I work with autistic adults across the spectrum, including those who are late-diagnosed, those who have self-identified after years of feeling different, and those still in the process of figuring it out. There's no expectation here to mask, perform neurotypicality, or justify your identity.
What autism is, and isn't
Autism is a neurodevelopmental difference, not a disorder to be cured. It shapes how you perceive, process, communicate, and connect. The diagnostic frameworks are still catching up to what autistic adults actually experience, particularly autistic adults who weren't picked up as children, which often means women, non-binary people, and anyone who learned to mask early.
What people describe varies enormously: differences in sensory processing, social communication, executive function, emotional regulation, special interests, the need for predictability, the cost of unmasking. Autism doesn't look one way. It's a profile, not a checklist.
A note on language: I use identity-first language (“autistic person”) as the majority of autistic adults prefer, but I'll follow your lead on what feels right for you. Same with diagnosis, formal diagnosis isn't required to come to therapy or to use the language that fits your experience.
How I work with autistic clients
Therapy is adapted to suit how you actually communicate and process. That means:
No assumed shared frameworks. I won't assume metaphor lands, that direct questions feel safe, that eye contact is wanted, or that processing time should match the standard. You can take silence. You can think out loud. You can ask me to repeat or rephrase. You can email me afterward if something comes up that didn't fit in the session.
Working with sensory and regulatory reality. Burnout, overwhelm, shutdown, and the cost of masking are real. We can work with all of it without pathologising it.
Late diagnosis processing. For many people, identifying as autistic later in life brings up grief, relief, anger, and a re-narrating of your own history. There's a lot to make sense of. Therapy can hold that.
Relationships, work, family. Navigating a world built for neurotypical brains has costs. We can work on the practical strategies as well as the emotional weight of it.
I don't carry out autism assessments or provide diagnoses. If you're looking to be assessed, I'm happy to signpost you toward appropriate assessment services in Ireland.
What therapy with me looks like
You don't have to perform competence here. You don't have to apologise for not making eye contact, for being literal, for needing things spelled out, for being too much, or for not being enough. You're allowed to bring your actual self.
Many of my clients describe the relief of being in a space where they don't have to translate themselves. That relief is the starting point. From there, we work on what's actually brought you to therapy.