The AuDHD Psych Podcast

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🎙️ Episode 34: AuDHD (& Human) Experience — Self-Concept & It's Influence on Autistic, AuDHD & ADHD Experience
"Am I actually broken? Or do I just have these lessons that I've learnt that have informed my understanding of myself?"
Summary:
This week Aaron unpacks self-concept: what it is, how we develop it as neurodivergent people, and how we can deliberately change it to improve our emotional experience. Building on the working model of emotions from the previous episode, he frames self-concept as our integrated understanding of who and what we are, woven together from core beliefs and spanning every domain that matters to us: relationships, learning, work, family, and social life.
Aaron explains that every single experience teaches us something about ourselves, and shares personal examples of how failure experiences shaped his own self-concept: failing year twelve twice, mixed performance in the Navy, and believing he was "academically stupid" until nearly 40, when a colleague encouraged him to study psychology. He contrasts this with the success experiences since, which have reshaped his understanding of himself as a learner once he found the right environment and the right anchors for his attention.
He then turns to the neurodivergent experience under a deficit-based model, where "normal" is implicitly assumed to be "right" and difference is repeatedly fed back to us as vague, impulsive, too much, or not enough. These implicit lessons create a self-fulfilling loop: expecting social situations to go badly, becoming anxious, performing worse, and reinforcing the belief. Aaron closes with two practical pathways for change: deliberately collecting new success experiences through scaffolded, CBT-style exposure, and finding community, where comparing ourselves against a realistic norm teaches us that we are not wrong, deficient, or broken. He cautions against the "superpower" framing just as much as the deficit framing, landing on a balanced view of ourselves as humans with strengths, weaknesses, and neutral characteristics alike.
Key Themes & Takeaways:
Self-concept as integrated beliefs – our understanding of who and what we are, across every important life domain
Every experience is a lesson – successes and failures alike continually update our self-concept, which is never set and forget
Failure experiences and anxiety-driven motivation – relying on urgency and deadlines without the right anchors can build a history of perceived failure
The deficit model's implicit lessons – when the construct itself is framed as a deficit, neurodivergent people learn they are "not right" simply by being different
The self-fulfilling loop – a negative self-concept raises anxiety, reduces performance, and makes mistakes the salient memory
Success experiences change self-concept – scaffolded challenges teach us "I can cope with this" and build confidence
Community as a realistic comparison – being among similar people replaces comparison against "normal" with a fair and appropriate norm
Balanced, not superpowered – a truthful self-concept includes strengths, weaknesses, and value-neutral characteristics
Self-concept drives emotion, and emotion is the quality of our lives
Referenced Concepts:
Self-concept and CBT core beliefs
Working model of emotions (previous episode)
Deficit-based and medical models of neurodivergence
Implicit learning and the "normal equals right" heuristic
Scaffolded exposure and success experiences
Community and realistic social comparison (queer theory and minority community)
LOAPAC – the League of Autistic Psychologists and Affirming Colleagues
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Keywords: AuDHD podcast, autism and ADHD, neurodivergent psychologist, neurodiversity affirming, Howearth Psychology, queer psychologist, autism diagnosis, ADHD awareness, lived experience, neurodivergent mental health, clinical psychology podcast

