For Autistic and ADHD teens and adults in Louisiana

Neurodiversity Affirming Counseling

Sometimes it feels like everybody else got the instructions to life but you.

You find yourself practicing conversations, feeling like you have to speak “correctly” in order to fit in. No matter how much you practice, you only feel exhausted at the end of the day when you’re finally able to relax in your own home. Others might have told you you’re “quirky” or “weird”. You might even start to tell yourself that you’re just “lazy” or “too much”. You long to feel understood.

Outwardly, you’re a high-achiever. But inside, you’re barely keeping it together.

You find yourself working twice as hard as others just to keep up, often waiting until the last minute to finish major projects leaving you feeling overwhelmed and exhausted. Your family and friends laugh about how you can be so successful and still constantly put off your own laundry.

Any piece of criticism or rejection stays with you.

You can’t stop thinking about a bad grade on a test, a breakup, or a mistake that you made at work, constantly replaying the scenario when you try to sleep.

Your body craves sensory input like constantly snapping a hair band on your wrist, playing with jewelry, chewing on straws or even your cheeks, obsessively finding the “perfect” candle, or playing the same songs over and over again. At the same time, you almost feel physical pain in your head when there’s too much going on around you: a loud tv show, multiple people trying to talk to you at once, a bad smell from the trash you forgot to take out.

Others try to help, but they don’t really get what it’s like to be in your head.

They might say things like:

“But you did too well in school to have ADHD”
“But you have a lot of friends, you can’t be autistic”
“You can’t diagnose yourself from a Tik Tok video”

Neurodiversity and Medical Trauma

Some Autistic and ADHD experiences can make it extra hard to recover from medical trauma or find comfort living with a chronic illness due to:

Interoceptive Awareness - You might hyprfocus on each body part or, on the other extreme, you might find it difficult to understand your body’s cues that tell you when it’s time to eat or when you’re in pain
Sensory Overload - Some medical experiences can be full of sensory stimuli, such as loud medical equipment, uncomfortable beds, and strong fluorescent lights, which can make you feel overwhelmed and unable to focus.
Masking - Sometimes when you learn to mask all of your tendencies in public spaces, it can be hard for you to tell others when you’re in pain or communicate with your medical providers.

LEARN MORE ABOUT COUNSELING FOR MEDICAL TRAUMA

You crave authenticity and “straightforwardness”. You feel trapped between wanting to fit in and wanting to be yourself.

Neurodiversity affirming counseling can help you feel like yourself.

You deserve a space where you can take off the mask and be fully yourself. Neurodiversity affirming counseling means we will work with your thought patterns, not against them, to bring about real change in a way that feels authentic to who you are. You don’t have to feel alienated or isolated.

Whether you’ve been diagnosed since childhood, or you’re just starting to explore if you might be Autistic, ADHD, or AuDHD, counseling can help you understand yourself and find coping tools that work for your specific sensory needs and special interests. Sometimes when we spend so long ignoring our body’s needs to try to fit in with others who are neurotypical, it can be uncomfortable or even painful to reconnect to our own cues again. In counseling, you can learn to prioritize your comfort so that you can feel connected to others and to your own body.

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