Life Coach for High-functioning / High-masking ND Adults

To Help Neurodivergent Adults Embrace Their New Life

Your brain isn’t broken. You’re exhausted from trying to perform normal all the time.I learned this recently at the age of 36.And now I want to help other ADHD / AuDHD / Autistic adults embrace this awareness.I'm Navin Israni. I help ADHD / AuDHD / Autistic adults to help them get unstuck and find accommodations that work for them through an educational approach.On the evaluation call, we'll talk for 30 mins or so and try to understand where you are stuck and try to get an overview and your life.Have questions? Feel free to email me or book an intro call from my "Enroll With Me" section.Or explore more by connecting with me on my LinkedIn or my Reddit.

My Story

Hi, I am Navin Israni. I am 36 and well medicated. Live independently. Have some habits in control, not all.

After ~6 years of my AuDHD diagnosis (Autism in 2020, ADHD in 2024), I realized that I cannot perform like or be neurotypical.

That was not always the case. I got diagnosed a few months into the pandemic in 2020 (wow, you too? And you’re alive? Your soul is still intact? 😹👹👽👺).

My struggle started in 2014 when at the age of 24, I lost my mom to Cancer. At that time, I was struggling to transition out of IT. I hated everything about that industry; that career industry was prescribed by my mom and nobody taught me what to expect.

But, at 24, I didn’t have her in my life, I had no reason to continue being a s/w engineer. I had no other concrete ideas except I knew I loved writing. I didn’t know how I’d make it a career! I was so confused about my career!

I had no self esteem. I was people pleasing and constantly anxious in public and I was loathing myself with self hate and at home. I didn’t know how to get myself to do basic things in life.

Then came the biggest shock of all. During the pandemic, I got trapped in a house for months with people who hated me yet I had to depend on them; they were my only "family" left after my mom had passed away in 2014.

So how did I cope with the weight of grief, the mental chaos of career confusion, and the absolute emotional horror of the pandemic?

Food, of course!

By age 34, I had already ballooned into a ~100 kilo guy at just 5 feet 5 ½ inches - not just obese but morbidly obese. I ate junk food every day, frequently ended my 2500 calorie days with a big cone of Bavarian Chocolate at Baskin Robbins at night, and only barely even noticed when I went from L to XL to XXL in clothes size.

My alarm bells only rang once my XXL tees and jeans started feeling tight. I wasn’t ready for such a major change in the way I shopped. I couldn’t accept the limited fashion choices I would get at those stores. I’ve always loved dressing nice!

But once I found out about my neurodivergence, it gave me a framework to think about myself.

Before, all the junk snacks in my house were kept at eye level or above in the kitchen, always visible. Today if there is something I don’t want to overeat, I either eat it outside once or I keep it invisible or inaccessible in my kitchen. Why? Out of sight, out of mind!
No willpower, no complicated frameworks! Just a common, colloquial understanding of my ADHD.

Now, my treats are now just treats and I do not allow them to become meals (except Chocolate! Even the Devil loves chocolate!)

Before, I used to force myself to “do good habits” I saw in “productivity porn” style videos on YouTube, bought a tracker, and looked at it daily. I failed multiple times and the tracker taunted me about them every day. Today, I have lowered my expectations and redefined what MY good habits are. These habits connect directly to my senses. I don’t let others dictate that definition for me!

Since I can’t afford therapy (as of writing this), I’ve prioritized funding my psychiatrist visits, buying meds, and food that feeds my soul and body.

Before, I had no idea how important following a routine was for my mental health. Now my Autism diagnosis now makes so much sense when I eat the same brunch every day and I feel amazing, and anxiety-free (at least during that part of the day). I made my routines appeal to me!

I have a lot to say, I could write a book or make a movie about self compassion (some day, I just might!).

My career confusion is still there but I am much more confident of what I don’t want to do while still discovering new short-term hobbies and long-term passions. ADHD gives us new hobbies every month, how fun! 😀

And that’s where my ADHD coaching comes in. One of my long-term passions is communication skills and I love to boss peopl… I mean teach.. I love to teach people! 😛

I have an innate ability to distill my experience into wisdom that makes sense. I love being a teacher!

My goal as a Coach is to share my tips, tricks, wisdom and mindset shifts with other diagnosed (self or clinically diagnosed) ADHD folks.
I am by no means a perfect specimen of a neurotypical. I do still fall prey to the self comparison virus from time to time, I am not immune from ADHD emotional dysregulation either.

But I will assure you that your life as an ADHDer / Autistic person does get better as you get older.

You will find your way to get where you want to go, but having a coach who has been in your place can make the journey faster – and perhaps just a tad bit less lonely! 😊

My Coaching Principles

Once I found out about my neurodivergence, it gave me a framework to think about myself.

