You Can’t Love Well From a False Map | Dating on High Alert with Ilja Abbattista

You Can’t Love Well From a False Map | Dating on High Alert with Ilja Abbattista

What happens when the information you’ve used to understand yourself was never built for the full picture?

A major new study has found that over half of ADHD and autism content online is inaccurate or misleading - and honestly, I think a lot of people can already feel that.

Because so many people are trying so hard to heal.
Learning the language.
Doing the work.
Trying to understand themselves and their relationships…

…and still ending up confused, overwhelmed, heartbroken, or exhausted.

In this episode, Ilja Abbattista explores:
🧠 AuDHD misinformation online
🖤 trauma, masking & nervous system survival
⚡ why so much relationship advice misses the mark
🧩 the complexity of late diagnosis & self understanding
🌿 and what changes when you finally start working from a more accurate map of yourself

Because maybe you were never failing.

Maybe the map was incomplete.

If this episode resonates with you and you’d like support navigating your own patterns, relationships, self understanding, or healing journey, you can find ways to work with Ilja in the show notes, including 1:1 coaching and Dear Ilja voice note support.

And if this podcast is helping you feel seen, understood, or less alone - please consider supporting the show by sharing the episode or leaving a review. It genuinely helps keep these conversations going.

Links are in the show notes.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, welcome back to Dating on Highland. I'm Illia Abbatista. I'm a speaker, advocate, Audal Trauma coach, and somebody who has spent a very long time trying to understand herself using information that was never really built for her. Today's episode is called You Can't Love Well from a False Map. And I want to start with something that came out recently. It was a study that reviewed over 5,000 posts across all major social media platforms. And what they found was that over half of the Audit content out there is inaccurate or misleading. So, my very first reaction when I read that was not of a surprise. It was more like. I can totally see that. And I've spent years trying to find myself an information that didn't always describe me. Even long before the, you know, autism or ADHD could have been a part of my life. And I know that I'm not alone in that, but before I get into where we are now, I think it's worth going back a little bit. Because for those of us that were in our 40s, 50s, and beyond, there wasn't just a gap in the information. There was literally nothing. There was no conversation, there wasn't any framework, no possibility of being recognized. ADHD was a boys thing. Caused apparently by too many e-numbers. If your son was bouncing off the walls and couldn't assist in the class, yeah, maybe. But a girl, quiet girl who sat in the corner and daydreamed, or who worked incredibly hard to hold it all together on the outside while everything was completely chaotic on the inside. Not a chance. And it wasn't just the quiet ones who were missed. I was a bit of a chatterbox when I still had the confidence to be one. So yeah, that picture didn't fit either. There weren't even any conversations that existed back then. And when something becomes stereotypical, people stop looking for anything else, any other possibilities. And then you have autism. Autism back then for me was Rayman. It was very specific, very narrow, very male, a very male picture. And if you didn't look like that, and most of us didn't, then the door was never open to you. And it wasn't that we'd slip through the net. The net was never designed to catch us in the first place. So for an entire generation of women and girls and many others who just didn't fit the box, there were no words. No explanation, no other possible answer. And in the absence of any other answer, most of us drew the only conclusion that was available to us. We were the problem. Something was wrong with us. Undiagnosed, not neurodivergent, just difficult, just too much, just damaged. And that's what I thought about myself. I thought I was damaged. I had a trauma history, and I assumed that that explained everything. The way I felt, the way I struggled, the way certain things were just harder for me than they seem to be for everybody else. And the explanation I had available to me was trauma. And so that's where I put it all. And then finally something shifted. People who already had their diagnosis started recognizing themselves in me. And that felt extraordinary. Not because it gave me answers immediately, but because it made me feel less alone for the very first time in a very, very long time. Suddenly, I wasn't the only one. Suddenly there was a very different possible explanation for why the map never quite fit. And then when the autism diagnosis came, it was definitely a surprise. And now, yeah, it's kind of obvious. As obvious to me as my ADHD is. But I had to get there through other people's recognition of me before I could recognize it in myself. Because the information alone wasn't enough. The research wasn't there. And I had spent so long assuming the problem was me that I hadn't considered that there might be a different answer entirely. And here's the reality of where we are now. Today. Aud as a combined presentation barely exists in research terms. And we're not talking about gaps here and there. We're talking about a near absence. The research on