The Doorway
a 12-week writing & therapy group for
post-diagnosis neurodivergent adults
online (D.C. & maryland) | Next Cohort Starts: jan 2027
Make sense of your diagnosis and find connection
in a creative, neurodiversity-affirming space
You’re incredibly bright, accomplished, creative, and full of empathy, yet you walked through life for a long time without knowing why you felt different.
Because you blended in so well, no one knew just how misunderstood you often felt. When relationships changed or ended, you experienced loneliness, grief, and on top of that, felt not good enough, like it was somehow your fault.
Additionally, in transitions – times of change and high stress – your typical coping tools and compensations seemed to fall by the wayside. The ground underneath you and your identity felt shaky.
Now finally, like a key unlocking a door that has long been closed, getting diagnosed late in your life has allowed you to understand the unevenness you’ve experienced: your gifts side by side with your burdens; your desire to connect side by side with your need for alone time.
Now you know why life seems so much harder, why you’ve never felt Good enough, and why relationships have been a struggle: You’re neurodivergent.
And that means you’re not flawed at your core; there’s a clear explanation why you’ve struggled through the years. And yet while you feel relief to know that you're neurodivergent, your diagnosis* – whether ADHD, Autism, or AuDHD – has left you with more questions than answers. (Questions only you can truly answer).
Now, post-diagnosis (or in the process of self-diagnosis*) you wonder:
HOW do I understand my past through this new lens?
HOW do I come to terms with my limitations, and still feel my value and wholeness?
WHO am I underneath the ways I’ve blended in and compensated?
You’re ready to integrate your dx, but none
of the options feel like they cover everything…
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Going Solo feels lonely (and you've already tried it!)
You could do it alone, and you’ve probably already tried that. But it’s hard to trust what’s on the internet, and hard to process in an empty chamber.
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Individual Therapy doesn't feel like enough
Individual therapy focuses on internal work, not shared experiences. Your therapist can be a sympathetic witness, but they aren’t going through changes alongside you.
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Social Media feels too crowded, and still lonely
You’ve tried Facebook groups or social media – but the unmoderated, unstructured nature of these options offers only fleeting insights and connection.
What if there’s an option created precisely for your experience?
What if there was a space where you undergo this shift in identity and narrative alongside other newly-diagnosed neurodivergent adults navigating this messy middle?
And what if this group allowed you to get the attention you need, where you could take up space without feeling like a burden, where your contribution was adding to the collective healing of the group?
Introducing The Doorway
A writing and process group for newly diagnosed neurodivergent adults that helps you come home to yourself.
Over the course of 12 weeks, you'll gather with 6-8 newly diagnosed neurodivergent adults who are at the threshold.
Bright, insightful people like you, who no longer want to live with false stories about not being enough or being too much. People ready to enter a space for healing, gaining tools, and connecting.
is the doorway the right group for you?
You're a late-identified or neurodivergent adult (ADHD, AuDHD, Autism) seeking a space to integrate your diagnosis into your life.
You've spent much of your life feeling like an outsider, and your diagnosis was the first thing that made sense.
Part of your neurodivergence is juggling the tension between longing for connection and a need for solitude and time to recharge.
Burnout or a major life transition (parenthood, perimenopause, career changes, or relationship shifts) was a catalyst to explore diagnosis.
You’re curious about your inner world. You love learning, exploring, and growing as a person.
After a lifetime feeling different and misunderstood, you’re seeking a space to connect with kindred spirits.
Not sure? You can reach out … I won’t leave you guessing – we can explore if it’s a fit!
Open the Doorway to…
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Reframing your Experience
Reframe past shames by identifying toxic systems that impact your sense of self. Recontextualize your limitations and build self-compassion.
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Burnout Recovery & Prevention
Move through burnout by receiving support and ideas for self-care. Use this work to restore energy and motivation.
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Tools & Accommodations
Learn how to manage sensory and emotional overwhelm and how to ask for work and life accommodations so that you can sustain your energy.
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Creativity
Sink your teeth into creative work and experience flow. See how writing can facilitate new ways to understand your mind and a platform to retell your story.
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Joy & Aliveness
Increase your energy, confidence, and joy as you understand and overcome past pain in a safe space.
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Connection
Receive empathy and the experience of being deeply listened to. You’ll feel seen, heard, less alone, and invigorated by the positives of your neurodivergence.
WHEN WRITING IS MEDICINE
How this group was born
Meet Your Facilitator, Melanie Eisner— therapist, neurodivergent adult, and writer
As a longtime creative writer, I believe in the healing powers of the pen. Writing offers a space where you can dream, imagine, remember, rage, or weep. You can enter terrain just outside of our awareness, and allow what seeks to become known to emerge on the page.
