Each begets the other. Trauma and abuse is in many ways (socially) hereditary but often enhanced by neurodivergence. In a brain with sensory sensitivities outside the norm, connection can be difficult (even between ND people), and from that disconnection often arises the sorts of overwhelms in both caregiver and child that make for neglect out of overwhelm or explosive situations.
Couple that with just plain generational trauma - physical punishment that ND people are more sensitive to, the high prevalence of CSA, and a world that doesn’t even try to make any accommodations and you find it more rare to find neurodivergent people who are untraumatized.
One result mentioned here but worth highlighting is the capacity to dissociate and the existence of dissociative disorders. Many people in this cohort also find they have the ability to structurally dissociate as a coping mechanism of last resort - an outsized percentage of people diagnosed with OSDD, DID, and DDNOS are neurodivergent, and among social groups of neurodivergent people often dissociative people will tend to attract - it’s nearly to the point that “capacity to dissociate” could itself be a neurotype. Anyway it’s a fascinating line of study, and if I didn’t have folks w dissociative disorders in my life I might doubt their existence.
Disassociation can be a useful thing to be able to do, sometimes. Under certain circumstances you can be better at dealing with dangerous, stressful situations, for example.
It's generally maladaptive but there's a reason the brain does it.
There's quite a few definitions of dissociation including mundane "forget details of your daily commute" to "blanking out to a wall" - I'm talking about structural dissociation which is more that the mind heavily compartmentalizes into parts to adapt to vastly different situations like war, random violence, trauma, or overwhelming situations
Obligatory PSA that "the theory of structural dissociation" (as published by did-research.org) is not very accurate in many respects, even though the concept of "structure dissociation" itself (as in the brain compartmentalizating/partitioning itself to separate incompatible information) is still a true thing. (I hate when phonies repurpose the names of true concepts to pass off a bunch of fake ones.)
I'm mainly talking about stuff like: the maximum age supposedly being 6–9, the strict separation into "ANPs"/"EPs"/etc, and stuff like that, being unsupported at best. I do think disorganized attachment itself is one of the more plausible theories for how structural dissociation happens, but I generalize it more to any incompatible information instead.
I fully agree - ANPs/EPs especially really don't hold up in practice. It seems capacity to dissociate might be correlated to the trait of suggestibility, and that's how I personally think about it mechanistically. Personal experience and all, but I keep a lower profile here!
I have a dissociative disorder (DID) and it is definitely maladaptive sometimes. Sometimes I can be the only one not completely panicking in a situation and bring it under control. But other times I don't pay enough attention to things I need to fix quickly because I just put it away and forget about it. It's probably not just dissociation that does this, but dissociation does somewhat enable it.
taurath · · focus · HN ↗
Couple that with just plain generational trauma - physical punishment that ND people are more sensitive to, the high prevalence of CSA, and a world that doesn’t even try to make any accommodations and you find it more rare to find neurodivergent people who are untraumatized.
One result mentioned here but worth highlighting is the capacity to dissociate and the existence of dissociative disorders. Many people in this cohort also find they have the ability to structurally dissociate as a coping mechanism of last resort - an outsized percentage of people diagnosed with OSDD, DID, and DDNOS are neurodivergent, and among social groups of neurodivergent people often dissociative people will tend to attract - it’s nearly to the point that “capacity to dissociate” could itself be a neurotype. Anyway it’s a fascinating line of study, and if I didn’t have folks w dissociative disorders in my life I might doubt their existence.
idiotsecant · · focus · HN ↗
It's generally maladaptive but there's a reason the brain does it.
taurath · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
I'm mainly talking about stuff like: the maximum age supposedly being 6–9, the strict separation into "ANPs"/"EPs"/etc, and stuff like that, being unsupported at best. I do think disorganized attachment itself is one of the more plausible theories for how structural dissociation happens, but I generalize it more to any incompatible information instead.
taurath · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗
LoganDark · · focus · HN ↗