Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy & Approach
Therapy tailored to fit you - online across Ontario - for ADHD, autism, AuDHD, gifted and twice-exceptional adults.
Your experiences, challenges, and hopes are uniquely yours, so your therapy should be too.
I work with late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults and those exploring neurodivergence, creating a space where you can be understood and supported without judgment.
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What Brings Neurodivergent Adults to Therapy
Many adults in Ontario feel overwhelming when your brain, body, and emotions pull you in different directions. Many neurodivergent adults describe working twice as hard to keep up, carrying invisible weight, or feeling disconnected from their authentic selves. Therapy often begins here, in the space between exhaustion and hope. This section shares some of the most common reasons neurodivergent adults seek therapy and the struggles that lead them to reach out for support.
Understanding Yourself & Identity
When you first begin exploring neurodivergence, it can feel like your life splits into “before” and “after.” For many late-diagnosed or self-diagnosed adults, there’s a flood of grief, relief, and self-questioning all at once. Therapy offers a safe space to sort through these layers, rebuild self-trust, and reconnect with who you really are.
Common Themes:
- Navigating a late or self-diagnosis (ADHD, autism, AuDHD) and reframing life without shame
- Wrestling with imposter syndrome and fears of being a fraud in the life you’ve built
- Feeling like a walking contradiction — e.g., ADHD spontaneity alongside autistic need for predictability
- Questioning identity: “Who am I, really?”
What if you found yourself....
- Cultivating self-acceptance, quiet confidence, and authenticity without apology
- Integrating your story into a cohesive identity where all parts of you are welcomed
Emotional Well-Being
Emotions may feel overwhelming, sudden, and hard to regulate, or at times, completely shut down. Many neurodivergent adults describe living with intense anxiety, rejection sensitivity, or burnout. Therapy helps you process these feelings with compassion and discover new ways to move through them.
Common Themes:
- Anxiety, depression, or chronic burnout after years of pushing harder than others
- Rejection Sensitivity (RSD) and constant worry about being misunderstood or criticized
- Emotional intensity that leads to shutdowns, rumination, or spirals
- Grief and anger about missed opportunities or years of misunderstanding
What if you found yourself....
- Finding peace with your past and hope for your future
- Developing resilience and confidence in handling emotions without shame
Relationships & Connection
Many neurodivergent adults long for safe relationships but feel drained by social demands or misunderstood in their communication. Therapy can help you explore boundaries, build confidence, and cultivate communities where you don’t have to hide.
Common Themes:
- Struggles with miscommunication across neurotypes (autistic/ADHD to neurotypical differences)
- Fear of judgment leading to masking or withdrawal
- Feeling disconnected from old circles while unsure how to find affirming communities
- Oscillating between craving closeness and withdrawing for protection
- Fear of letting others down due to perceived “unreliability”
What if you found yourself....
- Fostering mutual, supportive friendships and relationships
- Building a sense of belonging without having to edit yourself
Coping Tools & Habits
When life feels overwhelming, it’s natural to reach for whatever helps in the moment, whether that’s overworking, masking, or substances. These tools may ease short-term stress but often drain energy over time. Therapy provides new strategies that feel sustainable and supportive, so you don’t have to rely on coping methods that keep you hiding.
Common Themes:
- Relying on substances or self-medicating to cope with stress, sleep, or anxiety
- Fluctuating performance tied to cycles of use, recovery, or burnout
- Using urgency, perfectionism, or overworking as primary coping tools.
- Struggling to find strategies that feel immediate, effective, and healthy
What if you found yourself...
- Building healthy regulation tools that actually work for your nervous system
- Feeling in control of your choices rather than driven by them
Daily Life & Executive Function
Even the most capable and intelligent adults can struggle with daily routines, planning, or getting started. Many describe life as a cycle of procrastination, last-minute scrambles, and burnout. Therapy helps you create systems that fit your brain and reduce the chaos, so you can move toward consistency and calm.
Common Themes:
- Difficulty with focus, organization, and follow-through despite high intelligence
- Procrastination or perfectionism that leads to stress and self-criticism
- Frustration that “small tasks” feel harder than complex projects
- Over-reliance on urgency/adrenaline for productivity
- Fluctuating productivity: bursts of brilliance followed by paralysis
What if you found yourself...
