What If The Diagnostic & Support Framework Was Never Built For Women?
An advanced CPD-certified practitioner training helping clinicians, therapists, coaches, and educators recognise what traditional ADHD and autism models often miss in AuDHD women.
Why Traditional Frameworks Often Miss AuDHD Women
The gap isn't in the women sitting in your practice. It's in the model.
For years, AuDHD women have been filtered through systems that were never designed to fully recognise them.
Many diagnostic frameworks were shaped around male-centred research models, meaning what shows up in women is often overlooked, misunderstood, or misread entirely.
Practitioners are increasingly encountering women who:
- don’t “fit the textbook”
- appear highly capable while privately struggling
- cycle between overperformance and collapse
- remain chronically misunderstood despite years of seeking support
Many professionals intuitively sense that something is missing.
This programme was created to explain what that is.
The TOTI Framework:
Understanding AuDHD Women
as a Whole System
When the system misreads reality, women pay the price.
Most models interpret AuDHD women through fragmented lenses:
- behaviour without context
- symptoms without systemic connection
- coping without identity
- burnout without nervous system understanding
The TOTI (Tip Of The Iceberg) framework was created to bridge these gaps.
Developed through original lived-experience research and interdisciplinary scientific integration, TOTI offers a whole-system framework for understanding AuDHD women across brain, body, identity, relationships, environment, and nervous system safety.
Rather than asking: "What's wrong with this woman?"
TOTI asks: "What has this woman adapted to survive?"
Rather than isolating ADHD or autistic traits from the wider context of a woman’s life, TOTI helps practitioners recognise the interaction between:
- neurobiology
- hormones and physiology
- trauma and nervous system adaptation
- masking and relational survival
- identity development
- social and environmental pressures
- emotional labour and chronic over-functioning
This allows practitioners to recognise patterns traditional models routinely miss — including burnout, chronic self-doubt, nervous system exhaustion, and cycles of collapse beneath external capability.
Why This Training Changes the Standard of Care
Women aged 23–49 are among the fastest-growing groups receiving ADHD diagnoses, with research suggesting many also present with co-occurring autistic traits.
As diagnosis rates rise rapidly among adult women, practitioners are increasingly encountering presentations conventional training was never designed to recognise.
This creates a growing gap between what practitioners were trained to see — and what many AuDHD women are actually living.
This programme was created to bridge that gap.
Rather than relying on fragmented symptom-based models alone, the training equips practitioners with a more integrated, nervous-system-informed approach to recognising complexity, supporting regulation, and understanding the lived realities shaping many AuDHD women’s experiences.
The result is more accurate recognition, more nuanced support, and a more human model of care.
Lived Experience-Informed:
Grounded in original lived-experience research from the AuDHD Women Survey and large scale community insights, this programme moves beyond surface-level awareness into the nuanced realities that many AuDHD women navigate daily.
Intersectional & Neuro-affirming:
Learn how social, cultural, relational, psychological, biological, and environmental factors interact in shaping neurodivergent women’s experiences — and why one-size-fits-all approaches often fail.
Scientifically Grounded:
Backed by research across neurobiology, psychology, physiology, trauma, hormones, and nervous system regulation, this programme translates complex science into practical, relationally safe support strategies.
What You’ll Master in Your
6-Week Practitioner Journey
This advanced practitioner training gives clinicians, therapists, coaches, educators, and healthcare professionals an integrated framework for working with AuDHD women beyond traditional diagnostic models.
Grounded in Dr Samantha Hiew’s original TOTI framework, the programme helps practitioners move beyond fragmented symptom-based understanding into more accurate, whole-system formulation and support.
By the end of the programme, you will be able to:
- Recognise hidden burnout, masking, over-functioning, and nervous system exhaustion beneath external capability.
- Identify overlapping ADHD, autistic, hormonal, physical and mental health conditions, trauma, and relational patterns often missed in conventional assessments.
- Conduct more nuanced formulations that surface identity fragmentation, chronic adaptation, and late-diagnosed coping strategies.
- Support women in rebuilding internal safety, self-trust, regulation, and relational clarity.
