Pasadena · ADHD in Women
ADHD Therapy for Women in Pasadena, CA
For the woman who got diagnosed at 38 and has been quietly furious about it ever since.
Book a free consultLate Diagnosis
You were not lazy. You were compensating.
Girls who could read early and behave in class did not get flagged. What got flagged was the messy locker, the late assignment, the sense that you were somehow both bright and a disappointment. Then you built a system of alarms, lists and last-minute adrenaline that worked well enough to hide it, until a promotion or a baby or a bad year removed the slack.
The diagnosis explains a great deal and it also opens a grief nobody warns you about. Twenty years of thinking you had a character problem does not undo itself in an afternoon.
In This City
Pasadena has a lot of high-performing women running on fumes.
Between the campuses, the labs, the hospitals and the schools, the office sees a particular version of this: women whose work demands sustained attention on things they did not choose, who deliver anyway, and who then have nothing left for their own life. The inbox is immaculate. The car is a disaster. Dinner is a coin flip.
The Raymond Avenue office is easy to reach on a workday, and appointments that require a freeway are appointments that get canceled, which is not a moral failing so much as a design problem.
What We Actually Do
Concrete, not inspirational.
- Map where the energy goes, including the invisible labor nobody counts.
- Build supports that survive a bad week, since anything that only works when you are rested is not a support.
- Work directly on the shame, usually with EMDR on the specific moments that set it.
- Deal with rejection sensitivity honestly, because it drives more of the calendar than the calendar admits.
The Work
Half strategy, half unlearning.
Some of this is practical, building structures that fit your brain rather than the one you were told to have. Some of it is therapy in the older sense, because the strategies stop working when a voice underneath keeps calling you careless. I use parts work and EMDR here more than people expect, particularly on the memories that voice keeps quoting.
I am not a prescriber and I do not diagnose ADHD in place of a full evaluation. I do work well alongside whoever is handling medication.
Practical Details
Fees and getting started.
$225 for 50 minutes, in person at 65 N Raymond Ave in Pasadena or by video anywhere in California. Superbills for out-of-network. Free 10-minute consult first. Alexa Aversano, LMFT, license CA 140766, California only.
I see adults and teens and I am LGBTQ+ affirming. I do not treat severe mental illness or psychotic disorders.
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