Affirming Neurodivergence: Autism & ADHD with Maverick Joyce, MSW

In this episode we explore ADHD, autism, and rejection sensitive dysphoria through a neuroaffirming lens, moving from damage-based labels to desire-led support. Diagnosis, somatic tools, and group reflection come together to reduce shame and build practical strategies for daily life.

• benefits and limits of diagnosis and accommodations
• executive function, working memory, and decision paralysis
• masking in women and the role of hormones
• misdiagnosis risks and inside-out assessment
• neurodiversity paradigm versus DSM pathologizing
• desire-based frameworks for healing and growth
• choosing neuroaffirming counseling and shared neurotype
• somatic therapy and reworked CBT with body focus
• practical tools, habit windows, and body doubling
• resources including NeuroClastic, Aucademy, and Dr. Nick Walker
• Maverick’s RSD coaching with group reflection and somatics

You can find Maverick at: the.neuroqueer.therapist on Instagram. Six-month RSD coaching program starts in January 2026

Transcript

Sabrina Duong (00:44)
I am welcome to What Would Sabrina Say? I'm your host Sabrina Duong, and today we have joining with us Maverick Joyce, MSW. Thanks so much Maverick for joining us today.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (00:54)
Thanks for having me.

Sabrina Duong (00:56)
Yeah, so if you'd like to share a bit about yourself in terms of your areas of expertise in your profession and what it is that you do, and excited to jump in the topic about neurodivergence and understanding a bit more on autism and ADHD diagnosis.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (01:11)
Yeah, so I have a background in social work and I'm a therapist and also a coach. I kind of offer my services in a couple of different ways, just because like the limitations that therapy can have and we can get into that. I do intensive work, which is like one, two and three day intensives specifically for the autistic experience in a way that's very affirming and not pathologizing because there's a lot of, most therapy is kind of centered on deficit pathology and damage and then the other offering that I have are six month coaching programs for rejection sensitive dysphoria that are again like desire based neurodivergent affirming and Really instead of focusing on pain and damage really looks at the root core of RSD and how very things sensitivity, for example, that led to RSD developing in combination with external circumstances. those very sensitivities can actually be used as gifts and strengths in your life.

Sabrina Duong (02:14)
What a great way to explain it, how there can actually be strengths and gifts, right? We're always feeling out of place or not like everyone else. And there's so many ways to utilize our strengths So wondering if we can touch on diagnosis or labels. ⁓

Sabrina Duong (02:34)
Sometimes they're helpful right in the day to day in terms of

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (02:34)
Yeah.

Sabrina Duong (02:38)
maybe support for work or at school, but always great to talk to someone about pros and cons around that. So I wondering if you could touch on, yeah, the diagnosis for ADHD or autism.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (02:49)

Yeah, mean, so the benefit is that it gives you structural and systemic legitimacy according to their rules and framework. So if you have a very official job or a corporate job or a government job, having those accommodations or having those diagnoses allows you to ask for accommodations. that cannot be denied. self-diagnosis is always welcome within the autistic community and ADHD community. I call it self-determination though, just because of the way diagnosis has been pathologized, even though that wasn't the original meaning of the word. So if you self-determine, you can always advocate for accommodations, but a lot of people like the protection, the official protection that a diagnosis gives you. And also if you're going to apply for disability, like you need an official diagnosis, through a neuropsych evaluation. And it usually has to come from a psychiatrist or a psychologist.

Sabrina Duong (03:53)
So what are some typical symptoms that bring a person to a doctor or a therapist, would you say?

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (03:59)
Mm Well, I would say executive functioning, which is the ability to manage and working memory. So those go together, the ability to keep something in your mind and hold it there. Like, like waitresses use a lot of working memory because they have to remember oh, that table wanted this, that table wanted that, that table wanted that.

