AuDHD Counselling in Canberra
Neuro-affirming support for adults with both Autism and ADHD
If you’re looking for AuDHD counselling in Canberra, you may already know that living with both Autism and ADHD isn’t just a simple overlap of traits. It’s often a dynamic, sometimes conflicting experience, where different needs, patterns, and sensitivities interact in ways that don’t fully align with either neurotype on its own:
- You need routines, and it feels impossible to maintain them.
- You crave deep focus, and some days the focus doesn’t show up at all.
- You have sensory sensitivities, and you are sensory seeking.
- You prefer careful planning, and you respond impulsively.
- You’re exhausted by socialising, and hunger for connection.
As someone with both Autism and ADHD, you know that neither diagnosis fully captures your experience on its own. You also know that most supports were built for one or the other, not both and the particular push-pull of AuDHD. It’s a complex picture that often goes unrecognised for years. Whether you have one, two or no diagnoses but the mix of both seems to fit your experience, you’re not too complicated. You are accepted here. This page is for you.
Understanding AuDHD in adults
AuDHD is increasingly recognised as its own lived experience, rather than just “autism plus ADHD”. When both neurotypes are present, they don’t simply sit alongside each other, they interact. This can mean experiencing competing needs (such as those detailed above), or traits that mask or compensate for each other in ways that make self-understanding more difficult.
Many AuDHD adults describe feeling like they are constantly adjusting between different internal states. It is exhausting and can contribute to burnout, self-doubt, or a sense of inconsistency. When your experience is approached as separate parts, support feels fragmented or ineffective. Recognising AuDHD as an integrated experience means support is more integrated and effective too.
How I approach AuDHD counselling
Because AuDHD is an integrated experience, my approach to counselling is integrated as well. Rather than separating Autism and ADHD, we explore how your traits interact, and how your energy, attention, sensory profile, emotional regulation, and day-to-day functioning operate as a whole system.
This might include:
- Supporting regulation in a way that respects both sensory needs and the need for stimulation
- Working with executive functioning in flexible ways that adapt to variability and inconsistency
- Exploring identity, especially for late-diagnosed adults
- Unpacking masking and its impact on burnout and self-trust
- Building sustainable ways of living that actually fit you
A note on terminology
AuDHD is a community term, not a clinical one (you won’t find it in a diagnostic manual). I use it here because it’s the language many people use to describe their own experience, and because it captures something that “autism and ADHD” said separately doesn’t quite: the integration of both, the way they interact, the specific experience of being wired this way.
Yet some people do not identify with the AuDHD description. For them Autism and ADHD feel like different parts of their experience. That’s completely fine. If you use different language to describe yourself, such as Autistic with ADHD, ADHD and Autistic, multiply neurodivergent, or something else entirely, bring whatever language fits you.
Late diagnosis and the AuDHD experience
Many AuDHD adults receive one diagnosis before the other but the picture still felt incomplete. I’ve heard many people say that starting medication for ADHD allowed their Autism traits to become more visible and it was only then that Autism was considered.
Other adults receive request assessment for both simultaneously after decades of being told they were anxious, difficult, oversensitive, underperforming, or simply confusing. The combination of sometimes opposing traits make identification of either or both Autism and ADHD more difficult and alternative explanations may have been given for years before the label AuDHD made sense of it all.
Yet, still many adults with AuDHD doubt themselves and even their diagnoses precisely because of the confusing actions of these opposing traits.
Add to this the grief and identity realignment that often follow a late AuDHD diagnosis, and it easy to understand why so many people feel quite at sea. Working through the emotions and reframing of one’s life needs time and space.
And then comes the work of discovering who you are under all the masking and performing, and who you now want the world to see.
You don’t need a formal diagnosis for either
Long waitlists and high costs are significant barriers for accessing formal diagnoses. There is no need to go without support while you wait. I work with self-identifying AuDHD clients.
If you’ve arrived at a clear understanding of your experience through research, community, and recognition, that is valid. If you have already been through assessments only to be told you are not ADHD and/or Autistic but you still feel these neurotypes fit your experience, I will take that seriously.
I also work with people who have one formal diagnosis and are exploring whether the other might also be part of their makeup.
What we might work on together
When I work with AuDHD clients we might work on:
- Late diagnosis: the grief, the relief, the identity renegotiation, and the complicated relationship with a history that’s being seen through a new lens
- Autistic burnout: the physical and mental fatigue and diminished capacity that is complicated by an inability to rest because the ADHD keeps firing
- The boom and bust cycle: the ADHD drive for novelty and stimulation followed by the Autistic crash from sensory and emotional overload
- Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD): in the context of AuDHD where the emotional intensity of ADHD meets the social hypersensitivity of autism
- Unmasking: the slow, careful process of figuring out who you are underneath the layers of performance, and where and when to let the mask down
- Relationships: the people who didn’t understand, the ones who do, and the work of building connections that don’t require you to disappear to maintain
- Self-compassion: rebuilding a relationship with yourself that isn’t defined by the gap between how you function and how the world expects you to
- Executive function: not as problems to be fixed but as experiences to be understood and worked with rather than against
- Life transitions: the moments when the scaffolding of the familiar falls away and you are need to make sense of a new landscape
How I work
My approach is Humanistic, Person-centred, and Integrative. I follow your needs and use the approach that fits what you bring. Along with person-centred listening, approaches I draw from include Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Parts Work, Motivational Interviewing, and creative approaches.
For AuDHD specifically, I find that Parts Work can be particularly helpful. Many AuDHD adults carry a formidable inner critic (and many other inner voices) who have a lot to say on the myriad contradictions, the failures to meet expectations, the moments of being too much and not enough simultaneously. Understanding our parts, rather than struggling with them, tends to increase self-compassion and understanding.
ACT offers a way of working with the difficult thoughts and feelings that accumulate around an AuDHD experience, not by challenging or eliminating them, but by changing the relationship with them. For people who’ve spent years being told their thinking is the problem, this is a genuinely different kind of conversation and one that feels quite liberating.
Sessions have no fixed structure. We go at your pace. Neuronormative performance is not required. There is no expectation of eye contact, stimming is welcome, fidgets are available, and homework is your choice. This is your time to be your authentic self – and often to discover what that actually is.
Ready to take the first step?
Book a free 15 minute call
Reaching out is the hardest part. You don't need to have it all figured out, or know exactly what you want to say. A tentative hello is enough.
But, a very important factor in the success of therapy is the relationship you have with your therapist.
I recommend prospective clients book a free 15 minute consultation to get a sense of whether we are a good fit before you commit. There's no obligation and no pressure.
Click the button below to access my online booking page and find a time that is convenient for you. We can speak by phone or video call.
Please note that I only see people 15 years old or over.
Please also check out my FAQs if you have other questions. They may be answered there.
Request contact by email
To contact me via email, please send a message via the contact form below.
A note for practitioners
GP, psychiatrist, psychologist, occupational therapist, allied health referrals
If you're a GP, psychiatrist, psychologist, occupational therapist, or allied health practitioner looking for a referral pathway for clients, I'd be glad to help. I work collaboratively and am happy to have a brief conversation before or after a referral to support continuity of care.
I also accept referrals for self- or plan-managed NDIS participants.
You can reach me directly on 0411 035 820 or via the contact form above.