Neurodivergent Strategies for Late-Diagnosed Adults: The Divergent Paths Podcast

Regina McMenomy, PhD.
  • 4.8 (20)
  • Mental Health
  • Updated Weekly

Neurodivergent Strategies for Late-Diagnosed Adults is the podcast for people with ADHD, autism, and other late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults ready to unmask, heal from burnout, and build a life that works with their brain, not against it. Hosted by Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D., this show offers real talk and practical strategies for navigating executive dysfunction, rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), perfectionism, emotional regulation, masking, PDA, and more. Each episode explores how unspoken expectations, internalized ableism, and cultural myths about productivity keep neurodivergent people stuck and what we can do to shift the narrative. Whether you’re newly diagnosed, self-discovered, or still figuring it out, you’ll find insight, compassion, and tools to help you find your divergent path. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes! Book a Free Discovery Call with Regina About the Host: Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. (she/her) is a neurodivergent coach, educator, and host of the Divergent Paths podcast. With a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and over 20 years of experience in higher education and instructional design, she blends academic depth with lived neurodivergent insight. Regina was diagnosed later in life and like many of her clients, spent decades masking, overworking, and wondering why burnout always came back. Now she helps late-diagnosed people with ADHD and autism unmask safely, rebuild their self-trust, and embrace rest as a radical act of self-support. The Divergent Paths podcast offers empowering conversations, practical tools, and hard-won wisdom for those ready to live more authentically. You’ll often find her talking about nervous system regulation, perfectionism, emotional honesty and, occasionally, oatmeal.

  1. 3d ago

    Neurodivergent Late Diagnosis, Masking & Generational Trauma: Being Loved Versus Being Known

    What happens when everyone in a family is masking, and nobody knows it? Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. and Russ explore how late diagnosis reveals patterns of behavior that run through generations. Neurodivergence is highly heritable, so when you look to your family to figure out what’s “normal,” you may be comparing yourself to people who are masking the same traits. Children learn to mask by watching the adults around them and attachment built between two masks is compromised from the start. This episode covers how masking gets passed down, why gender expectations kept so many women from being diagnosed, how fawning and contingent love take root, and why loving someone isn’t the same as seeing them. It also makes clear that this is not about blaming parents. Most were doing their best without the understanding to do otherwise. Most importantly, it’s about cycle breaking: what repair looks like, how small shifts change what the next generation inherits, and why understanding your neurotype is part of that work. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.

    Neurodivergent Late Diagnosis, Masking & Generational Trauma: Being Loved Versus Being Known

  2. Oct 2

    Neurodivergent Unmasking: Why You Can Still Feel Lonely in Good Relationships

    You can be loved, cared for, and in a relationship that functions well... and still feel like no one quite gets you. If that sounds familiar, masking may be part of the reason. Attunement means being perceived accurately and responded to in real time. It is the "you get me" feeling that builds safety and belonging. But attunement only works when there is a genuine signal to tune into. When you have spent years presenting a masked version of yourself, the people around you are attuning to the performance. Their care is real. It is just aimed at someone who isn't fully you. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. explores how masking disrupts attunement in both directions, why near-misses can hurt more than obvious rejection, and how you can start resyncing your relationships without burning everything down. The client story shared in this episode was shared with permission. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.

    Neurodivergent Unmasking: Why You Can Still Feel Lonely in Good Relationships

  3. Sep 25

    Neurodivergent Hypervigilance vs Attunement: Why Reading People Drains You

    You can tell your boss is irritated before they say a word. You know when your partner is off, what your kids need, and which comment will set off the meeting. But when someone asks how you're doing, you go blank. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. launches a series on psychological attunement, the experience of feeling seen and how a late diagnosis shapes it. Many late-diagnosed and late-identified neurodivergent adults are highly attuned to other people. But much of that watching grew out of hypervigilance: years of getting things wrong without knowing why turned reading people into a safety system. From the outside, scanning for threats and connecting through curiosity can look the same. From the inside, one connects you and the other drains you. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.

    Neurodivergent Hypervigilance vs Attunement: Why Reading People Drains You

  4. Sep 18

    Neurodivergent Capacity Optimism: Why You Always End Up Doing Too Much

    You said yes to fun social plans on Monday. Then Saturday night arrives and the version of you who has to follow through has nothing left in the tank. Welcome to something Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. likes to call capacity optimism: the confident belief that future you will have the resources to keep the promises present you makes. In this episode, Dr. Regina explores why neurodivergent adults are especially prone to overcommitting. She draws on behavioral economist George Loewenstein's empathy gap, the finding that people in one physical or emotional state struggle to predict how they'll think, feel, or act in another. For late-diagnosed and late-identified neurodivergent folks, that gap gets wider based on several factors. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.

