That's certainly been my experience. For a long time, I wrestled with feeling different, with challenges and frustrations others didn't always understand, and strengths that were often overlooked. After facing mental health challenges in early adulthood, I began carving my own path, finding self-compassion and embracing the idea that everyone's needs and ways of being are different. That path led me into pastoral support work, helping others foster their own self-compassion through struggles that were often uniquely theirs.

When I later recognised many of my experiences in other late-identified Autistic and ADHD women, it helped me let go of the feeling that something was wrong with me. I could look up from the constant struggle of trying to be understood, and towards how I want to live. That's what led me to train as a health coach: as a way to help people feel genuinely seen, and then take purposeful, values-based action in the midst of the complicated realities of their lives.

Not everyone needs a label to understand themselves, and that's absolutely okay. My neurodiversity-affirming coaching approach is less about defining why a pattern shows up, and more about what matters most to you, then taking small, values-aligned action toward it, one step at a time.