mental health THERAPY SERVICES in atlanta, ga and online across georgia, florida, and colorado

ADHD & Autism Therapy

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Support for the way your brain actually works

Therapy that embraces your neurodivergence instead of trying to “fix” it.

Neurodivergence is a wide umbrella: AuDHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, OCD, Tourette's, sensory processing differences, and more. We especially specialize in late-diagnosed and self-diagnosed autistic and ADHD adults: the people who spent decades being called lazy, too sensitive, or "not living up to their potential" before anyone offered a better explanation.

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LESS OF:

  • The pressure to run on instructions written for neurotypical brains

  • Feeling alone in a full room — or exhausted by the palatable version of you that shows up so other people stay comfortable

  • The low-grade dread of transitions, unstructured time, fluorescent lights, and the "small" sensory stuff that isn't small to you

  • The "why can't I just ___ like everyone else seems to" spiral

  • Going from fine to flooded in seconds, then crashing into shutdown or burnout

TOGETHER WE WORK TO:

  • Understanding why task initiation actually breaks down for you and scaffolding skills that doesn't run on willpower or shame

  • Systems that survive a bad-brain day: flexible enough to bend, not the color-coded planner you'll abandon by Thursday

  • Words for what's happening in your body before a meltdown or shutdown, and somatic tools to catch it earlier

  • Room to unmask where it's safe, plus support for the grief and relief that come with finding out later in life

  • Self-advocacy that sounds like "here's what I need," not a three-paragraph apology

Therapy for ADHD & Autism helps you understand your unique patterns and build systems that actually work for your bain and your life.

ADHD & Autism Therapy might be a good fit if…

  • You were the "gifted kid," the "so sensitive" one, or the one who "just needs to apply themselves,” and it's finally starting to click why

  • You can hyperfocus for nine hours on the right thing and can't make yourself send one email on the wrong one

  • You've built a whole identity around being fine, and you're worn out from holding it up

  • Rest feels impossible, productivity feels like proof you're allowed to exist, and burnout keeps finding you anyway

  • You're done with advice that assumes the answer is more discipline

You deserve tools that fit your life, not pressure to fit someone else’s mold.

Our Approach

We don't run everyone through a single method. We pull from several evidence-based modalities and meet your brain where it actually is, because the goal isn’t to make you more "normal," whatever that means. The goal is a fuller life: deeper connection with the people you love, real self-advocacy with partners, employers, and providers, and the experience of feeling like yourself, maybe for the first time.

OUR MODALITIES:

  • Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

  • Somatic Experiencing

  • Ketamine Integration Therapy

Three women sitting on a dark gray sofa in a living room, smiling at the camera. Two women are wearing black tops, while the woman on the left is wearing a black top with white pants. The woman on the right is wearing a black dress and brown sandals. They are surrounded by two matching table lamps with cream shades on small marble side tables, a potted plant, and a cozy rug. Behind them is a wall with modern art framed pictures, a window with blinds to the left, and a well-lit room.
  • No. You don't need a piece of paper to deserve support. A formal diagnosis can open certain doors, like workplace accommodations, some services, your own sense of "okay, I wasn't imagining this," and we're glad to help you pursue one if that's a goal.

    But it's not a prerequisite for working with us. If your lived experience is telling you your brain works this way, that's enough to start here.

  • We don't provide formal ADHD or autism evaluations because that's a specific assessment process. But we're happy to point you toward trusted providers who do it well, especially ones who understand adult and late-identified presentations.

    What we offer is therapy: real support for living in your neurodivergent brain, whether you come in with a formal diagnosis, a self-diagnosis, or a strong hunch.

  • Short answer: yes, though it depends on what you're hoping therapy will do.

    Here's the honest version of the research. For a lot of people, medication and therapy together show the strongest results, because they're doing different jobs. Medication can turn down the volume on core symptoms like attention and impulsivity. Therapy is where you build systems that fit your brain, process the shame, unlearn the masking, and figure out how to actually live in a brain the world wasn't designed for. One doesn't replace the other.

    But "most effective on average" isn't the same as "required." Plenty of people do deep, real work here without medication by choice, because of side effects or access, or because it simply isn't right for them.

