How do I know if I should get tested for ADHD or Autism?
Honestly? If you're reading this page, that's probably already a signal worth paying attention to.
Most of the adults I work with have spent years — sometimes decades — chalking up their struggles to laziness, anxiety, or just "being too much." They've tried harder, organized better, apologized more, and still felt like they were running a race with different rules than everyone else.
Some of what brings people to me: trouble finishing things you care deeply about, a lifelong sense of watching other people do "normal" effortlessly while you're white-knuckling it, emotional responses that feel bigger than the moment, rejection that hits like a freight train, a brain that either hyperfocuses or won't focus at all, or the creeping sense that you've been masking who you are for so long you're not sure what's underneath.
You don't need to have failed out of school or been in crisis. Many of my clients are high-functioning in the ways the world can see and exhausted in the ways it can't. A good assessment isn't about confirming that you're broken — it's about finally having language for your experience, and a map that was actually made for how your brain works.
If you're not sure, I offer brief consultations. We can figure out together whether a full evaluation makes sense for you.
What does the process look like?
I want you to know upfront: this isn't a rushed, conveyor-belt experience.
Getting a thorough, affirming assessment as an adult takes time, and I've designed this process to honor that. Each step builds on the last, and you'll never feel like a file moving across someone's desk. Here's what it looks like from beginning to end.
A free 30-minute consultation.
We start here, always. Before any commitment is made, we meet on Zoom to talk about what's bringing you in and get a sense of whether we're a good fit. This conversation matters to me. You should feel confident in the person you're trusting with something this personal.
A clinical interview (about one hour).
This is a real conversation — about your history, your current life, the things that have felt hard for as long as you can remember, and the things you've built around them. It isn't a checklist. It's the foundation that shapes everything that follows.
Self-report measures, completed electronically on your own time.
Between sessions, you'll complete a set of standardized questionnaires that give me important data about how you experience yourself across different areas of life. You do these at your own pace, in your own space.
A full testing day.
This is the most involved part of the process. We meet for structured, live assessment tasks that can run six hours or more — with breaks woven in, and the option to divide the work across two days if that's what you need. I want you to be able to show up as your fullest self, not burned out before we're halfway through. All of your sessions, including this one, should be completed from a private, comfortable space — your home or somewhere else where you feel safe and won't be interrupted.
The written report.
Once testing is complete, I take time to score, interpret, and write. This is where everything comes together: your clinical interview, your self-report data, your performance on testing tasks, your history. I'm not just looking for a yes or no on diagnosis — I'm building a picture of how your particular brain works.
A one-hour feedback session.
When the report is ready, we meet and read it together. I mean that literally — we go through it, section by section. This is your opportunity to ask questions, add context, and make sure that what's on the page actually reflects who you are. Your report will include a full interpretation of the data collected throughout the process, a clear determination about diagnosis, and a thorough, personalized list of recommendations — not boilerplate suggestions, but supports designed around your specific profile, your real life, and what you actually need to thrive.
The full process typically takes several weeks from your initial consultation to your feedback session, depending on scheduling. It's a meaningful investment of time and energy, and it's designed to be — because you deserve an answer that's actually worth having.
Is this process affirming if I'm BIPOC, queer, or a woman who was diagnosed late?
This is the right question to ask, and I'm glad you're asking it before you invest your time and trust.
The short answer: yes, and it matters to me that you ask.
The longer answer: most of what we know about autism and ADHD was built on research with white boys. The diagnostic criteria, the clinical lore, the cultural image of who "looks like" they have ADHD or are autistic — all of it carries that bias forward. I've built my practice around the principle that culturally humble assessment isn't a niche specialty — it's just competent care.
If you're BIPOC:
If your struggles were overlooked, reframed, or explained away by systems — educational, medical, familial — that weren't designed to see you clearly, you've probably been missed. Repeatedly. You also may wish to explore the intersection of identity- based adaptive trauma responses and neurodivergence to understand which is which and whether different healing methods are needed for each. Culturally humble assessment means I interpret the data I collect with your full context in mind, not despite it. I don't pathologize the coping strategies that made sense given your life, and I won't map your experience onto a white, cisgender template that was never built for you.
If you're queer:
If you figured out early that masking was survival — that shrinking yourself, reading rooms, and performing normalcy kept you safer — that skill set can make it genuinely hard for clinicians to see what's underneath. Let's untangle protective survival strategies/ trauma responses from neurodivergence. I understand that the experience of being queer shapes how neurodivergence shows up, how it gets hidden, and what it costs. I won't ask you to separate those parts of yourself to fit neatly into a diagnostic box. You get to show up whole.
If you're a person who has spent years wondering if something was missed…
Late diagnosis is its own kind of grief. There can be relief and rage and mourning all at once — for the years you spent thinking something was fundamentally wrong with you, for the accommodations you never got, for the version of yourself you might have known sooner. I take that seriously. We go at your pace, and the feedback session is designed to be a space where you can feel all of it. You are not behind. You are here now, and this is where it changes.
What does it mean that your evaluations are trauma-informed?
It means I come to this work understanding that trauma isn't separate from the story — it's often woven through it in ways that have never been named.
PTSD and complex PTSD are themselves forms of neurodivergence. And just like autism and ADHD, many people who have experienced trauma move through their lives building accommodations around symptoms they never had language for — the hypervigilance they thought was just anxiety, the emotional flooding they assumed was a personality flaw, the exhaustion of always being braced for something. They adapted. They survived. And they often had no idea that what they were navigating had a name.
We also now understand that experiences of oppression — racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism — can register in the body as trauma. These are not abstract social issues that live outside the therapy room. They show up in nervous systems, in coping patterns, in the ways people have learned to take up space or disappear. I take that seriously.
In practice, this means I include measures specifically designed to assess trauma as part of the evaluation process. During the clinical interview, I ask about trauma history in a way that is gentle, thoughtful, and never required to go further than you are ready to go.
It also means that sometimes, what emerges from an evaluation is layered. You may leave with a diagnosis — or more than one — and a set of recommendations that includes trauma treatment alongside the supports related to that diagnosis. That's not a complication. That's a more complete picture of you, and a more grounded map for where to go next.