Episode 385 - Julianne & Michael John Cusick, "Navigating Trauma and Healing in Neurodiverse Relationships"

Welcome back to “Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick.” In today’s episode, Michael John Cusick and Julianne Cusick dive deep into the world of neurodiversity, focusing on the unique challenges faced by couples where one partner is neurodivergent, often navigating undiagnosed autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or related conditions. Drawing on both personal experience and extensive clinical work, Julianne Cusick shares valuable frameworks—including the “umbrella” of neurodiversity—and explains how overlapping diagnoses like depression, anxiety, and mood disorders often connect.

Together, Michael and Julianne tackle the realities of trauma within neurodiverse relationships, especially the emotional impact on neurotypical partners who may feel unseen or misunderstood. They unpack terms like Cassandra Syndrome and Ongoing Traumatic Relationship Syndrome, revealing why typical marriage advice sometimes falls short for these couples. You’ll also hear practical insights about the importance of attunement, how the absence of emotional mirroring can lead to lasting pain, and new paths forward—like specialized neurodiversity coaching and frameworks that finally bring clarity and hope.

Transcript

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Hi everybody. Welcome to Restoring the Soul Podcast. It's Michael John Cusick. And once again, I am with Julianne Cusick, my bride of almost 35 years, talking about neurodiversity. Hi, Julianne. Hey everyone. Hi, Michael. Hi, listeners. I'm excited that we're talking about neurodiversity. It's one of my favorite subjects. On a recent podcast, I had mentioned a couple visuals, and I actually have those here with me now. So I'd like to go ahead and share those in case somebody's listening consecutively. If they're viewing this online, you don't have to go far into the video to be able to see these. One is a framework of the umbrella. So here's neurodiversity, and you can see that there's a lot of different things under that umbrella of neurodiversity. And then even the umbrella of autism spectrum disorder, there's a lot underneath that umbrella. And we talked about depression, anxiety, learning disorders, mood disorders, sleep disorders, eating disorders, and the list goes on. And so it's just helpful to— when there's a cluster of those symptoms or different diagnoses to begin thinking of a different way of looking at that and a different framework of neurodiversity or ASD. So that was one. Thanks for letting me share that. Yeah, you bet. We want to talk today about a really difficult aspect of ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and neurodiversity, and that is trauma that the neurotypical partner will often experience as a result of living with someone with ASD. So why don't you jump into talking about that? I think you've got some clinical names and descriptors for this. Well, and before we do that, I want to just say that many individuals on the autism spectrum or with neurodiversity also have been impacted by trauma. And that stems from early childhood, not fitting in, not understanding, perhaps being punished for things that they, they don't understand. And so it's not just quote unquote the neurotypical partner, and it's certainly not intentional on the neurodivergent's part to be um, the, a factor in contributing to the trauma. But I do want to state that most people that I have worked with that are neurodivergent also have elements of trauma from growing up in a neurotypical world where they're wired differently. And there's just a lot of internal pain. Um, there are many times neurodivergent individuals will turn to substances food, alcohol, drugs to help feel, feel better, calm their anxiety, take the edge off of social situations, et cetera. And I definitely don't want to cause any further harm by not addressing the fact that many of them have their own trauma symptoms and are impacted by trauma. Yeah, even the common one of just being bullied because you're different growing up in school. Yeah, or teased, you know, maybe that, you know, child has a great mind for facts or needs to have their pencils all in a row or their desk in a certain order and kids come and mess that up. And that can really be hard when that individual is just trying to maintain a sense of safety safety and structure that they feel more comfortable operating in. So that said, yeah, there— and this is when neurodiversity is not diagnosed, so undiagnosed. So a husband and wife are in a neurodiverse relationship and they don't know it. And a neurodiverse relationship could be where one or both partners are on the spectrum or are neurodivergent. It seems, and this is supported in the research, we know that autism looks different in women and in men, and so does neurodiversity. So for some reason, whether it's caught more, like diagnosed more, or it's more prevalent, or both, there seems to be like a 70%, 30% of men are more likely to be neurodivergent than, than And so where we find these patterns on what happens is a neurotypical wife, like this is us, right? Get married. I expect a certain way of relating and that doesn't happen. It's like there's a change from dating and courtship to marriage because we've gone from living separately now to living together. And just as I put my hands further apart and then bring them close together, you can feel like the tension. And oftentimes that is very unsettling for a neurodivergent individual. They can cope with the neurotypical partner when there's distance, when there's space, but then this intimacy, physical closeness, there's too much of it. Masking falls down. The neurotypical partner is confused, oftentimes very hurt by how the neurodivergent partner responds or doesn't respond the way would be typical or expected. And