About Therapy
Understanding Your Story, From Someone Who Shares It
The lighting in this room stays low. There’s a chair that rocks, and one big enough to fold your legs up into, with a weighted blanket over the arm. You pick whichever one feels right.
You don’t have to sit still. You don’t have to hold my gaze. If a thought comes out half-formed, if you need to stim, if you’d rather look at the floor while you talk, all of that belongs here.
If you’ve spent your life feeling like everyone else got an instruction manual you never received, you’re in the right place. So many women who find out they’re autistic later in life have spent decades masking, mimicking the people around them just to blend in, running on an exhaustion no one else could see. Somewhere along the way you were called too sensitive, or too dramatic. Those words were never the truth of you. Your brain is wired differently, and different has never meant broken.
You never had to work this hard just to belong.
You Never Have to Perform Here
Starting an assessment can feel like a lot, so I build the whole experience around your comfort and your pace.
We work as partners. I’m not sitting across from you as a cold clinical judge running down a checklist. Together we explore your history and the specific way your brain is wired, and you stay in charge of the pace the whole way through.
Neurodivergent burnout is real, so we move at a speed that respects your nervous system. No rushing. No draining you dry to get through the material. When you need a break, we take one.
Trade the Guessing for a Clear, Credible Answer
My adult assessment runs across three sessions and can happen in my Colonie office or entirely online. It’s designed for adults who were missed the first time around, which is most of the women I sit with.
It includes the CAT-Q, a screener made specifically to measure masking, the camouflaging that hides autism from nearly every standard evaluation. That one instrument is often the reason a woman who’s been overlooked for decades finally gets seen.
Rather than dropping you somewhere on a line from mild to severe, I map your profile across the areas that shape your days: sensory experience, social communication, executive function, emotional regulation. You leave with a real picture of how your mind works.
Your Answer Is Where the Real Work Begins
A diagnosis is a map, not a verdict. Once you have it, the parts of your life that felt random start to make sense. You can ask for accommodations that genuinely fit. You can hand your therapist the right framework instead of another round of coping skills aimed at the wrong target.
And this is a beginning, not a transaction. I don’t hand you a report and a goodbye. Understanding yourself is where the real work starts.
Picture easing up on yourself because you finally understand why you feel and move through the world the way you do. The shame that came from wondering what was wrong with you has somewhere to go now.
Your family stops treating your experience like something you’re inventing. And the long cycle of misdiagnosis and medications that never quite landed comes to a close.
Clarity You Can Feel
You’ll get a thorough, professional assessment, the kind grounded in real clinical instruments. It’s built to feel like being understood, not processed.
One of those instruments is designed to measure masking itself, the very thing that hides autism in so many women and leaves them undiagnosed for decades. Instead of placing you somewhere on a single line from mild to severe, we map your profile across the areas that actually shape your days: sensory experience, social communication, executive function, emotional regulation.
What comes out of it is a map, not a verdict. Once you have it, the things that always felt random start to make sense, and the shame that came with not understanding yourself begins to ease.
About Jessica Waterman, LCSW, CAS
I know what that map feels like to receive, because I got mine at thirty-three.
Before
For most of my life, I was the one quietly working twice as hard to look like everyone else, replaying conversations afterward, wondering why the kind of connection that seemed effortless for other people cost me a full day to recover from. I had done years of my own therapy for anxiety and everything that came with it, and something never quite fit.
At 33
Then, at 33, I was diagnosed autistic and ADHD. The relief of it is hard to put into words. Every confusing chapter suddenly had context. I wasn’t lazy, and I wasn’t too much. I had simply been living without the one piece of information that made the rest of me legible.
Moonrise
That experience is the reason Moonrise exists. Having sat on both sides of the assessment, as the person waiting for answers and as the clinician trained to give them, I understand how much rides on getting this right, and how gently it needs to be done.
Jessica Waterman, LCSW
The Training Behind the Warmth
The warmth in this room is real, and so is the training behind it. I’m a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and a Certified Autism Specialist (CAS), with a Master’s degree from the University at Albany. My work has centered on how autism actually shows up in adults, and especially in women, who so often get missed.
You can trust that your story is being heard by someone who understands the science, the psychology, and the lived reality of being an autistic adult, from the inside.
- LCSW
- Certified Autism Specialist
- Master’s, University at Albany
Move From Questioning to Knowing
If any of this felt like your own life described back to you, I’d love to talk. We can start with a free 15-minute consultation, a low-key conversation to see whether I’m the right person to help you find your answer. No masking required, not even here.
Call or text me at (518) 903-9671, in the Capital Region or by secure telehealth anywhere in New York.
Step Out of Guessing and Into Knowing
Moonrise is named for the phases. The moon doesn't change shape as it moves through them. You finally get to see it whole.
Your story has been there the whole time, adapting and masking and getting yourself through a world that never quite made room for you. You are not broken, and you don't have to keep guessing by yourself.
When you're ready to step out of the exhaustion of guessing and into the clarity of knowing, I'll be right here. Reach out for a free 15-minute consultation. No pressure, no obligation, just a conversation with a therapist and evaluator who has lived the question you're asking. Call or text (518) 903-9671.
Moonrise Therapy Services
Call or text(518) 903-9671 Emailjwaterman@moonrisetherapyservices.comOffice1721 Central Avenue
Colonie, NY 12205