05/07/2026
Mental health, ADHD, autism, trauma, learning disabilities and behaviour — helping you deal with one or all
My core work sits where different things overlap. That includes neurodivergence on its own, neurodivergence with mental health difficulties, neurodivergence with trauma and mental health, neurodivergence with learning disabilities and mental health, and behaviour that is happening in the context of neurodivergence, learning disabilities and mental health. In most situations there is never just one problem; there are usually two, three or more of these happening at the same time across home, school and services. I focus specifically on these overlapping, complex situations, not on mild or single-issue presentations.
🧠 Who this is for
I work one-to-one with children from around four years old, with adolescents and teenagers, and with adults and older adults of all genders. A lot of my work is with autistic, ADHD or PDA children and young people whose lives are being taken over by anxiety, shutdown, aggression, burnout or school refusal, and with adults who are living with overwhelm, burnout, low mood, trauma reactions or repeated crises on top of neurodivergence. I also work with whole families, especially where PDA and demand-sensitive patterns run through more than one person, so that we are managing and strategising with the entire family rather than just focusing on one individual. Many of the situations I see include serious mental health, trauma, learning disability or risk issues alongside neurodivergence, and the common factor is that things are complex enough that people need careful thinking and practical strategy rather than quick, standard answers.
🔍 Behaviour
Many people are unsure what is “normal” behaviour and what is a sign that something is going wrong, whether that is in their child, themselves, or the wider family. My job is to assess human behaviour across the whole system: children’s behaviour, parents’ behaviour, adult behaviour, and the behaviour of services and professionals around them. I look closely at what people are doing, how they communicate, how they respond under pressure, and how all of that fits into their neurodivergence, mental health and environment, so we can separate everyday ups and downs from patterns that are genuinely harmful or unsustainable.
In family assessments I am effectively profiling each person in the system and how they interact with each other and the environment. I look at the child, the parents and anyone else involved, and then I go away and think in depth about what that particular mix of people and circumstances needs; everything is tailor-made, and I keep refining the plan until it properly fits that specific family. This can include behaviour at home, behaviour at school, and behaviour from services such as school staff, local authority teams, CAMHS or GPs, where part of the question is whether they are responding appropriately or adding pressure.
A lot of the behaviour I see involves neurodivergent patterns that have pushed and pushed past healthy limits — for example controlling behaviour, anxiety‑driven behaviour or aggression that is now putting serious pressure on parents in terms of time, energy and emotional load. I often work with separated families where there are very different rules and routines in different households, and my role is to help you manage as well as possible even when some parts of the situation cannot easily be changed. I am also looking very carefully at parent behaviour, especially around PDA and demand‑sensitivity, because tone of voice, facial expression and nervous‑system state make a huge difference; part of the work is helping parents deactivate their own nervous systems so that they can respond more effectively.
If there is “bad behaviour” at school, we do not stop at describing it; we map it in detail and work out what is driving it. That can include neurodivergence, mental health and trauma, but also practical issues such as curriculum level, specific lessons being too easy or too hard, or particular people or environments acting as triggers. We go through lessons, days and incidents to understand exactly what is happening, and then we build a plan that addresses the real drivers rather than just trying to suppress the behaviour on the surface.
💬 Mental health
If you are struggling with intrusive thoughts, anxiety, low mood, self-harm, suicidal thinking, burnout or shutdown, I can often help, especially where these sit alongside autism, ADHD, PDA or other neurodivergent profiles. You cannot simply send a neurodivergent person for standard talking therapies and expect the thoughts to stop, because if they do not understand how their mind works and do not have everyday systems that fit them, that kind of therapy often does not go in deeply enough or last very long. When ADHD or autism are not understood or managed in a way that fits the person, serious mental health problems often build over time. Part of the work is understanding pressure properly — when someone is overloaded, when the pressure is too low, and how to optimise their system so they are more able to function, cope and engage with support. My background includes seven years in NHS crisis services, so I am used to working with people who have been very distressed or at risk, and part of my role is helping people stabilise and understand themselves well enough that other therapies, if they are needed, have a better chance of being effective. I am not an emergency or crisis service, and if someone is in immediate danger they still need urgent support, but I am often the right person to see once the immediate risk has reduced – for example when you are being discharged from intensive home treatment, are no longer under a crisis team, or were never accepted by them but are still carrying serious distress that sits between everyday problems and full crisis.
