About US

Choosing Change

Choosing Change supports individuals and families, wherever they are in their journey of understanding ADHD, to move forward to their best life. You may be starting the journey towards understanding what a new ADHD diagnosis means for your child. Or you may have just received your own ADHD diagnosis as an adult. Whether you are sitting on a waiting list for assessment, or have received an official diagnosis, Choosing Change programs have been designed to help you take ADHD in your stride.

It can be difficult – and disheartening! – to try to translate what an ADHD diagnosis means for yourself, or your child. It can feel like you’ve been given a list of things that are wrong with you, or your kid, without a lot of guidance about where to turn next. Choosing Change programs are designed to answer the “what next?” question, and help you write the operating manual for *your* ADHD brain. And your kid’s ADHD brain.

Choosing Change takes a different approach to how we talk about ADHD, and the expectations we hold for you as an adult or parent of a child with ADHD. We can say, hand on heart, that we get it. Because we are ADHDers too. We make the new-to-ADHD-diagnosis learning journey human, because we are ADHD humans.

Choosing Change aims to instill acceptance, hope and humanity into the way we as a community speak about ADHD and neurodivergence. The way we think about ourselves as adults with ADHD. The way we think about and speak to our ADHD kids. This is what we mean we we say we are neurodiversity affirming.

About Sarah Stokely

Sarah Stokely is the founder and director of Choosing Change. She holds Graduate Diplomas in Psychology and Psychological Studies from Deakin University, and a Masters in Counselling and Psychotherapy from the Australian College of Applied Psychology (ACAP).

As a Registered Practising Counsellor with PACFA, Sarah has worked with children, young people and adults across out of home care sector, family violence, family services and the youth services sector. Her worldview as a mental health clinician was turned upside down in 2021 when she became one of the many people whose burnout from the COVID pandemic and Melbourne’s prolonged lockdown led to an ADHD diagnosis.

Sarah is now hyperfocused on supporting people who receive adult diagnosis of ADHD, and parents of ADHD kids. Her mission is to make sure we don’t have another ‘lost generation’ of undiagnosed and unsupported kids with ADHD, and for all kids to know what neurodiversity affirming families and schools feels like.