Found: One Undiagnosed Psychologist

I’m a clinical psychologist. I just noticed I started this story with that line—and I guess I usually do. It’s central to my identity. And at times, especially now, I can’t stand it. I’d give anything to turn it off—and yet I also know how much it’s given me: the ability to see, and to be seen, as part of a terrifyingly and thrillingly vast human web.

I came into my current professional and personal world through a kind of backdoor. A string of lived experiences kept mysteriously syncing with the clients I saw. Familial trauma lit the spark, chronic illness deepened my craving for real connection, and soon I was working with people who felt like echoes—those with complex relational trauma and so-called “personality disorders.”

Then came 2020. My husband got an informal autism diagnosis. Suddenly, my clients—their “combo packs” of chronic health issues, interpersonal chaos, diagnostic Easter eggs—made even more sense. And then, BAM: my couples therapist (neurodivergent herself) said, “I wonder if you have ADHD.”

Cue: identity collapse. And then, not long after, the autism piece dropped. Another BAM. Turns out, that’s common.

Becoming an “AuDHDer” at 29 shattered and rebuilt me. It was like falling into a psychosis-shaped baptism—part burnout, part bipolarity, part ecstatic delirium. My jet-engine brain, never satisfied with one explanation for anything, carried me to a place of overwhelming insight and then slammed me back into “reality,” as others define it.

I’m both grateful and disoriented. The confusion, the rejection, especially from people I love (and who are almost certainly neurodivergent themselves), has been a kind of mourning. Now I crave a space where nuance actually lives, where philosophy is welcome, and where—maybe—someone else might recognize this experience I still don’t fully understand myself.