There are generations of women who have lived extraordinary lives without ever knowing their neurotype

Your neurotype is the unique way your brain is wired neurodevelopmentally — the rhythm, focus, and sensory pattern that shapes how you experience the world. Not knowing this about yourself can mean spending a lifetime misinterpreting your own traits. You may have assumed you were too intense, too distracted, too sensitive, or too changeable — not realising these were expressions of ADHD, autism, or both.

Many women describe years of wondering why their energy came in unpredictable highs and lows, why attention sometimes locked on deeply and other times scattered, or why they couldn’t quite “flow with the mainstream” in work, friendships, or family life. For some, the result has been chronic self-doubt, cycles of burnout, and a sense that life has always been harder than it should be.

(And while men also experience these challenges, the research and diagnostic frameworks have historically been male-centric, leaving many capable women invisible in plain sight.)

For many women, discovering their neurotype is both a homecoming and a reckoning.

After decades of being misunderstood, the realisation that your mind was never broken — only wired differently — can be both deeply healing and disorienting.

For decades, girls grew up in systems that didn’t see them — schools that rewarded compliance and masked distress, workplaces that praised productivity over sensitivity, and mental-health frameworks that missed the subtle signs of neurodivergence in women. Many learned to push through exhaustion, perfectionism, or emotional overwhelm, never realising that their brain was wired differently — or that these differences held deep intelligence and creativity.

Only recently has the research caught up. Until the last decade, most diagnostic criteria were written for boys and men, and even today many women seeking an Autism and ADHD assessment are told they’re “too self-aware” or “too functional” to meet criteria. Yet the lived experience tells another story — one of sensory sensitivity, deep empathy, burnout, and a lifetime of feeling slightly “off-sync” with the world.

Women in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond grew up in a world that had no language for neurodivergence in women. Schools rewarded compliance and girls instinctively masked distress where they could. Workplaces praised productivity over sensitivity. And the mental health field itself — still decades away from being trauma-informed — often missed what was right in front of it.

For many women, simply existing with a different brain and nervous system within these environments generated trauma. They learned to push through exhaustion, to over-adapt, and to blame themselves for being “too sensitive” or “too much.” When they sought help, they often turned to systems that pathologised their responses without recognising the deeper mismatch between their neurotype and the social and cultural structures surrounding them.

Only recently have we begun to understand how autism, ADHD, and AuDHD present differently in women and girls — how these patterns are often externally quieter, more relational, more internalised. And it is only now, with better language and compassion, that many women are finding the insight and courage to re-interpret their pasts not as personal failings but as reflections of a world that didn’t yet know how to see them.

Younger women — those now in their 20s and 30s — are coming of age in a time when there’s finally some language for neurodivergence and how it can show up in girls and women. Terms like autism, ADHD, and masking are part of the cultural conversation in ways they never were before. Social media has opened new spaces for self-understanding and connection, and many women first recognise themselves through short videos or online discussions that describe experiences they’ve never been able to name.

Yet this visibility can also be confusing. Teachers, health professionals, and even some psychologists may receive insufficient training on how neurodivergence presents in women and girls. The online world offers fragments of truth — but without context, these fragments can feel overwhelming or inconsistent. Many younger women are left trying to piece together their identity through a patchwork of personal stories and algorithms, often without the grounded guidance of a professional who understands how the diagnostic criteria translate into lived experience. Here’s where an Autism and ADHD assessment can help.

Next Steps to start my ADHD, Autism or AuDHD assessment

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•Book a session now to begin the process, or

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