Making Sense of Your Body
Focused, time-limited therapy with a clear beginning and end, for neurodivergent adults whose physical symptoms keep being written off as anxiety.
Delivered online via Zoom
Six sessions over six to eight weeks
Neurodiversity-affirming throughout
Some exhaustion isn't burnout. A racing heart isn't always anxiety. If you're neurodivergent, you've probably been told otherwise for years.
There's a particular fatigue that comes from not being believed. From explaining your symptoms again, watching them get written down as stress, and leaving with nothing. After enough of that, most people stop asking.
What often gets missed is that there is a well-documented link between neurodivergence and a cluster of physical conditions — joint hypermobility and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, dysautonomia and POTS, mast cell activation, and autoimmune patterns. The research is clear. It just hasn't reached most consulting rooms yet.
Historically, doctors have rarely screened for these conditions in neurodivergent people. When a neurodivergent person reports fatigue, pain, dizziness, or sensory overwhelm, those symptoms get attributed to the neurodivergence itself. Real, treatable conditions get filed under "anxiety" and missed. This pattern is called diagnostic overshadowing, and it happens so often that it has been identified as a key development area for practitioners in the National Roadmap to Improve the Health and Mental Health of Autistic People. So there is some hope for change here, but it doesn't discount the impacts on people who have experienced it.
There's another layer, too. Many neurodivergent people experience interoception, the sense of what's happening inside your body, differently. Signals can be muted, delayed, or hard to put into words, which makes symptoms easier to miss and harder to communicate. None of that means they aren't real.
Interoceptive differences don't mean you are to blame for not having your health needs met. But it does mean you may have spent years being handed a story about your body that doesn't fit.
A therapeutic process that sits in a gap that shouldn't exist.
This is a therapy intensive that sits between therapists who don't know these conditions exist, and doctors who don't account for medical trauma. It's focused, time-limited therapy with a clear beginning and end.
Across six sessions, we:
- 1 make sense of your symptoms and history alongside the patterns that commonly co-occur with neurodivergence,
- 2 work through what medical settings have come to feel like — the dread, the bracing, the avoidance — and, where medical trauma is part of your experience, process it using gentle somatic approaches,
- 3 use somatic strategies to help you check in with your body more safely, going at a pace that soothes your nervous system rather than overwhelming it,
- 4 use hypnotherapy and guided rest to help you cope with bad health days, increase self-compassion, and rebuild your confidence to advocate, and
- 5 build you a written summary and a plan you can take to your GP.
This is therapeutic work, not a diagnosis. I help you make sense of what your body might be doing and find pathways where you'll be taken seriously. I don't diagnose, because that's a doctor's role. This isn't about coming to any conclusions. It's to leave you clearer, steadier, and better equipped to ask for the care you need.
I acknowledge that pathologising language is entrenched in the medical system. Terms like 'disorder' and 'illness' can validate the challenges we are facing. There is also the risk that they limit how we understand ourselves and our experiences. I use this language in this context because I want to help you to name what might be happening in your body, so you can get the care you deserve. I don't pathologise who you are.
The intensive runs across roughly six to eight weeks, with a mix of 90 and 60 minute sessions. I also offer alternative delivery options such as half day sessions or voice notes and recordings to make the intensive as accessible as possible. The full session-by-session breakdown is in the information pack you can download below.
This intensive is likely a fit if you're a neurodivergent adult and:
- ✓your physical symptoms have been dismissed, under-investigated, or labelled "just anxiety,"
- ✓you suspect something more is going on but don't know where to start,
- ✓appointments feel daunting, and you'd advocate better with support and a plan
- ✓you'd value a focused, time-limited piece of work rather than ongoing therapy.
Where I'll point you elsewhere
So you can make an informed choice, here's what this intensive isn't. It's a focused therapy intensive, not ongoing chronic-illness care, and not a substitute for medical assessment or treatment. If what you need is long-term illness management, eating-disorder treatment, or support through acute crisis, that's outside this scope, and I'll happily point you toward practitioners who can help.
By the end, these are yours to keep, and to share with whichever practitioners you choose.
A written summary
In plain language, of the patterns we've made sense of together and why they're worth investigating.
Recommendations for your GP
We will also weigh up which specialists to prioritise being referred to and what to raise. Where I know of clinicians experienced with these conditions, I'll point you toward them.
Help finding a GP who listens
If those conversations haven't gone well before, this is part of the work.
A self-advocacy plan
For navigating appointments and having your concerns taken seriously.
Accommodations and tools
Strategies tailored to your neurotype that bring a little more ease to medical appointments.
Audio recordings
Of your rest, pain management and self-soothing sessions, to use again whenever you need them.
A fixed package, priced for the full scope of the work.
The sessions, your written summary and specialist recommendations, the recordings you keep, and the deeper therapeutic and rest work. Around twelve to thirteen hours of work in all. All fees are exact and GST-inclusive, with no further out-of-pocket costs within the package.
The standard fee for the intensive.
A lower founding price, available to the first four people to book. Once those four places are taken, the standard rate applies.
One to two places per year, held for people facing financial barriers. May be waitlisted when full.
The founding rate is a genuine launch price, limited to a set number of places, not a deadline. Please don't rush a decision that should be about whether this work is right for you.
The details: delivered online via Zoom, Australia-wide. As a counsellor I can't offer Medicare rebates; some private health funds may cover counselling sessions. Please confirm rebate eligibility with your insurer.
Booked with care, and flexible when your body needs it to be.
A $250 deposit holds your place and counts toward your total fee. There is a 48-hour cooling-off window after booking in which you can withdraw for a full refund, no reason needed.
If you cancel before we start, the deposit is retained and everything else is refunded. If you withdraw partway through, you're charged only for the sessions we've completed and the rest is refunded.
This work flexes with your body. If you're having a rough day, whether that's a flare, low capacity, or a hard mental-health stretch, we don't have to cancel. We can use the time differently instead, bringing forward the rest and self-compassion work. You are never penalised for being unwell. The things we're working on are the last things you should be penalised for.
Full booking, cancellation and refund terms are in the information pack below.
Want to sit with the details before deciding?
The pack covers the full session-by-session breakdown, how we can process medical trauma if that is a part of your picture, the complete booking and cancellation terms, and everything else you might want to read before enquiring. It's also something you can share with a partner, friend, or anyone helping you think it through.
The questions people ask first.
You've spent long enough being told it's all in your head. This is a way to make sense of what's actually going on, with someone who already understands why the asking has been so hard.