⚡ ADHD
With ADHD, my work ranges from basic coaching to very detailed, advanced support. I have ADHD myself, which means I am often drawing on things I have actually been through, not just theory, and that can make it easier for people to trust that I understand what is happening in their heads and lives. I have helped many children, young people and adults stabilise with or without medication, reducing impulsivity and bringing behaviour back within a range that feels manageable. In practical terms, that can mean sitting with parents at the kitchen table going through a child’s planner, lesson by lesson and day by day, mapping exactly what has happened, when and with whom, then using that detail to work out what the ADHD system is doing and why things keep going wrong. When a child is willing and able to engage, I can often help turn behaviour around in a matter of weeks by making sure they understand their own brain, adjusting pressure and expectations, and putting new patterns in place that fit how they actually work. Children do not always tell the full story, or they may deny things they feel ashamed of, so I often share short personal examples of my own ADHD – for example around anger – and use familiar figures like the Hulk to show they are not the only ones who react that way; once they realise I have done similar things, they are much more willing to be honest. Medication can be helpful but is not a requirement; it can be a little harder without it to find and keep the optimal middle ground, but it is still very possible. Over time, the aim is that you become an expert in your own ADHD – you understand what is happening, you can spot patterns early, and you can work problems out for yourself rather than feeling constantly blindsided. Alongside this, I do a lot of work around anger, emotional regulation, general mental health problems and behaviour at home or at school, including where ADHD overlaps with PDA, substance use, or repeated contact with the criminal justice system, and I teach people how to manage the same nervous system that can drive both ADHD and addiction so that they can reduce harm, stay safer, and build a life that does not depend on substances or constant crisis to feel bearable.
🧩 Autism
Autism can be very hard both for the person themselves and for the people around them, so I work with autistic individuals and with whole families to make sense of what is happening and to change things in a practical way. I particularly enjoy working with autistic children and young people, because their minds are still relatively flexible and there is often a lot of room to build skills, confidence and understanding that will last for life. In sessions, whether in person or online, I am very direct and very thorough: once someone is ready, I will ask them to walk through situations in detail, explain how they understand what is happening, and tell me how they would deal with it step by step; I check carefully that they are comfortable with this, and once everyone is happy, I “grill” them in a deliberate, respectful way – asking why they think what they think, why they choose particular responses, what they expect those to do for them, and how this links to the neurobiology and nervous-system patterns we have already talked about. Over time, this turns people into genuine experts in their own autism. Alongside that, we build awareness – including interoception – so that people can notice what is happening inside their bodies and minds before everything tips over, and we look at their cognitive schemes, the patterns, rules and templates they are using to navigate the world, then remap them so life has more options and does not feel trapped in one rigid way of doing things. A big part of the work is finding where pressure is sitting in the system, including the internal pressure people put on themselves, and adjusting that so it is in the right places rather than silently causing problems elsewhere. Depending on how deep someone wants to go, this can be a short piece focused on basic coping, or a longer process where we keep fine-tuning their understanding and skills until they can read their own patterns and design their own strategies with confidence.
🔥 PDA
PDA can be one of the most difficult things for both individuals and families to live with, so I work with children, teenagers, adults and whole families where PDA or demand-sensitive patterns are part of the picture. My job is to understand all of the pressures acting on the person – obvious external demands like school, home routines, requests and expectations, and internal demands like guilt, shame, self-monitoring, perfectionism, fear of getting things wrong and feeling trapped – and then work out which combinations of those pressures are driving the PDA. I often work with whole family systems where more than one person is demand-sensitive, because what looks like one child’s problem is often a pattern running through the household. I use different approaches depending on whether the underlying pattern looks more ADHD-based, more autistic, or a mixture, because the behaviour on the surface can look similar while the mechanics underneath are very different. In practice, this can mean very detailed work with parents, with the child or young person, or with an adult and their partner or family, going through ordinary days and specific flashpoints to see exactly where pressure builds, where it spikes, and where the system needs more autonomy, more protection or more structure. Over time, the aim is to reduce the overall demand level on the nervous system, change how people respond to early signs of overload, and gradually “deactivate” the PDA by removing unnecessary pressure and building new ways of doing things that feel safe enough for the person with PDA while still keeping the family, school or workplace functioning. The depth of work can range from a short piece of strategic advice through to longer, highly detailed support where we keep tracking the pattern together over months.
