Case studyFor autistic and ADHD adults
How one autistic and ADHD adult plans a day around energy she cannot predict
Jasmine is an autistic and ADHD adult in Australia. She had tried keeping a journal and could never sustain it. Since 18 August 2026 she has started each morning with Pip, the pocket coach in Understanding Zoe, planning against the energy she actually has rather than a fixed list, and logging what her body is doing as it happens.
Written by Laetitia Andrac, co-founder of Understanding Zoe
Published 7 min read
Before: the journals that never lasted, and a system built for someone else
Jasmine had tried to do this by hand. Journals, notes, the usual advice given to anyone told to track their moods and their triggers. It never held.
The problem with a manual journal is not the writing. It is that nothing ever comes back. You record a bad Tuesday, and the record sits there. Nobody reads it to you three weeks later when the same pattern shows up again, so the insight is lost at exactly the point it would have been worth something.
Underneath that sits a bigger gap. Almost everything built for autistic and ADHD people is built for children, and an adult is largely on their own. Australia's National Autism Strategy 2025 to 2031 names it directly: "References to autism are often in relation to children only and do not recognise the experience of autism across the life span." The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the same shape in its numbers, recording autism in 3.1% of people under 25 and 0.3% of people aged 25 and over.
The turning point: the morning that replaced the television
The old start to the day was the television. It was not a decision so much as a default, and it set the trajectory of everything after it.
What changed was small and specific: breakfast, then a check-in, before anything else. It started on 18 August 2026 and it has run every day since.
That last clause is the whole problem in one sentence. Boom and bust is not poor planning. It is what happens when energy is unpredictable and you have learned to spend it all the moment it arrives, because you do not trust it to come back.
It has also grown. What began as breakfast and a check-in now carries a homemade vegetable juice, yin yoga, and time grounding outside with a lemon, apple cider vinegar and honey tea. The whole routine is built around the morning check-in with Pip, which is what keeps her accountable to her own goals.
What Jasmine actually does now with Understanding Zoe
Plans the day against real energy.
Jasmine told Pip about the boom and bust pattern directly, so it is part of what gets taken into account rather than something to be talked out of.
Logs the body in real time.
Not at the end of the day and not from memory. What the body is doing, and what is around it, as it happens.
Keeps the thread between appointments.
What comes out of a session goes into Understanding Zoe, so the goals set in the room turn up daily rather than being remembered in the waiting area a fortnight later. The gap between appointments is where most plans quietly stop existing.
Two nervous systems, not two personalities
Being both autistic and ADHD is one of the things Jasmine had never been able to make sense of. She put it to Pip as Jekyll and Hyde: two people in one head, pulling in opposite directions. What came back reframed it as two nervous systems rather than two personalities.
That reframe has a research lineage. Monotropism, described by Murray, Lesser and Lawson (2005), holds that autistic attention pools deeply into a few interests at a time rather than spreading across many. Read that way, an autistic and ADHD nervous system is not two personalities in conflict. It is one attention system under two different sets of demands.
One consequence was immediate and practical, and it is the opposite of how almost all self-regulation advice is written: the high needs managing as much as the crash does.
In Jasmine's words
“Pip is now catching me if I type in too many plans.”
“Every time I'm feeling something in my body, I'm typing that into Pip and going, 'Hey, I'm feeling this way in my body and these are other observations that I've noticed. I've noticed it's overcast, I've noticed this, I've just done these activities and I'm feeling this way.'”
“The feedback I'm getting from Pip is really informative and helping me [view] myself in a less judgmental kind of way.”
“One thing I've identified since using Pip is that my ADHD happy moods need regulating as much as my meltdowns. And I've never considered that before.”
What Jasmine calls Understanding Zoe
Asked what Understanding Zoe actually is, Jasmine did not reach for our words.
“A support worker in your pocket.”
She was clear about the boundary of that, and so are we: a helpful friend and assistant, not a replacement for clinical care.
The hesitation on using AI
Jasmine did not arrive at this enthusiastic. She researched Understanding Zoe before using it, specifically on privacy, and still describes herself as sceptical of the category.
“I'm an AI cynic. But if this is how AI should be used, in my opinion, this is what it should be used for.”
She has since told her GP and her psychologist.
“I spent my actual entire session just telling him about this app, because it's become my special interest now.”
Understanding Zoe does not use your data to train models, and you choose what each person in your village can see.
Questions autistic and ADHD adults ask
How do I plan my day when my energy is completely unpredictable?
Jasmine plans each morning in Understanding Zoe against her current energy and the last few days, rather than against a fixed list of tasks. The pattern she was interrupting is boom and bust: spending ten hours on housework the moment energy arrives, because it might not come back. Planning against real capacity is what breaks that cycle.
Why do I never manage to keep a journal going?
Because nothing comes back. Jasmine had tried manual journals and could not sustain them. What works differently in Understanding Zoe is that a logged observation is held and reconnected to what is happening weeks later, so the effort of recording turns into something useful rather than something filed and forgotten.
How can someone be both autistic and ADHD?
Jasmine describes it as feeling like two personalities pulling in opposite directions, until it was reframed as two nervous systems rather than two people. That led to a practical realisation: her ADHD high moods need regulating as much as her low ones, which is the opposite of how most advice is written.
How do I keep track of what my psychologist and I agreed, between appointments?
Jasmine logs what comes out of a session into Understanding Zoe, so it turns up daily rather than being remembered a fortnight later in the waiting room. The gap between appointments is where most plans quietly stop existing, and it is the part of the work nobody is paid to hold.
How do I work out which sensory triggers are affecting me?
By logging what your body is doing alongside what is around you, as it happens, rather than reconstructing it later. Fluorescent light and overcast weather affected Jasmine physically for years without being named as a cause. A pattern like that is close to impossible to see from inside it and obvious once something holds the record.
Is there anything built for autistic and ADHD adults, or is it all for children?
Most of it is built for children. Australia's National Autism Strategy says so itself, noting that references to autism are often about children only and do not recognise autism across the life span. Jasmine uses Understanding Zoe for herself, not for a child.
About this case study
- Source
- An interview on 24 August 2026, with further detail Jasmine added when she reviewed this draft on 31 August 2026. Quotes are lightly edited to remove spoken filler; square brackets mark a word supplied for sense.
- Written by
- Laetitia Andrac, Understanding Zoe
- Published
- 1 September 2026
- Last reviewed
- 1 September 2026
- Next review
- March 2027
- Consent
- Published with Jasmine's written approval, having reviewed every quote in context.
What this is. One person's account of their own experience. It is not a clinical claim and not evidence that Understanding Zoe produces any outcome. We hold no verified efficacy data and we will say so plainly until we do. Understanding Zoe is not a crisis service and Pip is not a therapist.
If you need help now: Lifeline 13 11 14, 13YARN 13 92 76, or 000 in an emergency.
References
- Australian Government Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, National Autism Strategy 2025 to 2031, released 14 January 2025. Link checked 31 August 2026. health.gov.au/resources/publications/national-autism-strategy-2025-2031
- Australian Bureau of Statistics, Autism in Australia, 2022, released 11 October 2024. Autism recorded in 3.1% of people under 25 and 0.3% of people aged 25 and over. Link checked 31 August 2026. abs.gov.au/articles/autism-australia-2022
- Murray D, Lesser M and Lawson W, "Attention, monotropism and the diagnostic criteria for autism", Autism, 2005, 9(2), pages 139 to 156. Link checked 31 August 2026. monotropism.org/murray-lesser-lawson
