You found out at thirty, forty or fifty, and suddenly your whole life until then asks to be reread. Grief for the years you did not know arrives, along with relief that there is an explanation and anger at those who could have noticed. I do not rush this part, because it is the work itself.
This is for you if
Do not start with me if
You are in crisis right now
The period after a late diagnosis can be hard, and in some people it brings difficult things to the surface. 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. The place here stays open afterwards.
Substance use has become how you carry this
It happens often and it is not a moral failing: when nobody explains why you are like this, you find your own way to take the edge off. But while the substance use comes first, work on identity does not take hold. Specialist support for that part first, then we come back here.
You are looking for the assessment rather than what follows it
I do not diagnose and I do not assess. What is worked on here is what happens after you find out. If you are still before that point, I will tell you the options in the United Kingdom and in Romania, and we can talk without any paperwork: some of the people I work with never want any.
You want to get past the hard part quickly
I understand why, but I cannot help you skip the grief. The anger and the mourning afterwards are not a complication of the process, they are the process. Peace comes after you have recognised yourself, not before it, and hurrying here only postpones it.
What this looks like day to day
Moments come back to you that you have not thought about in twenty years: a parents’ evening, a job you lost, a friend who drifted away. You relive them, but with what you know now, and only now do they add up. The process is exhausting and entirely normal. In books it is called reframing; lived, it is less elegant than that.
"So that explains everything" and "so I lost thirty years" sit side by side, and they do not cancel out. You are not ungrateful for finding it hard after good news, and it is not a contradiction: this is usually how it looks.
You tell a parent and get "we are all a bit like that". You tell work and do not know whether you did the right thing. You tell a friend and they ask whether you are sure. Every conversation demands a decision, and some of them you get wrong. It can be prepared in advance, one at a time, with whoever is worth the effort.
What we do together
The diagnosis gives you a name. What you do with the life before it is separate work.
People usually arrive here believing the hard part is over. In fact the hard part is starting: you have an explanation for who you are, and with it a revision of everything you believed about yourself until now. That is what we work on.
There are three movements, and they do not arrive in turn, they arrive mixed. Reframing: rereading the years before with what you know now, not as an exercise in nostalgia but to arrive at the correct version of your own story. Grief: for the old self, the one who believed he was lazy or odd, and for the years that could have looked different. And anger, which needs somewhere to go, because otherwise it either turns inward as self-blame or explodes outward, usually at family.
Then the practical part: who you tell, how, what you ask for at work, what you do with the relationships that settled around the old explanation. And the question that eventually comes to everyone: who am I, really, if I have spent so many years living by someone else’s instructions.
What I draw on: Schema Therapy, because the patterns formed in precisely the years when nobody knew. Internal Family Systems, for the parts that organised themselves around the wrong explanation. Person-Centred practice, meaning your pace, especially for the grief. And if you also want the question of meaning, there is room for that too.
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 a small pack: general wellbeing, mood, anxiety. These are not about the diagnosis, they are about how you are now, and the period after a late identification is often harder than people expect.
Then, if it makes sense, the profile part. With late diagnosis one of them is unlike the rest: a retrospective questionnaire, about childhood. It seems strange at forty, but it is often the most useful, because it puts into words exactly what nobody saw at the time. A few people have cried while filling it in, and that is not a bad sign.
You fill them in on your phone or your computer, at your own pace, stopping halfway and coming back tomorrow. The font can change, the automatic jump to the next question can be turned off.
It is not an exam and it does not replace a formal assessment. What it does here is something else: it gives you a written form of what you have lived, which holds when the doubt comes back, because the doubt does come back, especially after a conversation with someone who does not believe you. You see the results too, in your own account, and you can take them with you to an assessment.
The first few months
The opening conversation, 30 minutes, free
On Google Meet, camera however you want it. You tell me how long you have known and what has changed since. No preparation, no obligation.
The small pack of questionnaires
In your account, before the first session or straight after. Three short questionnaires about how you are now.
The first session
We usually start with the moment of finding out: how it was, who you told, what the first weeks felt like. Many people have not yet told anyone that story properly.
The first four or five sessions
Reframing. We take the moments that keep coming back and put them in the light you have now. This is the part where most changes, because you see that you had an explanation all along and nobody gave it to you.
The second and third months
The grief and the anger, with everything they bring: parents, school, the medical system, the years. I do not hurry this part and I do not turn it into "let us look at the bright side". Alongside it, the practical decisions about disclosure, one at a time.
How we know it is working
Two short questions at the end of sessions and a questionnaire redone every few months. The sign I look for is not the sadness disappearing, but it no longer being the only thing in the room.
How long it takes
I cannot promise you a number. What I do know is that this works better than it looks at the outset, because you already have half the answer: you know who you are. What is missing is peace with the road.
Questions people ask me
There is, and it is a very common situation. The grief and the reframing do not wait for paperwork to begin. Some of the people I work with are on waiting lists, some decided they do not want the assessment. I do not ask you for a document before I take you seriously.
Because before you had a wrong explanation, but you had one, and now everything is being rewritten. On top of that comes the mourning for the years before. It is not a sign that you found out too late, it is the ordinary shape of the process, and it goes through a hard stretch before it settles.
Anger is one of the most common reactions and it does not need my approval to be legitimate. What we do with it is another matter. If it stays turned inward it becomes self-blame; if it comes out unchecked it damages relationships you would benefit from. Here we find it a place and a shape.
I will not answer yes or no, because it depends on your workplace rather than on principles. What we can do is weigh it concretely: what you stand to gain, what you risk, what you are entitled to ask for, what you do not have to explain. And, if you decide to, how you word it.
No. The retrospective one, about childhood, is the one that stirs things up most; if you would rather not do it now, we postpone it or leave 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 do not reach your GP or your employer unless you ask in writing. The details are on the privacy page.
A standard session is £80 for 50 minutes. 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
“My experience with Giancarlo has been — and continues to be — a breath of fresh air in my journey of discovering and understanding myself as an autistic person with ADHD, diagnosed at over 30 years old. He supported me both during the very difficult period before and during my ADHD diagnosis and the start of medication, and afterwards, when I found my footing and was able to benefit from therapy even more.”
Late Diagnosis — Grief, Identity & Reclaiming Yourself
You found out at thirty, forty or fifty, and suddenly your whole life until then asks to be reread.
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