The problem is…

….he’s right about a lot of the things he says. I am lazy. I am a bad housewife. I don’t put enough care into my appearance. I do forget things all the time. I never know when to shut up, and when to let him have his space. I don’t give him my full attention when I’m talking to him. How can I call it emotional abuse when these things are true?”

I had to dig back in my text message history about eight years to unearth this conversation with my lovely friend and stalwart support Jenn. I stumped her with this one, because for every time she tried to rationalise the point, I had a mountain of evidence to contradict her. Yes, my language could have been kinder to myself – I fully admit that now – but the bare facts remain. Housework challenges me. I am rarely put together – I dress for dopamine, not for how I look to others. I am chatty and most of my internal thoughts love to be heard on the outside. I can’t give anything my full attention.

The missing piece of the puzzle – the part of myself I didn’t understand until I was nearly four years out of the relationship – is that I am neurodiverse. I am ADHD (with more than a sneaking suspicion there is some autism in there too). It’s a key part of what left me vulnerable to the emotional and psychological abuse I have experienced.

Neurodiversity and Intimate Partner Violence

The research picture is clear. ADHD adults are more likely to experience domestic abuse than their ‘neurotypical’ counterparts (Wymbs, Dawson, Egan & Sachetti, 2016). Autistic adults are also more likely to experience victimisation and may find it more difficult to recognise when someone is acting in an abusive way (Pearson, Rees & Forster, 2022). This likelihood only increases when you add in additional factors like gender, sexuality, receiving mental health diagnoses and coming from a low-income background (Cooke et al, 2023).

Many researchers have found that ADHD women are more likely to experience low self-esteem compared to ADHD men and women who aren’t ADHD. Rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) is common in people with ADHD. This is a powerful emotional reaction to the feeling of being criticised or rejected (both real and perceived). Most neurodiverse women have grown up being labelled as “oversensitive”, “over dramatic” or worse, because of these responses. Often, these labels mean that we minimise the impact when feeling hurt by others’ actions – clearly, we are the problem here.

To get a little controversial here, I am of the opinion that RSD is not an intrinsic part of ADHD. Following some intensive soul-searching and reading the work of the incredible Dr Jessica Taylor, I would suggest that it is instead a trauma response. William Dodson, M.D., estimates that ADHD children receive 20,000 more negative messages about themselves by age 10 than their neurotypical peers. Through personal and professional experience, I would suggest that this figure does not magically stop at age 10 – it is, rather, too difficult to calculate the volume of negative messages when our peers get involved. To grow up neurodiverse is – at present – inherently traumatic.

In short, we’re used to being criticised, corrected and expected to change ourselves on a fundamental level. Whilst during our childhood, this may have been done with good intentions, the path to intimate partner violence is clear.

Educational gaps for our children

Before coming to the realisation that I myself was neurodiverse, I was already embedded in the world of neurodiversity on a professional level. In my studies for an MA in Autism Education, I conducted a project into sexuality and relationships education (SRE) for neurodiverse children and found a gaping hole in the provision. While we already know that SRE curricula are often sadly lacking in relevant information on how to spot the signs of intimate partner violence, the reality is that these programmes are completely unfit for purpose when it comes to children with autism and ADHD (if delivered at all).

When it comes to neurodiverse children, additional accommodations to ensure accessibility should include consideration of the visual materials, to understand their comprehensibility and anatomical accuracy (Tissot, 2009); vocabulary teaching (Siebelink et al., 2006); and practice on how to apply social skills and the new understanding to real life scenarios. However, a low proportion of teachers feel that they are equipped to provide sexual education to students with autism, citing a lack of training as an issue (Kalyva, 2010).

Imagine then, teenage me… the sex education I had received was heavy on putting prophylactics on wooden poles and squeezing fake boobs to find lumps, but completely lacking in knowledge of how your partner should speak to you. I was naive and eager to please, with 20,000+ reminders of exactly what parts of myself I needed to correct to be palatable to others. I’d had several romantic partners of both genders (oops – bisexuality, another risk factor appears) but their legacy was both subtle and not-so-subtle layers of trauma.

This was a missed point of intervention. Whilst I am in no way blaming myself for what I went on to experience, I can see that I desperately needed to understand how relationships should work. But no one around me was equipped to share the information with me in ways I could understand. We are failing our neurodiverse children, setting them up to become adult survivors through lack of inclusive support.

The impact of neurodiversity on survivors

There are better blog posts than this out there detailing how to support survivors at all points of the relationship, through enduring to ending and then in the post-separation stages. However, I believe that it is important to shed light on some of the thinking patterns and challenges of the neurodiverse mind.

Neurodiverse people find something called executive function difficult. Simply put, executive function is the set of skills we use to plan, prioritise and manage daily life – it’s what helps us remember to put the bins out and know what order to do the washing up every day. When you are struggling to manage the multiple competing demands of life, it can be easy to miss the signs of gaslighting. We simply don’t have the brain space to pick up on the subtle manipulation that is happening to us.

In fact, in a contradictory fashion I found the housework-specific emotional abuse actually provided structure for my executive function to attach tasks to. It’s infinitely easier to go and load the dishwasher when someone is criticising you for the kitchen being so untidy after you cook. Adrenaline can be a great motivator in remembering to bring the bins in on bin day. I had a much cleaner house while in that relationship than I do now! Again, this can make the coercive control harder to spot, because there can be a contradictory gratitude to the abuser for making things that feel impossible actually happen – they’re “helping”.