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🎙️ Episode 33: AuDHD Experience — Disclosure and Self-Advocacy
"Disclose where it serves you, and only where you feel safe doing so. People are not entitled to our information."
Summary:
Should I tell people I'm neurodivergent, and how do I advocate for what I need? This week Aaron reframes disclosure as something almost everyone gets wrong: it isn't a one-off announcement but a repeated, context-specific process that happens across settings and across a lifetime. Borrowing the queer community's language of "inviting people in," he explains why partial disclosure is the norm, not a failure, and why the decision always comes down to a personal cost-benefit analysis grounded in safety.
Aaron walks through what the research tells us. In a UK study of 238 autistic adults, around 55% disclosed to some people, about a third disclosed to everyone, and roughly 10% told no one, with close to half of employees only disclosing after starting a job and outcomes split between positive and negative experiences. He contrasts this with the only experience-sampling study of disclosure as it happens, where about two-thirds of opportunities led to some disclosure and three-quarters of those were experienced positively, and he lingers on one participant's line: "I don't have the spoons to disclose and self-advocate in this context right now."
From there, Aaron turns to accommodations. In Australia you don't have to name a diagnosis to a workplace; you can describe your difficulties and ask for reasonable adjustments, and employers have both a legal and a moral obligation to provide them where they don't cause undue hardship. Speaking as both a clinician and a small-practice owner, he explains what an employer needs to know to act, acknowledges that accommodations are often only partially met or not met at all, and closes with a practical self-reflection framework: identify the environment, the differences that matter in it, their impact, the accommodation that would help, and whether seeking it is worth the cost. That list tells you where disclosure actually serves you.
Key Themes & Takeaways:
Disclosure is a process, not an event – we invite people in repeatedly, to new supervisors, HR, teachers, colleagues and friends, across settings and across our lives
Partial disclosure is normal – telling some people and not others isn't doing it badly; it's the most common pattern and reflects safety, not commitment
Cost-benefit analysis sits at the centre – weigh the energy and anxiety of disclosing, and the risk of prejudice, against the accommodations and expectation management it could unlock
Spoons matter – capacity to disclose and self-advocate fluctuates day to day with everything else going on in your life, and it's okay to say not today
You don't have to name the diagnosis – in Australian workplaces you can describe difficulties and propose solutions without disclosing a health condition
Accommodations are a structural good – for employers, adjustments aren't an inconvenience but the way to keep goal-aligned people who feel safe, included and respected
If nothing improved, it isn't you – partially met, unmet, delayed and self-funded accommodations are a documented pattern in the research, not a personal failing
The AuDHD research gap – almost all disclosure research lumps neurodivergent people together; ADHD is thin and AuDHD is near-absent, so prospective PhD students take note
Know your needs before you disclose – mapping environment, differences, impact, accommodation and worth-it-ness tells you where disclosure is actually in your interest
Referenced Concepts:
Romualdez et al. (2021), "People Might Understand Me Better": diagnostic disclosure experiences of 238 autistic adults in UK workplaces
Love et al. (2023) / Aspect Australia: experience-sampling study of 36 autistic adults across 231 disclosure opportunities
Reasonable adjustments and undue hardship in Australian workplaces
Learning plans in school and university settings
Spoon theory and fluctuating cognitive and social energy
Masking, stress-related rigidity and sensory differences (including misophonia)
LOAPAC (League of Autistic Psychologists and Affirming Colleagues; LOAPAC.org) register of affirming practitioners
This episode is psychoeducation for general information only and isn't individualised therapy. If you need individual support, please find an affirming clinician in your area.
We are different, not defective.
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Keywords: AuDHD podcast, autism and ADHD, neurodivergent psychologist, neurodiversity affirming, Howearth Psychology, queer psychologist, autism diagnosis, ADHD awareness, lived experience, neurodivergent mental health, clinical psychology podcast

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🎙️ Episode 31: AuDHD Experience — A Working Model of Emotions
"Emotions are our integrated experience of our body's response to our understanding of ourselves in our context."
Summary:
This week Aaron shares a working model for understanding emotions, developed with alexithymia and interoceptive differences in the neurodivergent community in mind. He defines emotion as combining cognitive appraisal (our understanding of self and context) with the body's physiological response, drawing on Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest framework extended to a "survive then thrive" lens.
Aaron distinguishes challenge from threat, then walks through the activated spectrum of emotions using a real-world example from his own neighbourhood, St Kilda: fight (anger), flight (fear/anxiety), freeze, and fawn, explaining the physiological and attentional shifts behind each — heart rate, digestion, muscle tension, and narrowing focus. He extends the model into flop (depression, underpinned by hopelessness) and touches on disgust as a slower-threat, memory-enhancing response distinct from the acute threat responses.
He then turns to positive and deactivated states — calm, contentment, boredom, and the activated positives of excitement, interest, curiosity, and play — showing how these emerge once safety is established and how they support learning and thriving rather than mere survival. Aaron closes with practical questions listeners can use to identify their own emotions when interoception is limited, such as noticing expectations, direction of movement (towards or away), activation level, and sense of agency.
Key Themes & Takeaways:
Emotion as appraisal plus body response – emotions reflect both our understanding of self-in-context and our body's activation (or non-activation) in response
Challenge vs threat – the same event can trigger different emotions depending on our perceived resources relative to the demand
The activated spectrum – fight, flight, freeze, and fawn each reflect a different appraisal of available resources to manage a threat
Flop and hopelessness – depression's low-arousal presentation is framed as a response to perceived hopelessness about safety
Disgust as a distinct response – slower-threat, memory-enhancing, and less about urgent escape
Thriving states – curiosity, interest, and play are framed as extensions available once safety is established
Practical self-reflection tool – simple questions (expectation, direction, activation, agency) can help identify emotions without relying on interoceptive cues
Referenced Concepts:
Alexithymia and interoception
Schema theory and internal working models
Darwin's theory of natural selection
Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop responses
Disgust and contamination-avoidance
Kelly McGonigal's TED talk on stress reappraisal
We are different, not defective.
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Keywords: AuDHD podcast, autism and ADHD, neurodivergent psychologist, neurodiversity affirming, Howearth Psychology, queer psychologist, autism diagnosis, ADHD awareness, lived experience, neurodivergent mental health, clinical psychology podcast