And so we use that in our daily life too when we're organizing tasks. And that's where executive functioning comes in, where it's keeping all these things in mind and organizing them. so usually struggles in that, and struggles that can bring up a lot of shame for people, even though it makes total sense that these are struggles when you have either ADHD or you're autistic, but things, just like, remembering to brush your teeth, remembering to feed yourself. doing all those things and then all the responsibilities that life asks of you, the household tasks like laundry and keeping your space clean and organized. So that's a really big one is the executive functioning and the working memory and the overwhelm that can cause the sort of like freeze response that comes up when you have to make decisions like, do I? wash the laundry or the dishes, do I do my homework or do I take a shower, all of these things that can lead to what's called decision paralysis, which is kind of like the freezing up of because you're so overwhelmed by these different tasks and you don't know where to start. So things like that are often what brings a person in.

Sabrina Duong (05:26)
Great. I was wondering if we could touch on symptoms that perhaps look different for women sometimes involving ADHD and what that looks like.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (05:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. So there's a lot of masking that often happens with women or trans and non-binary folk, just because when you are socialized female, in any way, you really get a lot of messaging about being cooperative, making yourself small, what's too much. there's a lot of implicit and subtle messaging and sometimes it's overt for some people, but there's just a lot of messaging around the ways you need to shrink yourself. And so there's usually a lot of masking. a lot of times, adult women who are diagnosed later in life they'll have had experiences where ADHD was written off as a possible diagnosis because they got good grades or they are high achievers. And that's a bit of a misnomer because they're compensating. So they're working twice as hard, three times as hard to achieve the same thing that their peers are achieving but at half or a third of the energy cost.

So there's a lot of assumptions and discrimination when it comes to what ADHD looks like in women. And also hormones can really affect the way that it manifests. We have different spikes of progesterone throughout our cycle. Our estrogen levels change. that's
really affects how the ADHD manifests and that also really influences emotions too. Like sometimes the ADHD shows up more in an emotional way of overstimulation or

Sabrina Duong (07:12)
It also affects mood and irritability. And I think sometimes that gets overlooked too in the clinical world, right?

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (07:16)
Yeah.

Sabrina Duong (07:20)
⁓ And how women's mental cycle affects mood, how anxiety can be heightened during the time of our cycle. And I think for a lot of times women hear it's all in your head, but here is our experience or here is part of ⁓ another reason, right? It's like a puzzle piece that finally actually fits and clicks and, it can be so such a relief for women to know, wow, this is why, right? Or where it's coming from.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (07:53)
Yep. And that actually makes me think about I've had a number of people who were misdiagnosed their entire life with depression. And actually, it turns out it's ADHD, like the kind of the shutdown and overwhelm that can happen when you experience ADHD can lead to it being misinterpreted as depression. Because the DSM, all of those things they're very subjective experiences that happen on the inside of our bodies, but you have someone from the outside, looking at your behaviors and judging your behaviors and then trying to assign a diagnosis to it. diagnosing from the outside in will just never be as effective as diagnosing from the inside out.

Sabrina Duong (08:30)
Right, so there's a lot of focus on behaviors, especially for autism and, support like IBI or ABA, it's always focusing on routine. Only recently now are you hearing more about, like you said, it being an internalized experience, exploring with the person how they're experiencing their world and what maybe goals are.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (08:34)
Yeah. I've always said that it's really ironic that they call the autistic experience rigid because if you look at the way they define autism and those questionnaires, they're so rigid. Like they are so rigid. That's just very, it's always been very ironic to me.

