Hope Affirm Thrive. Your Roadmap Through IVF

“Wow, you’ve lost weight.”

I’ve heard it from friends, family, colleagues, clients and people I barely know. It’s usually well meant. But a comment on my body skips the story behind it.

The food noise was never about willpower. It was ADHD, and it quietened with my ADHD medication and hyperfocus on the HAT Program and my PhD. By BMI I’m still “overweight”. Lipoedema and probable hEDS aren’t going anywhere. I’m in pain every day, and a smaller body isn’t automatically a healthier one.

Infertility taught me this first. People read the outcome and skip the story.

If you’re in the middle of IVF, you already know how much your body gets commented on. You don’t owe anyone the story behind it.

Next time, try “You seem well” or “It’s good to see you.”

Published. 🖤

My paper on designing neurodiversity-affirming and trauma-informed clinical spaces is out today in Neurodiversity journal by Sage.

This one is personal. As a late-identified Autistic and ADHD psychologist, I’ve spent years sitting in clinical spaces that weren’t built for brains like mine. Fluorescent lights. Strong scents. No room to move. Nowhere to breathe.

This paper is about what happens when we design the room differently. Not as an aesthetic choice, but as a clinical one. The environment a client walks into before a single word is spoken can determine whether therapy is even possible.

The framework covers ten design principles across seven sensory domains, from lighting and acoustics to temperature and affirming visual messaging, with evidence ratings and real-world costings so it’s actually usable across practice settings, not just beautifully appointed ones.

It grew out of my work with the HAT Program, Australia’s first neurodiversity-affirming psychological support program for IVF patients, and the practice I purpose built at Bancroft Psychology with all of this in mind.

If you work in psychology or healthcare and want to read it, the link is in my bio.

Thank you to my sister SteFanny Ann Stephanie Bell for photographing the space with such care and to OLIVIA R KALIN for the commissioned Noongar artwork that gives the practice its heart.

I kept nodding along listening to my fellow AuDHD colleague Monique Mitchelson on IT’S A LOT PODCAST with ABBIE CHATFIELD this week. 🎧

Monique shared that ADHD is around 70 to 90% genetic and Autism around 90%. So when one child in a family is Autistic or ADHD, at least one parent often is too, and nobody has ever named it.

She also spoke about trauma and neurodivergence being passed down together, and shared that when around 600 women with ADHD were asked, about 70% said their ADHD symptoms worsened after having children.

This is exactly why the Hope Affirm Thrive (HAT) Program screens for trauma, Autism and ADHD from the very start, and works with both before pregnancy and birth. Fertility treatment, pregnancy and early parenthood are some of the most demanding seasons a nervous system will ever go through.

You deserve care that sees all of you.

Thank you Monique for saying it so clearly to such a big audience. 💛

Your story could shape the next report on women’s health in Australia. Here’s how.

The Senate Select Committee on Women’s Health is taking submissions right now, and they want to hear from you.

I’ve just made mine, both as a psychologist and as someone who’s lived a lot of what this inquiry is looking at: a 13-year fertility journey, medical dismissal, a BMI threshold that couldn’t see the condition underneath it, postpartum care I had to find myself, and years spent trying to get pain taken seriously.

My submissions argue for things like:
✨ Individual clinical assessment instead of blanket BMI cutoffs for fertility treatment
✨ A proper Medicare item for IVF-specific psychological support (up to 40 sessions a year, not 10)
✨ Postpartum mental health support offered proactively, not something you have to go find yourself
✨ Recognition that pain dismissed as “normal” or “in your head” deserves real investigation

You don’t need to be a psychologist, a researcher, or an “expert” on the system to have something worth saying. If any part of this sounds familiar, your voice belongs in this inquiry too.

Submissions can be anonymous. They can be a few paragraphs or a few pages. There is no wrong way to do this.

Submissions close 9 October 2026.

Head to aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/womens_health, or message us and we’ll point you in the right direction.

This is how committees end up with recommendations that reflect what women actually live through. But only if enough of us tell them.

📌 Link to submit in stories

Big news.

After 10 years of clinical work, a 13-year fertility journey of my own, and late autism and ADHD that reframed everything, I have just enrolled in a PhD by publication at the University of Western Australia.