    We don't push meds, and we don't pretend they're the only path. We rely on your lived experience to guide treatment, make referrals when it makes sense, and work alongside your medical team so that whatever you choose actually improves your life and not just your symptom checklist.

  • There's no medication that treats autism itself because autism isn't a disease, and it isn't something to be cured.What medication can help with is the stuff that often rides alongside it: anxiety, depression, ADHD, sleep, sensory overload. Some autistic people find those meds genuinely useful; plenty don't need or want them. If a med for a co-occurring piece would make your day-to-day easier, we'll talk it through and connect you with the right provider if you’re not already connected with one.

  • ADHD and autism are lifelong, neurodevelopmental ways of being, not illnesses we're trying to cure, and not things that disappear if you just work hard enough in therapy. (If anyone promises to "cure" your neurodivergence, that's your cue to run.)

    Here's the nuance, though: symptoms aren't always what they look like on the surface. Chronic illness can mimic ADHD. Complex PTSD and adverse childhood experiences can create ADHD-like patterns. Sometimes what got labeled as one thing turns out to be several things tangled together. None of that means your experience isn't real; it means the picture can be more layered than a single diagnosis captures.

    The good news is: we don't have to fully untangle the "why" to help you feel better. Our work is about easing the suffering the symptoms cause and building changes that make your life more livable regardless of root cause. When we take the pressure off figuring it all out, the answers tend to arrive on their own, in a much gentler way.

  • Both. They're equally effective for most people, so it really comes down to what works for your nervous system.

    In-person sessions are available at our Atlanta offices in Georgia. Online sessions are available anywhere you're physically located in Georgia, Florida, or Colorado — that's a licensing rule, and what matters is where you are during the session, not where you officially live.

    A lot of neurodivergent clients prefer online: you can stim, pace, or fidget freely, skip the sensory gauntlet of a waiting room and fluorescent lights, and stay somewhere that's already regulating for you. It also helps if transitions and travel wipe you out, or if fragrance and chemical sensitivities make unfamiliar environments hard. Others find that getting out of the house and having a dedicated space to land helps them focus. Both are completely valid, and we'll figure out what fits you.

  • In essence, we are diverging from the norm. And that's a good thing. These diagnoses have historically come with the notion that we have deficits in our brains... that our brains just don't work correctly. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, here at The Chronic Illness Therapist, we believe that neurodivergent brains aren't so abnormal after all. Rather, they are quite common.

    That doesn't mean nothing is hard. We're not here to slap "superpower" on your worst burnout day. A huge amount of neurodivergent struggle comes from living in a world built almost entirely for neurotypical brains, not from a brain that needs fixing.

You might be wondering…

  • We do not accept insurance. However, we will provide you with a medical receipt (aka: a superbill) that you can use to submit your claims to your insurance. You can also use your FSA/HSA for our appointments.

    Please see our full fee details here.

  • Short version: they're deeply connected, but it's usually less "A causes B" and more "these two keep feeding each other." Adults with ADHD are significantly more likely to experience depression than people without it, and there are a few reasons why.

    The one we see most is depression that grows out of years of unsupported ADHD. When you've spent a lifetime working twice as hard for half the credit (missing deadlines you genuinely cared about, getting called lazy or careless, masking constantly, bracing for the next bit of rejection) it wears down your sense of self. That slow erosion is fertile ground for depression. Living undiagnosed and unsupported in a world that wasn't built for you is genuinely depleting.

    There's also real overlap in the symptoms themselves. Low motivation, trouble concentrating, exhaustion, and disrupted sleep show up in both; which is exactly why some people get treated for depression for years, never quite get better, and only later find out ADHD was part of the picture all along. And once depression sets in, it tends to amplify ADHD symptoms, making focus and follow-through even harder.

    The good news is you don't have to perfectly separate the two to start feeling better. We treat the whole picture (the brain, burnout, and shame underneath) so the relief is real, not just symptom whack-a-mole.

  • Occupational therapists are often the right referral for a formal sensory assessment and for direct sensory work, like sensory integration therapy. If that's what you need, we'll gladly point you toward a good one.

