Neuro-Affirming Perinatal Counselling for ADHD & Autistic Mothers

Ongoing therapeutic support for ADHD, Autistic, and AuDHD mothers navigating pregnancy, birth trauma, and matrescence. Online worldwide, in English and Portuguese.

For the mothers who have been told they were fine, and always knew they weren't.

By Tania Fragoso — BSc Mental Health Counselling (Netherlands, 2024), 3 Steps Rewind Practitioner, Supporting Neurodiverse Birth (UK, 2024). AuDHD mother of three, working with neurodivergent mothers online from Málaga, Spain

Published April 2026 · Last reviewed April 2026

You have always felt things more than the people around you seem to

Maybe you arrived at motherhood already exhausted from a life of holding it together. Maybe the birth left you with something you still cannot quite name. Maybe the postpartum period has been louder, brighter, and more dysregulating than anyone warned you it would be — and the standard advice has not touched the actual problem.

If you are reading this, one of the following may be true:

✅ You have a recent ADHD, Autism, or AuDHD diagnosis and you are beginning to understand why your perinatal experience unfolded the way it did.

✅ You have suspected for a long time that your brain works differently, and no-one has helped you make sense of it in the context of being a mother.

✅ You do not have a diagnosis, and may not want one, but you know that generic support has never reached you.

✅ You are a neurodivergent mother with a birth that is still living in your body, a nervous system that does not switch off, and a sense that something about how you experience early parenthood is not being met by the support you have tried before.

You are in the right place.

What Neuro-Affirming Perinatal Counselling Is

This is ongoing, one-to-one therapeutic support for the period that comprises pregnancy, labor, and after birth, held through a neurodivergent-affirming and trauma-informed lens. That means two things in practice.

Neuro-affirming means I do not treat your neurotype as something to be managed, masked, or worked around. Your sensory sensitivities, your executive dysfunction patterns, your emotional intensity, your communication style, and your rhythms of connection are not obstacles to the work. They are the context the work is built around.

Trauma-informed means the pace, structure, and depth of each session is shaped by your nervous system, not by a fixed protocol. We move at a titrated pace — small, manageable steps — so that processing does not become retraumatising. You are never required to talk about something you are not ready for, and you are never rushed toward resolution.

This is not advice-giving, diagnosis, or a programme to complete. It is a consistent, confidential therapeutic relationship in which you can think out loud, make sense of your experience, and find your footing in a period of life that rarely gives neurodivergent mothers the space they need.

What We Can Work on Together:

Support for Neurodivergent Parents and Autistic Mothers

Birth trauma and unresolved birth experiences

A birth that is still living in your body — that you replay without meaning to, or that you have never been able to put into words that felt true.

Postpartum burnout and nervous system depletion

The kind of exhaustion that sleep does not touch. The shutdown, the irritability, the flat numbness, or the hypervigilance that has not lifted since your baby arrived.

Matrescence and identity shift

The loss of the self you were before, the unfamiliarity of the self you are becoming, and the grief that often sits underneath that transition to motherhood — particularly for neurodivergent mothers whose identity was already hard-won.

Late diagnosis and reframing your motherhood story

Making sense of pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood in the light of a new diagnosis — and beginning to understand what was actually happening, rather than what you had been told was happening.

Rejection sensitive dysphoria, emotional dysregulation, and alexithymia

The feelings that are too big, too sudden, or too hard to locate and name. The criticism that lands as devastation. The sense of feeling everything and being able to describe almost none of it.

Perinatal anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and hypervigilance

Not the anxiety that is resolved by breathwork and a walk. The specific, sensory, relentless anxiety that comes with being a neurodivergent parent of a small, unpredictable human.

Cultural and systemic navigation

Being a mother across maternity systems, languages, and expectations — particularly if you have navigated care in the UK, the Netherlands, Portugal, or Spain.

How Sessions Work

Counselling here is flexible. Some mothers come for four or five sessions to work through a specific experience. Others stay for months, working through matrescence as it unfolds in real time. We will talk about what fits during your introduction call, and revisit the shape of the work as we go.

Format: 60-minute sessions, online via a secure encrypted platform. No camera required if you are having a low-sensory day.

Cadence: Weekly or fortnightly, depending on your capacity and need. I will not pressure you into a frequency that does not fit your life.

Accessibility: Sessions are adapted for how your brain works — permission to pause, to stim, to turn off video, to ask for things to be repeated, to arrive without a prepared agenda, and to process slowly. None of this needs to be earned.