ADHD alone is still catching up. The research on autism, particularly in women in late diagnosed adults, is also very much still catching up. You put the two together and you are largely on your own. There is no definitive guide. There is no well-researched roadmap. There is an awful lot of content online, a growing community of people trying to figure it out together, and not nearly enough science to back any of it up properly. Some of that information out there does fit a little, enough to make you pause, enough to make you think, oh, you know, I recognise part of that. But it's not enough to see the whole picture. Not enough to say, ah, yes, that's me. And when the only information or when the information only fits partially, and you can't find yourself fully in any of it, it's it's so easy to draw the conclusion that is wrong. Not that the information is incomplete, but that you are the problem. Which means whether you have a trauma history or not, most of us with Aud are doing something remarkable and exhausting in equal measure. We are piecing ourselves together from incomplete information, asking questions that don't have clean answers yet, and trying to build a picture of who we are from a puzzle where half the pieces are still missing. And there is a very clear difference between feeling seen and having an accurate map. And the map, for most of us, is still very much incomplete. And when the foundation is shaky, everything built on top of it is shaky too. And I can tell you what I mean from my own experience. So I don't take everybody's word for it. I ask lots of questions to lots of people, even to, you know, world experts, the right people from reputable places. And I challenge. I look at things from different angles, not because I think I know better than anybody else, but because the information I kept finding just didn't fit me. And I have learned over time that when the advice doesn't work, it's not always because I'm doing it wrong. Sometimes it's because the advice wasn't built for somebody like me. And here's what I mean about the map being incomplete. ADHD content online tends to focus on productivity, time-blindness, dopamine hacks, relatable memes about forgetting things. And some of that is very real. But it misses the emotional dysregulation, the rejection sensitivity, and loads of other things. And I want to say something about RSD. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria, because it's only recently started being talked about properly. Not long ago, it was practically unheard of as a concept. And yet, for so many people with ADHD and autism and Audi HD, it's one of the most debilitating parts of daily life. The fact that it's taken this long to even have a name for it tells you everything about how far the research still has to travel. That's a long way. And autism content online is still very much largely written about white boys and children. The female experience, the late diagnosed experience, the experience of somebody who has masks so successfully for so long that even they didn't know that they were doing it. That's not well represented at all. And then there's Aud where parts of your neurology can actively conflict with each other. And when your ADHD wants novelty and your autism wants sameness, when one part of your brain is so desperate to start and another part physically cannot. And nobody, not a study, not a reel, not even a blog post, is fully capturing what that's actually like to live inside. And you add a trauma history into that. And the map gets even harder to read because now you're trying to work out what is this? Is this my ADHD? Is this my autism? Is this a trauma response? Or is this masking? Or is it a coping mechanism that I developed at six years old that became so normal that I thought it was my personality? What's genetic? What's layered? What do I actually need to heal? And what do I need to understand and work with? These are just some of the questions even the most respected experts don't have clean answers to yet. And yet the content online makes it look so simple, makes it look like a checklist. Makes it look like, oh, you relate to this, so therefore you must have this. And you know, this is where the phrase comes from, where we some people just say we're all a little bit ADHD. And why that stings when you hear it. Because when something so complex gets reduced to a relatable quirk, two things happen at the same time. People who don't have it think that they do, and people who actually live it feel dismissed. And both are harmful. So why am I talking about this on a dating and relationships podcast? Because you cannot navigate love, intimacy, or a connection accurately from a false map. And a lot of us have been trying to do exactly that. I mean, think about what actually shows up in relationships when the self-understanding isn't quite there yet. Sometimes you have moments where you can freeze. Genuinely, physically freeze. You've got too many thoughts going on. More than usual. And you can't process them. You can't move, you can't speak. And from the outside, it looks like you're possibly being lazy or even awkward. It looks like you might be avoiding. Or that you just don't care. When actually your nervous system is completely overwhelmed and you simply cannot move your body right now. Or you've spent three days in hyperfocus. You've poured absolutely everything into something that your brain has been running at full tilt, probably not even eaten or drunk enough. And you