Neurodiversity-Affirming · ADHD · Autism · HSP · Late Diagnosis · Identity
Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy in Miami
In-person in Coconut Grove · Telehealth throughout Florida
You Have Always Known Yourself — and You Have Always Been the Last to Know
There is often a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with a neurodivergent life; even when, especially when, that life looks fine from the outside. You may have spent years learning to read the room, to adapt, to perform the version of yourself that felt acceptable. The effort required may have been invisible to others. It may still be invisible to you.
Perhaps you came to adulthood with a sense of always having been different, too much in some ways, not enough in others. You may have received a diagnosis recently, or finally: ADHD, autism, dyslexia, sensory processing differences. You may identify as a Highly Sensitive Person — someone for whom the world has always registered at a higher volume, in every sense. Or you may still be in the uncertain middle, recognizing yourself in descriptions you’ve read, without the formal language to name it.
What often accompanies a late or emerging understanding of neurodivergence is not relief alone. There is relief, yes. But there is also grief for the years spent assuming you were failing at something that was never designed for you. There is anger, and confusion, and a renegotiation of your own story.
Therapy can be a space to hold all of that.
You are not broken. You are not behind. You are navigating a world that was not built with your nervous system in mind and doing it with more self-awareness than you are usually given credit for.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
— C.G. Jung
What Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy Means Here
Neurodiversity-affirming therapy is not a specific technique or protocol. It is an orientation, one that begins with the assumption that neurological difference is a natural and meaningful variation in human experience, not a disorder to be corrected. This includes not only formally diagnosed conditions such as ADHD and autism, but also the experiences of Highly Sensitive Persons, those whose nervous systems are wired to process the world with unusual depth and intensity.
In practice, this means that our work together does not have assimilation as its goal. We are not trying to make you more neurotypical. We are trying to help you understand yourself more fully: the patterns that have shaped your inner life, the ways your nervous system responds to the world, the meanings you have made of experiences that may have been confusing or painful, and the identity questions that arise when someone renegotiates who they thought they were.
Many neurodivergent people arrive in therapy having already done significant cognitive work. You understand a great deal about how your brain functions. You may have elaborate systems, compensatory strategies, and a well-developed capacity for self-analysis. What therapy offers is something different: not more information, but a relational space in which the emotional and psychological dimensions of your experience can be explored, including the ones that haven’t responded to insight alone.
You May Recognize Yourself in Some of These:
- A recent or late ADHD or autism diagnosis — and the complicated feelings that followed
- A sense of always having been different, without quite having language for it
- An identification with the experience of High Sensitivity — feeling things more deeply, needing more time to process, finding the world more overwhelming than others seem to
- Exhaustion from masking — from years of performing neurotypicality
- Identity disruption: not knowing who you are when the mask comes off
- Shame around executive function, time, attention, or emotional regulation
- Difficulty in relationships — being misread, misunderstanding others, or both
- Intense sensory sensitivity that others don’t seem to understand or take seriously
- A history of burnout, often tied to environments that required more than you could sustainably give
- A deep sense of meaning, intensity of interest, or creativity that has been pathologized rather than celebrated
- Wondering what kind of life is actually possible for someone like you
My Approach to Neurodiversity-Affirming Therapy
I bring a depth-oriented, psychodynamically informed framework to this work; one that takes neurodivergence seriously as an aspect of identity, not merely as a list of symptoms to manage. I am not a behavioral specialist, and I do not offer skills-based interventions or structured programs. What I offer is something more open-ended: a relational, exploratory space in which we can attend to the whole person.
I have completed BodyDreaming Training, a three-year post-graduate program integrating Somatic Experiencing, Polyvagal Theory, attachment theory, Jungian, and Feminist orientations, and I am currently pursuing advanced psychoanalytic training at the Florida Psychoanalytic Institute. This background shapes how I understand the relationship between nervous system, early experience, identity, and psychological meaning — dimensions that are all deeply relevant in neurodivergent lives.
Many of my clients who are neurodivergent have also experienced relational trauma, chronic stress, or the cumulative injury of years in environments that did not accommodate them. I hold all of this together; the neurological, the relational, the somatic, and the psychological — rather than treating any one dimension in isolation.
Affirming Identity
We begin from a non-pathologizing stance. Neurodivergence is part of who you are — not a problem to be managed, but an aspect of your experience to be understood.
Somatic Awareness
The nervous system is central to neurodivergent and highly sensitive experience. We attend to sensation, regulation, and the body’s experience alongside insight and language.
