Adult Autism, ADHD, and AuDHD Evaluations

Neurodivergence Affirming, Trauma-informed, AUDHD, ADHD, and Adult Autism Assessments in North Carolina (NC), Maryland (MD), Vermont (VT), Massachusetts (MA), Minnesota (MN), Pennsylvania, Florida (FL), Virginia (VA), South Carolina (SC), Delaware (DE), Idaho (ID), and Utah (UT)

Our adult autism assessment and ADHD assessment process is neurodiversity-affirming and grounded in a strengths-based understanding of autistic and ADHD identities.

We disavow and are wholly opposed to deficit-focused or ableist models.

We have deep and specialized expertise in assessing adults who are late-identified or self-identifying, especially those who have developed extensive compensatory strategies that can lead to missed or inaccurate diagnoses in more generalized settings.

We are highly skilled at differentiating complex trauma, internalized hyperactivity, AFAB presentations, and a wide variety of neurodivergent (Autistic, adhd, AuDHD, etc.) lived experiences.

If you are seeking a highly detailed, personalized, thorough, respectful, and clinically rigorous ADHD and/or adult autism assessment, please reach out.

We offer comprehensive formal diagnostic AuDHD, Autistic, and ADHD assessments designed to provide clear answers, meaningful validation, and practical next steps tailored to your individual life, needs, and circumstances.

Adults across FL, NC, SC, VA, MD, MA, MN, PA, VT, ID, UT, and DE can access expert, affirming, ADHD and AuDHD evaluations that are trauma-informed, deeply collaborative, and centered on highly detailed and personalized individual results.

Neurodivergence Affirming Adult AuDHD, Autism and ADHD Assessments

We center the lived experience of neurodivergent people and NOT how neurodivergent people appear through a neuro-normative lens. Our assessment work is grounded in the neurodiversity paradigm, the social model of disability, trauma-informed practice, and anti-oppressive, intersectional care.

We do not approach autism or ADHD as deficits to be fixed; we understand them as valid neurotypes—distinct ways of experiencing and responding to the world.

Diagnosis here is a process of discovery and meaning-making, not judgment. Our process is inclusive and intersectional.

We are specialized in diagnostic AuDHD evaluations for: late-identified/suspected adults, AFAB and gender-diverse adults, BIPOC adults, gifted / twice-exceptional (2E) individuals, trauma survivors, adults with co-occurring mental health diagnoses, and multiply neurodivergent people.

We also regularly explore the complexities of ADHD, Autism, AuDHD, alongside rare and/or complex chronic pain and illness realities.

Many adults were missed because traditional adult autism assessment tools were largely developed around male, white childhood presentations, externalized behaviors, and deficit-based frameworks. As a result, they often fail to capture internal experiences, masking, trauma adaptations, etc.

If you have concerns, as many do, that you may be told during an AuDHD evaluation that you're just anxious, you're overthinking it, you're too successful to be autistic, you have a job, you're married, you're a parent, you drive a car, you make eye contact, then we would encourage you to reach out for a free 15-minute consult to explore the fit and learn more about the process.

Adult Autism, ADHD, and AuDHD Evaluations of Lived Experience

While we will not know what the outcome will be until we go through the process, you should be able to trust that your assessor has a level of expertise that would involve deep, careful, and specialized consideration of all manner of information collected and reviewed, and synthesized in the context of our nuanced and complex evaluation process.

We recognize that there are many reasons why someone may present a certain way when facing the outer world, and our evaluations are not based on your outer presentations to the world.

In-Depth, Comprehensive, AuDHD, ADHD, Adult Autism Assessments

We do not offer surface-level screenings. Our assessments run deep. We use a myriad of approaches to assessment and evaluation, and then carefully synthesize the results in your highly personalized context.

The process is thorough, deeply thoughtful, and highly individualized. Upon completion of the process, your results will be reviewed with you at length, as will the rationale and support recommendations.

We pride ourselves on highly precise diagnostic formulations and insight into your unique life history and context.

