Your Mind, Illuminated
Thoughtful assessments for adults exploring ADHD, autism, giftedness, and twice-exceptionality.
© 2026 by Erin McCarthy Shaw, Nurse Practitioner in Psychiatry, PLLC
An AI-generated work inspired by the Rorschach inkblot — a nod to the history of psychiatric assessment and the beauty of a mind that sees differently. This is not a clinical instrument and is not used in assessments administered by this practice.
You may have always known that your mind works differently.
Maybe you notice patterns other people miss. Maybe you think quickly, deeply, or intensely — while struggling with things that seem as though they should be easy.
Maybe you've spent years wondering whether ADHD or autism explains part of your experience, or whether giftedness has made both your strengths and your struggles harder to recognize.
Sometimes, more than one of these things is true.
My work is designed for adults who want a clearer understanding of how they think, process, relate, and move through the world.
ASSESSMENT SERVICES
ADHD, Autism, Gifted, & 2e
Assessments
Assessment here is not about putting you through an enormous battery of tests or reducing you to a collection of scores.
It begins with your story.
We look carefully at your developmental history, current experiences, strengths, challenges, and the patterns that have followed you across different stages of life. From there, I select the assessment components that are most useful for answering your particular questions.
Depending on what we are exploring, the process may look at attention and executive functioning, autistic traits and experiences, cognitive strengths, giftedness, twice-exceptionality, sensory differences, masking, and other factors that can shape how a person functions and understands themselves.
The goal is not simply to determine whether you meet criteria for a diagnosis. It is to understand how the different pieces fit together.
That distinction matters particularly for adults who have done well academically or professionally, learned to compensate for areas of difficulty, or spent years receiving explanations that never quite accounted for the whole picture.
Every assessment is individualized, neurodiversity-affirming, and focused on the questions that brought you here.
The Process
We begin with an in-depth interview focused on your developmental history, lived experience, and the questions you want the assessment to answer.
From there, I select rating scales and direct testing measures based on your individual profile rather than administering the same battery to everyone.
After the assessment is complete, I integrate the information across interview, testing, history, and self-report to develop a clear clinical formulation of what the findings mean — not only diagnostically, but in the context of your life.
We finish with a dedicated feedback session to walk through the results together, answer questions, and make sure you understand both the conclusions and the reasoning behind them.
Depending on your needs, written findings may be provided as a comprehensive report or a more concise summary.
Areas Commonly Explored
ADHD—Including adults whose attention or executive-function differences may have been overlooked because they were academically successful, highly capable, or able to compensate for many years.
Autism—Including subtle or highly masked presentations, particularly in adults who may not resemble traditional stereotypes of autism.
Giftedness—For adults seeking a clearer understanding of exceptional cognitive strengths, unusual patterns of thinking, or longstanding experiences of being intellectually out of step with their environments.
Twice-Exceptionality (2e)—For people in whom significant cognitive strengths coexist with ADHD, autism, executive-function differences, or other areas of challenge — sometimes making both sides of the profile harder to recognize.
This practice does not provide therapy, coaching, or ongoing medication management.Clients pay directly for assessment services. I do not bill insurance. Superbills are available upon request for clients who wish to seek reimbursement independently.
At this time, the practice provides remote assessment services exclusively to adults in New Mexico, New York, Connecticut, and Vermont.