Let me open a case file.

Subject: "Alex," age 35. Diagnostic History: Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), diagnosed at 19. Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), diagnosed at 24. A "query" for Bipolar II at 28. Treatment History: Multiple SSRIs. Years of CBT. Still exhausted. Still feels like they're failing at the basics of life. Still feels fundamentally misunderstood.

Does this case file feel familiar? Because I see some version of Alex at least once a week.

The Game of Diagnostic Whack-a-Mole

The traditional psychiatric model is not designed to solve complex puzzles. It is designed to match a cluster of symptoms to a billing code as quickly as possible. It is playing diagnostic whack-a-mole, and your brain is the mole.

It saw Alex's social hypervigilance and whacked it with a GAD label. It saw their autistic burnout and whacked it with an MDD label. It saw their AuDHD whiplash between hyperfocus and shutdown and whacked it with a Bipolar query. Three clinicians. Three labels. Three billing codes. Zero understanding of the actual person.

The system was not wrong about the symptoms. It was catastrophically wrong about the source.

Our Neo4j research database puts it bluntly: "Undiagnosed autism is often misdiagnosed as other mental health conditions like anxiety or eating disorders." And a February 2026 study in The BMJ (Fyfe et al., Karolinska Institutet) of 2.7 million individuals found that while boys are diagnosed with autism at a 4:1 ratio in childhood, rates become nearly equal by age 20 — the so-called "female catch-up effect." Translation: the system isn't catching autism in girls and women. It's catching a parade of downstream symptoms instead.

The research also confirms what Alex already knows in their bones: "Misdiagnosis has significant negative consequences, including medication risks and erosion of public trust." Every wrong label isn't just unhelpful — it's actively harmful. It puts you on the wrong medication, trains you in the wrong coping strategies, and — most insidiously — teaches you that you're "treatment-resistant" when the truth is you were never given the right treatment to resist.

Rewriting Alex's Case File

A truly affirming psychological assessment for adults is not a new whack-a-mole game. It is a forensic investigation of your entire life. Here's what Alex's case file looks like through a neurodiversity-affirming lens:

  • The "Anxiety" was a lifetime of sensory overload in a world that's too loud, and the constant, exhausting work of masking social confusion to appear "normal."

  • The "Depression" was the profound, bone-deep burnout that comes from spending 100% of your energy, every single day, performing "normal."

  • The "Mood Swings" were the neurological whiplash of an ADHD brain desperate for dopamine and an autistic brain desperate for calm, predictable routine — the AuDHD push-pull.

The problem was never the individual puzzle pieces. The problem was that no one was looking at the picture on the box.

The Old Model (Symptom-Based):

You → Anxiety, Depression, Mood Swings → A collection of separate problems → Separate medications → Still struggling

The Enlitens Model (Source-Based):

Undiagnosed Neurodivergence (the single, unifying source) → Anxiety, Depression, Mood Swings (the predictable, downstream consequences) → One coherent understanding → Strategies that actually work

The Cough Medicine Analogy

You've been diligently treating the symptoms while the root cause has gone unaddressed. It's like you've been taking cough medicine for a decade when the real problem is a hidden mold infestation in your house. (I know — mold analogies. But it's genuinely the best one I have.)

Your anxiety and depression are not your identity. They are the alarms your brilliant nervous system has been screaming for years to signal a foundational, neurodivergent wiring that nobody bothered to identify.

The goal is not to collect another misfit label for the alarm. It is to finally get the correct blueprint for the house →.

Signs You Might Be Living in Alex's Case File

I want to be specific here, because vague "if you feel different" language is useless. Here are the patterns I look for — the ones the whack-a-mole system misses:

  • You've been on multiple medications for anxiety or depression, and none of them have fully worked
  • You function well enough professionally but feel like you're running a marathon every day just to keep up
  • You've been told you're "too sensitive" or "too intense" your entire life
  • You've developed elaborate systems and routines that look like "anxiety" but are actually how your brain manages chaos
  • You crash hard after socializing — not because you're introverted, but because social processing is genuinely exhausting for your brain
  • Your "burnout" isn't just work stress — it's a full-body shutdown that happens cyclically
  • You Google your symptoms obsessively and feel RELIEF when you read about neurodivergence

If you're nodding at three or more of these, you're not "treatment-resistant." You may have been resisting the wrong treatment.

This Is Not About Collecting Another Diagnosis

An affirming assessment is not about adding another label to the collection. It's forensic investigation — piecing together the clues of your entire life to find the one, unifying theory that finally makes the puzzle make sense.

When you're ready to finally solve the case of you: The investigation begins here →

This is often the first step in the journey of adult late discovery →.

Part of: Assessment Hub → | Related: Your Experience is Not Up for Debate · Beyond the Label