- Translate complex science into practical, nervous-system-informed support approaches.
- Communicate more effectively across multidisciplinary settings to improve continuity of care and practitioner confidence.
Module 1: Reframing the Narrative for AuDHD Women
Module 2: Beyond Observable Behaviours
Module 3: Root Causes of AuDHD (Nature vs Nurture)
Module 4: Relational Coping, Motivation & Trauma Responses
Module 5: Practical Strategies for Treatment & Wellbeing
Module 6: Asking the Right Questions, Case Studies & Interactive Exploration
Post-Course Support: Community Calls
This programme comes with practical tools including:
- The original AuDHD Women's Intersectional Scientific TOTI Framework, with case formulation template.
- The AuDHD Women Life Coaching Manual, built from collective lived-experience research.
- Hormonal Cycle-Medication Tracker exploring the relationship between hormones, regulation, and medication response.
- Trauma-informed communication guidance
- Nervous-system safe support structures
What You’ll Walk Away With
For Practitioners
- Join a CPD-certified training and plug into a growing, interdisciplinary Intersectional Care Network committed to AuDHD-affirming providers.
- Deepen your mastery of epigenetics, neurobiology, neurochemistry, hormonal influences, body and nervous system adaptation, and relational dynamics shaping AuDHD women's lives.
- Apply practical frameworks to recognise overlooked presentations and patterns, so you can work with greater confidence, nuance, and clinical accuracy.
- Integrate intersectional, gender-responsive, and nervous-system-informed approaches into clinical practice, education, coaching, or leadership.
- Support women navigating masking, burnout, identity fragmentation, trauma overlap, emotional labour, and late diagnosis with clarity and care.
For AuDHD Women
-
Understand how your brain, body, nervous system, hormones, and lived experience interact so you can work with yourself, not against yourself.
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Name your patterns with clear language and frameworks so that what once felt confusing or isolating finally makes sense.
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Use practical tools to navigate identity, relationships, work, burnout, and transitions with more self‑trust, clarity, and internal safety.
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Advocate for yourself in healthcare, diagnostic, workplace, and relational systems with grounded confidence.
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Experience an emotionally safe, validating space within a community that truly understands AuDHD women’s realities.
Meet Your Trainer: Dr. Samantha Hiew
Named a Difference Maker by PBS America and Positive Role Model for Gender by the National Diversity Awards, Dr Samantha Hiew is a keynote speaker, lived experience researcher, and founder of ADHD Girls—a social impact platform transforming how society understands and supports neurodivergent women and underrepresented communities.
After being diagnosed with ADHD and autism in her 40s following years of feeling unseen within traditional systems, Samantha began asking a deeper question:
What happens when the frameworks themselves were never designed to fully recognise the lived realities of neurodivergent women?
That question became the foundation for her work.
Blending scientific training with lived-experience research, Samantha developed the original TOTI framework — integrating neuroscience, hormones, trauma, masking, nervous system science, identity, emotional labour, and relational adaptation into a more complete understanding of AuDHD women.
Her work bridges the gap between research, clinical understanding, and the realities many neurodivergent women are actually living.
Sam has spoken to over 100,000 people, trained more than 100 FTSE companies, and led the UK’s first large-scale event spotlighting the lives of AuDHD women and the diagnostic gaps they continue to face.
With a PhD in cancer research and a background in science communication, Samantha is known for translating complex interdisciplinary research into language, frameworks, and conversations that create both intellectual clarity and emotional recognition.
Her debut book, Tip of the ADHD Iceberg, supports late-diagnosed neurodivergent individuals in understanding themselves beyond stereotypes, deficit-based narratives, and fragmented models of care.
Through this programme, Samantha brings together scientific rigour, systems thinking, and deeply human insight to help practitioners better recognise, understand, and support the complexity of AuDHD women’s experiences.
What to Expect
Programme Schedule
Professional Certification
ADHD Girls Certifications
- Gain an industry-recognised certification in neuro-affirming, trauma-informed practice
- Deepen your expertise in female-presenting ADHD and autism
- Build confidence in supporting complex emotional and hormonal needs
- Earn CPD hours to advance your career and showcase your expertise on LinkedIn
Get certified today — and become part of the movement redefining women’s mental health and neurodiversity.