ADHDers are notorious over-sharers. Rarely have I had a thought cross my mind without the desire to say it out loud following rapidly. It makes us great conversationalists (in my opinion) but it also means that we might share lots of details about our emotions and fears with our perpetrators, which can be used against us. For example, when I was trying to leave, my ex-partner shared how he used his knowledge of the distress I experienced when someone else was alone and I wasn’t supporting them to convince me to go on a particularly terrifying rollercoaster ride. He also knew that I was terrified of the ride and that it would destabilise me for the rest of the day. All because he didn’t want to be bored in the queue. Up until this point, even though I finally saw the manipulation, I had believed it was all unconscious on his part rather than a weaponisation of my oversharing.

ADHD affects memory – particularly the ability to remember situations in detail and recall things under pressure. We know that traumatic experiences have a similar effect. This can mean that we are even more likely to doubt our own memory and believe the gaslighting. I was given advice to write down my experiences, but my executive function hates remembering to record things on a regular basis so I had to get creative. I used my phone camera to take photos of where I had left things. I created a specific text thread where I sent experiences as they happened, and my friend Jenn could reference this and remind me of them as needed. I bonded with another neurodiverse survivor and when our memory issues arose, we texted each other the simple phrase “it was real, right?” for affirmation of our sanity.

Creating a plan to leave the perpetrator (in my experience) can be incredibly overwhelming, contributing to the inaction of leaving. We know that leaving an abusive relationship is a complex and multifaceted process, and there are many reasons why people stay. I know that in my case, a large part of the inaction was because it was all just too complicated and my brain looks from where I currently am to the end result without being able to see the steps I need to take along the way. I was incredibly blessed to have a friend who sat me down and came up with the steps together, and then kept me on track in completing them. My mum came and helped me through part of the process at one point as well. Reminding someone that they need cutlery when they get somewhere new to live is more invaluable than you think!

Trauma survivors are hypervigilant to signs of danger, often with good reason. It is our brain’s best attempt at keeping us safe and it persists even when we are in places of safety. It’s a function of what is called our ‘default mode network’ – spontaneous brain activity that scans our environment. In neurotypical brains, this part of the brain switches off when we are doing another task – this is why things like mindful colouring or physical exercise can help to clear the mind (apparently). I wouldn’t know, because in the ADHD brain this region is always on. I have never had a clear mind once in my life – even when embedded in the deepest hyperfocus I have, my brain is still scanning for distractions. Learning to calm my nervous system and let it scan for idle distractions – not threats in my environment – has been the biggest challenge of my recovery and is something I still struggle with on occasion.

 

Conclusion

I hope it is clear from reading this that I do not blame myself or my neurodiversity for the things that I have experienced. The blame for that lies solely in the choices made by perpetrators (and it is a whole different blog post to discuss the impacts of neurodiversity in that group of people!) After much healing, I love my funky little brain and all the weird and wonderful things it does. It is, after all, where the Anna lives (and she’s pretty fabulous!)

I wrote this piece for several reasons. Firstly, because Lucy asked me to and I still love to people please – that’s a part of me too, and I indulge it within carefully established boundaries. Next, I wanted to provide some learning points for people working in the field of the challenges that neurodiversity might create for their service users. If this inspires you to consider your practice, I’ve done a good job.

But mostly, I am speaking to neurodiverse survivors (whether you’ve realised your brain is spicy or not yet). I want you to know that you are not alone in these challenges, and that they are not your fault. Our hardwiring, upbringing and education left us vulnerable, and we faced extra challenges when enduring and exiting the relationships. To me, that makes us more, not less. How badass are we to still be here, even with the extra hurdles?!

Our neurodiversity is just one piece of the glorious pie chart that makes up our identities, just like being a survivor is only one piece. We are multifaceted and vibrant and flippin incredible, exactly as we are (even with the sink full of dirty dishes and the overflowing laundry hamper!)

If this blog resonates with you, please check out You Don’t Own Me’s Resources Page for useful links.

References: 

Wymbs, B., Dawson, A., Egan, T., & Sachetti, G. (2016) Rates of Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration and Victimization Among Adults With ADHD.  Journal of Attention Disorders
Pearson, A.,  Rees, J.,  & Forster, S., (2022) “This Was Just How This Friendship Worked”: Experiences of Interpersonal Victimization Among Autistic Adults. Autism in Adulthood

Cooke, K., Ridgway, K., Westrupp, E., Hedley, D., Hooley, M., Stokes, M. (2023) The Prevalence and Risk Factors of Autistic Experiences of Interpersonal Violence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.  awaiting publication

Siebelink, E.M., de Jong, M.D.T., Taal, E., Roelvink, L. and Taylor, S.J., (2006). Sexuality and People With Intellectual Disabilities: Assessment of Knowledge, Attitudes, Experiences, and Needs. Mental Retardation,

Kalyva, E., (2010). Teachers’ perspectives of the sexuality of children with autism spectrum disorders. Research in Autism Spectrum Disorders,

Tissot, C., (2009). Establishing a sexual identity. Case studies of learners with autism and learning difficulties. Autism : the international journal of research and practice