After almost three decades of mental health difficulties and substance abuse I got sober six years ago. In 2007 I entered treatment starting on a methadone program for opiate addiction which lasted almost five years. On leaving treatment I slipped in and out of recovery programs never feeling like I belonged anywhere. I found myself in rooms for adult children doing inner-child healing. I began to develop my inner loving parent so that I could learn to re-parent myself with love, humour, gentleness and respect. Re-parenting is a path of self-love, it is hard but very worthwhile. Prior to sobriety I never completed anything. I changed jobs, plans, relationships, and interests constantly, unbeknown to me this often a pattern in people who are ADHD. I graduated with an undergraduate degree in Sociology & Criminology in 2019 and after experiencing another episode of burn-out after studying Victimology, I re-evaluated my life path. Studying fulltime and working in social care was full on. I graduated in 2022, with a Masters in Pluralistic Counselling & Psychotherapy, it is my biggest achievement in life because it was such hard work to get to this place and to train as a counsellor you have to study yourself. It felt like being a Russian doll and inside each layer there was a new "me" being revealed. I am very passionate about working pluralistically, with not one modality but a variety of perspectives. My training was very mind-opening, we learned about social justice and social structures as well as counselling theory that explores the individual. As I have found living as an autistic with ADHD, I am very impacted by my environment, stigma, social structures, and politics. I have developed a special interest in liberation psychology since being diagnosed autistic at the beginning of 2025 and in July 2025 I was diagnosed ADHD combined type just before my 50th Birthday. Internalising my neurodivergence led to me having high anxiety, panic disorder, depressive disorder and substance use disorder. It was a very dangerous pattern of poly drug and alcohol use. After leaving treatment in 2012 I had periods of abstinence, sometimes quite long periods of not using anything, other times more chaotic use, until I stopped using completely in 2019. I have been working on emotional sobriety with Women for Sobriety who I facilitated meetings with for a year. I am continuing to work through the ACA literature on "Becoming Your Own Loving Parent" and I am working through the "Laundry List" workbook. I am a certified Reiki Master after training over ten years from 2011-2021, I am also qualified in EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique). I have yet to offer these skills to others as I struggle with doing too much and I am going through a psychological process on receipt of my late diagnosis, because being autistic and ADHD is extremely tiring, there is a constant "push-pull" between my hyperactive and impulsive ADHD brain and my sensory sensitive autistic nervous system that gets burnt out very easily. I have sensory processing disorder, which means I am sensitive to bright lights and noise and I get fatigued easily in social situations or busy environments. Often I choose to be alone as it helps me to sensory and stimulation detox. My PTSD overlaps with my AuDHD and mostly relates to identity fragmentation after working through the impact of traumatic events in therapy over a long period. The high masking version of me is not really me at all but who I thought I needed to become in order to survive in this world. I am a highly sensitive and empathic person. I have been counselling adults and children in a mental health charity for two and a half years, previously I worked with survivors of sexual abuse, and in a charity for people with complex grief and before this in addiction recovery as a Peer Support Worker. Prior to my own recovery I couldn't maintain employment, I didn't know that I was AuDHD. I went through a healing process in these roles as I am a survivor and have experienced complex grief myself. I am unmasking, and learning to integrate my AuDHD identity, it has been and is still a lot to process, I am grieving, but I feel seen and heard for the first time in my life and my inner child is learning to trust.