so when months and years go on and there's not a framework for understanding the neurodiversity, that neurotypical partner, and in this case we're talking about the wife, they can feel depressed. They can feel like they're the problem. They can feel blamed by their partner. Many times they do a lot of work trying to improve themselves, trying to make their partner happy. And there's several syndromes. They're not going to find them in the DSM. They're not a clinical diagnosis, but terms like Cassandra syndrome. So ancient story, Cassandra wasn't believed. And so many neurotypical wives, if they're telling somebody, hey, this is what's happening in marriage, they're met with, oh, that's just normal, or all men are that way, or there's nothing, you know, special about this. My husband's the same way. And so the neurotypical partner really is not believed, not understood for the differences that her nervous system is picking up on, and her experiences are not validated. They're not taken as legitimate and real. Which can be a kind of secondary trauma, right? When someone's experienced trauma and they are finally coming out talking about it and they're not believed, that is a secondary trauma because the experience of trauma is one of being alone and not having the resources within to cope. Yes, absolutely. Well said. Talking through like an attachment lens, you know, if I smile like mom smiles to the baby, You know, the baby mirrors back, and even right now we're looking at each other, but I'm smiling and you weren't smiling back, right? That's a great example of the affect not being matched. Now, you weren't intentionally not smiling. It's like, it's just not a category. It's very automatic when you see a mother and child go back and forth. In a neurodiverse relationship or where the neurotypical wife is looking for that mirroring just naturally from their neurodivergent partner and they're not getting it, they think something is wrong with them, much like the child in the experiment where the mom goes blank. Still face experiment. Yeah, the child, baby just starts to cry and get all worked up. And so from an attachment, this there's a phrase called affective deprivation disorder. And basically what it means is I'm deprived from the matching, the affect being matched, and, and something in me starts to erode inside. And so that's something that can happen in undiagnosed neurodiverse couples. And, and like, how do you say to your husband, Well, I'm smiling and you're not. And it's like, that's an issue in a relationship, you know? And it's, it's, it's really can be a clue that there's something more going on when the absence of that is there, but the impact is real on the neurotypical partner. So I want you to say the name again, because I think that with, you said a lot there, say the name again, and then I have a question. Okay. Yeah. Um, from an attachment language, um, affective deprivation disorder. Okay. Got it. Affect is not being matched or met. Right. First of all, my question is, it sounds like that's something that's not necessarily just a partner of a neurodiverse individual. You could have that with somebody that's just emotionally shut down, severely depressed, addicted, something like that. That. So you can respond to that. Then I've got another question. Okay. Well, I actually want to expand. These two syndromes, if you will, are also under the umbrella that's now being used in the community, OTRS. Well, what in the world is that? Ongoing Traumatic Relationship Syndrome. And again, this is not in the DSM, but this is in the field where it's addressing when there's ongoing trauma in a relationship and the impact that that has on the partner. And this is being used in neurodiverse relationships, but it's not exclusive to that. Ongoing traumatic relationship syndrome can be experienced by partners living with someone who is drug or alcohol addicted or poor addicted, or there's, um, betrayals of other kinds, lies, withholdings, secrets. So this ongoing traumatic relationship syndrome isn't a one-time event. It's like this chronic kind of experience in the relationship that goes on and on and on that's unresolved for months, years, even decades. And that has an impact. And so it sounds like the heart of that, regardless of what the cause is— ASD, addiction, mood disorder— the heart of it is an absence of attunement. And the person who's on the receiving end of that, if they're not getting attunement, then their nervous system is going to get dysregulated and eventually be shaped around, I'm on my own and I'm simply not going to be attuned to. Usually people who are suffering from, whether it's affective deprivation disorder or ongoing traumatic relationship syndrome, they're going to have emotional, physical, and even psychological side effects. So they might have chronic illness, chronic pain, they might be depressed or have anxiety, they might feel like they're walking around on eggshells with their partner. It's very common to have depression, anxiety, low self-esteem. And oftentimes the partner can be like really successful outside of the home, and yet their experience inside the home is very, very different in their intimate partner relationship. So they feel less than, maybe they don't feel smart, like they just don't have the same level of, if you will, success that they do outside of the home. They can really be hypervigilant. They can have flashbacks. They can have nervous system responses where if there's like a certain subject or they're— they need to ask their partner about something, they'll just get really tight inside because they're predicting they've received negative responses in the past and they're like preparing for that negative response to happen again in the present. And then they can also take on a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of doubt. They can have trouble sleeping. And so again, these are