My YouTube addiction turned out to be my blessing. It allowed me to understand my unique brain and my life as a neurodivergent man through wonderful ADHD/Autism creators, coaches, senior academic experts in ADHD/Autism research, and Trauma and Chronic Pain Coaches on YouTube.

At every step, I’ve realized that what I’ve been avoiding the most is what will help me the most.

ADHD helps us think so fast and connect dots nobody else can. This means “regular” thinking outside my strengths (i.e. communication) felt like stepping outside my comfort zone. and anything outside this comfort zone felt unnecessary. I often saw my problems as a usual part of my life, completely blind to a new world where things could be better.

You see, us NDs are natural problem solvers. But when we are inside our comfort zone, we can't see our problems for what they are. I refused to leave my comfort zone and I was blind to my problems.

On top of that, I was constantly anxious and depressed while living with a nervous system with hair-trigger in a generally loud, crowded, and dusty country.

I was constantly angry and irritated. And I was exhausted by being constantly angry and irritated.

I was secretly hoping my problems would go away. But eventually age catches up with you and forces you to confront those problems.

Today, I am able to see my problems in a different way but the growth didn't come without its cost. That period helped me see and name my challenges clearly for what they are. I forced myself to actively think about solving them myself.

Ultimately, it helped expand the umbrella of what MY LIFE meant to me. I had to grow up!

Diagnosis is step ZERO of a new life, not the final step

I roll my eyes whenever I hear people say that getting a diagnosis in one or both of ADHD / Autism changed their lives.

What about those who stumbled on the diagnosis without complete historical research of their symptoms? For me, my Autism was “a hunch” from my (counseling) psychologist at that time (he told me so!). I’m forever grateful to him and his wife (a clinical psychologist) who gave me the tests to diagnose me.

Sure, the diagnoses help understand many things but not everything.

So many of us have so many co-occurring conditions! How can only ADHD / Autism make all the sense in one moment after the diagnosis! We are much more than our labels!

The people who say this aren’t lying, just that their journey of diagnosis started very differently than me or you; they’re compressing a lot of emotional context in just a few sentences to record a limited video. It’s a communication problem, but they have the right intention.

Besides, who even has time and energy to go through their problems in so much detail these days? It is an exhausting and expensive process - not for the faint of heart and certainly not a momentary resolution!

Whether you fully understand your diagnosis, feel completely lost, or fall somewhere in between, we have to move past the diagnoses as our sole self mirror.

I hope for us all to capture the youthful exuberance that we had before the world became too much for us. I want us to find our lost self that is buried under years of masks that we didn’t choose.

We can start sustainable recovery by focusing on our blessings, expressing our gratitude, finding our strengths, using them to gradually gain confidence, and finding our safe people.

Understanding executive function is easier than you think

I am super excited to share the linguistic tricks to understand and manage your ADHD better, based on my 18 years of experience as a writer of some form.

Language is a gift and a resource we all high masking/high functioning neurodivergent adults have and it’s free - so why not use it!

For example, the “executive” in executive dysfunction is an adjective with its root in the verb “execute”. Take it a step further and we can reframe “executive dysfunction” as “executing dysfunction”.

Here’s a summary of the difference in these two words from Gemini:

Executive function is simply your ability to execute your ideas and executive dysfunction happens when your ability to execute your ideas is impaired. Us NDs are born with an impaired executive function.

This means you have lots of ideas but you get stuck while executing them. Then comes life and family and coworkers and relationships in a world which was not designed by NDs.

You need to separate simply HAVING AN IDEA from EXECUTING THAT IDEA because planning for ADHD / Autism is very different from NT “planning frameworks”.

The way I (an ND) plan is very different from your plan because we all live different lives. Sure there are common planning principles but they’re just templates; they’re not meant to be actual solutions. Just like templates only give you a common skeleton, these productivity frameworks require some work to implement them; they’re not meant to be copied and pasted right on your life.

And it takes time - I am warning you because I know how an ADHD mind thinks. You wanna execute it the moment you learn it, the newness of that concept floods your brain with dopamine and puts blinders on your eyes; it makes you instantly forget everything else that’s going on in your life.

Instead of using that burst of positive feelings to make a future-focused and self-inspiring plan, we wanna get into action right away; we wanna see that vision come true then and there.

And wanting to do everything this way is what messes up our lives.

That's why I say: patience and self compassion are your friends in this journey. 🙂

Live an interesting life

I wish someone told me when I was diagnosed that I needed to stop trying to be a neurotypical.

Technical terms and jargon are important, but real life is real life. You gotta learn and be comfortable with who you are in this life period.

We have to rethink many of the core ideas we've picked up from the NT culture growing up.

We can certainly achieve some of our most pressing goals. But we must learn to navigate our ADHD / Autism first.

That journey will not be easy, but it will be infinitely more fun than living a boring a** neurotypical life! 😉 😉😉

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