Adult Autism Assessments - Accurate Diagnosis for Self-Understanding and Clarity

We are here to facilitate increased self-understanding, clarity, and consequently increased self-compassion. Diagnostic evaluation is something that many of our clients experience as fortifying the foundation of their self-understanding.

It can assist you in navigating how to release yourself from self-blame and habituated ways of conceptualizing yourself. It can serve as something that helps clients move into active discernment processes about how to actually meet their sensory, emotional, cognitive, and social needs and processing styles and capacities.

In short, for those who feel that formal diagnostic clarification is something they would like to seek out, we have found that in many cases it is experienced as life-changing.

That said, the diagnostic process also often brings up fears. Some of the most common fears include: “If I’m not neurodivergent, then what?” “I’m scared of being labeled.” “What if I pass as neurotypical so well that my assessor misses my neurodivergence?” “What if I am diagnosed but only as a result of inadvertently having tricked my assessor because I gave them all of the pieces that led me myself to be wondering?” “What if I don’t want medication?” “What if I’m just lazy?” “What if I don’t neatly fit in any category?”

We are highly specialized, astute, and extremely comprehensive and thorough in our process.

Adult AuDHD Assessments - Individualized Assessments which are deeply unique to you

We contextualize each individual within their own lived history and current experiences.

We do not use any cookie cutter approach in our evaluation and are heavily engaged in nuance and complexity and parsing apart the overlays between complex trauma, chronic pain/illness, Autism, ADHD, AuDHD and all manner of ways that people are shaped – past and present – by systems and ideologies and how this impacts how they show up and move through the world.

We want to hear everything that you think might be important for us to know. We want to hear all of your questions and talk through them together within the shared search for clarity.

We find that obtaining diagnostic clarification is about gaining language which can bring support – whether internally or externally sourced.

Late diagnosed/suspected/identified adults often don’t meet stereotypes and this does not invalidate your experience. Neurodivergence is not a character flaw and traits can be dynamic and fluid which can cause consternation.

We can talk through all of this together.

Agency, autonomy and self-authority are north stars in our approach to this work. We are highly proficient at working with heavily camouflaged adults who are exceptional at coping, albeit often in increasingly compartmentalized ways.

We hope that this process will contribute to transforming how you view yourself, and therefore how you interact with yourself. We are dedicated to making sure that every step of the process is thoughtful and clearly explained.

Because we do not take insurance, we are able to take fiercely devoted steps to ensure that your privacy is strictly protected.

You have absolute ownership over how you choose to share your results, or with who. We regularly assist clients with accommodations documentation if needed.

ADHD, AuDHD, and Adult Autism Assessments - The Path Inward

Some of our clients choose to seek out neurodivergence-specialized psychotherapy or coaching to assist with identity exploration, burnout recovery, late-diagnosis integration, trauma processing, relationship support, emotional regulation, executive functioning support, and family-of-origin work.

Depending on practice capacity, we provide such post-diagnostic support services, or at times when we are full, we provide clients with connections and referrals to other neurodivergent-affirming providers when indicated.

You don’t have to navigate this alone. We are committed to providing support, resources, and pathways for next steps, whether it’s about discerning who you are beneath the mask and how to honor that, how trauma, work life, medical conditions, and/or burnout shaped your coping, and what it means to YOU to live more authentically.

Psychotherapy and/or coaching for Autism, ADHD, or AuDHD provide ongoing support to focus on understanding how your neurotype and phenotype affect your experience of selfhood, social needs, energy and capacity, nervous system regulation and needs, relationships, and identity.

We are here to connect you with resources to assist you in the ongoing journey of discernment, authenticity, and self-advocacy, so that as you learn yourself more deeply you can explore what barriers have historically made it harder for you to feel like you are fully inhabiting your self and your life and are able to ask for what you need without apology.

We are here to help provide information and context that may assist you in feeling like you are finally working with your mind instead of against it. You don’t have to keep hiding. You don’t have to keep over-functioning.

