FAQs — Neurodivergent Therapy & Coaching | Love on the Autism Spectrum | Barbara (Blaze) Lazarony, LMFT

Limited

Your session fee includes our full 50 minutes together, as well as the time I spend between sessions reviewing notes, reflecting on our work, and preparing resources in your secure client portal. If you'd like a written estimate before we begin, I'll provide a Good Faith Estimate in alignment with federal guidelines under the No Surprises Act.

I accept payment by credit card through the secure Simple Practice client portal. However, I can provide a Superbill — a detailed receipt you can submit to your insurance company for possible reimbursement as an out-of-network provider. Many clients receive partial reimbursement for individual therapy, couples therapy, or assessment services — but every policy is different.

Because I work as a self-pay therapist, our work remains fully in your hands. You decide how often we meet — weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly — and how long you want to continue. There is no external timeline or insurance restriction dictating your process.

Before you call, write down the date, the representative's name, and the reference number. This keeps things organized and gives you accurate information in writing.

I'll provide a monthly Superbill with all relevant CPT codes and documentation. Reimbursement is not guaranteed and varies widely — checking this in advance helps you feel financially grounded before we begin. If you'd like, I can help you interpret your insurance answers during our consultation.

If you're in the process of applying for SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance) in California, here are a few important things to understand before we begin.

As a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT), I can provide clinical summaries, progress notes, and records of our sessions — but these are not a substitute for the specific medical certification that Social Security requires. To complete your SSDI claim, you'll need documentation from a licensed medical doctor (MD) or psychiatrist.

If you choose, I can share relevant records or treatment summaries with your doctor once you sign a medical release form. It's ultimately your doctor's decision whether or not they sign and submit the SSDI paperwork on your behalf.

For additional support with your application:

Both offer powerful pathways for growth, healing, and transformation — but they serve different purposes. Because I am both a licensed psychotherapist and a certified coach, I can offer either modality depending on your needs and location.

Ethically, I always assess which approach best fits your goals and circumstances. If you're seeking emotional healing, trauma integration, or clinical support — we'll work within a psychotherapy framework (California only). If you're seeking personal growth, relational transformation, or professional alignment — we can engage in coaching (available worldwide).

Important to know: while a psychotherapist can provide coaching, a coach cannot legally provide psychotherapy without a mental health license. During your initial consultation, we'll discuss your needs and ensure the path we choose supports your wellbeing and aligns with all ethical and legal guidelines.

This 20-minute conversation is your chance to slow down, breathe, and explore what's been feeling hard — and what's possible next. There's no pressure, no decision required, and no clinical intake forms to fill out beforehand.

"Starting therapy is an act of courage. I remember my very first therapy appointment — over twenty years ago now. I felt excited about creating change, but also nervous about the unknown. If you're feeling that mix of emotions, you're not alone."

Most people experience a sense of relief after our first conversation — because for perhaps the first time in a long time, they feel seen, heard, and understood. That's what I want for you.

You're welcome to ask about:

All therapy and coaching sessions take place via Zoom — a secure, HIPAA-compliant telehealth platform. I lead each session from my private, quiet office, free from interruptions.

You'll have access to your own Simple Practice portal — a secure, encrypted space for all communication and documentation.

The practical questions people ask most before a first session: privacy, scheduling, payment, and what happens between appointments.

Then we start with you, and that isn't a consolation prize. A great deal shifts in a relationship when one person stops carrying it alone and starts understanding what is actually happening between the two of you.

Some partners come along later, once the pressure is off and they can see this isn't a trial where they're the defendant. Some never do, and the work still matters. If that's where you are, we can start with you.

No. Late-identified, self-identified, and still-wondering are all welcome. Most people arrive with nothing more official than a long list of moments that finally started to add up.

If you do want a formal answer, I offer adult autism, ADHD and AuDHD assessments in California. You just don't need one to begin.

Partly, and the line is worth saying plainly. Therapy and assessments are limited to California, because that's where I'm licensed. Coaching is open to anyone, anywhere.

Coaching isn't therapy. We work on understanding, communication and designing a life that fits how you're both built, rather than treating a clinical condition. For a lot of couples and individuals, that's the right fit regardless of geography.

You decide. Weekly, every other week, monthly. Because this is a self-pay practice, there's no insurance company setting a session limit or an end date for us.

Most couples start weekly while we're building a shared language, then spread out as things steady. You can stop whenever you want to.

What you say in session stays in session, with the narrow legal exceptions every California therapist carries: a serious risk of harm to you or someone else, and suspected abuse of a child, elder or dependent adult.

In couples work, I run a no-secrets practice. If one of you tells me something privately, I won't hold it apart from your partner. That way I never become a third party carrying one side of the story, and you can both trust that what's in the room is the whole picture.

Before we meet, there's some intake paperwork to complete. In our first session, we meet together. We begin with one or two centering exercises as a couple, so we start from a calmer place rather than jumping straight into the hard part.

Then we create your topic pathway: the intentions you want our work together to follow. You'll leave knowing where we're headed and what we'll come back to.

You're welcome to try. I ask every client to keep a credit card on file, and if you have an HSA or FSA card, you can enter that one. Whether it's accepted depends on your plan, so it's worth a quick check with them.

Your session still ends at its scheduled time, so a late start means a shorter session. If you're more than 10 minutes late, it counts as a missed session.

Yes, for short requests. The best way to reach me is through the client portal, and email works too if you need it. If you're a couple, please copy your partner on anything you send, so nothing between sessions becomes a conversation one of you isn't part of.