- Building self-trust and confidence in your ability to follow through
- Developing sustainable routines and systems that align with your strengths
Sensory & Physical Needs
Your nervous system affects not just your thoughts and feelings, but your physical body and sensory experience. Many neurodivergent adults live with sensory sensitivities, chronic fatigue, or the impacts of pushing beyond their limits. Therapy helps you understand these needs and develop strategies that honour your body as much as your mind.
Common Themes:
- Sensory overload and difficulty coping in environments not designed for you
- Sensory-seeking needs: movement, stimulation, or input to regulate energy
- Ignoring body signals until burnout or health challenges appear
- Sleep disruption, fatigue, or physical discomfort tied to nervous system stress
What if you found yourself...
- Creating grounding and self-soothing practices that restore balance
- Building a sustainable daily rhythm that supports both mind and body
What Brings Neurodivergent Adults to Therapy
Many adults in Ontario feel overwhelmed when their brain, body, and emotions pull them in different directions. Many neurodivergent adults describe working twice as hard to keep up, carrying invisible weight, or feeling disconnected from their authentic selves. Therapy often begins here, in the space between exhaustion and hope. This section shares some of the most common reasons neurodivergent adults seek therapy and the struggles that lead them to reach out for support.
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How We Work Together – Trauma-Informed and Collaborative Therapy
Neurodiversity-Affirming & Trauma-Informed
Your brain and body aren’t problems to be fixed; we work at a pace that feels safe and sustainable
We recognize your challenges in the context of your environment, lived experiences, and nervous system, not as personal failings.
Client-Centred & Collaborative
You remain the expert on your own life_
You set the pace. Therapy moves in partnership with your comfort level, with regular check-ins to ensure the process feels safe and meaningful.
Integrative & Tailored
Integrating strategies that work with your goals and nervous system, not against it
We provide virtual, Ontario-wide therapy informed by approaches like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT), Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT), Internal Family Systems (IFS-informed), and mindfulness-based practices. We select tools and adapt them to fit your unique needs, strengths and values.
Things We Can Explore Together in Therapy
Starting therapy is more than naming what’s hard. It’s about creating a safe, collaborative space where we can work with your strengths, values, and needs. Together, we’ll explore strategies that fit your life, practices that bring steadiness, and new ways of relating to yourself and others. This section highlights the areas we may focus on in therapy, offering possibilities for growth, healing, and sustainable change.
Self-Image & Identity: Building Self-Understanding, Self-Acceptance and Self-Compassion
Your story is still unfolding. In therapy, we’ll work on building self-understanding, quieting the inner critic, and cultivating pride in who you are, without an apology.
Together, we might explore:
- Reframing your neurodivergent traits as strengths, not flaws
- Healing from self-doubt, shame, or imposter syndrome
- Rebuilding confidence and self-trust after setbacks
- Practicing self-compassion and acceptance
- Living more authentically, even in spaces that don’t always feel safe
Attention & Thinking Patterns: Working With Your Unique Mind
Your mind is powerful and unique. We’ll explore how to work with your natural rhythms instead of against them.
Together, we might explore:
- Executive functioning tools for focus, planning, and organization that feel sustainable
- Strategies to balance hyperfocus and task-switching
- New ways to manage procrastination and perfectionism
- Observing thought patterns without judgment or reactivity
- Shifting from cycles of urgency to steady, reliable progress
Emotional Regulation: Understanding and Navigating Emotions
Your emotions reflect deep sensitivity and intensity. In therapy, we’ll find ways to understand, regulate, and channel them without losing ourselves in the process.
Together, we might explore:
- Coping strategies for overwhelm, shutdowns, or mood swings
- Working through rejection sensitivity (RSD) and fear of criticism
- Naming, processing, and making space for complex feelings
- Gentle ways to address grief, trauma, or emotional wounds
- Acceptance of emotions and learning to 'surf the waves of emotion'
Anxiety & Mood: Finding Calm and Balance
Your nervous system works hard to keep you safe, but sometimes it leaves you stuck in cycles of worry, low energy, or exhaustion. Therapy provides tools to restore calm and protect your well-being.
Together, we might explore:
- Techniques for calming overthinking and rumination
- Ways to lift a low mood and reconnect with motivation
- Tools for burnout recovery and energy protection
- Reframing unhelpful thought patterns into compassionate ones
- Building daily practices that support balance and improve mood.