genuinely can't get out of bed. It's not that you won't, but you just can't. And your partner just doesn't understand why. And resentment can start to build, you know, and both sides. And you have occasion where you can send a text and you wait and you wait, and the waiting starts to feel like rejection. The nervous system starts to pull the alarm. And the voice in your head that was installed by years of getting it wrong in relationships starts to say, see, they don't care. You've done something wrong. And the overthinking starts, and then the spiral comes along. And the person that you're waiting on, sometimes they're the same person, the one who also doesn't reply to text, who is in their own version of overwhelm, their own version of shutdown, not ignoring you, just gone inside for a bit. Or maybe, you know, has been totally distracted and trusted the relationship not to have to reply immediately. And then there are other things that look strange from the outside, but make complete sense once you understand what is actually happening. The flat that is either immaculate or looked like a small hurricane has been through, uh passed through it sometimes within the same week. The habits that seem odd, but are doing a really important job. Stimming, for example. And I'll talk about my own because I think it helps to be specific. So I do stim constantly. Most people wouldn't necessarily notice it that I do. Because after a little while my fingers get really sore from doing it. You know, I'm sitting like this and rubbing my fingers. At night, I rub my feet together to fall asleep. It's a comfort thing or a regulating thing. And my leg bounces while I'm watching a film. Some people find that genuinely annoying. And yeah, I understand that. And it's not something that I'm doing to irritate anybody. It's it's it's my nervous system doing what it needs to feel okay. And these things show up in relationships, and the person on the receiving end often doesn't have the language for what they're seeing. You know, too messy, too tidy, restless, fidgety, odd habits. And the person with Audi HD, with, you know, obviously doesn't have the language to explain it either, because nobody ever gave them the right words. How can you explain something that you've never had explained to you? And I don't really think that this is a sport thing. I think this is one of the reasons in divorce rates, um, yeah, the divorce rate in the neurodivergent community is so incredibly high. When the internal experience can't be communicated and the external behavior gets misread, and neither neither person has the map to navigate it. Relationships can really take a beating. And when you add trauma on top of that, you have a population that is profoundly misunderstood, significantly underserved, and deserving so much more than what they're currently getting. But I also think that long-lasting love is possible, and I genuinely believe that. With mutual self-awareness, with mutual emotional intelligence, with a willingness to not just hear each other, but to actually listen and to try to keep understanding even when it's hard. And any of those things can be learned. They obviously need to be worked on, but they are learnable. And yet this is where I come in. I have lived experience and learned experience, and I know what it costs when those things aren't there, and I know what changes when they are. And I still think that people don't realize this next bit enough. Not all people with ADHD, autism, or Audi HD understand each other. We don't all present the same way, we're not all affected by the same things. Two people who are both neurodivergent can hurt each other just as much as anybody else. Because being neurodivergent doesn't mean automatic understanding. And that's a conversation for another episode. But let me get specific about dating because relationships in general is one thing. The early stages of dating, particularly when you're Audi HD, when you're doing it online, when you're in your 50s, that's a whole different conversation. But I do want to have a conference, this conversation, and I want to have it honestly. So I am in my 50s, and here's the reality of meeting somebody at this stage. So the bar isn't full of single people my age. It just isn't. And you certainly couldn't tell who was or wasn't. And if I'm out with my friends, my attention is with them, as it should be. And I'm not going to be approached by a stranger who's picked up on some signal that I didn't even know that I was sending. The way people used to meet organically, you know, it could be through friends, through work, in contexts where you got to know somebody a little bit before any of the dating pressure kicked in. I mean, for me at least, that world has largely gone. So for me, like for a lot of people, online dating is less of a choice and more of a necessity. And if I want to meet somebody, this is how I have to do it. Now I'm not saying that everybody on dating apps is single. You know, so there's that to look out for too, but at least there's an intention. At least that part is clearer. These apps were not designed for people like me. They were not designed for Audi HD brains or those that are carrying trauma. They were built for fast decisions, quick swipes, rapid fire chat, and a kind of performative self-marketing that is genuinely exhausting when your nervous system is already working overtime, just navigating the concept of a stranger. And some apps now even skip the online chat entirely and go straight