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Post-diagnostic support
You have the report. Now what?
Assessment usually ends with a document and a handshake. The part nobody schedules is the six months afterwards, when everything you thought about yourself is up for renegotiation.
Online across the UK, or in person in Brighton, Hove or Lewes. £80 per 50 minutes.
- BACP accredited, member 374395
- No waiting list for the first call
- Online UK-wide, or in Brighton, Hove or Lewes
- Referrals from assessment providers welcome
What is post-diagnostic support?
Post-diagnostic support is the help a person needs after an autism or ADHD assessment rather than before it. It covers making sense of the result, grieving the years spent not knowing, telling family and employers, and rebuilding daily life around how you actually work. It is not part of most assessments.
There is a strange drop after an assessment. For months, sometimes years, all the energy goes into getting seen. Then the report lands, and it turns out the report was the service. What follows is often a quiet stretch of relief, fury and disorientation with nobody obvious to take it to.
The diagnosis explains your life. It does not reorganise it. That part is work, and it is much easier with someone in the room.
I found out I had ADHD in my early thirties. Recognising it that late changes how you read your own history, and it is one of the reasons I work the way I do.
What people bring in the first months.
Grief for the years before.
For the support you did not get, the jobs you lost, the version of yourself you were told off for being. This is real grief and it deserves the same room as any other.
Telling people.
Parents who take it personally. Partners who say you seem fine. Colleagues you are not sure you trust. Who to tell, in what order, and what to do with the reactions.
Deciding what is actually you.
After decades of masking it is genuinely hard to tell which preferences are yours and which are survival. That takes time and it is worth taking.
Rebuilding the week.
Not life-hacks. Working out what your capacity honestly is, and what has to change so the week stops costing more than it returns.
Work and adjustments.
Whether to disclose, what to ask for, and how to hold a conversation with an employer who has never had it before.
The family pattern.
Recognition rarely stops with one person. Often a parent or a sibling is suddenly in focus too, and that changes the family in ways nobody asked for.
How soon after the assessment should I start?
Whenever it starts to sit badly, which for many people is a few weeks to a few months after the report. There is no window you can miss. Some come the week after; others come two years later, when the initial relief has worn off and the practical questions have not gone away.
If you are still waiting for an assessment, you do not have to wait for me. Waiting lists in the UK run to years, and the work of understanding yourself does not require a clinic's confirmation to begin.
For assessment providers
If you assess, and have nowhere to refer.
Most assessment reports end with a recommendation for therapeutic support and no named person attached to it. I am a BACP accredited counsellor taking referrals for exactly this, online across the UK and in person in Brighton, Hove or Lewes.
- No waiting list for an initial call
- Free 15-minute consultation before anyone commits
- Comfortable working with self-identifying clients as well as diagnosed ones
- Happy to be named in a report or a follow-up pack
What I will not do.
I do not assess, diagnose, or comment on the validity of a diagnosis a client arrives with. I do not advise on medication. If a client needs something outside counselling I will say so early rather than hold on to the work.
If it would help to talk it through before sending anyone, the call is free for practitioners too.
Common questions.
Do I need to bring my report?
Only if you would like to. Some people find it useful to go through what it actually says, particularly if it was written in language that felt cold. Others never bring it. The work is about your life rather than the document.
What if my diagnosis was private, or self-identified?
Both are fine. I do not rank routes to understanding yourself, and I do not require a report to work with you. Where you got the answer matters much less than what you do with it.
Can you help me get adjustments at work?
I can help you work out what you need, prepare for the conversation and handle how it goes. I cannot write an occupational health report or negotiate on your behalf, and I will point you to Access to Work rather than pretend otherwise.
Will you tell me whether the diagnosis is right?
No. That is outside what a counsellor can properly do. What we can look at is how it fits, what it explains, what it does not, and what you want to do with it.
The report was the beginning.
Fifteen minutes on the phone, free, to work out whether this is the right next step.