Support built for
the complexity of
both.

AuDHD — the co-occurrence of autism and ADHD — is not simply the two conditions added together. It is its own distinct experience, with a specific internal conflict that most clinicians don't fully understand. If you've been trying to explain your experience using either diagnosis alone and it never quite fits, this may be why.

What makes AuDHD distinct

Autism and ADHD co-occur at high rates — research suggests 50–70% of autistic adults also have ADHD. But the combination creates contradictions that neither diagnosis alone captures. The autistic need for routine and predictability collides with the ADHD drive toward novelty and stimulation. The autistic preference for deep focus on specific topics meets the ADHD difficulty sustaining attention on anything that doesn't provide immediate reward. The result is often a person who feels pulled in two directions simultaneously — and who has learned to mask both sets of traits, doubling the cost.

Assessment is genuinely complex. The two conditions mask each other, and many adults with AuDHD were diagnosed with one but not the other — or with neither, receiving instead a long list of anxiety, mood, or personality diagnoses that addressed the surface but not the source.

What the AuDHD experience often looks like

• Intense need for routine combined with impulsive disruption of that routine
• Hyperfocus on topics of deep interest alongside an inability to complete tasks that feel meaningless
• Social exhaustion — both from processing social situations analytically and from impulsive social responses
• Sensory overwhelm that interacts with emotional dysregulation in compounding ways
• A lifetime of not quite fitting into either the ADHD community or the autistic community
• Burnout that is deeper and harder to recover from than what either condition alone would predict

How I work with AuDHD

Most therapy frameworks were designed for one neurotype at a time. Working effectively with AuDHD requires understanding how the two profiles interact in a specific person — and building support that addresses both simultaneously rather than treating them as separate problems to solve in sequence.

In practice, this means we work on the nervous system first — understanding your specific sensory profile, your regulatory patterns, what helps and what doesn't. We work on building structure that supports autistic needs without rigidity that creates ADHD friction. We work on the identity questions that come with late diagnosis of a complex presentation that most people around you have never heard of. And we work on the burnout and masking that have accumulated from years of working harder than anyone around you realizes just to function.

I am one of a small number of therapists in California who specialize specifically in AuDHD. This is not a population I see occasionally — it is a core focus of my practice.