A CHAPTER, IN HER OWN WORDS
Neurodivergent Affirming Coach
by Jean Sheridan
I spent decades studying mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health and the intersection of counseling and sports coaching. With a BS in Holistic Health Counseling, an MS in Health Promotion and many professional coaching certifications, I've coached more than a thousand people, watching them find their clarity, build momentum, and create lives that felt aligned and meaningful. All the while, I held a secret.
SECTION ONE
When the tools didn't work for me
The tools I was teaching didn't work for me. The systems, frameworks, and step-by-step approaches that worked so beautifully for so many of my clients seemed to only confuse me. I'd guide someone through a process that transformed their life, then go home and stare at my own unfinished goals, my scattered interests, my inability to pick one lane and stay in it. The shame was profound. I felt like a fraud. Here I was, supposedly an expert in wellness and wellbeing, and I couldn't seem to get my own life to cooperate.
I tried so many different tools and systems, including yoga, meditation, mindfulness, working out, vegetarianism and keto. The harder I tried to fit myself into these prescribed paths, the more I felt like I was failing at something the rest of the world understood.
SECTION TWO
Seeing myself differently
It wasn't until I began looking through a neurodiversity-affirming lens that everything changed. One therapist suggested I was gifted; I thought — she just doesn't know me. Another therapist said she was surprised I had never been diagnosed. I began researching. The patterns were impossible to ignore: Au/DHD, the intersection of autism and ADHD. When I was going to school the research didn't exist, and for women in their 50s, 60s and above, these profiles were virtually invisible. Suddenly, a beautiful, complex, and coherent picture began to emerge.
SECTION THREE
The locomotive and the sailboat
Imagine being told your entire life that you are a locomotive. You're supposed to run on tracks. Everyone around you is running on tracks. The world is built for tracks. So you try. You force yourself onto the rails. You chug along, but something is always wrong. You derail, you slow down, and you need repairs that no one seems to understand.
Now imagine discovering, well into your 60s, that you were never a locomotive at all. You are a sailboat.
You don't need tracks; you need freedom and flexibility to process information, to allow your nervous system to regulate, to honor your sensitivity. You need to learn how to tack and jibe, to adjust your sails as conditions change, to move not in a straight line but in responsive, dynamic, fluid motion. You're not broken for failing to stay on the rails. Your operating system was designed for something entirely different. This is what it felt like to finally see myself through the lens of neurodivergence.
The productivity systems that left me feeling like a failure were designed for neurotypicals. The career advice to pick one thing and specialize was designed for people whose brains naturally focus on a single track. The constant pressure to streamline, simplify, and narrow my scope was damaging.
My brain processes information differently. My nervous and motivation systems have different needs. Variety, structure, choices, sensory acknowledgement, safety and recovery time are important pieces of my system's needs. The combination looked like I couldn't get my act together. But that's not what was happening.
SECTION FOUR
Multipotentialite
It turns out I am a multipotentialite; someone with many interests, many capabilities, many ways of showing up in the world. Some call us polymaths, Renaissance souls, or scanners. What I've come to understand is that my range of interests isn't a weakness. It's a strength to be integrated. The problem was that I was trying to treat each one of my many passions as a separate career path rather than weaving them together into a coherent whole.
I've visited many islands over the years: holistic health, trauma-informed coaching, mindfulness, spirituality, nervous system regulation, grief support, art, writing, acting and improvisation. I used to feel guilt and shame every time I moved from one to another, as if I was abandoning something important. But I wasn't abandoning anything. I was collecting what I needed, integrating what I'd learned, and bringing it all with me to the next destination.
The shame came from an external narrative that told me I should have one fixed identity, one clear label. But some of us aren't meant to live life that way. We're meant to build bridges between interests, to see the connections that others miss, to create new territory at the intersections.
SECTION SIX
A different kind of scaffolding
These days, I don't try to run on railroad tracks. I pay attention to what my sailboat needs: variety, creative play, understanding my nervous system and sensory needs, and how I work best. I'm building scaffolding that embraces all of my parts.
What kind of support will serve me, not what I've been told I should need? How do I honor the reality of my challenges while also leaning into my strengths?
This isn't about lowering standards or giving up on growth. It's about recognizing that growth looks different for different people. For me, growth looks like integration. It looks like honoring my need for variety while also creating enough predictability to feel safe. And it looks like showing up for you. You who are on similar journeys, who were never diagnosed or late-diagnosed but know, in your bones, that the story you've been told about yourself is incomplete, and are done trying to fit yourself into systems that were never built for you.
SECTION SEVEN
If this resonates
If you're reading this and something resonates, I want you to know two things. First, you're not alone. I spent most of my life believing I was the only one who thought they were broken. That's not true. There are so many of us, women who were labeled too much, not enough, scattered, unfocused, unreliable, too sensitive, too intense. We have all been struggling with the same mismatch, just in different ways.
Second, the fact that you've made it this far is evidence that you're resilient beyond measure. You've been navigating without a map, without language, without the right tools, and you're still here, still curious, still searching for ways to make your life feel like yours.
Remember the systems weren't built for you. You have a different operating system. Your needs matter. They are valid. Taking the time to build a flexible, integrated framework — one designed around how you actually work — is how you succeed.
AUTHOR BIO
Jean Sheridan is a Neurodiversity-affirming, trauma-informed wellness and executive-function coach for late-identified Au/DHD women. Training includes BS Holistic Health Counseling, MS Health Promotion, advanced certifications in trauma-informed, transformational, grief, spiritual and creativity coaching. She supports women who discovered their neurodivergent identity later in life and women working through CPTSD recovery in partnership with a therapist. True to her multipotentialite nature, her passions extend into the arts — theater, visual art, and writing among them.
You've found the harbour.
If something in this story feels familiar, you're warmly invited to reach out. No pressure, no pitch — just a conversation.