    Neurodivergent Capacity Optimism: Why You Always End Up Doing Too Much

  5. Sep 11

    Neurodivergent Rumination & the Zeigarnik Effect: Why Your Brain Can't Let It Go

    Can't stop overthinking a conversation you had? For a lot of late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults, rumination works like a quest that never registers as complete. You've done everything you can but the marker won't clear, so your brain keeps replaying the conversation and searching for the step you missed. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. and Russ break down effortful thinking, how it collides with rumination, and why masking and rejection sensitivity make the loop so much harder to close. If your brain grabs moments like this and refuses to let go, it isn't malfunctioning. It's doing exactly what it was built to do, just without an exit. Neurodivergent minds tend to love effortful thinking: the deep, gritty, deliberate kind of cognition that digs into how and why things happen. That kind of thinking is designed to sprint toward a conclusion and then rest. The trouble starts when there's no end to the effort. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.

    Neurodivergent Rumination & the Zeigarnik Effect: Why Your Brain Can't Let It Go

  6. Sep 4

    Neurodivergent Masking & Capacity: Borrowing Against Your Future

    There's a version of you that commuted, worked, volunteered, and kept every plate spinning. You look at that version now and wonder where she went. The comparison runs automatically and it always ends with you coming up short. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. provides the reframe: that capacity was never actually yours. You were borrowing against your future self and no one told you the interest rate. The crashes, the crabby moods, the drained feeling that never fully lifts between recovery cycles, all of that was the bill coming due. Masking doesn't create surplus. It runs a constant cycle of compensation and when you finally crash there's nothing underneath you because it was already spent. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.

    Neurodivergent Masking & Capacity: Borrowing Against Your Future

  7. Aug 28

    Neurodivergent Unmasking: When Your Nervous System Freaks Out

    If masking is the thing that kept you safe, how do you feel safe while you unmask? That question came from a client this week and it sits at the center of this episode. Masking was never a flaw. It was a survival strategy that worked, one you built without realizing it to reduce rejection and help you belong. So when you start taking it off, your nervous system reacts like you are removing armor while you are still on the battlefield. That fear is not a sign you are doing it wrong. It is your nervous system doing exactly what it was built to do. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.

    Neurodivergent Unmasking: When Your Nervous System Freaks Out

  8. Aug 21

    Neurodivergent Burnout: Why Rest Alone Won't Bring You Back

    You rested. You took the break everyone swore would fix it. So why can't you do the thing you used to be so good at? In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. and co-host Russ return to one of their earliest topics, neurodivergent burnout, with a harder and more honest update. The first time around, recovery sounded almost simple: rest, learn your capacity, come back. This time they get into what that framing left out. Neurodivergent burnout is not a bad week or a skipped vacation. It is your nervous system shutting down after a long mismatch between what your environment demands and what your brain can actually sustain. And sometimes the skills you were using to survive that mismatch do not fully come back. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes and get weekly nerdy neurodivergent insights! Chat with Regina on Instagram @drreginaphd Book a Make it Make Sense Call with Regina About Dr. Regina McMenomy, PhD Regina is a neurodivergent coach and educator who helps late-diagnosed adults unmask, heal from burnout, and build lives aligned with how their brains work. She founded Divergent Paths Consulting to provide the type of coaching and support that late-diagnosed nerdy neurodivergent folks need after receiving their late diagnoses.

    Neurodivergent Burnout: Why Rest Alone Won't Bring You Back
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4.8
out of 5
20 Ratings

About

Neurodivergent Strategies for Late-Diagnosed Adults is the podcast for people with ADHD, autism, and other late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults ready to unmask, heal from burnout, and build a life that works with their brain, not against it. Hosted by Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D., this show offers real talk and practical strategies for navigating executive dysfunction, rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), perfectionism, emotional regulation, masking, PDA, and more. Each episode explores how unspoken expectations, internalized ableism, and cultural myths about productivity keep neurodivergent people stuck and what we can do to shift the narrative. Whether you’re newly diagnosed, self-discovered, or still figuring it out, you’ll find insight, compassion, and tools to help you find your divergent path. Sign up for N.E.R.D. Notes! Book a Free Discovery Call with Regina About the Host: Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. (she/her) is a neurodivergent coach, educator, and host of the Divergent Paths podcast. With a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies and over 20 years of experience in higher education and instructional design, she blends academic depth with lived neurodivergent insight. Regina was diagnosed later in life and like many of her clients, spent decades masking, overworking, and wondering why burnout always came back. Now she helps late-diagnosed people with ADHD and autism unmask safely, rebuild their self-trust, and embrace rest as a radical act of self-support. The Divergent Paths podcast offers empowering conversations, practical tools, and hard-won wisdom for those ready to live more authentically. You’ll often find her talking about nervous system regulation, perfectionism, emotional honesty and, occasionally, oatmeal.

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