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🎙️ Episode 31: Neurodivergent Experience - Male/Female Vs Internalising/Externalising Presentations & Late Diagnosis
"When we talk about male and female presentations, we're really talking about internalising and externalising presentations."
Summary:
In this episode of The AuDHD Psych Podcast, clinical psychologist and AuDHDer Aaron Howearth asks why more boys and men are diagnosed with autism and ADHD than girls and women. He argues that what we call male and female presentations is better described as internalising and externalising. An internalising presentation suppresses the impulse and works hard to fit the social rules, while an externalising presentation acts on it and is visible to everyone in the room. He links that split to how we still raise sons and daughters differently, and to how diagnostic criteria are built from what clinicians and researchers could observe. Because externalising presentations are the observable ones, they are the ones encoded in slow-moving manuals like the DSM and ICD, while quieter internalising presentations are less likely to be noticed or referred on.
He then traces the cost of being missed. Internalising presentations more commonly come with anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidality, difficulties with self-esteem and self-concept, and a greater likelihood of a personality disorder diagnosis. Externalising presentations more often attract conduct diagnoses, defiance and aggression, but they also tend to bring earlier recognition and the relief of seeing yourself reflected in peers with the same label. Without that recognition, "I'm different" quietly becomes "I'm not enough". He closes on late diagnosis: masking eventually meets a threshold it cannot hold, and for many neurodivergent women that arrives at perimenopause, when falling oestrogen affects GABA, serotonin and dopamine and brain fog, inattention and sensory gating become harder to hide.
Key Themes & Takeaways
Internalising vs Externalising – What we often call male and female presentations may be better described as suppressing the impulse versus acting on it.
Culture May Contribute to Teaching Us Our Presentation – "Boys will be boys" permits externalising, while girls are taught to be pro-social, so masking is learned earlier.
How Criteria Get Built – Manuals encode what clinicians could observe, so externalising is captured and quieter presentations are missed.
Masks, Scripts And Stress – An internal compendium of social rules, with a script for each situation, works but can be a costly constant effort.
Patterns of Difficulties Differ – Internalisers more often meet criteria for anxiety, depression and personality disorders; externalisers for conduct and aggression.
Self-Concept Is A Deeper Injury – Without a name for what you are, self-understanding drifts from who you actually are.
Community Repairs The Picture – Seeing your strengths and struggles in others replaces being a bad person with being a different one.
Perimenopause And Late Diagnosis – A real Female-Male difference may be the reduced effects of oestrogen on GABA, serotonin and dopamine, amplifying brain fog, inattention and sensory gating.
The Double Mask – People approaching burnout often mask the burnout too, which can push diagnosis even later and burnout deeper.
Referenced Concepts
Internalising and externalising presentations of autism and ADHD
How diagnostic criteria are constructed in the DSM and ICD
Personality disorder diagnoses in internalising presentations
Self-concept and identity after late diagnosis
Perimenopause, oestrogen, GABA, serotonin and dopamine
Sensory gating, attention and autistic burnout
See Eps 10, 20 & 24 for related diagnosis/late diagnosis content.
If this episode raises difficult feelings, support is available in Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14, 13YARN 13 92 76, or Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.
We are different, not defective.
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Keywords: AuDHD podcast, autism and ADHD, neurodivergent psychologist, neurodiversity affirming, Howearth Psychology, queer psychologist, autism diagnosis, ADHD awareness, lived experience, neurodivergent mental health, clinical psychology podcast