Sabrina Duong (09:06)
Yes. So I was wondering if we could touch on before we kind of go into pathology of the brain and body difference, like about rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria. I think that's a topic discussed where people are researching and learning about ADHD symptoms. And just wondering if you're wanting to share what that is.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (09:29)
Yeah. So I think the most important thing about RSD or rejection sensitive dysphoria is that it looks different for everyone. It is experienced differently by every person and it's really complex. I always say the RSD is intersectional because intersectionality is about complexity, social inequality, relationality social justice, it's about all these different interlocking components. And that is exactly what RSD is. You if you grow up in a family where there's neurocultural mismatching, and I use that like as an adaptation of Dr. Stephanie Freiberg's work on cultural matching and with Indigenous children and in the school system, because neurodivergent children experience something really different. Like there isn't a lot of room in schools for bio neurodiversity. it's very rigid, it's very structured, it's very stay in your seat. And what, what is taught is it's a very big focus on like academics, not necessarily like authenticity for the child. So a lot of neurodivergent children, especially ADHD years and autistic kids will really, really experience this neuro cultural mismatching, where they are getting all these subtle cues and messages from the environment where, they're basically being told, it's not okay for you to embody your brain, like, embody your brain-body here, it's not okay for you to be who you are. You have to act this way, otherwise you'll get these consequences, and if you act this way, it will actually reward you for, not being who you are. So, it's so subtle so subtle the messaging that experience alone can lead to rejection sensitive dysphoria and that experience is like it's this intense like whole body visceral emotional reaction that a person gets when they it can just be perceiving rejection or adjacent to rejection or it can be actually experiencing rejection But like for example someone setting a boundary just saying like I'm really tired after work tonight And I don't want to hang out that could be perceived as rejection and set off this whole body visceral Experience that kind of spirals down or just basically an emotional flashback

Sabrina Duong (11:43)
Yeah, it's definitely taught at such a young age how you should behave and expectations and can really affect self-esteem when you feel like you don't fit or don't fit in and then energy that it takes up right to to again meet those certain school or academic standards. And what does rejection sensitivity maybe show up as?

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (11:58)
Yeah.

Sabrina Duong (12:08)
look like in adulthood.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (12:10)
Yeah, it shows up in so many little ways, but definitely any place where there's a relationship. it could look like anytime you're getting feedback, it feels really personal. it feels like you did something wrong. There's something wrong with you. those are kind of the internal core beliefs that are there that form, which like I never do anything right. I, always do things wrong.

I'll never fit in whenever you get feedback, it'll like ping on that. that could come up anywhere. you're at work, you get feedback about a project or maybe your coworkers go to lunch without you, and then that can trigger that experience within your body. especially in romantic relationships, just like having

your partner if they're giving you feedback, like I don't have the energy to do X, Z with you today, those are all things that can trigger that.

Sabrina Duong (13:00)
Right, so noticing those triggers in the environment and where that's coming from. therapy can be very helpful to find ways to cope and noticing what those triggers are.

Sabrina Duong (13:16)
I wonder if we can touch on pathology of the brain and body differences. We sort of talked about how, the diagnostic statistic manual is a pretty cookie cutter, very defined way of describing characteristics, but people have their own internalized experiences. And then there's the whole brain and body connection.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (13:26)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So the DSM really pathologizes human experiences if they deviate from this norm. well, the neurodiversity paradigm, which is like, is about making space for all brain bodies to exist.

And the people who are developing this framework, neuro normativity has been born out of that movement of people to describe, the implicit assumption that drives the DSM, which is that there is a normal normative brain body that exists.

if you aren't that brain body and you can't meet that level of functioning, then you have a disorder. And so that's what the DSM is, is this book of disorders because you aren't like neuro normative in that way. And so it really takes different neuro types and pathologizes them, like really problematizes the human existence instead of making space for difference to exist and looking at mental health through the lens perspective and framework of like, where are you in harmony and balance with yourself? And when you're out of harmony and balance with yourself, how do you get yourself back into harmony and balance with yourself? It's a very different way to conceptualize mental health.

Yeah, it's a very different way. And that's the neurodiversity paradigm is more what is in harmony and balance for you that is also in harmony balance for the world, not like, how can we get you better so that you're functioning in this way where you work like 40 hours a week and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Sabrina Duong (15:15)
Right. So we're learning that there are frameworks to better understand and meet people where they're at with their own goals versus this is what it should look like or what you should be doing. And who's to say it's right? Say it's right to work 40 hours a week and grind and...

