Why Attachment Theory Often Misses Neurodivergent Realities
Attachment theory is one of psychology’s most trusted maps. Secure. Anxious. Avoidant. Disorganised. Neat categories, widely taught, easily applied. They promise insight into how we love, connect, and survive relationships.
But maps are only useful if they reflect the terrain.
For many Autistic, ADHD, and AuDHD people, attachment theory doesn’t just feel inaccurate. It feels quietly pathologising. A framework designed through a neurotypical, compliance-shaped lens is often asked to explain nervous systems that were never built for that world.
And when the framework fails, the person is blamed.
At GRANN, we see this pattern repeatedly. People arrive labelled “avoidant” when they are sensory-protective or boundary-enforcing. “Anxious” when they are pattern-seeking in an unpredictable world. “Disorganised” when their nervous system has learned to survive chronic misunderstanding, masking, and relational mismatch.
Attachment theory, in its mainstream use, rarely asks a crucial question:
What if the behaviour is adaptive?
Attachment theory was never neuro-agnostic
John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth developed attachment theory in the mid-20th century, grounded in observations of infant–caregiver dyads within highly specific cultural and social norms. Proximity-seeking, eye contact, protest on separation, and reunion behaviour were interpreted through a narrow definition of “healthy bonding”.
These markers assume:
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predictable sensory environments
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shared communication styles
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consistent emotional signalling
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social norms that reward expressiveness and regulation through others
Autistic and ADHD nervous systems often violate these assumptions by design, not deficit.
An Autistic child who does not seek eye contact may be deeply attached. An ADHD child who oscillates between intense closeness and withdrawal may be regulating stimulation, not intimacy. An AuDHD adult who needs long periods of solitude may be maintaining connection by preventing burnout.
Yet attachment language often translates these realities into risk. Something that requires "fixing" or behaviour management.
When regulation is mistaken for rejection
Neurodivergent people frequently regulate through distance, parallel presence, or intermittent engagement. This is not emotional avoidance. It is nervous system wisdom. Boundary-setting.
For Autistic individuals, sensory overload can make proximity painful. For ADHD individuals, novelty and intensity can drive connection patterns that look inconsistent from the outside. For AuDHD people, the push–pull between sensory sensitivity and stimulation-seeking can create relational rhythms that do not fit linear models.
Attachment frameworks often interpret these patterns as relational insecurity rather than sensory, cognitive, nervous system or energy regulation.
“I care deeply,” one Autistic adult explains, “but if I stay too close for too long, my system shuts down.”
Under a neurotypical attachment lens, that shutdown is labelled avoidant. Under a neuro-affirming lens, it is protective homeostasis.
Not every pause in connection is a rupture. Not every withdrawal requires repair. For many neurodivergent people, distance is not a failure of attachment, but how attachment is preserved.
Masking creates false attachment narratives
Many Neurodivergent adults learn early that their natural attachment behaviours are unacceptable. So they mask.
They learn to perform closeness, responsiveness, and emotional availability in ways that meet social expectations but cost enormous internal resources. Over time, this can create attachment confusion, not because the person cannot attach, but because authenticity was unsafe.
Attachment theory rarely accounts for masking as a developmental factor.
When a person has spent decades overriding their nervous system cues to maintain connection, their adult attachment presentation may look “disorganised”. In reality, it reflects chronic relational trauma rooted in misattunement, not caregiver absence.
The issue was not insufficient bonding. It was incompatible systems.
Trauma is not the same as Neurodivergence. It is often Acquired and fits under the Umbrella of Neurodivergence.
Another frequent harm occurs when neurodivergent traits are collapsed into trauma narratives. While many neurodivergent people do experience trauma, their neurology itself is not evidence of it.
Hypervigilance can be a trauma response, but it can also be an ADHD attentional style. Withdrawal can be trauma, or it can be sensory recovery. Literal communication can be misread as emotional distance. Emotional intensity can be misread as instability.
When attachment theory is applied without neurodivergent literacy, it risks becoming a diagnostic shortcut rather than a relational tool.
And this risk is amplified by power.
Attachment frameworks are often applied top-down: by clinicians, educators, and systems with authority over diagnosis, access, and support. When power is uneven, attachment language can quietly become a compliance filter. The professional defines what “secure” looks like, and the Neurodivergent person bears the cost of failing to perform it convincingly enough.
Where attachment theory can still help
All of this does not mean attachment theory is useless.
For some people, attachment language can offer a starting point for reflection, especially when exploring relational trauma or unmet needs. The harm begins when the framework hardens into identity, diagnosis, or moral judgement, particularly for people whose nervous systems already sit outside the norm.
Used lightly, relationally, and with consent, attachment concepts can support insight. Used rigidly, they collapse difference into disorder.
A different question: what supports safety for this nervous system?
Neuro-affirming practice shifts the focus.
Instead of asking, “What attachment style is this?”
We ask, “What conditions allow this person to feel safe, regulated, and connected?”
For some Neurodivergent people, secure attachment looks like:
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predictable communication, not constant communication
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parallel presence rather than emotional mirroring
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explicit consent around touch, time, and expectations
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repair processes that are structured, not implied
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relationships that tolerate pauses without punishment
These are not deficits. They are design specifications.
A framework that cannot tolerate difference in how safety, closeness, and care are expressed will always mistake neurodivergence for dysfunction.
Toward a neuro-affirming relational model
A neuro-affirming future of relational care will not be built on tighter categories, but on wider tolerances for how connection can look, feel, and move.
This means centring relational consent. Sensory-informed care. Parallel connection. Co-regulation that does not require proximity. Communication norms that are explicit rather than assumed.
At GRANN, we see connection flourish when people are allowed to relate as they are, not as theory expects them to be.
Attachment is not broken in neurodivergent individuals or communities.
What is broken is the insistence that there is only one correct way to bond.
When we stop forcing squiggly or spikey nervous systems into tidy square boxes of relational frameworks, something remarkable happens. People do not become more attached.
They become more themselves.
And that is where real connection begins.
