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

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

by Regina McMenomy, PhD.
Mental Health
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.
E83
Sep 11, 2026
16:43
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.
E82
Sep 4, 2026
15:40
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.
E81
Aug 28, 2026
15:27
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.
E80
Aug 21, 2026
17:43
Neurodivergent Capacity: Why 'Simple' Tasks Feel So Hard
Ever stare down a five-minute task for three weeks straight and wonder what's wrong with you? Nothing is wrong with you. Your brain is just running more background processes than anyone ever taught you to account for. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. breaks down why "simple" tasks so often feel disproportionately hard for late diagnosed neurodivergent adults, and introduces the concept of discernment: the skill of accurately pricing what a task costs you, instead of what you think it should cost. Listen to learn a some strategies to stop "should-ing" on yourself. 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.
E79
Aug 14, 2026
14:23
Neurodivergent Impulsivity Isn't Selfish: The Science Behind Masking
You were probably told your impulsivity was selfish. That you jumped in, overshared, or said yes too fast because you weren't thinking about anyone but yourself. This episode makes the case, with the research to back it up, that the opposite was usually true. Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. talks about the science behind how impulsivity has different motivations than we assumed. For a lot of late-diagnosed neurodivergent adults, impulsivity got filed under "character flaw" early and somewhere along the way you decided you were the problem and built a mask to manage it. But the science tells a different story about what that impulse was actually reaching for: connection. 2013 study: Low Self-Control Promotes the Willingness to Sacrifice in Close Relationships 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.
E78
Aug 7, 2026
13:23
Neurodivergent Masking on Purpose: Why Intentional Masking is an Important Skill
Nobody sat you down and taught you to mask. It just switched on one day, quietly, without asking, and most of the time you don't even catch it happening. So what would it mean to actually get your hands on the switch? In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. and co-host Russ dig into intentional masking: the difference between the mask that flips on automatically, without your permission, and the one you choose to wear because you've read the room and done the math on what it will cost you. The heart of the conversation is your capacity, and why it's a moving target. We reframe this as a masking budget: your high-cost events (the dentist, the family visit, the party you're dreading) get planned around, not powered through. Because unmasking was never meant to be all or nothing, and treating it that way is its own kind of trap. 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.
E77
Jul 31, 2026
25:53
Neurodivergent Memory and Unmasking the Feelings You Never Got to Feel
You already know masking changes what other people see. What gets talked about far less is what it does on the inside. When you spend years suppressing emotion to keep a smooth, friction-free version of yourself running, you slowly lose access to the emotional data your brain uses to file memories away. And for a lot of neurodivergent people, especially those with ADHD, emotion is exactly how memory gets encoded in the first place. In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. walks through a concept she calls delayed encoding. The event happened, the memory happened, but the feelings attached to it were locked out at the time. Unmasking can hand them back to you, sometimes weeks later, sometimes decades. She uses a memory of her own to show how a moment you thought you understood can return with completely new emotional information once you can finally feel it. 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.
E76
Jul 24, 2026
16:36
Discomfort Isn't Danger: Recalibrating the Neurodivergent Fear Response
Calm water isn't the same thing as safe water. It just feels that way when you've spent years wanting to keep things smooth. Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. breaks down the concept of productive friction: the discomfort that shows up whenever you're actually growing, versus the discomfort that shows up when you're staying small to avoid rocking the boat. Drawing on her own swimming practice, she unpacks why so many late-diagnosed and late-identified neurodivergent adults have learned to mistake stillness for safety, and what it costs you when you do. If you've been feeling the friction in your own late-diagnosed or late-identified journey, that's not a sign something's wrong. It might be a sign something's finally moving. 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.
E75
Jul 17, 2026
11:34
Neurodivergent People-Pleasing Isn't Kindness, It's Masking
Ever laughed off the moment you gave yourself away? Maybe it was a joke that landed wrong, or eye contact that came a beat too late. Dr. Regina McMenomy, Ph.D. unpacks a kind of exhaustion that has nothing to do with how much sleep you got: instead, it's from the constant tension of monitoring your own performance while reading everyone else's reactions in real time. In this episode, you'll learn: What people-pleasing actually feels like from the inside for a lot of late-diagnosed adults How people-pleasing and masking are linked, with people-pleasing acting as the mechanism through which a masked version of yourself earns approval What changes in your relationships when you stop crafting every sentence for maximum smoothness and start just saying the thing If you've spent years dismissing this tension as anxiety or "just how you are," this episode offers a different lens, and a path toward relationships that don't drain you to maintain. 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.
E74
Jul 10, 2026
14:45
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