Depth & Meaning
We explore the psychological meanings you have made of your experience — the stories you carry about yourself, your worth, and your place in the world.
Relational Pacing
I take seriously the relational needs of neurodivergent clients. Sessions are unhurried. I do not rely on unspoken social conventions. I will be direct about how I work.
What This Work Might Include
Every person’s process is shaped by their history, their nervous system, and what they are ready to explore. That said, neurodiversity-affirming depth therapy often moves across several layers.
Processing a late or recent diagnosis
A diagnosis in adulthood, whether it arrives with certainty or remains uncertain, reorganizes the past. We create space for the full range of what that brings: relief, grief, anger, identity questions, and the complex task of rewriting your own story with new understanding.
Exploring the impact of masking
Masking, the sustained effort to present as neurotypical, is often invisible even to the person doing it. Over time, it can erode a sense of self, contribute to burnout, and make it difficult to know what you actually want or need. We work to understand what masking has cost you, and what might be possible when the performance is no longer necessary.
Identity and self-understanding
For many neurodivergent people, the question ‘Who am I when I stop trying to be what others need?’ is not abstract, it is urgent. Depth-oriented therapy offers space to explore this question with seriousness and without the pressure of a predetermined answer.
Relational patterns and attachment
Many neurodivergent people carry complex relational histories: experiences of being misunderstood, rejected, or having to suppress themselves in order to belong. We attend to these patterns; how they formed, how they continue to shape your experience of relationships, and what it might mean to be known more fully.
Burnout and nervous system recovery
Neurodivergent burnout is real, and it is often different from, and more severe than, what the word ‘burnout’ typically implies. It may involve a collapse of the capacity to mask, a loss of previously held skills, or a profound depletion that doesn’t resolve with rest. We work to understand what preceded the burnout, what your nervous system actually needs, and how to build a more sustainable relationship with your own limits.
Sensory experience, high sensitivity, and the body
Sensory sensitivity is often an under addressed dimension of neurodivergent life and it is frequently the texture of daily experience for Highly Sensitive Persons. This is not just a functional challenge. It is an aspect of being that carries meaning, informs relationships, shapes creative life, and determines the felt quality of being alive in the world. We can attend to sensory experience with the same curiosity and seriousness we bring to any other dimension of inner life neither dismissing it nor treating it as a problem to be managed away.
Integration
The goal of this work is not optimization, not helping you function more efficiently in a world that was not built for you. It is helping you develop a more honest, more spacious, and more compassionate relationship with yourself and from that ground, to build a life that is genuinely yours.
Who Tends to Seek This Work
I work with neurodivergent adults who are interested in depth, self-understanding, and the slower work of identity and meaning not primarily symptom management. My clients tend to be thoughtful and self-aware, with a strong inner life and often a long history of trying to make sense of themselves. This includes people navigating ADHD and autism, as well as those who identify as Highly Sensitive Persons, or who simply know that they feel and perceive the world more intensely than most.
You do not need a formal diagnosis to benefit from this work. If you recognize yourself in how neurodivergence or high sensitivity is described; the sensory experience, the relational patterns, the particular texture of your inner life, that recognition is itself a meaningful place to begin.
I also work with teens and young adults navigating these questions. Adolescence is often when neurodivergent identity becomes more visible, more confusing, and more in need of thoughtful support.
This work may be particularly relevant if you are:
- An adult with a recent ADHD or autism diagnosis — or an emerging, unconfirmed sense of neurodivergence
- Someone who identifies as a Highly Sensitive Person, or who has always experienced the world with unusual depth and intensity
- Experiencing burnout that seems tied to years of masking or overextension in environments not built for you
- Navigating identity questions following a diagnosis — who you are, who you have been, what is possible
- Struggling in relationships in ways that feel connected to how your brain works
- A creative, intellectual, or highly sensitive person whose inner life has often felt out of step with the world around you
- A teen or young adult working through a new or recent diagnosis, identity questions, or the transition to adulthood
- Seeking depth-oriented work — not primarily skills, strategies, or a protocol
- Looking for a therapist who will engage with you directly, take your inner life seriously, and not default to neurotypical frameworks
Available in Miami and Throughout Florida
I offer in-person psychotherapy at my office in Coconut Grove, Miami. I also work with clients throughout Florida via secure telehealth —
the same relational depth and unhurried presence, in a virtual format.
Sessions are 50 minutes. Longer sessions are available when clinically appropriate.