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (15:25)
Yeah. Yeah, it's very subjective. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Sabrina Duong (15:41)
And we know so many studies from long ago were based on, white males or, smaller populations so it's great to hear there's all these these frameworks that help people understand themselves. If anybody could touch on the desired based frameworks, just really appreciate the languaging you use because previously it was around, persistent behaviors and it's defiant and challenging. And so, yeah, if you could explain about that.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (16:08)
Yeah. Yeah, so that is a term that comes from Dr. Eve Tuck's work. She wrote this like open letter to the research community about using desire based frameworks within research. And that's really something that I use within my practice as a coach and a therapist. she was developing this looking from the perspective of being an Indigenous woman and looking at the way that research has treated marginalized groups, especially Indigenous peoples, like it's very focus on the damage, like what's wrong? How do we fix what's wrong? And it really ignores this whole history of how all this damage that's here was actually created by settler colonialism. And it doesn't actually focus on what Indigenous people want. It focuses on what the dominant culture wants. 

So capitalism, patriarchy, all of these systems that we know, the things that we take for granted, are actually just imposed dominant cultural norms. And so the desire-based framework is this guiding path away from damage into focusing on desire and what a person wants. And this is actually a really hard thing to do because we are so encouraged and led in this society to focus on the pain and the damage and what's wrong in life and lack scarcity mindset is so abundant, right? Because we're taught to focus on what's wrong and damage. We're not taught to focus on imagination, creation and desire. But when we actually start to learn what yes, feels like in our body and what desire feels like in our body, then we actually start to get more clarity and we start to engage with our problems, our pain in a different way, our damage, because pain's valid, our quote unquote damage, because again, that's subjective, in a different way because we know what our actual soul's truth and desire is. it... It can be a hard thing to describe because when you go through it, you see it from the other side. But before you've gone through that transformation of understanding what yes feels like in your body, it's hard to conceptualize it from like this part of just being like sort of ingrained into your socio-cultural conditioning as we all are when we're born.

Sabrina Duong (18:31)
if someone were to have goals and they would want to see a counselor involving managing ADHD symptoms or help support involving say, autism diagnosis. How could they benefit from counseling and what would they need to make sure their counselor knows as far as training and expertise?

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (18:32)

Yeah, I mean, I always recommend if you can find a counselor who shares your neuro type, that's really great. I approach it really similarly to the way you would approach like multiculturalism or like sort of like DEI inclusivity. And so I recommend for people if they can find if they're ADHD or to spec their ADHD, you know, and find a therapist who also has ADHD. If you're autistic, try to find a therapist who's also autistic. If you can't, then look for someone who is neuroaffirming. And if they're neuroaffirming, then they're not going to see your neurotype as a deficit or a disorder. They're going to see the society and the environment as the disorder and they're gonna support you in being your most authentic embodied self and finding a way to make that work within the disordered environment. So I think really the thing you wanna look for is the gaze, like where's the gaze? And is the gaze on you as the individual having the problem or is the gaze on the environment having the problem?

Sabrina Duong (20:01)
Right, a counselor who could have an understanding and seeing that it's the environment and how to support and cope within that environment versus again, focusing on behavioral approaches specifically, like in the past.

So counseling, I find can help people find tools, ⁓ to put your energy where you'd like it to be placed instead of putting your energy on other things, trying to fit into those environments. And using your strengths, anything else that therapy can help with?

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (20:24)
Yeah, I, for me, I always go back to the body. the biggest thing that therapy can be so helpful with, and I especially recommend this for neurodivergent people is do somatic therapy. It goes slowly and it's so worth it because when you're ADHD or autistic, you have been subtly trained throughout your life to not be in your body and to leave your body, abandon your body. ⁓ and learning the tools to stay with yourself in your body, attuned to the sensations in your body and be present to see them through. you will learn so much about yourself and that tool alone of being connected to your body will get you through
your hardest challenges. it's really powerful.