Adult Autism Assessment

Have you been carrying the wrong story about yourself? You’ve tried to figure it out for years: why everything feels harder than it “should,” why socializing drains you, why noise, light, or chaos can overwhelm you, and why you replay conversations in your head long after they end.

You’ve learned to mask, to perform, to appear “fine,” and still you wonder: why do I experience the world so differently? Why am I exhausted all the time? Is it possible I’ve been autistic all along?

If you are tired of a backdrop of guesswork, shame, and cognitive dissonance feeling central to self-understanding, let's connect.

Neurodivergent Affirming Autism Assessments

At Silhouette Psychotherapy, we provide trauma-informed, neurodivergence-affirming, and deeply respectful comprehensive Adult Autism Assessments designed to give you clarity, relief, and a new, compassionate understanding of who you are.

Autism is a neurotype—not a flaw, not a failure, and not a personality problem.

It affects how you process social interaction, experience sensory input, communicate and interpret meaning, and regulate emotions and energy. Autism presents differently in every person.

Autistic adults often feel drained by unclear expectations or social demands, depend on structure and routine to feel steady, experience hypersensitivity to sound, light, or textures, struggle with subtext, tone, or facial cues, have deep, focused interests that bring regulation and joy, and mask so effectively that no one sees the internal strain.

Autistic adults might experience sensory overwhelm in busy environments, emotional burnout from constant masking, anxiety around unpredictability, loneliness even when surrounded by people, intense passions that feel central to core identity, and persistent self-doubt and exhaustion.

Adult Autism Assessment Can Help Identify Your Needs

Formal assessment can offer understanding and clarity so that if you've ever felt if you could understand why you're different, maybe you could stop trying so hard to be normal - that’s exactly what an assessment can often offer—understanding, and a way to make space for yourself differently inside of your own life.

Getting assessed as an adult can be life-changing.

Many autistic adults are overlooked for years, have been misdiagnosed, told they’re “too sensitive,” or praised for coping while silently struggling.

For AFAB, BIPOC, or LGBTQIA+, the likelihood of being missed by traditional diagnostic models is significantly higher.

A thorough, affirming assessment can help you reinterpret your past with compassion, stop internalizing blame, understand how your brain truly works, access accommodations and targeted strategies, and advocate for yourself without guilt.

This is not about labeling you—it’s about freeing you.

Some of the most damaging common myths follow, accompanied by their swift correction and replacement with reality.

Myth: “Autistic people lack empathy.” False. Many autistic adults feel emotions deeply and intensely. Myth: “Autism only shows up in childhood.” False. Autism is lifelong—diagnosis often comes much later. Myth: “You don’t look autistic.” Autism is not visually observable in a person's physical appearance, nor does it have a singular appearance; it spans gender, race, culture, and personality. Myth: “If you’re successful or verbal, you can’t be autistic.” Masking can make autism invisible—but invisibility comes at a cost.

Diagnosis is not about proving something is wrong; it’s about understanding what has always been true.

The adult autism assessment may be right for you if you've always felt “different” but couldn’t explain why. If you experience chronic burnout or social exhaustion. If you relate to autism descriptions but not stereotypes.

If you are seeking both language for and contextual clarification of your experience, and you’re ready to know yourself clearly in a way that can facilitate the steady lessening of internalized self-judgment.

Adult ADHD Assessments

Our ADHD Assessments are a good fit for those in search of clear answers which are free of shame and are not pathologizing.

Our ADHD Assessments are adept at working with those who are high-masking (voluntarily or involuntarily) and may have compensatory strategies and structures running in the background by default and habit.

