Adult ADHD Therapy in Sacramento
You built systems your whole life. Color-coded calendars, alarms stacked on alarms, the deadline panic that somehow always delivered. Then something shifted — a bigger role, a new baby, a body that stopped forgiving four hours of sleep — and the systems stopped holding.
Maybe you were diagnosed at 38 and you're still re-reading your own history through a new lens. Maybe you've never been assessed, but every ADHD article reads like your biography. Either way: you're not broken, and you're not behind. You've been running a demanding life on settings that were never calibrated for your brain.
Adult ADHD therapy at Brilla Counseling starts there. Not with fixing you — with understanding how your particular mind works, and building a life that actually fits it.
Connection gets easier when you are not spending the whole conversation managing how you come across.
What Adult ADHD Therapy Involves
Adult ADHD therapy is not generic talk therapy with an ADHD label attached. It's structured, collaborative, and skills-forward, built for brains that need more than insight to change what Tuesday looks like.
Here's what the beginning looks like:
Session one is your story: your history with attention, what's costing you the most right now, what you've already tried, and what "better" would actually mean for you.
Sessions two and three map your executive function profile — where skills like task initiation, working memory, time management, and emotional regulation are strong, and where they need scaffolding. We name your values and agree on a working plan, so therapy has a direction you chose.
Ongoing sessions blend two things: processing the emotional weight of ADHD (the shame spirals, the rejection sensitivity, the "why is this so hard for me" loop) and building concrete supports you test between sessions. What works stays. What doesn't gets redesigned instead of blamed on you.
You will never be handed a planner and told to try harder. You've done that. It's why you're here.
Who This Is For
We work with adults across the full range of ADHD experiences:
- Recently diagnosed adults processing what a late diagnosis means — grief, relief, and re-reading decades of memories
- Long-diagnosed adults whose old strategies stopped working after a promotion, a move, parenthood, or burnout
- Self-identified and still-figuring-it-out adults. You do not need a diagnosis to start therapy here. If ADHD resonates, that's enough to begin.
- High-masking professionals who look fine from the outside and are exhausted from maintaining it
- Women and AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) adults whose ADHD was missed for years behind anxiety, perfectionism, or "she's just sensitive" — see our dedicated work with women with ADHD
If you're reading this at 1am with fourteen tabs open, you're in the right place.
Our Approach to ADHD Counseling
Everything we do is evidence-based and neurodivergent-affirming. In practice, that means four commitments:
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).ACT builds psychological flexibility: unhooking from the inner critic that narrates your every misstep, making room for discomfort instead of avoiding the tasks that trigger it, and taking action based on your values rather than your fear. For adults who've spent decades in self-blame, this work alone can be life-changing.
Executive function skill-building. We work from Dr. Peg Dawson's executive skills framework, assessing your specific profile across skills like task initiation, sustained attention, planning, and response inhibition — then building supports targeted to your actual weak points instead of generic productivity advice.
Neurodivergent-affirming care. The goal is not to make you pass as neurotypical. It's to reduce what's genuinely costing you — the missed deadlines, the relationship friction, the constant mental-load surcharge — while keeping what's genuinely you.
Trauma-informed practice. Decades of undiagnosed or misunderstood ADHD leave marks: chronic shame, rejection sensitivity, masking that's hard to take off. We treat those wounds as real, because they are. Read more about our trauma-informed ADHD therapy.
Ways to Work With Us
Individual therapy — weekly or biweekly 50-minute sessions, in person or online.
Family therapy — Developmentally appropriate therapy for children and teens, paired with structured therapy for parents
Group therapy for ADHD — skills and connection alongside peers who don't need the backstory explained.
Couples work — for relationships where ADHD is in the room, whether one partner has it or both.
Most clients start with individual sessions and add formats as it's useful.
Your Adult ADHD Counseling Team in Sacramento
Lauren Dibble, LMFT (License #123427) — Founder and Clinical Director. ADHD-Certified Clinical Services Provider (ADHD-CCSP), specializing in late-diagnosed ADHD in women, ACT, and executive function work. Co-founder of Sacramento Women with ADHD, a free peer community.
Joseph Boyle, LPCC (License #21262) — Team Lead. Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor working with adults navigating ADHD, anxiety, and life transitions.
Andrea Valle, Registered Associate Social Worker (Registration #[REGISTRATION NO.]) — provides therapy under the supervision of Lauren Dibble, LMFT #123427, offering lower-cost sessions without lower standards.