My research is focused on neurodiversity-affirming psychological support for people undergoing IVF treatment. The question I am exploring is one I lived: why does standard fertility care feel so impossible for so many of us, and what does care that is actually designed for our brains look like?

The Hope Affirm Thrive program was my first answer. The PhD is the evidence base.

I will be researching alongside an incredible supervisory team including Professor Carmela Pestell and Professor Roger Hart at UWA, Associate Professor Melissa Oxlad at the University of Adelaide, and the extraordinary Dr Alice Domar, one of the world’s leading fertility psychologists, who is also implementing aspects of this work in the United States.

To every client, colleague, and fellow neurodivergent person who has believed in this work before the research existed: thank you. This one is for you.

And to anyone who has ever sat in a fertility clinic feeling like the environment was designed for someone else entirely, this is for you too.

A 2026 Norwegian study followed over 22,000 women and found that those reporting a difficult childhood had 35% higher odds of infertility, along with higher odds of preterm birth and small for gestational age babies. Proposed mechanisms include chronic stress altering the HPA axis and reproductive hormone regulation.

This is part of why I screen for childhood adversity at intake and draw on EMDR where clinically indicated. It’s also why I think the current model of IVF psychological support, one Medicare-funded session with the in-clinic counsellor, falls short of what patients need.

📎 Bromark et al., Fertility and Sterility, 2026.

Minister Butler spoke this week about transparency and accountability in fertility care. I’ve spent over a year trying to get any of that applied to the psychological side of IVF - through the Department, my local MP, and the Minister’s office. Still waiting.

New research shows nearly a third of fertility patients meet criteria for Complex PTSD, and most say their care made it worse. This isn’t a fringe issue. It’s a system quietly failing people at scale.

Petition link in bio - every signature helps make this harder to ignore. 🔗

I didn’t win last night.

Frances Bilbao did, and if you don’t know her work at Mums Matter Psychology, please look her up. It was the right result.

But something else happened that I wasn’t expecting.

After the formalities, person after person found me in that room. Aged care workers. Disability services staff. Community service workers. People who had nothing professionally to do with fertility.

And they told me their IVF stories and the stories of people they knew.

Years of treatment. Failed cycles. The grief that doesn’t have a name.

These were not my clients. These were allied health professionals. People who spend their working lives caring for others. Who had quietly carried their own fertility experiences into rooms that never thought to ask.

And then there were the people who already knew. Colleagues who had heard about Hope Affirm Thrive through a colleague, a podcast, a conference presentation, a social media post, a lived experience advocate, a past client. People who had been quietly following the work and wanted to say so in person.

I didn’t expect that either.

That’s what I learned last night.

Fertility is not a niche population. It is not a specialty corner of healthcare. It is in every room. It is carried by the people who work in those rooms just as much as the people who walk through the doors.

Hope Affirm Thrive exists for the person in the waiting room who has been told their needs are too much. Last night I was reminded it also exists for the person on the other side of the door.

Thank you to everyone who found me last night and trusted me with your story. You didn’t have to. I won’t forget it.

And at home in Perth, Rob and Charlie watched the livestream. Charlie was sad for me that I didn’t win.

Sweet boy.

I already won when I had him. Thirteen years of trying will do that.

And congratulations to Frances. The room was better for both of us being in it.

HESTA Super Mums Matter Psychology

In two days I’m flying to a national awards ceremony.

That sentence looks simple. It isn’t.

I have POTS. Standing still risks me passing out. I have MCAS. Every meal at every event is a potential problem. I have hEDS and lipoedema. Travel is physically hard in ways most people don’t see. I’m also Autistic and ADHD. Formal events take a particular kind of preparation that has nothing to do with what I’m going to wear.

HESTA asked what I needed. The Sofitel asked what I needed. A bar stool on stage. Meals planned around my conditions for my entire stay. Softer bedding for the pain.

Nobody made it a problem. They just did it.

I’ve spent years navigating systems that didn’t ask. That told me my needs were too much. This time is different.

I’m a finalist in the HESTA Allied Health Excellence Awards Individual Leadership category. A solo practitioner from Perth who built Australia’s first neurodiversity-affirming IVF psychology program from a practice room and a lived experience that wouldn’t let me look away.

I don’t know what happens on the night. But getting there, actually being able to be in the room, is already something.

For everyone who has ever been told their needs are too much: they’re not. They’re just in the wrong system.

HESTA Super