Have you found yourself wondering how you can feel clear that in some ways you are highly capable and yet everything consistently feels harder for you than how it seems to be for others. Are you sensitive, insightful, intelligent, creative, and deeply intuitive. Are you able to generate ideas easily and are you someone who cares about doing things well. Then, in contrast, do you find that you lose track of time, forget what you were about to do, miss deadlines, spiral into self-blame, and start strong only to stall out halfway through. Do you find that your sense of self-trust has been damaged over time by trouble with impulsivity or inhibition? You may know better but feel like a house divided and watch yourself doing the thing you are simultaneously feeling clarity about not doing? Do you silently ask yourself: why can’t I just focus? Why does staying organized feel impossible? Why does everything take so much energy? Do you feel like your engine is constantly running and a bit revved and others tell you that you have so much energy they can't keep up?

ADHD has nothing to do with laziness, discipline, brokenness, values or morality. Living with undiagnosed ADHD—and gaining the understanding of that and its implications, is something that for many adults, can be the beginning of changing everything.

Adult ADHD Assessments Provide Self-Understanding

ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) is a neurodevelopmental difference that affects focus and sustained attention, time awareness, emotional regulation, impulse control, difficulty relaxing or feeling with restlessness, task initiation and follow-through, and executive functioning.

It’s not a willpower issue—it’s brain wiring.

While ADHD often begins in childhood, many adults—especially women, creatives, sensitive thinkers, and those with trauma histories—are overlooked for years.

Instead of being diagnosed, you may have masked your struggles, overachieved to compensate, internalized shame, and worked twice as hard just to stay afloat.

When you finally understand your brain, you stop fighting it—and start working with it.

What ADHD might look like in real life: at work, you start projects with enthusiasm, then hit a wall of overwhelm. Time slips away, deadlines sneak up, and you feel like you’re constantly catching up—but never fully arriving.

In relationships, you forget plans, zone out mid-conversation, and struggle to stay present when overstimulated.

Others may see distraction, but you’re actually managing overload, anxiety, or shame. In everyday life, keys vanish, emails remain unsent, laundry stays half-folded, and you bounce between hyperfocus and avoidance—criticizing yourself either way. If this sounds familiar, this may be due to your neurotype, and clarity can be the door that leads to relief.

Many ADHD adults remain undiagnosed due to gender bias in diagnostic criteria, high masking and perfectionism, co-occurring trauma, anxiety, or depression, and fear of being judged or dismissed.

At Silhouette Psychotherapy, ADHD assessments are collaborative and compassionate—not checkbox-based or rushed. Our process is trauma-informed, strengths-focused, private, and paced thoughtfully, and designed to empower you, not reduce you to a label.

Adult AuDHD Evaluations

Being both Autistic and ADHD (AuDHD) can feel confusing, contradictory—even exhausting. You may recognize yourself in both experiences, but never feel fully understood by assessments that focus on just one.

Our comprehensive AuDHD evaluations are designed to identify the overlapping and conflicting traits that make the AuDHD experience unique - so you can finally have clarity, validation, and direction.

AuDHD can look like feeling hyper-focused yet stuck. You might hyperfocus for hours on something you love, struggle to start simple daily tasks, crave structure but feel unable to follow through, and feel paralyzed by perfectionism or overwhelmed by initiation.

This isn’t laziness; it’s a neurological push–pull that requires nuanced evaluation.

AuDHD can look like feeling overwhelmed and under-stimulated. You may feel overloaded by noise, lights, or textures, constantly fidget or seek movement, and need stimulation to focus—but get overstimulated quickly.

Many people with AuDHD live in a daily sensory tug-of-war.

Our assessment helps clarify your specific sensory profile so support can actually fit your needs.

AuDHD can look like emotional regulation feeling intense, complex and draining. You might feel emotions deeply but struggle to name them, experience rejection sensitivity or emotional overwhelm, shut down or melt down after social situations, and miss hunger, thirst, or fatigue until you crash.

Understanding how autism and ADHD interact emotionally is key to sustainable coping strategies.

AuDHD can look like wanting connection and feeling exhausted by social interaction.

You may crave deep connection but struggle with social mechanics, talk too much—or go quiet, miss cues while being hyper-aware of others, mask your natural traits to fit in, and leave social interactions drained or anxious.

AuDHD Evaluations Provide Greater Clarity

A dual-diagnosis lens helps uncover what’s truly happening beneath the surface.