Languages: English and Portuguese.

Between sessions: You can reach me through my secure client portal for brief follow-ups, practical questions, or to send something you want to bring to our next session. This is not 24/7 support — it is a bridge between sessions for the kind of thinking that rarely arrives at convenient times.

Investment

Initial Foundation Session (75 minutes):

A longer first session to take a careful history, understand your neurotype and support needs, and shape the work around you.

€85

Standard Sessions (60 minutes):

€65

3-Session Bundle: €180

for shorter, focused pieces of work

€180

€350

6-Session Bundle:

for deeper therapeutic processes

All sessions are online and held in English or Portuguese. Payment plans are available — please mention this when you book.

Book a free 30-minute introduction call

Why Neurodivergent Birth and Parenthood Shaped This Work

I built this practice because I could not find it when I needed it.

I trained as a counsellor in the Netherlands and as a doula in Amsterdam before I had the language for my own neurodivergence. When my AuDHD diagnosis came, much later, it reshaped almost everything I thought I understood about my perinatal work — and about my own experience of becoming a mother of twins, and then of a younger daughter, across three countries.

What I know from the inside is what it costs to navigate perinatal mental health as an autistic mother — the sensory overload of the birth room, the executive dysfunction of the fourth trimester, the particular grief of matrescence when you are still learning who you are. I also know what it is to be a neurodivergent woman in a system that was not designed to see you clearly.

What I offer now is the counselling relationship I spent years looking for: one in which the therapist does not flinch at the intensity, does not mistake masking for coping, and does not ask you to become someone more manageable in order to be helped.

You do not have to translate yourself here.

In their words

"As a neurodivergent mother, finding someone who provides truly neuro-affirming care — rather than just 'standard' advice — made all the difference. Tania creates a space where I felt completely seen and safe to explore the complexities of the perinatal period and my own trauma recovery."

— Stephanie

"Tania also helped me work through my post-birth trauma, which was an essential part to naturally transition to the next phase, allowing me to have a proper and healthy closure. She is a person who has become my therapist, adviser, friend."

— Anastasia Ryaboshapka

Training, Supervision, and Professional Standards

Counselling, Doula, and Neuroaffirming Birth Training

My practice is built on specialist clinical training and lived experience. I hold a Bachelor's in Counselling (Academie voor Coaching en Counselling, Netherlands, 2024), a Doula Certification (BIA Doula Training, Amsterdam, 2018), and specialist certification as a 3 Steps Rewind Practitioner for birth trauma resolution (2022). I am additionally trained in Anxiety in the Perinatal Period (TBR College of Perinatal Emotional Health, 2021), Supporting Survivors in the Perinatal Period (Resilient Birth, 2021), and Supporting Neurodiverse Birth (Neurodivergent Birth UK, 2024).

I practise in accordance with my Ethical Commitment & Professional Standards, which cover confidentiality, consent, safeguarding, and ongoing supervision.

Resilient Birth, Supporting survivors certification

Clinical Supervision

All my counselling work is held within regular clinical supervision, in line with professional standards for ethical practice. Supervision is what keeps the work safe, accountable, and continually reflected upon — for you and for me.

Scope of Practice

Perinatal counselling is a specific, specialist intervention. It sits alongside — not instead of — medical and psychiatric care where that is needed. I do not diagnose mental health conditions, prescribe medication, or offer crisis intervention.

If you present with active postpartum psychosis, severe perinatal depression and anxiety , suicidality, or acute risk, I will support you in accessing the appropriate clinical care through your GP, midwife, or local mental health team, and will continue working alongside that care where clinically appropriate.

Confidentiality and Safeguarding

Our sessions are confidential. Session notes are held securely on an encrypted platform and discussed only with my clinical supervisor, in anonymised form, as part of standard practice. The exceptions to confidentiality are the ones required by law and professional ethics: risk of serious harm to you, risk to a child, or legal obligation. I will always talk with you first if any of this becomes relevant.

Not Sure If This Is Right for You?

That is exactly what the introduction call is for. Thirty minutes, free, no camera required. We will talk about what is bringing you here, I will tell you honestly whether I am the right fit, and if I am not, I will do my best to point you toward someone who is.

