POV: Your Therapist Asks If You’ve Ever Been Assessed for Autism/ADHD 

Understanding the Conversation About Neurodiversity – Part 2

By Lisa Healy, Senior Accredited Psychotherapist 

Common Emotional Reactions to Being Viewed Through the Neurodiversity Lens

If the suggestion of being identified as neurodivergent feels surprising or even upsetting, that probably makes sense. Here are some common reactions you might experience, and why they are completely valid:

• Feeling Seen and Validated
  • For some, this conversation feels like a breakthrough. If you’ve already been questioning whether you might be neurodivergent, this might bring a sense of clarity and relief. It might suddenly feel like you have permission to explore things more deeply.
  • It could be the validation you’ve been waiting for, helping you understand your history, experiences and struggles in a new light. For some people, it may be that just having a healthcare professional bring up neurodiversity can be enough for them to start down the road of adjusting their lives to fit better, without having to get a formal identification. Especially within the autistic community, self-identification as autistic is widely accepted and seen as valid for accessing support systems.
  • A conversation like this one with your healthcare provider can facilitate you exploring what it may mean for you if you were neurodivergent, helping you to consider your needs, strengths, and challenges, and set you on the road to a more compassionate relationship with yourself.

• Confusion, Distrust, Shame, Anger
  • If you’ve never considered neurodivergence before, it’s normal to feel confused, taken aback, or even insulted by the suggestion. You might wonder “Why would they think that about me?” or wonder what they mean by it.
  • You might feel self-conscious or exposed, as if your healthcare provider is seeing some private aspect of you that you don’t even know is there. You might also feel defensive, as if the suggestion implies there’s something “wrong” with you. It’s completely normal to feel uneasy or uncomfortable, especially as neurodivergence carries a stigma or is often misunderstood.
  • You may worry that what they are really saying is that you just have to accept things as they are and that they can’t help you. You may worry that your healthcare provider is being a reductionist and trying to fit you with a label rather than explore all of your nuances and complexity. You may carry a particular stereotype of what neurodivergent people are like and struggle to identify yourself in that representation.

These feelings are part of the complexity of making sense of this identity and reflect the fact that exploring neurodivergence can be deeply personal.

What Health Professionals Hope to Achieve by Suggesting Neurodivergence

When a healthcare provider suggests exploring a neurodivergent identity profile, their goal isn’t to label or categorize you. It’s to help you better understand yourself and find the support that works for you.

As a psychotherapist who has had a number of these conversations with my clients over the years, and as a neurodivergent person who came to my identification as an adult, here’s some insight into what your healthcare provider may really want for you:

• Better Understanding of Yourself: Getting to know and understand all the different parts of yourself, making sense of what has shaped your path through life and what shapes your experiences here and now is a key part of having your needs met effectively. It allows you to work on accepting yourself while also making whatever changes might be available to you to make your life better.
• More Self-Compassion: With a clearer understanding of your brain’s unique wiring, you may begin to practice more self-compassion instead of self-blame. Recognizing that your difficulties are not your fault is a powerful step toward healing, and it allows you to start taking action to prevent future suffering in a more informed place.

• Managing Your Energy: Many neurodivergent individuals spend significant energy “masking” or doing their best to fit in. Masking can mean suppressing things that would be considered inappropriate or not socially acceptable and adopting the behaviours that are expected of us, and it can be a lot of work.
  • There may be things you have learned not to do that could bring you lots of joy, satisfaction or peace. There may be things that you’ve learned to do that cost you a lot more than they’re worth. Many people who go unidentified until adulthood have been masking for so long and so effectively that it’s difficult to imagine what you might be like without it, which can be scary.
  • Being identified as neurodivergent can give you permission to start acknowledging your mask and start to use it more selectively, reducing mental and emotional strain. You might find it easier to practice “unmasking” with people who are supportive, accepting and encouraging as you start to figure out what feels right for you.
• Tailored Resources and Support: Whether with a formal identification or through self-identification, you can start to access strategies and therapies designed to work for you, not against you. Instead of trying to fit into a mould that doesn’t suit you, you can focus on what helps you thrive.
• Healing from Trauma: Not everyone who is identified as neurodivergent as an adult will connect their experiences with trauma, but for some people the journey to identification is a bumpy one. Looking back on your life with this new perspective can change everything (and you know how we feel about change?) and it often brings enormous emotional upheaval.
  • After years of possibly blaming yourself for your challenges or not being able to figure out why everything is just so hard, you might finally have answers and recognise that it’s not all your fault. There can be a real sense of loss and grief for the life you might have had if you had known this about yourself and had support earlier, and you might feel angry that it was missed. There’s a journey to go on to process what neurodiversity means to you, but hopefully, it is a path that nurtures a gentler life for you. An assessment and formal identification can help you heal from the trauma of not being seen, understood or supported in the ways you most needed to be.

Final Thoughts: Should You Get Assessed?

The decision about whether to have an assessment will come down to whether or not you feel like this would be helpful for you. A starting point for figuring this out could be to ask yourself some questions about what being identified as neurodivergent would mean for you. For example:

• Would this help me to understand myself and my life experiences better?
• What would it mean for how I speak to myself and about myself especially when I’m responding to challenges and setbacks?
• Would this allow me to make some meaningful changes to how I choose to live?
• Would this allow me to access supports that I might not have considered before?
• Could this help me to advocate for myself with more precision in work and in my relationships?
• Would a formal assessment and identification offer me something that self-reflection and informal learning couldn’t?
• How would it be for me if I went for an assessment and it turns out I’m not neurodivergent after all?

The team at EBTC are committed to providing neurodiversity-affirmative care. We know living life neurodivergent brings so many hardships, but we’re also champions of the undeniable and insurmountable strengths that often sit alongside those hardships. We want for you to be able to live the life that fits you best and allows you to feel fulfilled, valued, and cared for, and we want you to find the smoothest paths to get there.

A lot of us have gotten very comfy with having the neurodiversity chat with our clients when we think it would be helpful for them. Because we are so comfy with it and we are so optimistic that this could be a starting point in things getting better for you, we sometimes find ourselves out-of-sync with the person sitting across from us who might be less ready to hear this suggestion than we imagined.

If this is you, and you’re experiencing an avalanche of emotions and thoughts about what we’ve just suggested, that’s okay! Take your time. It makes sense that it’s a lot to take in.

Ultimately, the decision to pursue a neurodiversity assessment is deeply personal. If this is a conversation you’ve had with your healthcare provider, take your time to process it. Ask questions, seek second opinions, and consider what feels right for you.

Remember, exploring neurodivergence isn’t about fixing what’s “wrong” with you. It’s about giving you the language and tools to better understand yourself, access more appropriate support, and thrive in ways that are authentic to who you are.

*Psst, likely-ADHDers: Here’s the TL;DR, because I know you scrolled, saw a wall of text, and your brain said “nope.”
Your therapist sees you. They see the things you’ve been carrying that were never your fault, and they want things to get better for you. This gentle nudge is about letting you know that while life can be hard when you don’t realise you’re different, it can also be pretty freeing (and even kind of fun) to find out you’re just a little neurospicy.

About Lisa Healy

Lisa is a trauma-informed psychotherapist and certified EMDR therapist, who works to support adults to have better mental health and to live more content and fulfilling lives. With a focus on offering neurodiversity-affirmative therapy, she helps clients navigate their emotional experiences with compassion and understanding.

Lisa offers therapy appointments both online and in-person in Galway on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays up to 2pm. To be matched to the right therapist for you, please contact EBTC at 091-727777 or email us at on secretary@ebtc.ie to book an assessment appointment today.