Social & Communication: Creating Connections
You deserve relationships where you feel seen and understood. In therapy, we’ll practice the skills and boundaries that support safer, more nourishing connections.
Together, we might explore:
- Navigating communication differences across neurotypes
- Practicing boundary-setting without guilt
- Building supportive friendships and community
- Managing relational conflicts with more clarity and compassion
- Developing confidence in expressing your needs and self-advocacy
- Advocating with healthcare providers
Sensory & Physical Needs: Supporting Mind and Body
Your body and sensory system are part of your mental health story. In therapy, we’ll explore ways to support your physical well-being alongside your emotional growth.
Together, we might explore:
- Grounding and self-soothing practices for sensory overload
- Outlets for sensory-seeking energy
- Creating supportive routines for sleep and rest
- Addressing physical symptoms tied to stress or burnout
- Designing sustainable daily rhythms that nurture both body and mind
Learning to Navigate a World Not Designed for US
What Therapy Can Offer You - Sustainable, Authentic Change
Therapy here isn’t about ‘fixing’ you; you’re not broken.
We’ll work together to:
- Understand your unique wiring, thoughts, emotions, sensory experiences, and behaviours in the context of your life and relationships
- Build self-compassion and reduce shame from years of misunderstanding, invalidation and other relational harm or trauma
- Develop coping and regulation strategies tailored to you
- Explore identity, connection, and meaning in ways that feel safe
- Create a life that’s sustainable, authentic, and aligned with your values
Life begins the moment we decide to become ourselves.
“There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
FAQs About Services: Therapy Services FAQ: ADHD, Autism, Giftedness, and Online Counselling
If you can't find an answer to your questions here, plea
Do you offer harm-reduction therapy instead of requiring abstinence?
Yes. I understand that substances are often used as a way to regulate stress, anxiety, or pain. My harm-reduction approach allows you to explore your relationship with use without pressure to quit. Together, we focus on reducing harm, building alternative regulation tools, and making conscious choices that align with your goals.
How can therapy help with executive functioning and ADHD challenges?
Therapy can help you create systems that work with your brain rather than against it. We explore task initiation, organization, time management, and procrastination, not as personal failings, but as areas where tailored strategies can make a big difference. Many clients experience relief when they finally understand why past systems didn’t work and build ones that actually fit.
What if I’m “gifted” but still struggling with underachievement or burnout?
Giftedness often comes with high expectations and painful self-criticism. Therapy can help you reframe your story from one of “wasted potential” to one of resilience and complexity. Together we address burnout, emotional intensity, and rejection sensitivity (RSD) while helping you reconnect with your creativity, intelligence, and worth, without pushing yourself to collapse.
Can therapy help me process a late diagnosis of ADHD or autism?
Yes. A late diagnosis often triggers grief for missed opportunities and relief for new clarity. Therapy supports you in integrating both stories, who you thought you were and who you now know yourself to be. We work on identity reconstruction, self-compassion, and building a sustainable lifestyle that honours your neurodivergence.
How does therapy address rejection sensitivity and relationship struggles?
Rejection sensitivity (RSD) can create intense emotional reactions and relational challenges. In therapy, we focus on recognizing these patterns, calming your nervous system, and building healthier ways to respond. The goal isn’t to eliminate sensitivity but to reduce its grip so you can feel more grounded, understood, and connected in your relationships.
Do you work with people who feel like contradictions or don’t fit neatly into one label?
Yes. Many of my clients describe themselves as paradoxes, part ADHD, part autistic, part gifted, and entirely unique. Therapy here is not about boxing you in. It’s about helping you integrate your complexity, hold your contradictions with compassion, and design a life where you can belong to yourself fully.
What does a first session look like?
The first session is about getting to know you. We explore your story, what brought you here, and what you hope to gain from therapy. There’s no pressure to share everything at once; you set the pace. From there, we start identifying your goals and shaping therapy around what feels most supportive for you.
Do you provide online counselling in Ontario?
Yes. I provide secure, confidential online therapy across Ontario. Many clients prefer online sessions because it saves travel time, reduces sensory and social stress, and allows you to meet from the comfort of your own space. All you need is a private place and an internet connection.