to meeting in person. And I, you know, I get that understanding, you know, I get the logic behind that. But for somebody like me, where trust does build slowly, where I need a bit of context before I can feel safe, where walking into a room to meet a complete stranger carries a level of nervous system activation that most people don't experience. That's not a solution. That's that's a whole different kind of problem. So I do what I can and I try to show something real in my profile. Absolutely not everything. Because not everything is appropriate for a stranger. And I know better than most how much there is to find if somebody looks me up. I don't use my real name. Um, in in the early stages, certainly not. Uh uh and it's it's not entirely because I'm hiding, but it's because of what they would find, and that's a lot. And that's a lot for somebody to take on who doesn't quite know you yet. Um, so I talk publicly about trauma, about my own trauma, about neurodivergence, about things that require context to understand properly. And a stranger reading that without knowing me is not the same as somebody who has spent time with me and is needing to hear it. So I protect that. And I think that's wise, not deceptive. So I'm not going to lie about who I am, but I am careful about the order in which I reveal it. And unless somebody tells me early on that they have ADHD, autism, or Audi HD, then I won't say anything about my own neurodivergence until several dates at least. Because for me, this person is still a stranger because trust takes time. And because I mask in those early stages. Yep, I do. Um, I notice my fidgets and I manage them. I watch myself, I'm not performing or being somebody, you know, that I'm not. But because that's what most of us do when we're new to somebody, we show up carefully until we know that it's safe not to. But this next part is quite complicated and quite difficult to navigate. Because of the sheer volume of content online about red flags, green flags, and attachment styles and narcissism and love bombing, everybody is now walking into dates armed with a checklist. And those checklists were not written with any neurodivergence in mind at all. Which means the very things that are part of my neurology can look like red flags to somebody who's been consuming that content. So my need for clarity reads as pressure. My noticing inconsistency reads as intensity. And my struggle with ambiguity reads as anxiety or neediness. And from my side, I'm applying the same checklist to them. And some of what I'm seeing might actually be completely fine, just unfamiliar. So everybody is quietly ticking boxes. Both sets of boxes are quite blurry. And there's so much information now that it can make the whole thing so much easier rather than so much harder rather than easier. Sorry, beg your pardon. And it works both ways. And that's the part that I don't hear being discussed. Now I personally thrive on clarity. I always have, and I've started to name that a little bit earlier on in dating. And it's not to put pressure on anybody, but because it's part of how I function and it's fairer to be honest about it. So I don't need all the answers. And the answers might not even be there yet. But what I do need is I need to know that what somebody is saying to me matches their body language. That it's consistent, not just on the date, but when they're um back in their regular life, living their normal day, that it still matches. And if that's the case, then I'm completely okay. And I've talked in a uh a previous episode about gut feeling, about the times that I've ignored it and what that cost me. My need for clarity isn't just about what my gut tells me, it's also about what the other person tells me. So, in an ideal world, I would always want somebody to be totally open and honest so that I could understand, so that I could learn from it, so that my brain can settle. And I know that that is completely unrealistic, but it's just what my brain needs. And I've had to learn to live with that. Um, I can't make it go away, um, because I just don't think it will. But I have had to find ways to function alongside of that. So this need for clarity has has actually also been dangerous for me in the past. And that's the truth that I sit with. And as an example of what I mean, and I'm not going into the dangerous side of that right now, but one that stays with me. So when my mother was dying, I I needed clarity from her. I needed to know why certain things happened. And I asked her, why did she put me in a children's home? Why so many of the other things? And she just didn't know. And I couldn't push beyond that because at that point she could no longer remember. The clarity I needed will never come now. And those questions will always be there, and that still hurts me. