Looking after your wellbeing when you’re neurodivergent

Guest blog by Evolve Psychology

If you’ve spent years feeling “too much” or “not enough” – too sensitive, too scattered, too intense, or somehow never quite keeping up in the way everyone else seems to – you are far from alone.

As awareness of neurodivergency grows, many adults are now starting to understand that they are or might be autistic, have ADHD, or both (AuDHD). After all, research suggests that one in seven of us are neurodivergent. Some people seek a formal diagnosis. Many don’t, whether because of long waiting lists, not yet being ready or simply not feeling the need.  Regardless, recognising there’s a reason for your challenges can be a critical point in your life. It can lead to real self-understanding and validation to realise your struggles can be explained by the fact that your brain is different and you are navigating life designed for neurotypical brains.

So, broadly speaking, life might well be harder for you, maybe a little, maybe a lot. This makes it very important that you look after your wellbeing. This can look different from how other people look after themselves, and that’s fine.

Here’s some of our tips for taking care of yourself, based on what we know after supporting neurodivergent people in our psychology and neurodevelopmental clinics for many years. These are for adults but most apply to children too.

Don’t wait to look after your wellbeing

We can’t stress enough that it’s really important to support the difficulty, not the label.

You may be waiting for, or wondering about, a diagnostic assessment, but don’t put your wellbeing on hold until a report arrives. In the meantime, it can be useful to question: “what am I finding hard, and what would make it easier?” Then give yourself permission to meet those needs. Understanding yourself and looking after yourself is exactly what you’d encourage a friend to do after all.

It’s also worth knowing that a good deal of support, both in healthcare and at work, is based on how a difficulty affects your daily life, not on whether it has a formal name attached – even if people tend to assume otherwise.

Protect your sensory environment.

Notice what drains or overwhelms you. It might be bright light, background noise, certain textures or crowded spaces. Then build in small buffers or aids:

• Noise-cancelling headphones
• Sunglasses (yes, indoors too)
• A quiet corner to retreat to
• Running your errands at quieter times
• Socialise in shorter bursts

This is about helping to regulate a nervous system that processes sensory input differently to neurotypical people.

Understand your energy, not just your time

This is perhaps the most valuable adjustment to give yourself – it can protect you from burnout – a persistent state of deep exhaustion that can affect neurodivergent people.

Most of us plan our days by looking at the time available. But time isn’t the same as energy, and for neurodivergent adults, energy is often depleted by things a neurotypical world doesn’t register as effort:

• Masking
• Sensory processing
• Social decoding
• Executive function demands.

Rather than forcing yourself into a ‘normal’ schedule, notice your actual rhythms – when you focus best, when you crash, how long you can sustain a task before you need a break. Build routines built around your real patterns, rather than an idealised version of yourself – this will be more sustainable than relying on determination.

Think of energy like a bank account. Every activity is either a withdrawal or a deposit, and the goal isn’t to eliminate withdrawals, it’s to manage your balance.

• Withdrawals often include sensory overload, masking and complex admin
• Deposits might be quiet time, special interests, rest, or movement that feels regulating

Notice which activities drain you and aim to avoid having clusters together without recovery in between. Space things out, add recharge time, or lower your expectations on harder days. A “minimum viable” version of meals, cleaning or admin is a valid choice, not a failure. Give yourself somewhere calm to decompress at home, and permission to leave social occasions once you’ve had enough.

Try to avoid telling yourself how you ‘should’ feel. For example, you might find social situations more draining than you feel you ‘should,’ particularly if you mask your traits to get through them, as this is exhausting over time. Plan deliberate downtime afterwards. Even 30 minutes of quiet can prevent the crash that some people then feel.

Externalise what your brain won’t reliably hold

Differences in executive function – including attention, working memory, time management and getting started on tasks – are common in both autism and ADHD. Rather than struggling with these challenges and risking missing appointments, meetings and deadlines, outsource some of the work:

• Alarms
• Visual reminders
• Written checklists
• Fixed homes for important items
• Body doubling (working alongside someone else)

These are accommodations you’re allowed to give yourself, the same way glasses accommodate short-sightedness.

Let movement work

Movement tends to help with symptoms and mood, with even short busts mattering more than you might think. For ADHD, movement breaks reduce restlessness and support focus once returning to a task. For autistic adults, rhythmic or familiar movement can regulate sensory input and lower anxiety. This might be:

• A five-minute walk
• Stretching
• Time outdoors, even jumping on a trampoline
• Gardening
• Challenging exercise like a work out, at the gym or at home

Building small, enjoyable movement into your day, rather than treating it as a separate chore, tends to work best.

Ask for what you need at work

Under the Equality Act 2010, disability is defined by the impact of a difficulty on your day-to-day life, not by whether you have a diagnostic label. If you meet the threshold, you may be legally entitled to adjustments – and many employers will make reasonable changes as good practice regardless.

You don’t have to disclose a diagnosis: describing the difficulty and the adjustment that would help is enough. That might look like:

• Written instructions
• Advance notice of changes
• A quieter workspace – or accommodations like noise cancelling headphones
• Flexible working
• Tasks broken into smaller steps
• Permission to attend online meetings without your camera on
• The government’s Access to Work scheme is also worth exploring, and doesn’t require a diagnosis

Know when it’s time to loop in your GP

Your GP can’t diagnose autism or ADHD, but they can help with the anxiety, disrupted sleep, or low mood that often travels alongside it. It’s entirely reasonable to say you’re awaiting assessment and ask what support is available in the meantime – you don’t need a diagnosis in hand to ask for help with how you’re feeling right now.

Find your people

Not feeling alone matters. Whether that’s:

• Connecting with other neurodivergent adults – possibly online if you prefer that to a face to face get together
• Working with a therapist who understands neurodivergence
• Finding accurate descriptions of your experience in books or online

These reduce the sense of: “why am I like this?” which can lower stress and negative feelings you may carry. Community can help to turn a private, confusing struggle into something shared and explicable.

Women approaching or beyond midlife

Perimenopause and menopause can intensify existing neurodivergent traits considerably, as declining oestrogen affects the same dopamine and serotonin systems that neurodivergent brains already manage differently. Executive function, emotional regulation and sensory tolerance can all take a noticeable hit. This is a big factor behind many women with autism or ADHD seeking an assessment and potentially receiving a diagnosis for the first time in midlife. Strategies that previously kept them afloat become overwhelmed by the neurodivergent/menopause combination and struggles surface.

If this resonates, it’s worth raising both your neurodivergence and your menopause symptoms with your GP together and asking specifically about options like HRT.

What helps varies enormously between individuals and between types of neurodivergence, so treat all of this as a starting point to experiment with, not a fixed prescription. Your wellbeing matters enormously – looking after it can protect both your physical and mental health. The links between mental health struggles and neurodivergent people are explored in other blogs so we won’t discuss it in depth here, but you should know that people with ADHD and autism are more vulnerable to anxiety, burnout and depression. So, giving yourself what you need is a powerful step in protecting your long-term health.

About Evolve

Evolve Psychology offers assessments for ADHD, autism, dyslexia and dyscalculia from its clinics in Harrogate and other the UK and Ireland locations, as well as digitally.

It is clinician-founded and led, with a multidisciplinary team who will bring warmth and empathy to your assessment. Evolve offers privately funded assessments and through the NHS as a Right to Choose provider.

Further information is available at www.evolvepsychology.com

Evolve Skills & Research Academy betters the lives of neurodivergent people through high-quality training and research.

Further information is available at www.evolveskillsacademy.com