I’m Claire - observer, deep thinker, creative and practical in equal measure and a quiet shell collector, building Scattered Mind Society from the parts that once felt like too much.
I was diagnosed with combined ADHD and Autism at 39 after spending most of my life trying to be more.
More confident, more disciplined, more successful, more like everyone else. From the outside, I was keeping it together. Inside, I was overthinking everything, burning out, and measuring myself against where I should be, doom-scrolling past other people’s "perfect" lives.
No matter how work I did on myself or how much insight I gained, I was stuck in cycles of burnout and sick of starting over all the time.
Life appeared to be moving forward, I got married, had three boys (all with different brains to add to the mix) and was finishing a university degree I had dropped out of at 18. Only, I still felt too far behind to ever catch up.
I started learning about ADHD, especially how it presents in women and something clicked.
Not in a casual, joking way but in a quiet, confronting way.
I just knew.
But I didn't always know. Growing up I just thought I couldn't do anything right.
I did what I could to cope. I adapted.
Sometimes I tried harder but mostly I stopped trying at all until rock bottom hit and the cycle would start again.
Looking back, the signs were there:
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A very noisy inner world but very little sense of self
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Bullying, binge drinking, and the beginning
of an eating disorder in my teens - years shaped more by survival than self-understanding and set the path for years to come -
Learning to read the room and adapt to feel safe, while never really feeling that safe
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Little confidence in myself or my abilities
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A sense of being on the outside, even in rooms where I belonged
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Emotions that ran deep and fast
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Big ideas stretched into impossible standards
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Perfectionism that often led to avoidance
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Periods of burnout after intense effort
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Impulsive and addictive behaviours
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Anxiety that felt like a personality and was often treated as the root problem rather than part of a wider pattern
I could have never truly known myself
without knowing this part of me.
A diagnosis brought both relief and grief.
Relief, because things finally made sense.
Grief, for the years I had spent blaming myself for not being able to “get it together.”
It didn’t change who I was, but it gave me a framework for who I had always been. Language for the intensity, the burnout, the sensitivity. The way I could be capable and completely overwhelmed at the same time.
For years, I thought those patterns meant something was wrong with me.
In reality, they were part of how my brain works, I just didn’t have the understanding to make sense of them.
When that changed, so did the way I approached everything. I stopped trying to fix myself or spend all my spare time “healing,” and instead began building support around how I actually function. Paying attention to patterns rather than judging them, and creating a ways of living that felt sustainable.
This is the work I do now.
Helping others understand how their brain works, finding ways to work with it instead of against. and let go of the idea that you were ever the problem, not something to fix, something to understand.
This is where things start to make sense.
If you’d like to work together, you can find out more about my coaching services here.