Sensory and regulation-focused therapy for autistic and ADHD adults
Some people don't arrive in therapy with a problem so much as a state.
A background hum of too much. Noise that other people don't seem to notice. Lighting that makes a room unbearable without you being able to say why. The particular exhaustion of a day that looked, from the outside, like an ordinary day.
Or the opposite — flat, distant, hard to get moving, needing something loud or intense before anything registers at all.
If you have spent years being told to manage your stress, or to think differently about it, and none of it has touched this, there may be a reason. Some of what you are dealing with isn't thought. It is sensory, and it lives in the body.
This page describes a way of working that starts there instead.
What might be going on
Your nervous system takes in sensory information constantly. Sound, light, movement, touch, temperature, and the quieter internal signals — hunger, tension, heart rate, breath, the need for the bathroom. Almost all of this happens below awareness, and it runs continuously whether you are paying attention to it or not.
For some people that processing works differently.
Too much information comes in, and there is no filter to soften it. Or not enough registers, so the world feels muffled and far away. Or the internal signals are difficult to read, so you only notice hunger when you are shaking, or stress when you are already in tears.
The result is a nervous system that spends most of its time either braced or shut down, and very little time in the settled middle — the state where thinking clearly, connecting with people, and genuinely resting are actually possible.
That middle state is what the work aims at. It has a name in the approach I use: the just right state.
What people describe
Everyone's version of this is different, but some things come up again and again.
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Being wiped out by places that other people find ordinary — supermarkets, open-plan offices, family gatherings, busy streets
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Needing a long recovery period after social contact, even good social contact
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Noticing sound in a way that feels like an assault rather than an annoyance
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Clothing, labels, seams, textures that make a day unworkable
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Feeling nothing much at all until suddenly feeling everything at once
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Being described as oversensitive, or dramatic, or difficult, for most of your life
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Constant low-level movement — leg bouncing, skin picking, pacing, chewing — that you barely notice you are doing
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Reaching for intensity to feel present: caffeine, heat, cold, speed, noise, pressure
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Exhaustion that sleep does not repair
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Shutting down mid-conversation and being unable to find words
None of these are character flaws. They are what a nervous system does when it is working hard to manage a world that is delivering more, or less, than it can comfortably process.
Why talking about it sometimes isn't enough
There is a good reason why insight alone often fails to shift this.
When your system reads the situation as unsafe — and it makes that judgement below conscious thought, and far faster than thought — the parts of you that manage conversation, reflection and connection are dialled down. This is not a metaphor. It is physiology. The capacity to be reflective is not always available on demand.
So a person can understand their own history in fine detail, articulate exactly what happened and why, and still arrive at every session braced. The understanding is real. It just isn't reaching the level where the problem lives.
Regulation has to come before reflection. When that order is reversed, therapy can feel like something you are performing rather than something that is changing you.
This does not mean talking therapy is wrong or that you have wasted your time in it. It usually means the sequencing needs to change.
How I work
My background is an unusual combination. I am a registered occupational therapist with the HCPC, a counsellor accredited with the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society, and a clinical hypnotherapist. That means I can work with the nervous system directly, not only with what you think and feel about it.
The work usually moves through three stages, though rarely in a tidy line.
Understanding your sensory profile. We build a detailed picture of how your particular system takes in and manages information. What settles you. What winds you up. What you have been using to cope without realising it was coping. Most people find this stage clarifying in itself — it explains a great deal that had never had an explanation.
Building regulation. From there we work practically with what actually shifts your state. This is body-based and specific to you: movement, pressure, rhythm, breath, sound, and changes to the environments you spend your days in. The aim is not relaxation for its own sake. It is a system with enough support to be present without effort.
Making sense of it. Once there is more regulation available, the harder material becomes workable. Relationships, history, grief, the patterns you have been repeating. This is where counselling and attachment-based work come in — but it comes after the ground is steady enough to hold it, not before.
Sensory Attachment Intervention
Much of this draws on Sensory Attachment Intervention, developed by Éadaoin Bhreathnach, which brings together sensory integration, attachment theory, developmental trauma and polyvagal theory into one model.
I completed SAI for Adults & Adolescents with the Sensory Attachment Intervention Centre, which qualifies me to carry out the Just Right State Programme with adults and adolescents. I have also completed the companion attachment-based practice training for occupational therapists trained in SAI, covering the Dynamic-Maturational Model of attachment across the lifespan.
What a session is actually like
Slower than you might expect.
There is no pressure to produce a narrative, and no expectation that you will arrive with something prepared. We may spend time simply noticing what your body is doing, or trying something and paying attention to what changes. Some sessions involve a lot of talking. Some involve very little.
I keep substantial gaps between clients so that I arrive settled and unhurried. That is not an administrative detail — a regulated nervous system in the room is part of what makes this work, and it cannot be rushed.
You remain in charge throughout. Nothing happens that you have not agreed to, and stopping something is always available to you.
Online and in person
Online, across the UK. This work translates well to video, and in some ways better — you are already in your own environment, with your own things around you, which is where regulation ultimately has to live. We can work directly with the spaces you actually occupy.
In person, in Enniskillen. For those within reach of County Fermanagh, in a quiet consulting room set up with this work in mind. Some elements involving movement and pressure are only possible in person.
Longer sessions are available where the work benefits from more time and less clock-watching.
Who this suits, and who it doesn't
It tends to suit people who:
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Are autistic or ADHD, or suspect they might be, and want support that starts with the nervous system rather than with behaviour
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Have a diagnosis and found that nothing followed it
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Have done talking therapy, valued it, and still feel something was left untouched
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Struggle to identify what they are feeling until it is severe
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Are exhausted in a way that rest does not fix
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Want to understand their own system rather than get better at overriding it
You do not need a diagnosis to work with me, and you do not need language for any of this yet. Working it out together is part of the work.
It may not be the right fit if:
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You are currently in crisis or at immediate risk — urgent support is the right first step, and I can help you identify it
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You need a formal autism or ADHD assessment, which I do not provide, though I can work alongside one
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You want short-term, structured symptom management, which other approaches deliver better
If you are not sure, the conversation below is the place to find out. I would rather tell you honestly that I am not the right person than take on work I cannot do well.
Common questions
Do I need an autism or ADHD diagnosis?
No. A significant number of the people I work with have no diagnosis, and some choose never to seek one. The work responds to your nervous system as it is, not to a label.
Is this the same as sensory integration therapy for children?
It shares roots, but this is adult work, and it is not about exercises or equipment. It is about understanding your system and building regulation into an adult life with a job, relationships and responsibilities in it.
Can this work online?
Yes. Most of what we do is about your own body and your own environment, both of which are with you already.
How long does it take?
That depends on what you are bringing. Some people come for a defined piece of work over a few months. Others stay longer as things unfold. We review it together rather than my imposing a number at the start.
I've had therapy before and it didn't help. Why would this be different?
It may not be, and I won't promise otherwise. What is different is the starting point — the body first, rather than the story first. For some people that is exactly what was missing. For others it isn't, and we would find that out early.
What if I can't explain what's wrong?
That is a normal place to start, and often a meaningful one in itself. Being unable to put words to an internal state is a recognised difficulty rather than a failure of effort, and it is something we can work on directly.
Ready to Take the First Step?
The free 30-minute introductory call is available by phone or video, with nothing expected beyond that first conversation.