Ali Pember

Have you spent a lifetime being told you're too much - too sensitive, too intense, too emotional - while simultaneously never feeling like quite enough?

• Maybe you've been high-achieving on the outside while privately exhausted by the effort of holding it all together. 
• Perhaps perimenopause, motherhood, a career that no longer fits, or the weight of caring for others has pushed you to a tipping point.
• Or maybe a slow, dawning realisation is beginning to take shape: that what you've been calling anxiety, burnout, or simply being "a lot" might actually be something more specific - a profile that combines ADHD and Autistic traits, often called AuDHD.

You might not have a formal diagnosis. You might have identified for years as a Highly Sensitive Person, and found that the label partly fit, but didn't quite account for the contradictions. The rigidity alongside the impulsivity. The craving for connection and the desperate need for solitude. The hyper-focus that made you brilliant at your best, and the complete inability to function when overwhelmed.

If any of this sounds familiar, you're in the right place.

About me

My name is Ali Pember. I'm a therapist, coach, and late-discovered AuDHD woman. I work with people who are waking up to the possibility that they are neurodivergent, often in midlife, and often after years of quietly wondering why life felt so much harder than it looked from the outside.

Who I work with

My clients are typically women who have been outwardly successful - often gifted, driven, and deeply capable - but who are beginning to find that the version of themselves that pushed through, masked well, and made it all look effortless is no longer sustainable.

You may recognise yourself in some of this:

• You've spent years shape-shifting to meet others' expectations
• You suspect that what's been called perfectionism, people-pleasing, or over-sensitivity might actually be neurodivergence
• You feel constantly on the brink of burnout
• You've tried therapy but felt stuck going over the same ground
• You’ve tried coaching but found surface-level goals didn't touch what was really going on

While my specialism is women's experience - because neurodivergent women have been left out of the conversation for far too long - I also welcome men and non-binary clients who feel a strong resonance with this work.

How I work

I am both a qualified psychotherapist and an accredited coach, and I hold these two disciplines together deliberately. You don't have to decide in advance whether you need therapy or coaching, and you don't have to compartmentalise what you bring.

As a therapist, I'm attuned to the deeper layers: childhood patterns, family dynamics, trauma, shame, and the nervous system responses that keep us stuck in old ways of surviving.

As a coach, I also understand the need for clarity, practical strategies, and forward momentum - for actually doing things differently, not just understanding why you haven't.

In practice, this means our work can move fluidly. Some sessions go deep. Some are practical. Some involve untangling a specific situation or working out how to respond to a difficult email. Others open into something more existential: questions of identity, meaning, and what it might feel like to stop living by rules that were never written for you.

For late-discovered neurodivergent clients, this work often involves:

• Understanding your ADHD / Autistic profile and what it actually means for how you live, work, and relate
• Moving away from masking, shame, and chronic self-criticism towards genuine self-acceptance
• Building nervous system capacity - learning to work with your biology rather than against it
• Developing practical structures, rhythms, and routines that are designed around how your mind actually works
• Exploring the grief that often accompanies late discovery - the lost years, the misdiagnoses, the effort of a lifetime spent pretending
• Reconnecting with your strengths and finding a way of being in the world that is sustainable, authentic, and genuinely your own

The aim is not to become someone else. It is to finally understand yourself clearly enough to stop fighting who you are.

My background

Before retraining as a therapist and coach, I spent fifteen years in senior roles in business consulting and financial services. I know the culture of high performance, perfectionism, and relentless productivity from the inside. I know what this working environment costs you as a person, especially when you're neurodivergent and don't yet have the language to understand why everything seems more difficult for you.

Over the past decade I specialised in therapeutic coaching for matrescence and perimenopause. My work has now evolved to focus specifically on late-discovered neurodivergent women - those for whom so much life experience suddenly makes a different kind of sense.

What we might work on together

Clients come to me for support with:

• Late ADHD / Autistic discovery and what it means for your identity, relationships, and sense of self
• Burnout - understanding it, recovering from it, and building a life less likely to lead back there
• Masking, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and the exhaustion of performing a version of yourself that doesn't fit
• Nervous system regulation and learning to manage overwhelm, emotional intensity, and sensory sensitivity
• Career change and finding work that is congruent with how you're actually wired
• Navigating hormonal transitions - perimenopause, postnatal experience, matrescence - through a neurodivergent lens
• Relationships - with partners, children, parents, colleagues - and the particular relational patterns that often accompany AuDHD
• Parenting - particularly the challenges of raising a neurodivergent child while reparenting yourself
• Rebuilding self-trust, self-worth, and a clearer sense of who you are and what you actually need

What I offer

I offer a free initial call so we can explore what you're looking for and whether we're the right fit.

From there, I offer a single 90-minute Finding Clarity session - a good starting point if you want to get a sense of the work, process a recent discovery, or simply think through where you are and what you need next.

For deeper, ongoing work, my Making Sense programme offers three months of therapeutic coaching - space to go properly into your AuDHD experience, rebuild your relationship with yourself, and begin to find a way of living that genuinely fits.

You can find full details on my website.

You don't need to push harder, mask more, or keep pretending the old version of you is coming back. Something different is possible, and it starts with finally being understood.

• AuDHD coaching
• Therapeutic coaching

• Free 30 min initial chat
• Access to Work funding accepted
• Payment plans available

Begin working together

I offer a single session or 3 month programme for new clients:

• Finding Clarity - single session (90 min) = £150 
• Making Sense - 3 month programme (1 x 90 min, 6 x 60 min sessions plus check ins and resources) = £885 

Continue working together

After completing an initial session or programme with me, I offer follow on sessions:

• £125 per session (60 min) 
• 10% discount if you book 6 sessions
• 20% discount if you book 12 sessions 

Find out more on my website, or book a free initial chat above.