Featured In: Science & Stories of AuDHD Women
What Cohort Participants Are Saying
"Dr Samantha Hiew’s course has been an incredible experience—insightful, validating, and, most of all, a relief. As an Asian woman from a generation where neurodivergence is rarely spoken about or understood, I found in this course a language and framework that made sense of lifelong experiences I had internalised or misunderstood. This course doesn’t just inform—it empowers."
— Hamidah Hashim-Branson, Workplace Inclusion Practitioner
"The TOTI framework is now an essential tool in how I recognise and support neurodivergent women. Through her openness and vulnerability, Sam made the content deeply relatable. Thank you for holding such a supportive and affirming space, where I felt safe and fully able to engage!"
— Late Diagnosed AuDHD Coach
"Understanding how hormonal changes interact with neurotransmitters in AuDHD women was eye-opening. It will shape how I support clients, especially through significant life phases and transitions. The biological underpinnings were laid out with such depth and clarity—Sam has done the deep dive I needed to complement my understanding."
— Susanne Bohner, Coach and Consultant
"This course is so valuable and impactful, and has had huge benefits for me both personally and professionally.
If you're a coach or therapist looking to support AuDHD women, or are AuDHD yourself, the course is packed with information about neuroscience, genetics, hormones and many other areas that offer vital context for understanding the unique struggles (and strengths!) of this specific neurotype. Alongside the content, the group space created by Sam is affirming, accepting and empowering, offering a learning environment that really reflects and supports the course content."
- Maddy Winterbrook, Developmental Coach & Integrative Therapist
"This training was genuinely life-changing and life-affirming. It didn’t just provide information — it gave me language, permission, and deep compassion for experiences I had lived myself and witnessed in the women and families I support every day.
What makes this programme so powerful is the way it weaves rigorous science with lived, embodied human experience. Sam’s depth of knowledge is extraordinary, but it’s her humanity, authenticity, and deep understanding of AuDHD women that makes this work feel so safe, meaningful, and transformative.
The TOTI framework completely shifted how I understand and support AuDHD women — moving away from fixing and pathologising, and towards meaning-making, self-trust, and sustainable care.
This work feels deeply necessary, long overdue, and something that should be embedded across health, education, and community settings.
— Annie Hambley, Psychotherapist & Coach
“This training gave me something I had never experienced before: language, understanding, and what I can only describe as hope.
For the first time in my life, I was given answers and solutions that made sense within the context of my lived experience — not through pathology, but through recognition and understanding.
Sam’s work doesn’t just expand your mind intellectually and enable me to support others; it reaches the places in you that were never previously seen. The programme helped me understand my life, my diagnosis, my family, and myself with a level of compassion and clarity I didn’t know was possible.
This training felt transformative, deeply human, and genuinely life-changing.”
— Late Diagnosed AuDHD Coach
"I came in with solid knowledge of autism and some background on ADHD, and I still learned so much. The metaphor of living with one foot on the gas and one on the brake really stuck with me—it’s such a powerful way to understand the inner push-pull dynamic of AuDHD brains."
— Maaike van der Heide, Burnout Coach
"This training needs to go mainstream. Attending this course has confirmed for me that I’m AuDHD. I’ve decided to embark on a healing journey, then I can start supporting my clients fully. Understanding the connection with menstrual cycles and hormones could make a difference in so many women’s lives."
— Sarah Young, Cognitive Behavioural Psychotherapist
"I will go as far as to say this course should be mandatory training for anyone working with neurodivergent women. It helps professionals understand the nuances more around the paradoxes (like hyperempathy and high need for connection yet solitude, craving routine but rebelling against structure, etc.). It reminds them of the relevance of intersectionality on presentation and lived experience."
— Dionne Louise Crick, ADHD Holistic Life and Business Coach
Frequently Asked Questions
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Top 10 Missed Signs of AuDHD Women.
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