Therapy for Autistic, AuDHD & Neurodivergent Women

You’ve Always Felt “Different.”

Bright lights. Loud noises. Food textures. Scents that other people love make you nauseated or give you a headache. You feel things so intensely, but today no one would know it by looking at you, because early on in life (perhaps in childhood), you learned to suppress your strong sensory reactions. You learned that little girls are supposed to be quiet, sweet and reserved. So you kept it to yourself, screaming on the inside, smiling on the outside.

You joke about “being OCD” because you like things a certain way. You eat the same breakfast every day for months. You listen to the same songs over and over, yet certain songs (or sounds, or repetitive noises) make you feel like a feral cat, irritated and desperate to get away.

You can make friends, but maintaining relationships feels harder than it should be. Social interactions give you anxiety—not because you don’t want to interact—you just don’t know how to. So you watch people carefully, mimic others and develop scripts for certain situations. You eventually figure out how to blend in, but you still feel like an alien, cosplaying at being a human. Deep down, you’re terrified of people seeing how weird you really are because you’re sure they’d laugh and make fun of you, or they’d make that mean girl face of disdain and disgust.

You’ve had friends and partners ghost you, tell you you’re too sensitive, take advantage of you, or abuse you. Sometimes you talk too much and don’t realize until it’s too late that the person you’re talking to has zero interest in what you’re saying. You need a lot of alone time to feel okay, but that makes it even harder to function socially. Most of the time, you feel completely misunderstood or that no one knows the real you.

You Might Experience Things Like:

• Walking on eggshells, scripting conversations, or carefully managing how you say things to avoid setting someone off

• Second-guessing your thoughts, feelings, and decisions even more than you used to

• A nervous system that feels like it's been running on high alert for years

• Sensory overload that you used to push through — but can't anymore

• Taking on responsibility for everyone else's feelings while losing track of your own needs

• Exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix

• Pulling away from friends and family, or feeling like they wouldn't get it

• A growing sense that you've been masking your way through your own life

You don't need a label for what you've been living through or for who you are to recognize yourself in any of this, but you’re navigating a world that wasn’t built for your nervous system, and you deserve support.