Maggie Miller, Registered Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (Registration #[23108]) — provides therapy under the supervision of Lauren Dibble, LMFT #123427, offering lower-cost sessions without lower standards.
Mary Rose Bernal, Registered Associate Social Worker (Registration #140803) — provides therapy under the supervision of Lauren Dibble, LMFT #123427, offering lower-cost sessions without lower standards. Mary Rose is the only therapist based in San Diego and provides virtual therapy.
Every clinician at Brilla works from the same ADHD-specialized, neurodivergent-affirming model. This isn't a general practice that also sees ADHD. It's what we do.
ADHD Testing and Assessment
We offer ADHD assessment designed with late-diagnosed adults in mind: a structured clinical interview, your developmental and school and work history, validated ADHD rating scales, and careful attention to what else could be producing the same symptoms — anxiety, trauma, sleep, hormonal shifts. You leave with a clear clinical picture and a documented diagnostic impression you can bring to a prescriber.
What we don't do is psychological testing. Full cognitive and neuropsychological batteries are the scope of a licensed psychologist (PsyD or PhD), and if you need that level of documentation — for workplace accommodations, university disability services, or testing accommodations — we'll tell you plainly and help you find someone who does it well.
And to be clear: assessment is available, not required. You can start therapy while still holding the question.
ADHD Counseling in East Sacramento and Online Across California
Our office is at 924 57th St., Sacramento, CA 95819, in East Sacramento.
Not local? We provide online ADHD therapy across California — same clinicians, same model, from wherever you are in the state. Telehealth works particularly well for ADHD care: no commute to forget, no waiting room, and sessions happen on the same device your life already runs on.
Rates, and Why We're Private Pay
Individual 50-minute sessions are $150 to $275, depending on your clinician's licensure level. Every new client starts with a free 20-minute consultation so you can gauge fit before committing anything.
We're a private-pay practice by design. That means: no insurance company deciding how many sessions you need, no diagnosis required on file before you're "allowed" to get help, and no ADHD diagnosis reported to your insurer unless you choose that. We provide superbills on request, which many PPO plans reimburse for out-of-network care.
Full details on our rates and insurance page.
Support that keeps pace with you instead of asking you to keep up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an ADHD diagnosis to start therapy?
No. We welcome self-identified and questioning adults. If ADHD resonates with your experience, that's a valid starting point. Therapy can help whether or not you ever pursue formal assessment, and if you decide you want one, we offer that too.
What happens in the first session?
You talk, we listen, and together we map what's costing you the most right now. You'll leave with a clear picture of how we'd work together and at least one thing to try before session two. No intake interrogation, no judgment about the pile of unopened mail.
Can you prescribe ADHD medication?
No — we're therapists, not prescribers. Many of our clients combine therapy with medication managed by a physician or psychiatric NP, and we're glad to coordinate with your prescriber. Therapy addresses what medication doesn't: skills, shame, relationships, and the daily architecture of your life.
Do you take insurance?
We're private pay and provide superbills for out-of-network reimbursement, which many PPO plans offer. Private pay also means your care isn't shaped by an insurer's session limits or diagnosis requirements.
How is ADHD therapy different from ADHD coaching?
Coaching focuses on goals and accountability. Therapy does that too — and can also treat the anxiety, depression, trauma, and shame that decades of unsupported ADHD tend to create. Our clinicians are licensed to work at both levels, and our Accountability-Assisted Therapy program deliberately blends them.
How long does ADHD therapy take?
It varies with your goals. Some clients work intensively for a few months around a specific transition; others stay longer to work through deeper patterns. We review progress together regularly — you'll never be in open-ended therapy without knowing why.
Is online therapy effective for ADHD?
Yes. Telehealth removes the exact friction points that make ADHD brains skip appointments, and research on telehealth outcomes for ADHD care is strong. Many of our clients are online-only, from all over California.
I was diagnosed in my 40s. Is it too late for therapy to help?
It is genuinely never too late. Late diagnosis often brings grief about the years without answers — and remarkable momentum once you understand your own operating system. Late-diagnosed adults are the core of our practice, not the exception.
What does "neurodivergent-affirming" actually mean?
It means we treat ADHD as a difference in how your brain works, not a character defect to correct. We target the things that genuinely cost you — not the things that just make you different. You will not be pathologized here for stimming, info-dumping, or needing deadlines to function.
Ready to start? Request a free 20-minute consult or book directly. Overwhelmed by phone calls? Text us at (916) 287-8876 — we get it.