Sabrina Duong (21:26)
Right, because there's recommendations to use cognitive behavioral therapy. And again, that's so much focusing on thoughts. And how you're thinking about your environment is wrong. And let's have you reframe And I think there are so many other modalities that can help with regulating the nervous system, going into your body versus

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (21:32)
Yeah. And CBT is another great example of where's the focus. So CBT in and of itself, I don't think is like the monster everyone makes it out to be. It's the fact that it's been applied in an individualistic way instead of a systemic way. and also that it's been applied without connecting it to the body because our thoughts do have sensations in our body. So when you take kind of like the core, like the heart of CBT and you combine it and you, well, if you take the heart of CBT, you use externalization and an environmental focus and then connect it to the body. can be really powerful. And like, I'll give an example of that. so when I use CBT with people, if there's a thought come up, right, typically like a therapist would call that a cognitive distortion. But what I will do first is externalize that thought as in connected to a system, know, like patriarchy, settler colonialism, sexism, racism, all of those different systems that are part of the structure of settler colonialism. And I'll be like, okay, so that's a colonial distortion. It's connected to this system. And you have internalized that colonial distortion. So, where do you feel that in your body when you're thinking that thought? Like there are ways to rework.

CBT so that it's not looking at the behavior of an individual and blaming the behavior of an individual or shaming them like there are ways to Creatively use like the heart of CBT and I guess you could argue that it's not CBT anymore But if you boil it down to its essence Is what I'm talking about and then applying it in this holistic model I like to think of it as cognitive body therapy

Sabrina Duong (23:26)
Wow, that's great. So just noticing the ways that how we think and where those beliefs might be attached to or coming from and being able to, heal from that I notice what comes up for us in our body because of those beliefs.
What great work. Thanks for sharing how CBT can be used in a different way and looking at ⁓ colonialism. Yeah, so it we sort of touched on benefits of today of perhaps having a diagnosis and how that can help a person talked about how counseling can help different models of intervention.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (23:49)
Yeah.

Welcome.

Sabrina Duong (24:03)
Brain and body work, somatic work, how that can be helpful. We touched on different frameworks that are helpful for people to know, counselors especially to know and use in session. I was wondering if you could share some helpful resources or where people could go.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (24:20)
Yeah, there are a lot. So I'll have to give you some links to share and show notes if you have those for the podcast. Neuroclastic is one that I enjoy. I think they have a Facebook and Instagram account. And I think they have their own website too. But they have a lot of really great articles about autism. Maybe some about ADHD, but I think it's mostly autism focused.

⁓ then there's also it's our Academy. It's like a year for autism and then Academy. So it's autistic and Academy put together. ⁓ and I think that's.co cause it's a UK organization, but they are amazing. They have a YouTube channel with like every single topic connected to autism that you could think about. And they have just this expansive website with different definitions of different terms and.

⁓ what it's like to be autistic and support and resources. So that's also a really amazing website. And then again for autism there is neuroqueer.com and that's Dr. Nick Walker and she just has so many different articles about autism and really looking at autism from the inside out because she is also autistic and

and then just so many different essays about embodiment and autism and really offering a fresh new perspective that isn't all about autism being pathologized and problematized, but other being affirming. And then for ADHD, I really like, if you're looking for a practical tool, the anti planner planner by Danny Donovan.

It's really amazing. You might have heard of that one, but yeah, it's, it comes in a PDF form, electronically, or she also has a, like a big book, but it's an ADHD dream. And it's just for when you have to get stuff done and maybe it's hard, or maybe you're just like going through some overwhelm. she has all these different tabs for when you're feeling stuck, when you're feeling overwhelmed, when you're feeling burnout when you're feeling all these, when you're in these different emotional states, she has these different sections of this book with colors and organization and check and games. And it's just a really, it's really great. And it's really cool. So that's a really great practical one.

Sabrina Duong (26:32)
I, for myself, love to use Notion. It's just been such a game changer for me to have everything in one spot and be like another little brain and organize things for me and have templates from from filing taxes to my day-to-day tasks and remembering things.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (26:36)
⁓ yeah. Yeah.