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can do about it except to accept it. The questions don't go away just because there are no answers. But I have learnt to carry them differently. But that's what clarity means to me. Once I have it, I can relax. I can make a choice, I can move forward. Without it, the loop keeps running. And learning to live with the loops that will never close is part, it's part of the work too. And I'm not gonna lie that it's easy, because it's not. And I want to talk about masking for a moment because this is where I think there is such a gap in information that isn't just unhelpful, but I think it could actually do um further harm. So the standard narrative, the one that most people have heard, um, is the one that's all over social media, and honestly, the one that a lot of the professionals are still working from, is that the masking is exhausting because you're performing all day, because you're pretending to be somebody that you're not. And so the answer logically is to unmask, to stop performing, and to let yourself be seen. Now I understand why that narrative exists. The intention behind it is all good, but I also believe that it's incomplete and incomplete information in the context of trauma is not neutral and it can cause real further harm. And my theory, and this was recently validated by Dr. Janina Fisher, which I still have to take a breath when I say out loud, is that the exhaustion doesn't come from masking itself, it comes from what's underneath it. Whether it's the shame, the fear, or the deeply installed belief that who you actually are is unacceptable. So the mask itself isn't the problem. The mask is the protection, it's what's driving it that is the problem. And here is why that matters so much, especially when trauma is part of the picture. If a professional is working with somebody who is all DHD and has a trauma history, and they're working for research that says the mask is the issue, help them to remove it. But the research on what trauma does to that picture doesn't exist yet or hasn't reached them yet. Therefore, the approach might be pushing somebody towards something that feels not just uncomfortable but genuinely unsafe. And that person will likely blame themselves for not being able to do it because that's what we do. We assume that we're the ones that doing it, that are doing it wrong. And this actually terrifies me, you know, it genuinely does, because the people who are truly wanting to heal, who are doing absolutely everything right, they're seeking support, um, they're brave enough to do that work. Um they deserve to have that work built on accurate foundations. And right now, in this particular intersection of Audi HD and trauma, um, and the masking, we're just not there yet. And that's why conversations like this will matter. Um, and that's why the research really does need to happen. And that's why lived experience, messy, complicated, unresolved as it is sometimes, it belongs in the room alongside the clinical evidence. Because right now, lived experience is sometimes ahead of the research. And the people it's trying to describe deserve better than what we're currently giving them or receiving. And there's something that I see a lot in the people that I work with, and honestly, I see in myself too: imposter syndrome. But it's it's not usually the way it's described. It's not people questioning whether they belong in a room or um whether they're experienced enough to do a job. I mean something deeper. People who have real demonstrable uh capability, they have proof right in front of them that they are more than capable and still cannot believe it. They still assume that they're the ones that are doing something wrong and they still look outward for the answer rather than inwards. And I think I understand why. Um, when you've spent years being handed information that just doesn't fit you, frameworks that weren't built for you, advice that doesn't work for you, and then you wonder why it's not working, and you learn slowly and painfully to trust outward sources more than you do yourself. You assume that if an expert created it, therefore it must be right, which means that if it isn't working, the problem must be with you. But, you know, and and this is the part that I find really important because if we are really trying to heal, genuinely trying to do the work, and we go to the professionals who are standing on that research that doesn't fit our specific picture, then the wrong questions are going to get asked. And then the exploration goes in the wrong direction. And it's not through any fault of the professional necessarily, but because of the map that they're working from has the same gaps as everybody else's. And again, this is where self-awareness becomes something much more than a wellness buzzword. It becomes a clinical tool. Now, Professor Bessel van der Collok uh writes about this in his book, um, The Body Keeps uh The Body Keeps the Score. The idea of learning to tap into yourself, to feel where it's uncomfortable, to develop a kind of internal knowing about where the work needs to happen. Uh, like an internal doctor almost. And many leading experts across trauma and neurodivergence agree. Um self-awareness isn't separate from healing. It's it's simply the path to it. And I have lived this. Recently, I went to my uh to see my psychologist, and I had done some of the work uh on myself beforehand, and I sat with it, found the edges of what needed looking at, and named it as best as I could. And when I walked in, I knew where we needed to go. And yeah, she knows me well enough that she could see what was happening, and you know, we both laughed when I called it um speed counselling, because I wasn't wandering around looking for the thing. I had already found it. I just needed the right person in the room to go there with me. Um, yeah, that's not a small thing. That's that's to me everything. And when you know yourself, when you've built enough self-awareness to locate where that discomfort lives, you can guide the work and you can walk into a session and say, This is what I think needs looking at. And you can question yourself and look within and then bring what