Many couples experiencing persistent conflict and misunderstandings discover late that neurodiversity plays a central role in their dynamic.
ADHD is not simply about lack of concentration. It is a neurological difference in the brain’s dopamine system that affects how emotions are experienced and regulated. Dopamine determines what feels important — and with ADHD, many things quickly feel very important and urgent.
This means conflicts can flare up quickly — and feel incomprehensible afterwards for both parties. Added to this are challenges with working memory, sense of time, initiation, and emotional regulation. Agreements forgotten. Promises not kept — not out of bad will, but because the brain works differently.
In therapy, I help you understand these mechanisms, so you can begin to meet each other with curiosity rather than frustration.
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) affects how social signals, emotions, and communication are read and understood. Many with ASD have a strong desire for closeness and connection — but the path there looks different. Eye contact can feel overwhelming. Irony and sarcasm can be misunderstood. The need for routine and predictability can clash with the partner’s need for spontaneity.
For the neurotypical partner, it can feel like emotional distance — even though that is rarely the intention. For the partner with ASD, the relationship requires an enormous but invisible effort.
In therapy, we create a shared language for your differences, map what triggers reactions in each of you — and find paths to genuine connection on your own terms.
Many adults with ADHD or ASD have spent most of their lives with a sense of being wrong — too much, too little, too messy, too inflexible. A diagnosis can be a great relief. But it does not automatically resolve the strategies and survival patterns built up since childhood to fit in.
In individual therapy, we work to understand how your neurology has shaped you — and what you want to do differently going forward.
I am training as an ADHD and autism specialist and actively apply this knowledge in therapy — combined with a deep understanding of the emotional and relational patterns that accompany neurodiversity.