Intense, many-layered neurodivergent minds take in so much from the world, which overloads our systems. Writing helps you metabolize – to transform what is overwhelming into something you can speak about and hold in your hand. And you don’t have to be an experienced writer to get these benefits.
As a therapist for 15 years, I know that speaking about our pain, our stories, and our paths forward, and having our words be witnessed in the presence of caring relationships, facilitates healing and self-trust.
This group brings forth what I know to be the most transformative for neurodivergent adults: a space where you feel seen, and where you understand you are not alone in what you carry. An accepting, open space to be exactly who you are. A space for deep reflection, creativity, emotional intimacy, and community.
our weekly themes
Here are the themes that will anchor us. They are open to adaptations based on the composition and needs of the group.
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Weeks 1+2
Week 1: A Landing Space
We’ll take stock of where you are now, post-diagnosis. What has been circling through your mind? What has been circling through your world?
Week 2: Relief
Getting diagnosed feels deeply validating. You now know, truly, you are not defective at your core, you’re just wired differently.
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Weeks 3+4
Week 3: Identity
We’ll explore who you are now. You get to tell your story by looking at your past through this new lens.
Week 4: Masking
Masking your whole life can leave you with a complicated tangle to unknot. You may continue masking as parts of it have become part of you over the years. But you also get to ask where it drains your energy, where it blocks the fullest version of yourself, and choose where and when to stop masking.
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Weeks 5+6
Week 5: Overwhelm
Sensory and emotional overwhelm are two major challenges for neurodivergent folks. In this group, we’ll reflect on your sensory preferences and needs. We’ll explore your particular style of experiencing emotion. We’ll discuss what tools work for you and explore other modes to navigate sensory experiences and regulate emotions.
Week 6: Executive Functioning
Another major challenge for neurodivergent folks is executive functioning. After your diagnosis, learning how to work with your particular nervous system and brain can bring more ease. The group atmosphere will de-shame executive functioning struggles and generate ideas for addressing them.
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Weeks 7+8
Week 7: Connection
Many neurodivergent people crave connection, but relationships can be fraught due to past trauma, Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), feeling misunderstood, needing solitude, and more. In the group, we’ll explore your experiences and hardships around connection. We’ll use the group as a laboratory and explore connecting in a safe space where we can process in the moment how we each respond and take in one another.
Week 8: Supports
The group is a place to discuss self-accommodations, formal accommodations, gather resources, and think about where and how you can add support to your life.
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Weeks 9+10
Week 9: Sharing your Diagnosis
We’ll explore how to tell your loved ones about your diagnosis, and how to process what comes up when you do. We’ll explore how knowing your diagnosis changes your relationships.
Week 10: Friendship & Belonging
The group is a place to discuss finding community. Knowing yourself more accurately post-diagnosis can be helpful in finding your people.
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Week 11+12
Week 11: Grief
Alongside relief, you may also feel sadness for your younger self who believed they were flawed. You may mourn the time he or she lost, not understanding their value. Additionally, you may experience anger and disappointment at recognizing how loved ones failed to understand or tend to your needs.
Week 12: Looking Ahead
What are your dreams and desires? What do you want for your future? What do you want to take with you from this group?
Our weekly flow
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Opening
We’ll anchor into our weekly theme by writing to a related prompt (or go off-prompt!). You can write with a pen and paper, or on your laptop. We’ll write for 15 minutes, give or take, depending on flow.
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Middle
We’ll speak organically for about 45 minutes, sharing pieces of our writing if we want to, and listening to each other with presence. If you're in a quieter, reflective, or introspective mood, you won't be asked to share beyond your comfort.
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Closing
We’ll close out with a reflection or prompt after the discussion and write for 10 minutes. This is a place for you to process and integrate the energy and intensity that took place that day, and contain it before you return to the world.
integrating your diagnosis:
what makes the doorway different
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This group is specifically for late-diagnosed neurodivergent folks figuring out how to use their diagnosis to heal and reconfigure their lives in healthier ways.
This group centers both emotional healing as well as practical steps forward as a newly diagnosed person learning to navigate your nervous system.
This group combines creative writing and group discussion, to find multiple entry points into your emotional process.
The combination of writing and discussion offer periods of solo reflection and group connection – both which are needed for neurodivergent humans.
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The Doorway was created to fill a gap in care for neurodivergent adults – who don’t want to do it alone, who need community beyond individual therapy, and need a safe, small, structure not found on social media.
One of the strongest, most affirming resources that we have are others in the neurodivergent community. Our community is wide ranging, highly idiosyncratic, and special.
What makes this program unique is that it’s a committed 12-week container with the same people, and it's intentionally structured to provide deeper transformation. The group format lends itself to major aspects of healing: de-shaming, self-compassion, and self-acceptance.
If you find there is deeper work you would like to do together, individual therapy is also available.