you find to somebody qualified to help you work through it. And you're not a passive recipient of somebody else's map, you are an active participant in building your own. And you cannot heal what you don't understand, you cannot change what you haven't named, and you cannot guide the work or be guided through it if you haven't first done the honest, sometimes uncomfortable work of looking within. Now I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid to go there. I mean, I obviously I used to be a long time ago, but I've worked on myself extensively enough that I know how to get back up again after I do. And I can sit with you in that space place and I can ask you the questions, including the uncomfortable ones, and and help you find what's there. Now, I'm not saying this because I think that I've got all of the answers, but I but because I know what it's like to look and I know what changes when you find it. And I want to tell you what I do because I think it is a little bit different, and I and I want to be honest about why. So I have mentioned it before that I'm I'm I'm not a clinician, I'm not a therapist. I'm an Audi HD coach with lived experience, a trauma history, um, a diagnostic journey that took most of my adult life. And a deep, almost obsessive interest in how people's minds work. Now, if you do need clinical support, you know, therapy, psychiatry, diagnosis, please seek that out. Um that's not what I do, and I'll always be the first to say so. What I do is this I hit I help yourself see yourself more accurately. I ask the questions, including the uncomfortable ones, because I'm not afraid of them, and I've learned that the answers are usually where the real understanding lives. I look for patterns, I reflect back on what I see, and I do not hand you somebody else's framework and hope that it fits. I show you what you already do, or what you can already do, because here's the thing: you're already doing it every single day. You're already navigating the complexity, already finding ways through, already far more capable than you're giving yourself credit for. But you might just not be aware of that yet. I'm different not because I have a longer list of qualifications than anybody else, but because I bring something alongside that knowledge. I understand feelings from the inside. I can describe what it feels like to be in places where you might be in. I usually feel other people's pain too, which means that I'm not just observing your experience from a clinical distance. I'm curious enough to go deep. And I'm not going anywhere until we find what's actually there. And when that lands, when when somebody starts to see themselves clearly, perhaps for the first time, something shifts and something can change. And I absolutely love that moment. The aha, oh, I see. When clarity arrives and suddenly things make sense, when being understood and understanding yourself changes everything. Because it does. Understanding changes everything. And if you've been trying to figure yourself out using information that was never built for you, I want you to know that that does make complete sense. The map was incomplete and it wasn't your fault that it didn't work. And if you've been struggling in your relationships and wondering what's wrong with you, I want to offer you a different question. What's missing from your map? And if you've been sitting in rooms with professionals and leaving, feeling like something important didn't get reached, I want to gently suggest that self-awareness might be the thing that changes that. Not instead of uh professional support, but alongside of it. You can be the one who knows where to go. You can be the one who guides the work. You can be your own internal doctor. And then bring what you find to the people who can help you. And help you heal it. And if you are out there dating on the apps, navigating the checklists, trying to figure out what's a real red flag and what's just your nervous system doing its job. I also would like you to know that it isn't just you. It's hard, genuinely hard. And it gets easier when you know yourself better. It's it's never going to be perfect, nothing ever is, but it certainly gets easier. Because you cannot love from a false map, but you can build a better one. And yeah, that's where things start to change too. And if you'd like to work with me, whether that's you know, wonderful coaching or, you know, through the Dear Ilya voice notes or just by finding out more. The details are in the show notes and over at iliabetista.co.uk. And the book is coming. And it's called You're Welcome. The one that gives you the whole page, not just the checklist version, not the 60-second version. The real one, written by somebody who lived it, questioned it, sat with the uncomfortable parts of it. And came out the other side with something honest to say. Okay, I'll keep you posted about that. And I want to thank you for being here and uh to take care of yourselves. And as always, until next spiral. And if this podcast is helping you understand yourself differently, helping you feel seen, or helping you make sense of things that you've struggled to put into words for a long time. And if you'd like to support the podcast and help me keep creating conversations like this, the links are in the uh show notes. Whether that's sharing the episode, leaving a review, or working with me directly. It genuinely helps me more than you probably realize. And again, thank you for being here, and I'll see you next viral.