Trauma-informed Therapy
for the late-diagnosed, undiagnosed, and self-identified neurodivergent crowd in
North Carolina and South Carolina
You’re exhausted. Burnt to a crisp.
Feeling like you’re running on empty and can’t catch up to a world that often feels out of sync with who you really are. The constant hum of anxiety, the endless overthinking, the disconnection from yourself and others. Feeling like you’re performing, or like you always have to explain yourself. That feeling that things are too loud, too bright, the wrong texture. The start-stop of motivation and ability to engage with the world around you, even the tasks, hobbies, and experiences you love the most. It’s heavy, isn’t it?
That perpetual sense of overwhelm and stuckness is a real mountain to climb. I get it. Together, we’ll unpack the weight you carry, both personal and systemic, and build a way forward that feels true to you. In our work together you can pause, breathe, grieve as much as you need to, and develop the tools to build joy, ease, and belonging in your life. Fully inhabiting your own life isn’t just possible, it’s a powerful act of resistance in the face of a world that doesn’t often make space for your needs.
You might be arriving to this page already in possession of a highly specific diagnostic label to describe the ways that your brain and body are unique, but you also might just have the sense that things somehow seem harder for you than they do for so many of the people around you. You might scroll tiktok and instagram and really resonate with some of the content you take in about ADHD, Autism, Sensory Processing Disorder, PTSD/cPTSD, highly sensitive people (HSP), OCD, and the grab bag of difference/challenges that doesn’t fit neatly into one singular diagnostic criterium but is often included under the umbrella of neurodivergence.
You’re in the right place.
Chelsea, I hear this word all the time, but what even is neurodivergence?
Neurodivergence as a Non-pathologizing Framework
Neurodivergence is not a medical diagnosis, but rather a socio-cultural term used to describe when someone’s brain and body function, process, and learn differently from what society has defined as typical. Neurodiversity is the term used to describe the vast variety of ways in which human brains and bodies function in the world. Neurodivergence is a deeply political term for better understanding the intersections of human difference and variety in the world with existing structures of power, privilege and oppression. The bulk of the various diagnoses you probably see floating around social media belong to the western medical model of understanding human difference, and are by and large framed as pathology (a disorder). In our work together, I’ll help you better understand what might be happening in your brain and body.
But you get to choose what way of talking about your own experience feels the most helpful to you.
Here are just a few things we might talk about in our time together:
Strengthening Agency
I’ll help you better understand your own unique challenges and strengths, and build out your sense of agency and effectiveness in your own life. We’ll explore what you value most and what you desire, and together we’ll figure out how to close the gap between your life as it is now, and the life you’re dreaming of. If your number one goal is unmasking and mitigating neurodivergent burnout, we’ll work on that. If you want to focus on building more satisfying relationships, intimate connections, and community, then we’ll focus on that. If you need a space just to grieve what you have missed out on, I’ve got you. If you have no idea what you want to work on, then I’ll help you figure it out!
Working with YOUR Brain and Body
I support you in deepening your understanding of how YOUR brain and nervous system work, and help you develop personalized strategies for working with your brain and nervous system instead of against them. What works for other people might not be the same thing that works for you.
Pros and Cons of Formal Diagnosis
You might be considering seeking a formal diagnosis to describe your experience of neurodivergence. You might have understandable hesitations about what that process, and formal diagnosis, might mean for you within the current socio-political climate. Because I am out of network with insurance companies, we can explore your concerns in depth without needing to add a specific diagnosis to your permanent medical file. I can help you weigh the pros and cons and work through what seeking a formal diagnosis might mean for you and your life.
Chronic Illness and Chronic Pain
(the neurodivergent overlap)
If you’ve made it this far you might already be keenly aware that there’s a high correlation (not to be confused with causation) between a few forms of neurodivergence (especially Autism and ADHD) and physical, structural, and autoimmune conditions such as Ehler’s Danlos Syndrome, Disautonomia/POTS, and MCAS. Managing chronic pain and chronic illness takes its own toll on your mental and emotional health and wellbeing, and you deserve to work with a therapist with at minimum a baseline understanding of these conditions you might be managing.
