Category Archives: Neurodivergence & Identity

When My Diagnosis Became Their Healing: How Understanding Autism Changed All of Us By Michelle Labine PhD December 202 I had been circling around the idea that I might be Autistic for almost eight years before I was formally diagnosed: ADHD at 48, Autistic at 50. By the time I sat in that final assessment […]

Masking on Overdrive: How ADHD Amplifies Autistic Adaptation By Michelle Labine, PhD December 2025 There is a particular kind of tiredness that settles into my body when I think about the years I spent adapting myself to everyone around me. I hesitate to use the word masking because it has never sat right with me […]

The Hidden Burnout: When ADHD Drive Meets Autistic Exhaustion By Michelle Labine, PhD A December Reflection This is a topic I’ve written about before in different forms, and the fact that I keep circling back to it tells me just how deeply it lives in my bones. This push-pull between ADHD drive and Autistic exhaustion […]

Part One: When the Mind Speaks in Images Autistic Knowing in the Therapy Room By Michelle Labine, PhD November 2025 As an Autistic therapist, one of the most reliable ways I understand what’s unfolding in a session doesn’t come from structured thought or linear reasoning. Instead, it comes as an image sudden, symbolic, and quietly […]

Feeling “Childlike” in Power or Learning Situations: A Common AuDHD Pattern By Michelle Labine, PhD October 2025 When an AuDHD woman says she feels “childlike” or “small” in certain situations, she isn’t being metaphorical. It’s a full-body experience and a visceral shrinking that shows up as a quieting of voice, a sudden loss of words, […]

Autism + Environment = Outcome Understanding the Equation as a Late-Diagnosed AuDHD Woman By Michelle Labine, PhD  October 2025 For most of my life, I believed the way I responded to the world revealed something inherently wrong with me; that I was too sensitive, too intense, too emotional. What I couldn’t see then was that […]

Who Am I Outside the Mask? By Michelle Labine, PhD   September 2025 My mask was never about being the “easygoing partner.” I wasn’t that. My mask was achievement. I was the one who got things done the lists, the planning, the remembering, the fixing. If something needed to be taken care of, I was […]

When We Reduce Autism to an “Epidemic” Caused by Tylenol, We Erase Accountability By Michelle Labine, PhD September 2025   The term “autism” was first used by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1911, but he used it in the context of schizophrenia, to describe a form of withdrawal into one’s inner world. The first descriptions […]

Trump’s “Cure” for Autism Is Nothing New: It’s Recycled Eugenics By Michelle Labine, PhD  September 2025 President Donald Trump has declared that he has “found an answer” to autism. He has linked autism to women taking Tylenol during pregnancy and promoted leucovorin as a possible treatment. He is presenting this as groundbreaking news, as if […]

The Neurodivergent Cycle: Slow Start, Hyperfocus, and the Crash By Michelle Labine, PhD September 2025 Many neurodivergent people whether living with ADHD, autism, or both describe a familiar pattern in their work, creativity, and daily routines. The path from task to completion is not linear, rather it’s a cycle. The Slow Start: difficulty initiating tasks, […]