Masking has a cost, and the bill arrives in the evening, or after years. Here we work with sensory needs, with identity after a late diagnosis, and with the question of who you are when you stop making the effort to seem fine. I do not teach techniques for enduring.
This is for you if
Do not start with me if
You are in crisis right now
If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, do not start with me. Call 999, or Samaritans on 116 123, free and around the clock in the United Kingdom. I am saying it plainly because the order matters. The place here stays open afterwards.
You are looking for a formal assessment
I do not diagnose and I do not assess. I work with people who have a diagnosis, with people on waiting lists, and with people who recognised themselves and decided that was enough. If you do want the assessment, I will tell you what the options are in the United Kingdom and in Romania.
Someone is sending you to make you easier to live with
If you are here because a parent, a partner or an employer wants you less autistic, more flexible, more like them, I am not the right person. I do not work on reducing autistic traits, and I will not push you to endure an environment that does not suit you simply because other people endure it.
You are deep in burnout and need less first, not more
Therapy is a demand too, with a fixed time and real effort. When you are at the end of your reserves, sometimes the thing that helps is not one more appointment but two demands taken out of your week. I will say so even if it means we do not start yet, and I am here when you have the capacity.
What this looks like day to day
You go for a coffee for two hours and it looks like nothing. Except the account does not close there: you need an evening, sometimes a day, to come back. In time you learn to work out in advance whether you have anywhere to recover, and if you do not, you stop going. From the outside it is called withdrawing. From the inside it is accounting.
You stretch, and stretch, and cope, and you are the person who can be relied on. Then one day it goes over something small, a noise, a change of plan, and you come down completely. It is not weakness and it did not come out of nowhere. It had been gathering for months.
In a conversation, one part of you runs the discussion while another wonders where to look, how much to say, whether you overshared. That is why a walk is easier than sitting face to face across a table: when you walk, your arms have something to do. That effort is invisible, and it still costs.
What we do together
We are not working to make you less autistic.
The starting point is that the problem is not in you, it is in the mismatch. Most of what hurts comes from years in an environment built for somebody else, from which you concluded that you were the thing that was wrong. That is where we begin, and a great deal else shifts from there.
In practice we look at three things. The mask: where you wear it, what it costs, and where you could set it down without it becoming unsafe, because "unmask everywhere" is easy advice to give and hard to live. Energy: where it leaks and what would have to come out of the week for any to be left. And who you are beyond the role, a question that after a late diagnosis is far less philosophical than it sounds.
What I draw on: Internal Family Systems, for the parts that split between the one who copes and the one who hides. Schema Therapy, for what you learned about yourself back when nobody knew why you were like this. Polyvagal work, for the body that goes into alarm before the thought arrives. And Person-Centred practice, which means your pace rather than mine.
One thing I say plainly, because therapy often gets it wrong here: I do not work with techniques of "tolerate the discomfort until it passes". For autistic adults in overload that does harm rather than good. Sessions can also carry more structure than open-ended talk if that helps you, and they can be held with the camera off.
The psychometric questionnaires
The questionnaires: before the first session, or shortly after it.
I set you up with an account in the client area and send you a small pack. Usually three short questionnaires about how you are doing generally, about mood and about anxiety. Nothing on autism yet, nothing long.
When it makes sense, usually within the first two sessions, the part that concerns us arrives: autistic traits, how much and how you mask, your sensory profile, the patterns that give you predictability, and the way your attention runs deep on one channel at a time. If burnout, sleep or sensory eating turn out to be in play, I will send from there too.
You fill them in on your phone or your computer, at your own pace. You can stop halfway and come back tomorrow, your answers stay saved. You can change the font if the text tires your eyes, and you can turn off the automatic jump to the next question.
To be clear: it is not an exam, it does not hand down a verdict, and it does not replace a formal assessment. For many people the most useful part is something else entirely: a questionnaire about masking or about sensory experience puts into words things you have lived with all your life without having names for them. You see the results too, in your own account. And if there is one you would rather not do, you do not do it.
The first few months
The opening conversation, 30 minutes, free
On Google Meet, with the camera however you want it. You tell me what brought you and ask me what you want to know. It is not an interview and you do not need to prepare. If by the end you realise I am not the right person, you found that out quickly and for nothing.
The small pack of questionnaires
It lands in your account before the first session or straight after it. Three short questionnaires, so we have a starting point in numbers.
The first session
If you would rather know in advance what it looks like, I will tell you in advance. If you would rather I did more of the talking at the start until you settle, say so and that is what we do. Silences are fine; I do not fill them just so there is no silence.
The first four or five sessions
We draw the map: where the energy goes, what is mask and what is you, what actually overloads you, what you would genuinely need as support. Many people discover here that half their tiredness had a cause rather than being a character fault.
The second and third months
We go into what hurts: the years of mismatch, the relationships in which you disappeared, the anger you had nowhere to put. Alongside that, practical things: how to ask for what you need at work, how to say no without it costing you three days.
How we know it is working
At the end of sessions I give you two short questions about how it went, and every few months we redo one of the opening questionnaires. So that we are not going on impressions. If it is not working, we say so and change it.
How long it takes
I cannot promise you a number. What I can promise is that I will not rush, and that we stop now and then to look at where we have got to.
Questions people ask me
Yes. I do not ask you for paperwork before I take you seriously, and I do not need a document to work with how you function. Some of the people I work with are waiting for an assessment; some have decided they do not want one.
No. You can look elsewhere, you can pace, you can hold something in your hands, you can turn the camera off. Eye contact is not evidence that you are present, and for many people it is exactly what eats the attention that should be going into the conversation.
Yes. You can write during the session, you can bring notes, you can send me beforehand whatever will not come out loud. That is not a departure from therapy, it is an ordinary adjustment.
No. If one blocks you or feels intrusive, say so and we drop it. I will only tell you what we lose without it.
They sit in your account in the client area, the two of us see them, and you can reread them whenever you like. They go to nobody else, and they do not reach your GP or your employer unless you ask in writing. The details are on the privacy page.
Because it happens often and there are concrete reasons for it. Therapy that treats autistic traits as thoughts to be corrected, or that pushes you to endure what does not suit you, makes overload worse rather than repairing it. That is not the aim here. And if something about the way I work is not working for you, I want you to tell me rather than adapt to me.
A standard session is £80 for 50 minutes. There is a reduced rate of £50 for Romania and Eastern Europe. The opening conversation is free, 30 minutes.
One small step
You do not have to write to me today. You can start smaller.
What clients say
“He helps me become aware of my specific needs as a neurodivergent person, my sensory sensitivities and sources of emotional dysregulation, for which I can seek accommodations and adjustments that considerably improve my quality of life.”
Autism — Late Diagnosis & Identity
Masking has a cost, and the bill arrives in the evening, or after years.
Book sessionRelated articles
Other services
Self-assessment tools
I offer a free 30-minute initial consultation. No commitment.
Free Consultation