AuDHD is not just about challenges. When properly understood, it often reveals extraordinary strengths, including deep hyperfocus and mastery, creative, outside-the-box thinking, complex pattern recognition, passionate advocacy and integrity, and authentic, meaningful connection.

A comprehensive assessment doesn’t just identify difficulties—it highlights your capabilities.

Standard evaluations often miss the overlap. Traits can cancel each other out or mask one another, leading to misdiagnosis—or no diagnosis at all.

Our approach evaluates both autism and ADHD together, identifies overlapping and conflicting traits, differentiates executive dysfunction patterns, clarifies sensory and emotional regulation profiles, and provides personalized recommendations.

Clarity changes everything: when you understand how your brain works, self-blame decreases, strategies become effective, support becomes targeted, and confidence grows. If you’ve ever thought, “Why can I do some things brilliantly but struggle with basic tasks?” “Why am I both overwhelmed and restless?” or “Why do I feel different, even among neurodivergent people?” An AuDHD assessment could provide the answers you’ve been searching for.

AuDHD Evaluation: When your brain isn’t one or the other—it’s both.

Do you feel pulled in opposite directions inside your own mind? Craving structure…but resisting it. Needing routine…but getting bored by it. Deeply sensitive…yet mentally restless. Overstimulated…and under-focused at the same time. Maybe you’ve wondered: Am I autistic? Is it ADHD? Why do parts of both fit—but neither explains everything?

If this sounds like you, you may be AuDHD—a term many adults use to describe having both Autism and ADHD.

And understanding that dual neurotype can be life-changing.

At Silhouette Psychotherapy, we provide compassionate, in-depth Adult AuDHD Assessments designed to help you understand your full neurodivergent profile—not just half of it.

What is AuDHD? What is an AuDHD Evaluation?

AuDHD isn’t yet a formal diagnostic label in the DSM-5-TR. It’s a lived experience describing the overlap between Autism Spectrum (AS) and Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Research now confirms what many adults have known intuitively: autism and ADHD frequently co-exist in the same brain.

This combination can create a nervous system that feels paradoxical—highly sensitive yet highly scattered, craving predictability yet resisting constraint, deeply empathetic yet socially overwhelmed, capable of intense hyperfocus followed by shutdown. Many clients describe it as “driving with the brakes and the accelerator pressed at the same time.”

That’s not dysfunction—that’s complexity. And complexity deserves a nuanced assessment.

Comprehensive, In-Depth AuDHD Evaluations

Many AuDHD adults go undiagnosed or have been misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, Autism only, ADHD only, mood disorders, or personality disorders.

In less official venues, many have also been historically labeled as “too intense” or “too sensitive” and told to “just try harder.”

Many AuDHD adults learned to mask early—and mask well.

Most systems assess Autism and ADHD separately, but when both exist, they interact in ways that many clinicians who do not specialize in AuDHD may miss.

An Adult AuDHD assessment is a deep-dive comprehensive evaluation process grounded in clinical expertise and clinical rigor, focusing on your historic and present lived experience.

We offer validation without pathologizing, and clarity without oversimplification or reductionism.

Many AuDHD adults experience cycle between hyperfocus and total shutdown, sensory overwhelm paired with internalized hyperactivity or racing thoughts, a strong need for structure yet difficulty implementing or maintaining it, executive dysfunction affecting work or relationships, emotional intensity and struggles with emotional regulation due to emotional flooding, masking behaviors that may lead to burnout, and creative passions and focus that may be interspersed, if not paired with chronic overwhelm or malaise.

Naming it and obtaining the clarity that a name can provide, often is what begins to facilitate the changing of the narrative.

Widespread misconceptions, in conjunction with instinctual and often longstanding masking, contribute to missed diagnoses and misdiagnoses.

Autistic people lacking empathy is an egregious mythology. Many autistic adults feel emotions deeply and intensely. ADHD does not just mean you’re distracted.

