Autism Therapy in Oklahoma | Ala Therapy Collective

The Part Nobody Sees

Everyone said you seemed fine.

Seeming fine took everything you had.

Running a translation layer over every conversation. Watching faces for the rule you were supposed to already know. Rehearsing a two sentence exchange with the pharmacist in the car. Getting the tone right, the eye contact right, the amount of talking right. Then going home and lying on the floor because there was nothing left.

People saw the performance and told you it looked easy. What they did not see was the cost, and the cost is the part that actually needs somewhere to go. When it stacks up long enough it has a name. Autistic burnout is not ordinary tiredness. It does not answer to a weekend off, a better system, or trying harder.

That is the work here. Not fixing the way your brain runs. Putting down the translation.

Social exhaustion is not a social deficit. You have been doing it on hard mode.

What Actually Comes Up

Named plainly, without the clinical hedge.

Autism does not show up the way the checklist says it does, especially in girls, women, and anyone who figured out early that fitting in was safer than being understood.

Masking, and the exhaustion that comes after years of it
Autistic burnout, the kind that skills and effort do not touch
Sensory overload, shutdown, and the recovery nobody schedules for
A late diagnosis, and the grief that arrives with the relief
Identity, once there is finally a name for it
Meltdowns, without shame attached to them
Being called rude, cold, or too much by people who never asked
Work and school built for a nervous system that is not yours
Anxiety and depression that grew on top of it, not instead of it
Parents and caregivers trying to help and running out of road

It rarely travels alone. Anxiety and depression, trauma, chronic illness, and OCD show up alongside it constantly. Nobody here treats those as separate appointments.

If ADHD is in the picture too, that combination has a name and a particular problem attached to it. Taylor puts it best: you fit in ADHD spaces sometimes and autism spaces other times and never completely belong in either. That is AuDHD, and it has its own page, because it gets missed constantly and it deserves more than a paragraph.

Teens, Parents, and the People Who Love Them

Your kid is not giving you a hard time.

They are having one, and they have been holding it together at school all day so that you get the version that falls apart.

That is not a discipline problem and it is not something you caused. It is what happens when a kid spends seven hours performing and then finally reaches the one place safe enough to stop.

Michi Medley works with teens and with the adults raising them, often together. An Advanced Certified Autism Specialist through IBCCES with trauma-informed ABA training, and the clinician here who most wants the parent in the room. If your kid just got a diagnosis and you are holding a report full of words nobody defined for you, that is a normal place to start from.

There is also a teen therapy page if you want the broader picture.

Women, Girls, and Everyone Who Got Good At It

Five years. That is the head start you did not get.

Women are diagnosed with autism about five years later than men, on average, and are significantly more likely to be handed the wrong diagnosis at the first evaluation instead.

Anxiety, usually. Or depression. Or a personality disorder. Which is not entirely wrong, because by the time most women get assessed they do have anxiety, from twenty years of running a translation layer nobody knew about. The anxiety is real. It is also downstream, and treating the downstream thing forever is why so many women arrive here having already done a decade of therapy that helped a little and never touched it.

The mechanism is not a mystery. Girls who mask well get read as fine. Fine does not get referred. The better you are at it, the longer it takes, which means the women who compensated hardest waited longest, and then got told at 38 that it was probably just burnout.

More on therapy for women, and Shylah has written about the same pattern in ADHD: What ADHD Actually Looks Like in Women.

The Overlap

Autism and queerness travel together.

More than most people know. A University of Cambridge study published in Nature found that gender diverse people are several times more likely to be autistic than cisgender people. That is not a coincidence and it is not a trend.

What it means practically is that a lot of people arrive here working on both at once, and a clinician who is affirming about one but awkward about the other is not actually affirming. Every clinician on this page holds both. See LGBTQIA+ affirming therapy.

The Clinicians

Three people, all currently accepting.