Yeah

Mm-hmm. My friend uses

Notion. ⁓ I like Asana. That's the, I really like the Asana task, ⁓ and, ⁓ and I also, on Microsoft, they have OneNote, which is, cool. all these different notebooks and you can organize them and put different things in them. And I like that too. And I like Notion. I do use Notion too. it's more for ideas and creative stuff.

Sabrina Duong (27:07)
Yeah, once you find something that works for you, it's great. But there's, there's a lot of things in cell trial and error and being kind to yourself in the process.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (27:10)
Yeah.

There is, there is, it's also just a matter of making yourself stick with something, reminding yourself to stick with it, because I have found that I sometimes get into loops where I try something and then just stop too soon, but the brain really forms a habit after three weeks of doing something, so I'm constantly reminding myself, no give this, give this some time before you decide to stop for you, because I, all I will get stuck in this loop of

trying and stopping and trying and stopping. Yeah.

Sabrina Duong (27:40)
Right. such

a great topic and lots of people ask this, how do you stick to something? How do you not just stop and start? And I think it's, giving yourself time to try it, giving yourself five minutes to do a task and permission to switch. But yeah, that's that's a hard one for many attaching it to some kind of reward. We hear a lot now body doubling, So pairing up with someone to do it.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (27:55)
Yep. body doubling is great. Yeah, yeah, having

Sabrina Duong (28:08)
I learned so much today in speaking to Maverick and excited to have you on any time to talk about great helpful tips or resources ⁓ and learning more about these important frameworks and also talk about rejection sensitivity. So thanks for your time today and for sharing such great resources. Just wondering where people could find you if they'd like to know more information or seek out further help.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (28:17)
Yeah. so I have an Instagram account, is the.neuroqueer.therapist. It'll mostly talk about rejection sensitivity on there. I do my coaching business on there. So it's really about rejection, dysphoria, offering different perspectives and ways to look at it. I'm really a more holistic perspective, including spirituality, because we don't really talk about spirit, but like we all feel that connection to something greater than ourselves. And so I really do holistic mind, body, emotion, spirit work when I'm talking about rejection-sensitive dysphoria. And I have a six-month coaching program coming up soon for that too, which will start in January. And it's, six months.

The big thing though is that there is this, there is a group element to the coaching program and it uses this methodology called critical reflections where you take an experience you had with rejection sensitivity and you share it in a group. And it's this culture of like generosity and curiosity and radical acceptance and compassion and expansiveness. And it's just really holding space for everything and being curious about, just really open-ended questions, really curious about the experience. And then like through this process, developing a new way of looking at your experiences. And that combines with a one-on-one where we do a lot of somatic coaching and getting to know your body and those two experiences of like the individual and the collective really synthesized together to help you understand your experiences in a new way so that rejection doesn't become so personalized because the thing about rejection is that it's usually almost, it's like always about other person and the filter that they're looking at you through. And our sociocultural conditioning is the filter that we look at others through. someone might be looking at you through patriarchy or sexism or racism or their own like family culture, which was maybe really ⁓ strict and rigid or something. So really work that getting out all of that childhood stuff and softening it and really beginning to embody the understanding that rejection is about the other person and it's not personal.

Sabrina Duong (30:46)
Right, what a great way to get support from others to do those reflecting pieces and understand how you may be impacted by others behavior or ways they communicate.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (30:55)
Yeah. And it's so powerful to share your experiences in a group like that. I've gone through this myself. everything I offer is stuff that I've been through myself and my healing process. So it's really powerful to have your experiences be seen and heard and just held with love and compassion. Yeah.

Sabrina Duong (31:16)
Well, thanks so much for sharing that resource. I think so many people could benefit from the support that you offer and feel free to share updates. Happy to pass the information. Thanks so much for being here and the work you do. Appreciate it.

Maverick Joyce (they/them) (31:27)
Yeah, great. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was so fun to talk.