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🎙️ Episode 30: AuDHD Experience - Autistic Burnout & Recovery
"Downtime is a necessity, not a nice to have."
Summary:
In this episode of The AuDHD Psych Podcast, clinical psychologist and AuDHDer Aaron Howearth takes on two questions: what is autistic or neurodivergent burnout, and what can we actually do to protect ourselves from it? He begins by being clear about where the evidence sits. Autistic burnout has been described within community since around 2008 but only reached academic publication in 2020, when Raymaker and colleagues offered a description, followed by Higgins and colleagues the year after. There is no specific research on ADHD burnout — that literature is about occupational burnout in ADHDers — and no research at all on combined AuDHD burnout, so this episode draws on the autistic burnout literature and says so plainly.
Aaron works through the characteristics the two descriptions broadly agree on: debilitating exhaustion that leaves people drained and depleted, a loss of existing skills that increases disability, and, in Higgins' description, withdrawal. He makes the skill loss concrete — heightened sensory sensitivity, more emotional difficulty, reduced cognition, memory, speech and executive function, and increased difficulty with the activities of daily living like showering, cooking, cleaning and getting to work. He also complicates the three-month timeframe commonly quoted from Raymaker and colleagues, noting that the lived experience research mostly doesn't specify a duration at all: for some people it is days, for others months or years, and some don't fully recover.
Drawing on a recent systematic review synthesising the lived experience literature, Aaron maps the consequences across three domains: adverse health and wellbeing impacts, our place within the community, and our capacity to stay hopeful about the future and about ourselves. That includes longer-lasting disability and continued fatigue, difficulty expressing our intelligence and feeling like we come across as silly, the sense of having lost part of ourselves, anxiety, depression, increased meltdowns, self-injury and somatic distress; reduced capacity to engage in education and work, with homelessness, inpatient admission and lost independence reported by some participants; and lowered self-esteem, self-criticism, hopelessness and increased suicidality — where, for some people, the wish is not to die but to escape the feeling of being burnt out.
Aaron then turns to what feeds burnout and what protects against it. He handles camouflaging carefully: much of the lived experience research points to masking as a contributor while some follow-up research hasn't shown a significant influence, and his own argument is that what matters is our relationship with masking and whether the benefits genuinely outweigh the costs. He names ignorance, stigma, disbelief and unaccommodating environments as exhausting in their own right, before closing on the protective themes from the review — the power of knowledge, the power of taking care of our own needs for rest, solitude and sensory relief, and the power of others. He finishes by inviting listeners to choose one thing over the coming week that lowers the cost of their days, while noting that sometimes the thing to do is nothing at all.
Key Themes & Takeaways
 • Three Very Different Evidence Bases — Autistic burnout has descriptive academic research from 2020 onwards, the ADHD literature is really occupational burnout in ADHDers, and combined AuDHD burnout has no research at all.
 • Exhaustion, Skill Loss & Withdrawal — The agreed characteristics are debilitating exhaustion and a loss of existing skills that increases disability, with withdrawal included in Higgins' description.
 • Skill Loss Is Concrete, Not Abstract — It shows up as heightened sensory sensitivity, more emotional difficulty, reduced cognition, memory, speech and executive function, and difficulty with basic activities of daily living.
 • No Fixed Timeframe — The frequently quoted three months is not a rule; the lived experience research describes days, weeks, months or years, and incomplete recovery for some people.
 • Burnout Reaches Across Life — Impacts span physical and mental health, education and employment, housing and independence, and our hope about the future and about ourselves.
 • Masking Is Associated, Not Proven Causal — Lived experience research points to camouflaging as a contributor while some follow-up research does not; what likely matters is our relationship with masking and whether it earns more than it costs.
 • Ignorance & Stigma Are Exhausting — Sensory-harsh environments, unmet accommodations, being told we're overreacting, and disbelief in our autism or our distress all carry their own cost across healthcare, education, employment and family.
 • Self-Knowledge Is Protective — Being unaware means our support needs stay hidden and self-concept difficulties are more likely; understanding our own patterns makes life more manageable and replaces "I'm broken" with "I'm doing things differently."
 • Rest, Solitude & Sensory Relief — Pacing, permission to leave early, managed expectations in both directions, working from home, deliberate solitude and protected low-demand time are necessities rather than luxuries.
 • The Power of Others — Being trusted, accepted and seen, in accommodating environments that account for a disability they can't see, is both preventative and restorative; community is where we stop feeling broken.

References:

Ali, D., Bougoure, M., Cooper, B., Quinton, A. M. G., Tan, D., Brett, J., Mandy, W., Maybery, M., Magiati, I., & Happé, F. (2025). Burnout as experienced by autistic people: A systematic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 122, 102669. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2025.102669 
Clarey, M. M., Abel, S., Ireland, M. J., & Brownlow, C. (2026). Autistic burnout on Reddit: A Sisyphean struggle with daily tasks. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 56(7), 2790–2802. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-025-06765-4 
Higgins, J. M., Arnold, S. R. C., Weise, J., Pellicano, E., & Trollor, J. N. (2021). Defining autistic burnout through experts by lived experience: Suggested data-based model and consensus method. Autism, 25(8), 2356–2369. https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613211019858

Raymaker, D. M., Teo, A. R., Steckler, N. A., Lentz, B., Scharer, M., Delos Santos, A., Kapp, S. K., Hunter, M., Joyce, A., & Nicolaidis, C. (2020). "Having all of your internal resources exhausted beyond measure and being left with no clean-up crew": Defining autistic burnout. Autism in Adulthood, 2(2), 132–143. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2019.0079

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Keywords: AuDHD podcast, autism and ADHD, neurodivergent psychologist, neurodiversity affirming, Howearth Psychology, queer psychologist, autism diagnosis, ADHD awareness, lived experience, neurodivergent mental health, clinical psychology podcast