Taylor Hendricks, LMSW

Licensed Master Social Worker · Oklahoma

Autism
ADHD
AuDHD
OCD
Walk and Talk

Taylor works with the ones who have been trying hard for a long time. The kids masking at school and unraveling at home. The adults who got called gifted and lazy in the same breath. CBT for the concrete tools, with DBT, ACT, and trauma-informed work pulled in depending on what is actually in front of her.

Also runs Neurodivergent IRL, an outdoor walk-and-talk in the Tulsa area for people who think better moving than sitting still in a box on a screen. Her hours are evenings early in the week and Sundays, which is the schedule of somebody who knows when people can actually talk.

Michi Medley, LMSW, A-CAS

Advanced Certified Autism Specialist · IBCCES

Autism
Teens
Families
LGBTQIA+
Chronic Illness

Michi holds the Advanced Certified Autism Specialist credential through IBCCES, which is the only credential of its kind on this roster and the reason her name is on this page at all. She is also the parent of a child with autism, so whatever you are bracing yourself to explain has decent odds of having already happened in her house.

Works with teens, with parents and caregivers, and often with the two of them in the room at once. Direct, calm, and funnier than people expect from someone who is not afraid of a hard conversation.

Paula Sophia Schonauer, LCSW

Licensed Clinical Social Worker · Oklahoma and Hawaii

LGBTQIA+
Trauma
Identity
Veterans
First Responders

Twenty two years at the Oklahoma City Police Department, the first openly transgender officer the department ever had, and most of a life spent performing a version of herself that other people could read without effort. There is very little you can tell Paula about the distance between how you seem and how you actually are that will surprise her.

Person-centered, and she means it literally, which is rarer than it sounds. The MFA in creative writing, the published novel about closeted identity, and the national poetry slam make for an odd resume on a therapist, and are most of the reason the thing under the thing you said does not get past her.

Works with men, which is worth knowing if half the affirming clinicians you found do not.

You will know the number before you book.

Ala Therapy Collective is in network with many major Oklahoma plans. Send your member ID through the contact form and Jessie verifies your benefits and tells you what each session costs before you commit to anything. Most people owe a co-pay. Self-pay and a sliding scale are available.

Ala Therapy Collective does not accept Medicaid, including any carrier's Medicaid product or SoonerCare. If that is your plan, reach out anyway and we will point you toward in-network options.

Find your carrier:

Verify My Benefits

Questions People Actually Ask

Straight answers.

Do I need a diagnosis to start?

No. Plenty of people here are still working out what is going on, or are self-identified, or got a report years ago that nobody ever walked them through. Therapy does not require a label to be useful, and being unsure is a completely normal place to start from.

Do you work with teens?

Yes, and teens are a real focus here rather than an afterthought. Taylor Hendricks and Michi Medley both work with adolescents, and Michi works with parents and caregivers too, sometimes alongside the teen. Reach out and tell us the age and we will tell you honestly whether we are a fit.

What if I have autism and ADHD?

That combination is called AuDHD and it gets missed constantly, partly because the two can mask each other. It has its own page here. Taylor and Michi both work with it.

Is this ABA?

No. This is talk therapy. Michi has trauma-informed ABA training in her background and studied it before moving into social work, which is part of why she understands what people mean when they say a previous provider taught them to hide. The work here is not about producing a less noticeable person.

My kid was just diagnosed. What now?

Start by reaching out. A lot of parents arrive holding a report full of terms nobody defined and a list of recommendations with no order to them. Michi Medley works with families in exactly that spot, and part of the first conversation is just translating the paperwork into something usable.

Does insurance cover autism therapy?

Most major plans cover outpatient therapy. Send your member ID through the contact form and we verify your specific benefits before your first appointment, so you know what you owe without having to call anyone. Ala Therapy Collective does not accept Medicaid or SoonerCare.

Are sessions online?

Yes, online across Oklahoma. Taylor also offers outdoor walk-and-talk sessions in the Tulsa area through Neurodivergent IRL, which works well for people who do better moving than sitting across from someone.

You were never broken. You were translating.