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.

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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.

There's a moment after diagnosis where you think the hard part is over. You have the language now, the explanation, the "why." Then you go back to your same job, same relationships, same life, and realize none of it changed just because you understand it better.

In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. and Russ Catanach dig into that specific, disorienting stretch: the gap between knowing you're neurodivergent and actually living like it. They talk through why this phase can feel so much harder than understanding the diagnosis itself, what masking feels like once you're aware you're doing it, and why intentional unmasking (even though it's exhausting) gives you agency that burnout never will.

If you're in that in-between space right now, not who you were before your diagnosis but not sure who you're becoming either, this episode will make you feel a lot less alone in 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.

Most neurodivergent coaching will sell you a three-month transformation and a tidy finish line. For late diagnosed adults doing genuine unmasking work, that promise can do real harm. This episode is about why your path is divergent by design, and why curiosity about yourself matters more than any checklist.

Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. describes the people she loves working with: late diagnosed, late identified, late realized neurodivergent adults who are approaching their neurodivergence with genuine curiosity, not just collecting a label. These are people who are done outsourcing their self-concept to their work, their hobbies, or relationships that never really supported them. She also gets honest about why her coaching looks nothing like the tidy three-month transformation arc most of the industry sells, and why that framing can actively harm someone doing real unmasking work.

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.

You started doing the work. You've begun understanding how your brain actually works, and you began peeling back the mask you built to survive. So why is everything suddenly harder with the people closest to you?

Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. shares in this episode the part nobody warns you about: what happens to your relationships after you start unmasking. When you cancel plans without guilt, hold firmer boundaries, and stop spending your executive function smoothing every sharp edge, people notice. Some read it as you becoming mean or distant. That tension isn't proof your relationships are broken. It usually means they need renegotiation.

Unmasking isn't about becoming someone new. It's about becoming visible, including to yourself, and not everyone will be ready for that. You're not the villain here. You might just be the antagonist to someone else's comfort, and you're allowed to be okay with that.

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.

It is a terrifying thing to stand in a spotlight you never agreed to walk into. When you're a late-diagnosed neurodivergent adult you might have heard dropping the mask brings instant freedom, but nobody warns you about the deep ache of finally being seen for exactly who you are. When someone looks past your carefully constructed, people-pleasing performance and embraces your messy, genuine self, your nervous system might actually scream danger instead of feeling relief.

In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. explores the emotional reality of the "visibility gap"—the awkward, liminal space between who you used to be and who you are becoming. For late-diagnosed adults, their mask wasn't just a habit; it was a protective system built brick by brick. This episode unpacks why unmasking is a relational event, why being misread hurts so much more once you are trying to be authentic, and how your nervous system gradually calibrates to accept true belonging and secure, safe connections.

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.

You recognize the feeling the moment it starts. One conversation, one interaction, and suddenly this person is everywhere in your brain, first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and approximately 47 times in between. You're not just interested. You're consumed. And if you're neurodivergent, there's a reason it hits that hard.

In this episode, Dr. Regina and Russ break down limerence (also called romantic hyperfixation), why ADHD and autistic brains are especially susceptible to it, and how your attachment style either fuels the fire or keeps the loop going indefinitely. If you've ever turned a person into a puzzle you couldn't stop trying to solve, this one's for you.

If you've ever confused intensity for intimacy, or chased the high of pursuit without realizing why, this episode gives you the language and the framework to finally understand what was happening and what to do about 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.

Have you ever spent hours decoding a single text message, or convinced yourself that anticipating everyone else's needs was how to be a "good friend"? If you are late-identified neurodivergent, what you’ve always praised as a thoughtful personality trait might actually be a highly activated nervous system response.

In this episode of Divergent Paths, Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. breaks down the intersection of anxious attachment, codependency, and masking. She explores how growing up with unpredictable connections teaches your nervous system to stay hyper-vigilant, leading to a habit of reading the room at the expense of your own boundaries. You'll discover why self-abandonment gets socially rewarded as being "low maintenance" and how to start tracking your internal signals instead of everyone else’s emotional state.

It’s time to stop prioritizing everyone else's comfort and start learning how to check back in 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.

Do you know what you actually want? Not what makes everyone else comfortable, not what keeps the peace, but what you want? For many late-diagnosed and late-identifying neurodivergent adults, that question is genuinely hard to answer. It's often the result of enmeshment.

In this episode, Dr. Regina McMenomy Ph.D. breaks down why enmeshment is so common among neurodivergent people, how a lifetime of masking sets the stage for boundaryless relationships, and what it actually looks like to start finding your edges.

This episode is for you if you've ever left a conversation feeling drained in a way that goes beyond introversion, if you've caught yourself riding someone else's emotional wave without knowing how you climbed aboard, or if you're in the middle of figuring out who you actually are post-diagnosis.

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.