💥 Trauma
Many people come to me knowing something is badly wrong but not having a clear name for it. They may not know whether what they are living with is trauma, neurodivergence, a mixture of both, or something else entirely, especially because trauma and neurodivergence can overlap and look very similar from the outside. Part of my work is helping people unpack this: looking carefully at what has happened to them, how their nervous system is reacting now, how their day-to-day life actually feels, and how all of that fits (or does not fit) with autism, ADHD, PDA and other patterns they may already know about or suspect. Some people come mainly for help with trauma itself; others come because everything is tangled together and they have no idea where to start.
I often work with people who have been told they are not in the right place for trauma therapy yet, or who have been considered too risky for that work at this point. In those situations, my focus is on stabilising things as much as possible: helping them build coping skills, routines and supports so that risk reduces and life becomes more manageable, and so that they have a solid framework to fall back on before, during and after any trauma therapy they may do later. In practical terms, that can mean working on self-harm and suicidal thinking, understanding triggers, recognising early warning signs in body and mind, and adjusting pressure and expectations so they are not constantly pushed over the edge. I also help people decide when to refer themselves for talking therapies, and support them in getting to the point where those therapies are more likely to help rather than overwhelm.
📚 Learning disability
Some of the most complex work I do involves everything already described – neurodivergence, mental health, trauma, behaviour and environment – plus a learning disability. A major difficulty in these cases is that many of the people I work with have no spoken language or very limited communication, and even when someone can talk, autism and interoception issues can make it very hard for them to explain what is happening inside. In some situations their developmental level is closer to that of a much younger child, so they do not have the words, concepts or self-awareness to describe their internal experience, even when they are clearly distressed or struggling. My role is to build as accurate a picture as possible using behaviour, patterns, context and what the people around them can see, and then to use that to support them and the people caring for them in a way that respects their limits while still trying to reduce distress and improve quality of life.
When learning disability is part of the picture, I deliberately assume that almost anything could be contributing at first, and hold a very wide list of possibilities in mind. I then scan through each one and start whittling the list down by looking at what we know and what we do not know yet. Anything we can be confident about goes into the assessment as a “sure thing”, so everyone is clear about it. I also include a separate section on what it might be – the things that are plausible but cannot be confirmed because the information is not available, either because the person cannot tell us or because we have not yet seen enough. The plan then links directly to both parts of that picture: there is a section on what to do about the things we know are present, and a section on what to do in case those “might be” factors are real. In other words, we do not only plan for what we can see now; we also plan for what could be happening out of sight, so that families and services have a structured way of responding both to what is known and to what is still uncertain.
🧭 How I work
The way I work depends on what the situation actually needs. Sometimes the focus is a short, targeted piece of work: a small number of sessions to stabilise things, make sense of what is happening, and leave you with a clear plan that you can take forward on your own or with other services. In other cases, especially where there is a lot of overlap between neurodivergence, learning disability, trauma, behaviour and environment, the work is more detailed and runs over a longer period of time. Whatever level of support you choose, I design my reports so that, as far as possible, you do not need me afterwards: they are information-dense on purpose, bringing together understanding, explanations, relevant literature and a clear plan, so that you are armed with everything known about the situation rather than left guessing.
I am very adaptable in how I work, because situations and family dynamics often change once things start to settle. It is common for the original problem to ease and for a different pattern to become more visible underneath. My job is not only to help you stabilise the immediate situation, but also to keep reassessing and fine-tuning the plan as those changes happen, so that support keeps fitting what is actually in front of us rather than what was happening three months ago. Because I will already have assessed you or your child, I teach and explain things in a way that matches how you think and where your knowledge currently is. Whether we are working on an individual situation, emotional dysregulation, parenting, or adult life, my role is to keep stretching your understanding just enough – pushing your knowledge and confidence without overwhelming you – so that over time you become more able to read patterns, understand what is going on, and make informed decisions without needing constant input from me.
📞 Contact and enquiries
For advice or to arrange a free initial consultation:
☎️ (07940) 506909
📧 [email protected]