I don't offer emergency services. If you're in crisis, call 911, call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), or go to your nearest emergency room.

Only with your permission. Your intake paperwork asks you to choose yes or no, and either answer is fine. I prefer recorded sessions myself, because recording makes the work easier and keeps it accurate.

That's always your choice. My work is client-centered, so you decide when to end. Many clients taper over time, from weekly to twice a month to once a month, so the ending arrives gradually rather than all at once.

After we finish regular sessions, I'm still available for check-ins and one-off sessions when you need them.

The questions people tend to carry quietly, often before they've said them out loud to anyone. Each answer is short, and each one links to a longer post if you want to keep reading.

It may not be stonewalling at all. Stonewalling is a choice to withhold. A sensory-based shutdown happens when a nervous system hits its limit and goes offline to protect itself. From the outside they can look identical, which is why so many couples end up fighting about the shutdown instead of what caused it. I explain the difference in stonewalling and sensory-based withdrawal.

Sometimes silence is punishment. Far more often, in the couples I work with, it's a person who has run out of words and doesn't know how to say so. That doesn't make the days of quiet any easier on you, and your hurt is real either way. The way through starts with knowing which kind of quiet it is, and autism and the silent treatment walks through both.

Most likely the feelings are there and the words for them aren't. Alexithymia, a difficulty identifying and describing your own emotions, is common in autistic adults, and it can look like indifference to the person on the other side of it. It isn't. The feelings often show up in the body or in behavior long before they show up in language. More on alexithymia here.

Not necessarily, and that's the part people miss. Affection often goes missing for attachment reasons rather than autistic ones: someone who learned early that reaching out wasn't safe can love deeply and still hold back. Autism can shape how affection is shown. Attachment shapes whether it feels safe to show it at all. I untangle the two in autism and affection.

It's common, which isn't the same as fair, or fine. In my practice, I often see one partner carrying the planning, the remembering and the emotional weather for two, for years, until she's too tired to even name it. You're not too much. You've just been carrying too much alone. Start with the mental load in a neurodiverse relationship.

Usually it's can't, dressed up as won't. Executive dysfunction makes starting, sequencing and finishing tasks hard in ways that look like laziness from the outside, and that misreading turns a pile of dishes into a fight about whether he cares. Calling it can't doesn't mean you carry it all. It means you can stop arguing about character and start building systems. More in executive dysfunction or laziness.

Often, yes. When intimacy stops in a neurodiverse relationship, there's usually something specific underneath it: sensory overload, mismatched desire, exhaustion, or a build-up of hurt that makes touch feel like a demand. Each of those has a way back, and none of them requires either of you to pretend. I write about desire and sensory needs in autism and sex.

Neither of you. One nervous system settles through touch, the other settles through space, and both are doing exactly what they're built to do. The work is finding the kinds of touch, and the timing, that land as connection for both of you instead of a negotiation. More in sensory mismatch in neurodiverse relationships.

It may be rejection sensitive dysphoria: an intense, fast emotional response to perceived criticism or rejection, often described by people with ADHD. The reaction feels huge because, inside that nervous system, it is huge, even when the trigger looks small. Understanding it changes the question from "why are you overreacting?" to "what just landed so hard?" More on rejection sensitive dysphoria in relationships.

Because rest and recovery aren't the same thing. Rest stops the output. Recovery lets a nervous system that has been masking, managing and bracing all week actually come down, and for many neurodivergent adults that takes something different from a nap or a free Saturday. Rest isn't earned, it's essential. More in rest vs recovery.

Usually some relief, and often some grief. Unmasking can bring up mourning for the years spent performing, and some relationships shift when the person in them starts showing up as they are. Neither of those means you're doing it wrong. You can set the mask down at a pace your nervous system can actually sustain. More on the grief of unmasking.

Now you get to reread your life with the right instruction manual. Most late-identified adults go through relief, grief and a lot of "oh, so that's why," sometimes all in the same afternoon. I learned I was neurodivergent at 57, so I know that afternoon well. There's no deadline for making sense of it. Start with a late-in-life autism diagnosis.

No. Autism doesn't have a look. Many adults, especially women and people who learned to mask early, present in ways the old stereotypes never described. "You don't look autistic" usually says more about the speaker's picture of autism than about you. More in mild autism in adults.

Sometimes it's one, sometimes the other, and very often it's both. Childhood emotional neglect and neurodivergence can produce look-alike patterns, like trouble naming feelings or a deep sense of being different, and they frequently travel together. You don't have to sort it out alone or all at once. More in childhood emotional neglect and neurodivergence.

I don't just teach these values — I live them. I've worked with my own therapist for more than twenty years, and I continue to seek guidance, reflection, and mentorship. My practice is grounded in nervous system safety, trauma-informed care, and the particular wisdom that comes from late diagnosis and decades of unmasking. My practice is built on the values that sustain genuine transformation.

My greatest joy is witnessing your transformation — seeing you reclaim your light, your truth, and your voice.
You deserve to soar. And I'll be right here cheering you on every step of the way.

The FAQ is just one piece of the picture. Here's where to go next depending on what you're looking for.

If you have additional questions or need more support, please don't hesitate to reach out directly at Blaze@BlazeLazarony.com

I'm here to offer clarity, compassion, and guidance — whether you're exploring Autism, ADHD, or trauma, deepening your relationships, or simply navigating what it means to live and love as a neurodivergent person in today's world.

Your story matters. Your journey is uniquely yours. And you don't have to walk it alone.