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 […]