Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy in Littleton, Colorado

When Understanding Your Brain Changes Your Story

Sometimes an autism or ADHD diagnosis doesn't come in early childhood.

Sometimes it comes after years of wondering why things that seem easy for everyone else feel so difficult. After being described as too sensitive, anxious, perfectionistic, disorganized, shy, intense, or simply "a lot." After becoming very good at appearing okay while working incredibly hard underneath the surface.

For many girls and women with ADHD—and autistic people of all genders—neurodivergence can be overlooked or misunderstood for years.

I have a particular interest in supporting teens and young adults who are discovering their neurodivergence later than expected, especially late-identified autism and ADHD in girls and women. As someone who also learned about my own neurodivergence later in life, this work is personally meaningful to me. I understand how finally having language for your experience can provide answers while also opening up an entirely new set of questions.

Therapy can be a place to explore those questions, reconsider the stories you've carried about yourself, and begin understanding your brain through curiosity rather than criticism.

From "What's Wrong With Me?" to "What Works for Me?"

Receiving a diagnosis later in life can bring relief, validation, grief, confusion—or all of these at once. You may suddenly find yourself looking backward and seeing your experiences differently:

Maybe I wasn't lazy.

Maybe I wasn't too sensitive.

Maybe there was a reason relationships or everyday tasks took so much energy.

A diagnosis doesn't change who you are, but it can change how you understand who you've been.

This can be especially powerful when your neurodivergence didn't fit the stereotypical picture of autism or ADHD. Autism may have looked more like masking, social exhaustion, sensory sensitivity, or carefully studying how to fit in. ADHD may have shown up as overwhelm, time blindness, difficulty initiating tasks, emotional intensity, or relying on anxiety and perfectionism to keep everything together.

I know from my own experience that making sense of the past can happen alongside figuring out what this new understanding means for the future. Your experience will be uniquely yours, and I won't assume it mirrors mine. Instead, I bring both clinical knowledge and lived understanding, along with genuine curiosity about your brain, your story, and what neurodivergence means for you.

Rather than continuing to ask:

"Why can't I just do this like everyone else?"

therapy can help us become curious about:

"What makes this difficult for my brain, and what would help?"

Together, we can identify strengths, understand patterns, recognize needs, develop strategies, and build greater self-compassion. The goal isn't to lower expectations. It's to find expectations and supports that make sense for the brain you actually have.

Treating Distress, Not Differences

This principle is central to my approach:

We treat distress—not neurodivergence.

Being autistic or having ADHD isn't something I want to remove or change.

That doesn't mean being neurodivergent is always easy. Anxiety, burnout, executive functioning challenges, sensory overwhelm, emotional intensity, relationship difficulties, and years spent trying to fit into environments that weren't designed for your brain can cause very real distress.

Therapy can help you better understand your patterns, process a new diagnosis, recognize sensory and emotional needs, understand masking and burnout, develop strategies that work for your brain, communicate your needs and boundaries, and challenge years of shame or negative beliefs about yourself.

The goal isn't to become less autistic, less ADHD, or more "normal." It's to understand yourself well enough to build a life that works for you.

Different doesn't mean less. It means learning what your brain needs to thrive.

Neurodivergence Within Relationships

Neurodivergence doesn't exist in isolation. We experience it within our relationships, families, schools, workplaces, and communities.

For teens and young adults, therapy may include exploring communication differences, friendships, family relationships, boundaries, independence, identity, and the exhaustion that can come from masking.

For children and teens, I also work with parents and caregivers to help them understand what may be happening underneath a behavior. Rather than asking only:

"How do we get them to stop doing this?"

we can also become curious about:

"What might this behavior be communicating?"

Understanding doesn't mean eliminating boundaries or expectations. It means considering your child's nervous system, developmental needs, strengths, and capacity so that expectations and support make sense for the child in front of you.

Sometimes the most meaningful change happens not because a neurodivergent person learns to be different, but because they—and the people who love them—begin to understand their experience differently.