Post-assessment integration
with Ellen
You’ve received a diagnosis of ADHD, Autism or AuDHD - now what?
Having confirmation of what you’ve maybe suspected for a while can feel like a lot of things: relief, confusion, a sense of ‘I knew it’ - or maybe a feeling of ‘well that was a life plot twist I didn’t see coming’, grief that we didn’t know sooner and for all we’ve suffered up until now, gladness that we have some new answers, curiosity about what might change for us now that we know what we know.
Perhaps all of the above. Or some of it. Or something else entirely.
There is no right way to feel.
Receiving a diagnosis of neurodivergence is often a bit of an identity shift - and when our idea of who we are shifts, it sometimes takes a while to catch up with ourselves.
If you’re wishing you had a map, these 1:1 integration consultation sessions with Ellen are for you.
They are dedicated time for you to explore your diagnosis, your feelings about it, your struggles and strengths, and draw yourself a map of areas you might like to explore as you integrate.
It’s important to note:
these sessions are consultations/coaching - they are not therapy.
If you’re looking for therapy in particular, you can join Shelby’s 1:1 waitlist here, though we can’t give you an estimate of when places will be available.
You can also email support@shelby-leigh.com and Ellen can send you a list of other therapists to look into.
What does Ellen know about integrating anything?
Quite a lot, as it happens.
You know her already as the kind presence behind the scenes, managing your pre-assessment paperwork, answering questions, making the process leading up to your assessment run smoothly.
She is a wizard at what she does - and that isn’t all she does.
She’s also a qualified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, certified coach, and she holds a qualification in Art Therapy in Australia, where she lives.
She’s late-diagnosed, high-masking AuDHD, and has worked with many neurodivergent clients in her own practice, offering an eclectic choose-your-own-adventure mix of psycho-education, somatic work, nervous system tending, creative processes, and more - she’s kind, curious, warm, listens deeply, and uses her neurodivergent pattern-recognising brain to help her clients see themselves, their struggles and their strengths more clearly.
She also isn’t Shelby. Sorry.
It makes so much sense to feel seen, heard, valued and validated through your assessment process with Shelby (that’s what we strive for!) and of course you want more of that (particularly if these things have been rare in your experience of life until now).
While Ellen isn’t Shelby, and it might feel a little like starting again with someone new, you can expect similar warmth and depth of care that may feel quite familiar - there’s a reason Shelby and Ellen have been collaborating on all things therapeutic and otherwise for close to a decade (that might well have been lifetimes). You can also expect Ellen to have read your intake form and your assessment report when you meet.
There’s a saying that floats around healing spaces (perhaps you’ve heard it) - ‘it takes a village’. So perhaps Ellen could be another part of your village, your circle of support.
Choose
your own adventure
Ellen loves both adventures and maps, so she tends to start by helping you create a kind of living map (living in that it will grow and evolve as you do) of the landscape that is living as a neurodivergent person in the world.
Together you’ll highlight some roads you might like to start exploring down. These sessions aren’t designed to give you answers (although they will likely give you some), they’re more designed to help you know which questions feel meaningful to you as you start to integrate your diagnosis and explore what it means to you.
Integration is a process and it does take time, and having some clues around where and how to start that process can be very useful!
There is no limit to what you might explore in these sessions, but here are a few ideas for areas that are useful for many neurodivergent folk:
Special interests
Nervous system education & care
Untangling shame
Exploring strengths - where is the fun and aliveness in who you are and how you operate?
Sensory sensitivities
Neurodivergent burnout
Social struggles
Masking
Logistical details
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Sessions are 60 minutes and $200USD
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Sundays @ 5:30PM & 7:00PM PDT
Mondays @ 4:30PM & 6:00PM PDT
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Click the link to schedule your appointment. Payment is required at the time of booking. 24 hours notice is required to reschedule or cancel.
https://shelby-leigh.as.me/assessment-integration-with-ellen
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It bears repeating - these sessions are 1:1 consultations & coaching designed to help you integrate your diagnosis into your life and identity. They are not therapy.
FAQ:
Can I have more than one session?
Yes - you’re welcome to book one, book two, or keep coming until you feel you don’t need to any longer. Choose your own adventure and trust your own sense of timing.
What’s Ellen like to work with?
Ellen in person is much like Ellen in her emails, but with an Australian accent.
She is kind, warm, whimsical, and her clients often tell her they appreciate how permission giving she is.
She has a wealth of skills and knowledge picked up from various teachers, training, self-study and life experience - if it’s not obvious, she loves to learn - at one point she was enrolled in seven courses at once and despite skating the edge of burnout would probably do that again.
Working 1:1 with her, you can expect gentle curiosity, warm guidance (always with the encouragement to say no to anything that doesn’t feel useful to you), and someone who is very firmly with you in your corner.
Hello!
I’m Ellen.
I’m a multi-faceted creative weirdo. As well as being awesome behind the scenes here with Shelby, for a long time I’ve had a small private practice in Australia, where I live, and still maintain a handful of regular clients there though haven’t taken new ones in some time while I’ve been tending to other projects.
My discovery that I’m Autistic was a total life plot twist - did not see that coming (definition of a plot twist, really), but looking at my life and struggles and strengths through the lens of Autism explained so much… but not quite everything.
The next rabbit hole I went down was exploring giftedness, which is fascinating - InterGifted’s framework helped me see more clearly how and why I have non-stop ideas and an insatiable appetite for learning, and why I tend to disappear into existential black holes. Autism and giftedness explained so much… but not quite everything.
After that, I had 5 mental health professionals (including Shelby!) in the space of six months ask me ‘are you sure you’re not also ADHD?’
To which I replied: no, no… here are all the reasons why I’m totally not ADHD.
But the more I learned about how ADHD co-occurs with Autism, and how it shows up in women, the more it made sense of a lot more of my experience of life. I finally accepted I’d managed to collect just about the whole set and now recognise myself as AuDHD.
I often notice myself distracted by squirrels (unfortunately not literal squirrels as we don’t have those in Australia) and find myself saying: how did I ever not know that I’m ADHD?!?
Seems I was the last to know.
I sat on all these diagnoses for quite a while - it was many years before it felt okay to share them more widely. A big part of the reason for that was needing time to integrate - I tried to find someone offering the kinds of sessions I am offering now, but at the time there was no one easily findable doing this kind of work, so my process of integration was self directed.
It would have been nice to have some kind of guide, someone to bounce ideas off and talk with about what I was discovering, but I stumbled around in the dark for a while, read a bunch of books, learned from other’s experiences shared online, spent a lot of time watching myself -
my traits, my coping strategies, the things I found hard and the things I found easy, how I’d built a life to accommodate myself, where I might build in further strategies and systems to make my life feel the way I want it to, and thinking about what it all meant.
All this to say - our maps of who we are and how our brains work and what we need to feel comfy in the world do very much evolve and change, and it’s this kind of living map that I help my clients create.
When I’m not here working with Shelby and being generally awesome, I am wildly creative - I have non-stop ideas all the time and it’s a continual source of sadness that I can’t bend time to have more of it to implement all these ideas.
Someday I will capture a time elf and all my time problems will be solved.
As you can maybe tell, I love the whimsical and the absurd. I’m currently editing my first novel (and planning the next several), and I love to read like books are oxygen. I’d also quite like to be a pirate when I grow up.