symptoms of somebody with trauma. And instead of it being a one-time event, it's like this slow drip of living in a dynamic that is unhealthy. I guess the big question that I would anticipate that listeners are thinking is, how does that person get help? you Because, know, unlike somebody with a personality disorder or somebody with a flagrant addiction and they won't get help, the person who's neurodiverse can't change themselves. And it's not gonna be a good idea to go into couples counseling. So how do you work with women that have that kind of trauma from that affective deprivation? Yeah, yeah, that's tough. This is where it really gets hard. And for those individuals who are listening right now and you find yourself like, oh my gosh, this is resonating, I feel this way, you really wanna meet with somebody who can attune to you, who can hear and understand, and someone who has the framework of understanding of neurodiversity to be able to further flesh out if this is what's at play in the relationship. And while somebody who's neurodivergent can't change their neurology, they can learn new behaviors. And so this is instead of couples, you know, counseling, this is where like coaching and learning new skills or creating a shared language, as I call it, can be very, very helpful. So there's a lot of individuals now that do do neurodiverse coaching and It's, it's skills that are based, not just communication skills that work for neurotypical couples, they're nuanced to work with couples that are neurodiverse. So there's a higher likelihood that they're going to work, that there's going to be some traction, but it requires work on both parts, not just the neurotypical trying harder and not just the neurodivergent trying harder because Most neurodivergent individuals are trying harder than the average Joe, and they're not getting the results that they think that they should get. Maybe they've read a bunch of books on marriage and relationship and they're trying to implement all of those things. And if this is you and you're listening, like, you're not alone. And it feels very crazy making, like, why doesn't my wife respond the way it says that she should in this book? And oftentimes this is, you know, what's underlying is this undiagnosed neurodiversity. And so for both partners, I think you really need somebody who understands neurodiversity and finding out, like, is this a framework? Even if it's not full-blown ASD, even, you know, if it's ADHD, that is significant to live with. And depending on executive functioning, you know, maybe the person's chronically late or losing things, that has an impact. And so again, it's not pathologize, but it's to understand and create a way of working with it so that instead of the couple, the individuals working against each other, they can start to work towards one another. And I've seen in you, Michael, great change because of the framework of understanding yourself, our dynamics, and learning new tools and having do-overs is one of them. When it doesn't go well the first time, one of us saying, hey, can we do do-over. That, that's one thing that's really important is to know that even though neurodiversity is going to remain, that people can change and they do change because we can learn a new way of being. Will you come back and talk about this idea that people who are neurodivergent are often you working, know, very, very hard? I remember our, uh, couples neurodiversity coach brought that up once and I felt so seen and validated because the way that my brain operates and how that plays out between us, I had felt so often like a failure and I was trying as hard as I could and that it wasn't having the net effect that I wanted. And I really was trying really hard. You know, it's like learning how to speak a foreign language on one level and just not being able to get it. I remember being as a kid taking, or in high school, taking a couple of years of German. And then I was somewhere on vacation and ran into a German person, and I started speaking what I thought was German. And they looked at me like, what language are you talking about? And that's often how I have felt. So I think it might mean a lot as you're speaking to people that are neurodivergent to say it's common to have that feeling and you see, and we see that they're working hard. Yeah. So yes, neurodivergent individuals are usually working harder than their neurotypical peers working harder but not necessarily smarter, not necessarily getting the results they want or being effective. Some of this has to do with perception, and I talked about the duck-bunny image, and here it is. And you can look at this and say, well, what do you see? You know, do you see a duck or do you see a bunny? And what's interesting about this is that many times the partner's very well-meaning and wanting to do something. I remember this was years ago, we were hosting a party at our home and I had asked you to bring up extra chairs and put them out on the back patio. And what you ended up doing was vacuuming the living room. And I was confused and a bit frustrated. I can't remember if we knew or not about the neurodiversity, but the intent was good, right? The intent was to please, to help, but the party wasn't inside. I didn't care about the carpet being vacuumed. I needed the chairs outside so when we had the event, people could sit. So it's that kind of it's like a miss. You know, we think about the love languages. You know, if somebody's love language is acts of service and all they're getting from their partner is words of affirmation, it's never going to fill their cup. And so it's this mismatch between what is really needed or wanted and what is given. And so the intent, you know, 9 times out of 10 is positive, right? I'm trying to support, I'm trying to love, I'm trying to serve, I'm trying to come alongside, I'm trying trying I'm to do something nice for you, but