Monotropism affects executive functioning, emotional regulation, and time perception. It is outdated and false that you cannot have both.

Current research shows significant overlap.

It is wholly and entirely false that if you are professionally successful, you cannot be neurodivergent.

Masking and overcompensation can hide enormous internal strain. It is time for us to cease focusing on external markers only, but to also make room for internal felt subjective realities of moving through the world, when in diagnostic contexts.

Diagnosis is about understanding what’s true in a way that one can make sustained contact with what is true as a platform for building intentionally.

Autism can present in ways that can conceal or compensate for ADHD. ADHD can present in ways that can conceal or compensate for Autism.

In short, within this seesaw dynamic, it is critical to work with a deeply specialized clinician if you are wanting to be thoroughly assessed for AuDHD.

Clients who benefit from the AuDHD evaluation have often felt different in ways that are hard to explain - even to themselves. Autism may feel like it fits but it doesn’t explain your impulsivity or restlessness. ADHD may feel like it fits but it doesn’t make explain your sensory world, burnout, fatigue, or chronic overwhelm. If you are interested in a process that would yield clarity and that would be grounded in respect, not stereotypes, we look forward to connecting with you.

If you've spent years questioning yourself—masking, over-functioning, pushing through burnout, you don’t have to keep wondering. You don’t have to choose between the two if you'd like to be evaluated for both simultaneously by a practice that can track the interplay between the two.

You don't have to settle for partial explanations. You deserve a process that is comprehensive, thorough and unique to each client.

AuDHD Evaluations that See All of You

Why this assessment is different: many clinicians evaluate Autism and ADHD in isolation.

We specialize in their overlap and interaction—especially in high-masking, late-identified adults. Our AuDHD evaluations are trauma-informed, neurodiversity-affirming, customized for high-masking adults, conducted online for flexibility and privacy, and are structured and highly collaborative.

We don’t search for what’s “wrong”—we clarify what’s real.

We assess the whole nervous system, including executive functioning, attention and impulsivity, sensory patterns, emotional regulation, masking strategies, trauma history, and identity and burnout patterns.

When clinicians lack comprehensive training or specialization in camouflaged presentations of Autism, ADHD, or AuDHD, missed diagnoses and missed diagnoses are common.

Obtaining diagnostic clarification can be profoundly impactful for many, precipitating the entrance into a process of reinterpreting childhood, understanding burnout, making sense of relationships, releasing shame, and building an authentic and healing neurodivergent identity.

What to Expect During an Adult Autism, ADHD, AuDHD Evaluation

This is a formal diagnostic process for adults seeking clarity regarding ADHD, Autism,and/or AuDHD.

If you're ready to understand yourself through a new lens, our evaluations are rooted in respect and empowerment, designed to help you understand and accommodate your brain rather than fighting it.

We invite you to reach out and schedule a free 15-minute consultation.

When we get your message we will reach back to schedule and prior to the consult we will send you a collection of detailed information about the clinical and logistical aspects of the process so that you know exactly what to expect.

Adult Autism Assessment Insurance and Payment

We are a private-pay practice and do not accept insurance.

This intentional choice allows us to utilize neuro-affirming evaluation methods, offer an equitable pricing model, and reduce systemic barriers to care.

By remaining private-pay, we protect your privacy and autonomy—a priority for many of our clients who value having full control over their personal information and have previously experienced harm within medical or institutional systems.

While we do not interface with insurance directly, we can provide a superbill for potential reimbursement. We recommend contacting your insurance provider in advance to understand your specific coverage options.

Take the First Step toward Clarity

If you are seeking clarity and a process that honors your lived experience, our approach to adult autism, ADHD, and AuDHD evaluation is rooted in respect and empowerment. We would be honored to work with you.

Reach out to us today to schedule your free 15-minute consultation to explore how we fit your needs. During this time, we will provide you with detailed and comprehensive information regarding our rates, policies, and the diagnostic journey.

We look forward to hearing from you and supporting you through this AuDHD, ADHD or Adult Autism Assessment process.