ADHD Therapy in California
Adult ADHD often manifests as always feeling like we are missing something or as underlying fear of being in trouble.
You may work best under threat or stress. You have three good systems you abandoned. You can focus for nine hours on something interesting and avoid answering an email for a week. You are known as reliable and you know what that costs. You have been told you are bright for as long as you can remember, and you have spent a long time quietly wondering if something is missing or why it feels so hard sometimes.
What ADHD therapy actually addresses
Medication, when it helps, tends to help in quieting the noise and improving our ability to focus. It does not do much in the way of processing everything that happened before it.
The compensation
Most late identified adults built elaborate systems or tried a new hack to make things easier and get the task done. At some point we feel like we have tried everything, but still can’t get it right. What looks like sudden burnout is often a way of processing that is at odds with a world designed for neurotypical people.
The self concept
A long stretch of unexplained underperformance relative to your own sense of your ability produces a durable theory about yourself. Usually the theory is that you are lazy, or a fraud, or that you squandered something. A diagnosis does not dislodge it. That takes actual work.
Relationship difficulties
ADHD is rarely contained to the person who has it. If the strain is showing up in your relationship, that may be better addressed with both partners present. Couples therapy
What I do and do not do
I do not diagnose ADHD and I do not prescribe medication. However, I work with my clients to process, better understand, and create environments as well as routines that maximize their strengths leading to a fulfilling, successful life.
I have a network of professionals including psychiatrists and psychologists to help you navigate your wants and needs based on your goals. I help my clients seek assessment, medication, and/or simply understand what neurodiversity means for them based on their needs.
You do not need a diagnosis to start therapy with me. A meaningful number of my clients are working on exactly the question of whether this is what is going on.
Late diagnosis
Getting diagnosed well into adulthood is not primarily good news, whatever the internet suggests. It is an explanation, which is a relief. It is also a rereading of your entire history, which takes time and is frequently experienced as grief.
There is usually a period of going back through it. The degree you did not finish. The job you lost. The relationship where you were told for years that you did not care. Reinterpreting those with new information is real work and it does not happen in a week.
AuDHD and autistic adults
I work with autistic adults and with people whose ADHD and autism co-occur, where the usual ADHD advice partially fits and partially makes things worse.
If you are late identified and have spent your life masking, expect some of the work to be about what is underneath the mask, which is often unfamiliar territory for the person wearing it. I adapt how I work: pacing, directness, how much I ask you to read between the lines. You should not have to adapt to a standard format.
How I work with ADHD clients
Sessions are adapted to toward how you process. If you think out loud, we do that. If you need something written down at the end, we do that. If you have been late twice and are dreading the conversation, we simply make the necessary adjustments.
Common questions
Do I need a diagnosis before starting therapy?
No. Many clients start while still working out whether ADHD is the right explanation.
Can therapy help if I am already medicated and it is working?
This is the most common reason people come. Medication addresses the mechanism. It does not address what the mechanism cost you, or the habits and self concept you built around it.
Is it ADHD or burnout?
Frequently both, and they feed each other. Undiagnosed ADHD makes burnout more likely, and burnout makes ADHD symptoms markedly worse. Untangling them is often the first useful thing we do.
Do you work with ADHD in couples?
Yes, and that is often the better setting when there are a dynamic of misunderstanding and chronic frustration from processing differences.