it's not, it's not experienced that way by the partner. That's an example of what I mean by they're working harder. Yeah. And you touched on this, but you brought up this issue of the sensitivity of what I did was intended to be helpful, but it wasn't perceived that way. Because I remember the incident where I'm vacuuming thinking, wow, you know, my wife's going to be so impressed that I'm vacuuming, and she didn't even ask me, but it was actually missing something else. And that brings up this issue that we'll talk about in another episode on the podcast of rejection-sensitive dysphoria, which is something that has been a helpful category for me and at least a half a dozen men who this has really given them some language. We're going to have to wrap up soon, but will you talk about what it's like in your 2-week intensives, how you are helping couples in those intensives when they have neurodiverse issues, knowing that not everybody comes with that as an issue. Some do, others come for other issues, and they're not exactly sure why they're struggling, why they can't connect, why they have such conflict. And then you bring this to the surface and it kind of becomes the key that unlocks everything. If we're wrapping up, I don't know if I'll have time to answer that question because it's a process. Um, but I have worked You've got 7 minutes. Okay, I think I can do it in 7 minutes. Many couples come to Restoring the Soul because they have unresolved problems and issues in their marriage, and they've gone to counseling for years, they've gone to marriage retreats, and nothing has really worked. And so when they come here, one of the lenses that I encourage all of our therapists to use is to rule out underlying neurodiversity, because if we miss that, we're missing the most important thing thing in that relationship because it's a real game changer to name it and to understand it and to reframe it for both individuals. So when when I, I start working with a couple in a 2-week intensive, and I really do need 2 weeks in these complicated situations, especially when there's undiagnosed neurodiversity, my first job is to be an investigator, is to be curious, is to sit and hear their stories, and I'll usually spend at least 1, 2, if not 3 days or more hearing their story as a couple and as an individual. It helps me get to know them. It builds safety and trust and a relational rapport, and that is needed for any type of therapeutic work to be done. From there, if I'm suspicious, I will do some different interviews, different assessments. In a previous podcast, we talked about the ASPE quiz. I also mentioned 12 common traits of undiagnosed autism or ASD, and I oftentimes will look at those 12 and interview the couple and say, where do you see this at play? And even if it's not a full-blown ASD level 1 or 2, neurodiversity, ADHD, ADD is enough for that to impact the relationship. So we, I do further investigation and exploration. And then if this lens, if this framework of understanding is fitting, and I'm you hearing, know, the response from my couple of, oh my gosh, know, you you're reading my mail. How did you know that? And I know I'm on the right track. And if the assessments line up with what I'm seeing, with what the couple is reporting, then we continue to move forward. So there's some psychoeducation involved, and then we will move on to very practical skills-based coaching to help create a shared language for the couple so that each partner is experiencing maybe for the first time in years, if not ever, being heard and seen by their partner. So we're beginning to build trust. We're beginning to sync neurological systems, nervous systems, and really working towards a foundation. And then as with many things in counseling, it's not a one-time, you know, fixes all. It's the new launching pad for people to move forward with this new understanding and with a list of new helps and supports and resources and recommendations to take them on the journey ahead. From personal experience, I think it took us about a year to 2 years to really get our, our head around this framework and really understand It took me time to heal some of the hurts that I had taken as so personal, to reframe those and see that wasn't intended to be hurtful to me, even though that was how I perceived it. And so learning new ways of being, new ways of understanding, it's just like if we were going to go learn cha-cha, it's going to take more than one dance class. If we're going to learn German or Spanish or Mandarin, you know, it's going to take time. And so I want people to know this is— this will have a learning curve. Yeah, thank you for all of that. And because not everybody who listens to the podcast understands the format of the intensive, you did talk about 2 weeks. We work with people 3 hours a day, Monday through Friday. They have the weekend off. They come back and they do the second week. That's 30 hours of counseling, which is about the average of what people do in a year. It's actually significantly above that for people that are really committed. They might do 30 hours of counseling. But what you just described, people within that 2-week time frame can get the clarity through the assessment, through the relational piece of this where they're going to feel very, very safe. And then, as you said, the skills, the tools, the conversations It's some real hope and healing during the intensive, but then this launching of being able to go and live in a more fruitful, productive, connected way ultimately. And I've seen you do that with so many people, and I am so, so grateful for you to share your expertise. Very, very glad to have this conversation because I know it's going to be helpful to a number of people that are still scratching their heads saying, why? Why hasn't all of the counseling and the help that we've sought been helpful? We still don't know what's going on. Yeah.