Hello, and welcome to this little corner of the internet

I've been putting off starting a blog for a while now. Not because I don't have things to say (anyone who knows me will tell you that's never been the problem) but because I kept waiting until I had the right words, the right structure, the right everything. Which, if you know anything about AuDHD, you'll recognise immediately as a very specific kind of trap.

So here I am. Imperfect opening paragraph and all.

My name is Maritxu (pronounced Mah-ree-choo), and yes, I'll probably mention the pronunciation more than once because I spent too many years watching people avoid saying my name altogether rather than risk getting it wrong. That particular experience, the quiet erasure of something that is just yours, turns out to be fairly central to a lot of what I do as a therapist.

I'm a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor, and I work with adults who often find themselves at the edges of spaces that weren't quite designed with them in mind. People navigating late diagnoses, or the long exhale that can follow one. People who are queer, or neurodivergent, or both, or neither, but who have still spent years quietly wondering why everything seems to take more out of them than it seems to take out of everyone else.

I know what it is to move through the world sensing that something is different about how you experience it, without yet having language for what that difference is.

I came to my own neurodivergence later in life. I'm AuDHD (autistic and ADHD) and I found out as an adult, after years of being described as "a lot," "too sensitive," "so intense." After years of being very good at performing competence while quietly drowning behind it. The diagnosis didn't fix anything overnight, but it gave me something I hadn't realised I was missing: a framework that actually fit. A way of understanding myself that wasn't built around deficit.

That experience is part of why I do this work. And it's part of why I wanted to create a blog, because I think there's real value in saying these things out loud, in a space that doesn't require you to have it all figured out first.

So what will this blog actually be? Honestly, a mix. I'll write about neurodivergence: what neuroaffirming therapy actually means, why late diagnosis hits the way it does, what masking costs us. I'll write about queerness and identity and the particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living in a world that keeps asking you to justify your existence. I'll probably write about relationships, and the nervous system, and all the ways our bodies carry things our minds haven't yet caught up with.

Sometimes the posts will be more clinical and informative. Sometimes they'll be more personal. I'm a therapist, but I'm also a human being with my own story, and I think that matters. I'm not interested in performing a kind of professional distance that makes you feel like you're reading a textbook. I'd rather you read this and feel, even slightly, like someone understands.

If you've found your way here (whether you're thinking about therapy, curious about neurodivergence, or you just happened to land on this page) I'm glad you're here. You don't need a reason, or a diagnosis, or a crisis. You're welcome to just look around.

And if something you read here resonates, feel free to reach out. That's what this space is for.

More soon.

Warmest,
Maritxu 🌱