I should say right off the bat here, that I am not an expert on neurodivergence; as a whole, or on any particular one. In fact, I think if I were, I wouldn’t have been able to come up with this tool for understanding, as I probably would have gotten lost in the weeds of the complexity of it all. So what I’m going to offer here is an acknowledged, gross over-simplification. But hopefully a useful one.
What has been happening that led me to create this tool, is that I have had a growing number of couples come into my therapeutic space with a dynamic of disconnection that is impacted by neurodivergence. If partners process information in significantly different ways, they will behave and communicate in ways that are confusing, and often painful, to each other. And when it starts to emerge that this is the case, it helps explain why they are so stuck in their pattern; partly because neurodiversity is a fixed thing, but also due to the misunderstandings that arise when partners don’t understand their own difference, let alone their partner’s. We make meaning of each other through the lens of our attachments wounds, and we get further and further from each other over time.
So I came up with a little metaphor. Something that helps people better appreciate which kind of nervous system they most relate to, as well as the difference between how they process information and how their partner does. This way, they can make new and more accurate meaning out of their partner’s behavior in their co-regulation-cycle-gone-wrong, which has the potential of bringing down the temperature on the whole thing significantly.
Think for the moment of your nervous system has having a Richter Scale; a measurement for how stimuli and information, both external and internal, impacts you. A “10” impacts you greatly, a “1” barely impacts you at all. We’ll define the “normal” nervous system as having increments from 1 to 10 (1, 2, 3…). We can say that it has to be pretty quiet (not a lot of information higher on the scale coming in) to be impacted by things happening in the 1-3 range. If there’s anything else going on, those smaller hits get weeded out of our awareness. If we want to focus on stimuli that hits us at a 5, but there are 6’s happening around us, we can choose to do that. If there are 7’s going on, it gets harder, but we can probably still choose to hone in on the 5 for some period of time. Things get “louder” than that, it will likely no longer feel possible to choose our focus. There is a soft rhythm to our ability to narrow our focus, then a need to zoom out into something more relaxed; we focus for a while, we need to zoom out for a bit. If there is a ton of information coming in at any level, or if there is just a lot happening on the high end of the scale, the system can get overwhelmed and lose its ability to process. Overall, though, there is a relative functionality, balance and harmony to this nervous system.
For someone who identifies with the experience of ADHD, it operates a bit differently. Not much makes it into our conscious awareness at the low end of the scale no matter what else is going on; it’s gotta hit us at about a 5 or higher to register at all. If I want to focus on that 5, but there is a 6 happening, I’m already screwed, let alone a 7 or higher - the primary issue here is the inability to choose where my focus goes. And what determines whether something is a 5 or 6 is very subjective; whatever is personally compelling in the moment is not the same as what matters to us on a deeper level. In short, the urgent outweighs the important. If the “H” part of the diagnosis is real for us, all of that difficulty eases if we are moving our bodies. The overwhelm we are often experiencing is largely confounded by the frustration of not being able to choose where our focus is, as well as the loops we get into as our focus travels from one compelling stimuli to the next without an off-ramp. The zoom in/zoom out thing gets pretty extreme; throwing us down hyper-focused rabbit holes until the satisfying ping of completion, or until it burns out completely into a total inability to do anything but zone. But man, what we can do in that hyper-focused state! And, in a crisis, we naturally cut through the noise to deal with the most essential need of the moment. Our highly associative thinking, taken down rabbit holes, can be extremely creative and lead to out-of-the-box ideas.
For someone who identifies with the experience of High Sensitivity, or Sensory Processing Sensitivity, we have to move the whole scale up; it starts at 3 and goes to 13. And the increments are not 3, 4, 5…but rather 3, 3.25, 3.5, 3.75…all the way up the scale. Nothing gets weeded out, everything is a hell of a lot “louder”, and there is just a whole lot more information, not coming in (we all take in the same amount), but impacting us and being processed as different. So it takes a hell of a lot more time and energy to process all of that abundance, context and nuance. We can choose to focus on something in the middle of the scale if there is something higher going on just like “normies” - in fact, we are often needing to exercise a very effective “honing” muscle to zero-in on something, despite all of the noise that is perpetually part of our experience. But overwhelm is a constant and very real issue, for which, if we fail to get in front, the only solution is for all and any inputs to STOP. We zoom in and zoom out, but, studies have shown that our minds are never “at rest” in the same way as other people - we are constantly in a state of processing. But, HSP’s have stunning intuition; immediately grasping (while not being able to immediately articulate) both the whole of something, as well as the nuances, connections and ramifications of that thing. And, given the time and space they need to in order to process all of that, they will integrate and articulate it all in a way that is highly illuminating. I call it “circling the drain” to understanding with unrivaled depth and breadth.
And for people who identify as being on the Autism Spectrum, EVERYTHING IS A 10!
When I give this spiel in my office, I usually pause here for dramatic and comedic affect, as this really does pretty much capture it for a lot of folks. But the downstream effects of this are pretty vast in terms of knowing, let alone choosing, what to focus on, and how to prioritize. Everything carries the same salience and importance. And talk about OVERWHELM. Everything being a 10 is enough to overwhelm anyone, let alone the amplifying effects of trying to suss out what to focus on, what it all means, and how to effectively respond. I’m not even sure what this means for the idea of zooming in and out. Folks on the Spectrum definitely describe experiences similar to those with ADHD here, in terms of the extreme swings between the two. But, given the time and space they need to do so, people on the Spectrum can, in a different way but similar to HSP’s, capture the whole of everything at once, not miss a thing, and provide a take on things that sheds entirely new light on experience.
So, like I said - gross oversimplifications. But we are all trapped inside of our own nervous systems, and struggle to know how it is different from others in a way that can lead to a lot of misunderstandings and hurt amongst partners. I have found that, if folks are better able to see themselves clearly, they are better at letting in their partner on what they are struggling with, and at advocating for what they need. Hope this helps you with that, or in some other way. In the work I do, we can further make sense out of why, for instance, people with ADHD often get misread as selfish. Or what makes it so hard for HSP’s and ADHD folks to communicate sometimes. But as it stands, if this speaks to you in some way, or if something doesn’t seem right to you, let me know your thoughts.