Book your free 30-minute introduction call

Perinatal Mental Health and Neurodivergence: Common Questions

Refers to emotional wellbeing during pregnancy and the first year after birth. It covers everything from Postnatal depression and anxiety to traumatic birth experience, postpartum psychosis, and the quieter mental health difficulties — depletion, dissociation, identity loss — that rarely get named in standard antenatal care.
Neurodivergence changes how this period is experienced. Women with ADHD and autistic mothers face a higher risk of postnatal depression, birth trauma, and burnout, often because the sensory, emotional, and executive demands of early parenthood land harder on a neurodivergent nervous system. The support offered by NHS perinatal mental health teams, GPs, and midwives is valuable — but it is usually designed around a neurotypical experience. Neuro-affirming perinatal counselling sits alongside that care, offering something specifically shaped around how your brain processes, regulates, and recovers.
ADHD and autism both shape how the this period lands. Sensory sensitivities that make the birth environment overwhelming. Executive dysfunction that turns the fourth trimester into a daily organisational crisis. Emotional regulation difficulties that intensify with sleep deprivation. A higher risk of traumatic birth, postnatal depression, and burnout. For autistic mothers in particular, the unpredictability of a newborn can be deeply destabilising in a way that rarely gets named. These are not personal failings. They are the predictable result of a neurotypical system offering neurotypical care to mothers whose brains work differently.
It starts from the assumption that your neurotype is not the problem. Sessions are adapted around your sensory processing needs, your communication style, and your capacity on any given day. There is no expectation that you will mask, perform wellness, or arrive ready to talk. The work moves at your pace, and the support is genuinely inclusive of how you process information, form relationships, and meet the demands of early parenthood.
Yes. Autistic mothers often experience the birth environment as sensorily overwhelming in ways antenatal preparation rarely anticipates — bright lights, unfamiliar touch, unpredictable routines, and the relational intensity of being cared for by strangers. The research is beginning to catch up with what many of us have known from the inside: autistic women are significantly more likely to experience birth-related psychological trauma and postnatal depression (PPD), and significantly less likely to have that recognised by the mental health services they encounter.
Autistic burnout in the transition into motherhood looks different from PPD, though the two can co-exist. Predictability, low-demand environments, and care adapted for sensory and communication needs are not luxuries — they are clinical considerations. A neuroaffirming counselling relationship can be the place where this is finally taken seriously.

ADHD affects attention, emotional regulation, executive function, and sensory processing — all of which are tested acutely in early parenthood. Many women with ADHD describe the period after becoming a mother as the moment their coping strategies finally gave way: the scaffolding of work, social structure, and independent time disappeared overnight, and the demands of early parenthood asked more of their executive function than any other period of their life.
Support for mothers with ADHD can include a medication review with your GP, practical support tailored to ADHD symptoms (external scaffolding rather than "just try to be more organised"), peer community with other neurodivergent parents, and neuro-affirming support that makes space for the emotional and relational shape of matrescence with ADHD. You do not have to choose one — the most effective support is usually layered.
In more places than you might think, but rarely in one place. A starting list:
Your GP and midwife can refer you to NHS perinatal mental health services where you live, and it is worth asking directly whether the team has experience supporting neurodivergent parents. A neurodivergent-affirming doula can offer practical support during the antenatal period, birth, and the immediate postpartum — particularly valuable where the maternity system is not adapted for sensory or communication needs. Peer communities, online and in person, offer something clinical support cannot: the recognition of being understood by people who share the experience. Specialist counselling — like the work I offer — sits alongside these, holding the emotional and relational processing that the wider system rarely has capacity for.
If you are outside the UK, the same layered approach applies: your local maternity system, peer community, and specialist support, chosen to fit your context.
Look for someone who names neurodiversity explicitly in their work — not as an add-on, but as a specialism. Ask about their training, their familiarity with ADHD and autism in the perinatal period, whether they are a 3 Steps Rewind practitioner or hold other birth trauma training, and whether sessions are adapted for neurodivergent clients. If you are considering working with me, the free 30-minute introduction call is the right place to ask those questions.
Truly inclusive, neuroaffirming care is not a specialism for the lucky few. It is what all maternal care should be moving towards.
Three things, consistently. First, recognising that neurodivergent individuals are not a small minority of perinatal service users — they are a significant and under-identified population, and perinatal mental health teams need training that reflects this. Second, adapting the environment and communication to reduce the avoidable sensory and social load of maternity care: written information ahead of appointments, predictability about what will happen in a session, permission to request accommodations without having to justify them. Third, challenging the social expectations of what a "good mother" looks like — expectations that are particularly punishing for neurodivergent women and that routinely get mistaken for mental health symptoms.
Truly inclusive, neuroaffirming care is not a specialism for the lucky few. It is what all maternal care should be moving towards.