    Worth knowing: "Sensory Processing Disorder" isn't actually a standalone diagnosis in the DSM, but the experiences are very real and well-documented, sensory differences are written right into the autism criteria, and the debate over the label is part of why OTs handle the assessment side.

    But here's where talk therapy comes in — especially the somatic, nervous-system-based work we do. We're not changing the volume of the input so much as changing your relationship to it and your capacity around it. That looks like:

    • Catching overload earlier. Somatic work builds interoception (your ability to feel what's happening in your body) so you can notice you're nearing your limit before you hit full meltdown or shutdown.

    • Recovering from a dysregulated nervous system. A sensory meltdown isn't a character flaw; it's a flooded nervous system. Somatic Experiencing works directly with that system so you can come back down and recover faster.

    • Unlearning the "push through it" reflex. So many neurodivergent people override their sensory limits to seem fine, and they pay for it later in burnout. We help you stop overriding and start trusting what your body is telling you.

    • Dropping the shame. If you grew up being called "too sensitive" or "dramatic," there's usually a layer of self-blame to unwind. Your sensitivity isn't a defect to apologize for.

    • Advocating for your needs. Naming what helps and asking for it without apology.

    In short: OT tends to address the sensory input; therapy addresses what your nervous system, your emotions, and your sense of self do in response to it. At their best, the two work side by side.

  • "Combined type" means you meet the criteria for both the inattentive side and the hyperactive-impulsive side. So you get the daydreamy, lose-your-keys, can't-start-the-task experience and the restless, fidgety, blurt-it-out, hard-to-wait experience at the same time. No wonder it feels like a lot.

    In practice it tends to look like:

    • Inattention: losing focus mid-sentence, getting pulled away by every shiny thing, mistakes on stuff you genuinely know, a graveyard of half-finished projects.

    • Hyperactivity-impulsivity: physical restlessness, a motor that won't idle, interrupting because you'll lose the thought if you wait, saying yes (or buying the thing) before the slower part of your brain catches up.

    Put those two together and the ordinary parts of life, like focusing, staying organized, and managing your energy, can feel very overwhelming.

    Here's what's actually at the heart of how we work with it:

    • Self-compassion, top-down and bottom-up. Top-down means loosening the "I'm lazy / I'm a mess" stories. Bottom-up means working through the body sensations, because shame shows up there too, not just in your thoughts.

    • Values-driven goals. Before we touch a single system, we figure out what actually matters to you, and start there. Motivation is a lot easier to find when the goal is genuinely yours instead of someone else's idea of "having it together."

    • Emotion regulation that fits an ADHD nervous system. Tools for the 0-to-100 intensity, rejection sensitivity, and overwhelm, withOUT asking you to flatten your feelings to get there.

    • Executive-function scaffolding, not willpower. We build external supports, like externalized reminders, body-doubling, friction-reduction, and time-perception workarounds, so follow-through doesn't hinge on you white-knuckling it.

    • Working with your attention, not against it. ADHD brains run on interest, novelty, and urgency. Rather than forcing neurotypical focus, we design around how your attention actually engages.

    • Understanding impulsivity instead of just suppressing it. We look at where that fast, spontaneous wiring costs you and build a pause where it helps all while keeping the parts that make you quick, creative, and genuinely fun to be around.

  • That's incredibly common, and it usually isn't a you problem. A lot of neurodivergent people have sat through therapy that assumed a neurotypical brain: "just make a schedule," "try harder," "manage your stress better," advice that never accounted for how your brain is wired or what it might need in order to achieve those tips in the first place.

    When the approach doesn't fit, it can leave you feeling even more broken than when you walked in.

    We start from the opposite assumption: your brain isn't the problem to be corrected. If past therapy felt like being asked to mask in the one room you came to stop masking, this work will feel very different.

Looking for additional support but not therapy?

Welcome to the Waiting Room

A community membership for people living with chronic illness A space for conversation, reflection, and shared understanding with others who truly get it. Open to anyone, anywhere. Not therapy. No clinical relationship, just connection and insight. This is for people who want to feel less alone in it all.

Let’s find what works for you.

Book a discovery call to ask questions, share your goals, and explore if ADHD & Autism therapy is the right fit.

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