation—and unmasking isn’t about “dropping the act” overnight, but about expanding their sense of safety so more of their real self can come forward without fear.
Unmasking intensives offer relief, clarity, and practical tools for living in a way that feels congruent, sustainable, and deeply humane. Wanna know more? Contact me to schedule a consultation!