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Creativity, and creative writing in particular, is well suited for neurodivergent minds trying to heal and make sense of their place in the world.
Curiosity is the seed of creativity, and no one is more curious than neurodivergent folks. Furthermore, writing is a place to come to when you’re overwhelmed with input, stimuli, and emotions. Writing can help reveal the permutations and interconnections your brain sees, and at the same time tease apart the threads.
Creative writing can help you strengthen your inner resources, learn who you are by seeing what shows up on the page, and reflect the beauty of who you are. Writing can help you tap into raw sensory data from your body, emotions, and memories. Writing offers a chance to connect to your inner child, and a place to weave threads of your intellect together with your unconscious.
Writing, like meditation or therapy, is a form of witnessing the self, witnessing one's own mind, its intricate inner workings, and witnessing the different versions of the stories we have told ourselves. We can clear pieces of the past that no longer serve us and replace them with more accurate stories.
Putting your words on paper produces a transformative effect. What were free floating thoughts – the jumble which may have felt heavy – now have a place to live outside of you. Seeing what once resided only in your body gives you more freedom over those thoughts and feelings. Your narrative becomes pliable, with the capacity to shift and grow. You're left with release, breath, form, and clarity.
why is this group called The Doorway?
The Doorway is a symbol for leaving and entering. There’s no commencement ceremony to mark the moment when you learn you’re neurodivergent. But there is a transition. There is a [way of living] you’re saying goodbye to, and another you’re walking toward.
That’s why I’ve created this doorway, as a practical and symbolic ritual of crossing the threshold that represents this significant shift in your life.
As a group, we’ll travel…
From: A place of not understanding your uniqueness and your spiky combination of brilliance and faltering, beauty and pain. A place with false stories in which you blame yourself for so many things.
To: Treading these waters together as a group. Becoming more effective in navigating your world and stepping toward knowing and loving yourself at a deeper level.
The Doorway Details
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Timing
Fridays at 9:30AM ET (75min)
Starting late January, 2027
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Location
Meeting on Zoom
For those in Maryland / D.C.
Capped at 8 participants -
Cost
$60 per group
A superbill can be submitted to your insurance for potential reimbursement
FAQ
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This for High-Masking, or Late-Dianosed Neurotypes who are based in D.C. and Maryland.
Missed presentations of neurodivergence, including high-masking individuals, women and non-binary people, AuDHD profiles, sensory differences, and twice-exceptional (2e) or gifted individuals.
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You do not have to be a writer or creator. This group is not about “good” writing. It’s about the process. I’ll simply ask you to pick up a pen and be curious. This is about exploring your feelings, thoughts, and experiences. Writing allows us to access parts of ourselves in new ways. Accommodations (self-created or from your environment) can be helpful at any age, and the process of learning how to provide yourself with them is a skill you’ll need, as neurodivergence can shift and change over your lifespan.
Additionally, the length of time you’ve been masking may be proportionate to the fear or uncertainty you feel about unmasking. Support from a neuroaffirming provider can guide you in pacing this process and in building the tools and skills needed to create a life that feels sustainable for your sensitive nervous system.
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This group is a safe, open space that welcomes both formally diagnosed and self-diagnosed Autistic, ADHD, or AuDHD individuals.
Self-diagnosis is the thoroughly researched conclusion that you meet the criteria for autism, ADHD, or AuDHD. It is not a casual guess based on a whim. For most neurodivergent adults, self-diagnosis is an in-depth process that takes months or even years. It can involve familiarizing yourself with clinical diagnostic criteria, learning about neurodivergent lived experiences, reading books, and looking back at your own life history through a new lens.
Because formal clinical paths to diagnosis are often expensive, or biased against adults, women, and people of color, the neurodivergent community widely recognizes self-diagnosis as a valid and often necessary path to self-understanding.
You do not need a piece of paper from a clinician to join us. If you resonate with these traits, seek community, and want a supportive space to process your diagnosis, you belong here.
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If you’re not quite sure you’re neurodivergent at all, then please reach out to me and we can decide if this group is a fit for you. (However, if you’re drawn to this group, it is likely that you may be neurodivergent!) If the group is not a right fit, I’m happy to work with you in individual therapy or connect you to resources or a neurodiversity-affirming assessor that can help you gain clarity!
HOW TO JOIN ‘THE DOORWAY’
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01. Complete the form
Complete the Inquiry Form to let me know that you’re interested in the group! I’ll reach out to you and confirm that I’ve received your information and we’ll schedule a time to chat.
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02. Consult with Melanie
We’ll have a 15-30 minute Zoom conversation to talk about you. We’ll confirm if the group would be a good fit for your needs and answer any questions you have.
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03. Commit to the Group
Once you decide that you’d like to be a part of the group, I’ll send the group agreements over for you to sign. You’ll commit to being at the group weekly and then we’ll get started!