Neurodivergent people and trauma

There are different forms of trauma that we can experience as children, teenagers and adults, namely individual, interpersonal, structural and collective trauma. Neurodivergent people are however often more vulnerable to experiencing trauma, especially for example bullying, victimisation, sexual abuse, generational trauma and accidents. https://neurodivergentinsights.com/adhd-and-trauma/?srsltid=AfmBOoqlLQ8ZhWUonjZhlcVx1j3Dg18eiVE4gmL62kfIltW7_W--rdOS

In various studies it has been found that 9 out of 10 autistic women and people assigned female at birth have experienced domestic violence and 55-89% of autistic people have experienced victimisation by a person they know.  https://theautisticadvocate.com/new-research-from-kieran-rose-and-dr-amy-pearson-finds-widespread-abuse-of-autistic-people/ 

There is also trauma that we can experience as neurodivergent people that is due to our different sensory needs, this is too often not understood or even discussed with us. Unless therapists, health and mental health professionals in particular understand things like the differences in the neurodivergent nervous system, body and our internal signals (interoception) and experiences of alexithymia, then they might not appreciate how sensory overload or deprivation impacts us. The emphasis is so often on us having faulty thinking and false beliefs that need to be changed, rather than that their ableist ideas about us need to change.

The systemic trauma we are affected by as neurodivergent people is less obvious to many, but those of us who have been left burnt out and physically and mentally unwell because of this can testify to the impact upon our lives. Systems generated trauma can be a constant, prolonged dripping tap in our lives as neurodivergent children, adults and as parents of neurodivergent children/adults. That prolonged experience of being unsafe is essentially the result of stigma and often has a devastating impact. Trauma caused by the education system, the criminal justice system, the health and mental health system and the welfare system, has left its indelible marks and scars upon so many of us who identify as neurodivergent. These systems claim to want to ‘do better’ but too often their solutions are too little too late and may also be completely inappropriate, actually causing even more trauma.

For many of us we have had contact at one time or another with the mental health system. This is because of the lens through which we are too often seen and labelled as neurodivergent people. This system has told us we are defective, disordered, psychotic, dysfunctional. It has restrained and sought to retrain us. It has over prescribed and never apologised to us. It has traumatised us and never looked at itself in the mirror to see the pain it has caused. With some psychiatrists telling us that autistic burnout doesn’t exist, despite The Royal College of Psychiatry legitimising it; gaslighting us, invalidating our experiences and humiliating us, we are too often left alone to find a way though the valley of the shadows.

We can fail to understand the accumulative nature of things that might eventually lead to trauma for a neurodivergent person. Some things are instantly traumatising for anyone but for so many neurodivergent people prolonged exposure to certain environments that are not in sync with our differences and different needs leads to burnout. I am not just talking about physical environments here that might impact our senses, I am also talking about attitudes and behaviours towards us that are ableist. An environment can try to be neuro-affirming but due to stigma and ableist attitudes the adjustments are merely tokenistic and therefore too often actually meaningless and ineffective. Regarding schools and the impact upon neurodivergent children and teenagers a study carried out by Sinead Mullally and her team found that most of the children who are unable to attend school were neurodivergent and found that 85% of autistic children and young people were traumatised by school https://researchfeatures.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Sinead-Mullally.pdf  This is the reality.  School trauma is real and it doesn’t just go away. That trauma can impact that individual for many years, if not their entire life.

When I talk about school trauma some people might think that I am being soft, a bit of a snow flake, that trauma is the wrong word to use in relation to school and that children and young people just need to be tougher and more resilient. Resilience formed in a person due to traumatic experiences is actually survival. I survived as a child and again as an adult in circumstances that were deeply traumatising. Home and also school were mostly not safe for me emotionally, psychologically or even physically at times. Surviving this and the bullying and victimisation I endured at school and in workplaces also had a devastating impact upon me and my identity. 

Is that what we want for neurodivergent children and adults? Do we want neurodivergent children and young people to be genuinely resilient and be able to thrive or to survive because of suffering? Surviving for most of us as neurodivergent people leads to addiction, mental health problems, burnout and chronic illness. The number of neurodivergent people who are struggling with things like poor mental health and burnout is not because they are defective but because the systems that traumatised them are defective.

So we can introduce white papers that seek to make things better for children with SEN, many of whom will be neurodivergent, but unless we address the elephant in the room and the impact of environments and systems, unless we address stigma and how we view neurodivergent people, it is a drop in the ocean and quite frankly a potential waste of time.