How ADHD can make you vulnerable to abuse & control: spot the signs
This post may be difficult to read and references a range of different abuse. It refers anonymously to a range of different people and isn't intended to reflect one person or relationship in particular.
Last night, I attended a Refuge event and realised how when I was in a 'coercive and controlling' relationship, the thought of calling a domestic abuse charity helpline had never even crossed my mind.
This is because I didn't even realise I was in an abusive relationship: I'd managed to blame and gaslight myself into believing that it was my fault.
Abuse doesn’t come in one shape or form. Emotional abuse in particular, is extremely difficult to spot, because it's invisible. In 2015, ‘controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship’ was made a crime with a prison sentence of 5 years in the UK.
This is not limited to, but can include things like:
isolating a person from their friends and family
controlling what they do, where they go, who they can see, what they wear, and when they sleep
repeatedly putting them down
financial abuse
threats to reveal or publish private information.
The link between a person who experienced ‘adverse childhood experiences’ and mental illness later in life is as strong as the link between smoking and cancer. Unsurprisingly, research has found that children with ADHD have higher exposure to these experiences than those without ADHD.
When you grow up believing that you are the problem, and being told off for being 'lazy' or 'stupid', this becomes your default setting. Children with ADHD receive 20,000 more negative comments than their peers by age 10.
I have lost count of the number of peoples' houses I have moved into after dating them for a few weeks. I did a partner visa with a stranger. I used to go on dates and think it was perfectly normal to start them with a shot of tequila. I have had been physically assaulted and felt guilty for 'making a scene' by getting ice for my injuries.
Before I accessed proper support for my ADHD, it felt as though my life didn't belong to me. It felt like anybody could walk up to me and tell me what to do, and I'd do it, as I did when a stranger told me to lose 3 inches of weight off my hips to do a job I didn't even want to do when I was 18.
It makes me incredibly sad to think of how much trauma I have experienced that I have blamed myself for throughout my life. Last night was a good reminder:
It is never your fault for being abused.
As ADHD is linked to a 30% developmental delay in executive functioning skills, this can makes us extra-vulnerable to abuse, including in the following ways:
1) Self-awareness
Being unaware of our own feelings, needs and/or experiences can mean that we're likely to seek information from external sources about our internal states. For example, we might be constantly asking for reassurance, or whether we're doing something 'right.
We may trust other people's versions of realities much more than we trust our own. When I eventually called the police about an incident relating to a relationship I had and was asked the mandatory list of questions to determine whether coercive or controlling abuse had taken place, I was shocked when I said yes to almost everything.
I strongly recommend people with ADHD keep a (secure!) diary where they can ground themselves in reality. When a friend noted that I'd cried every day she'd stayed with me and my partner due to arguments, I dismissed this, until reading my diary and seeing that she was right. It was extremely sad, but validating, to know that I wasn't just making it up: these things had happened.
This is extra important for you to do if you're worried you're in a potentially abusive relationship, as this could become evidence if needed later on. I also strongly recommend accessing therapy and/or coaching in addition to speaking to people you trust in your life about what you're experiencing.
Seeing things through the eyes of another person can often remind us that what we're taking as 'normal' is not actually normal. If this resonates with you, try to hold on to as much of your identity as possible, making an extra effort to do the hobbies and things you enjoy outside of a controlling relationship.
2) Impulsivity
In my experience of people with ADHD, we are far more likely to overshare personal and sensitive information (often to our detriment) with people who have not earned our trust. This can create uneven relationships with people who may be much better able to consciously regulate what they decide to tell us, and bonding over 'trauma' rather than a healthy connection.
Love bombing is a form of emotional abuse that involves a person going above and beyond for another in an effort to manipulate them into a relationship. It can create a sense of dependency which is then tapered off, leaving the victim wondering what happened to the 'nice' person they knew.
This is particularly dangerous for people with ADHD, because the dopamine rush of a new relationship can ignite our hyper-focus, and we may be utterly consumed ourselves. This can feel confusing and overwhelming, especially if we are in a relationship with someone who is taking advantage of us. Healthy relationships should not leave us feeling so dependent and consumed.
This can also result in us making impulsive decisions from a place of extreme vulnerability, such as my decision to do a partner visa with someone I knew nothing about. In contrast, they knew my entire life story - I am incapable of lying! The older I get, the more I am slowly accepting that 'romance' like being whisked off on holiday by someone I don't know is actually not a strong foundation for a healthy relationship.
It's important for people with ADHD to remember that trust is earned over time, not an automatic right. Being able to spot when someone is proclaiming their love for us or calling us non-stop when they don't even know us as 'warning signals' instead of 'true love' is extremely important for us to have healthy relationships.
3) Memory
Gaslighting is a 'sophisticated manipulation tactic which certain types of personalities use to create doubt in the minds of others'. For someone who may experience memory challenges as a part of having ADHD, this makes us extra vulnerable to gaslighting, as we can easily lose trust in our own memories.
If we're trusting the memory of another person instead, this can be extremely dangerous if they do not have our best interests at heart. For example, a previous partner tried to convince me that 'we had agreed' that they would do something when we actually agreed the opposite! Luckily, there were factors around this situation that meant I finally was 100% sure that they were lying.
Within 15 minutes they were telling me multiple versions of the truth, each one starting with 'so I promise this really is the whole truth', eventually ending in the admittance that they had cheated on me.
I would imagine that a lot of abuse starts with targeting our memories and trust within ourselves. If we start to lose trust in what we can remember, then we can lose trust in our decision making abilities.
Again, this is why it's incredibly helpful and important to have a written diary (that is safely protected - this previous partner had read mine, so I bought a Remarkable) and to talk to people outside of the relationship, who can provide reassurance.
4) Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria
Experiencing challenges with regulating our emotions, low self-esteem, and Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, can make us extremely vulnerable.
Throughout my life, people have been able to deliberately 'trigger me' into having an emotional reaction which they could use to their advantage. This was also often done in relationships, where a simple conversation would quickly escalate into a catastrophe, with me blaming myself for being 'emotional'.
Experiencing this can also make us highly compassionate and caring towards others, which means we can often search for ways to rationalise their behaviour. We may also be particularly prone to comments suggesting potential rejection or designed to impact our self-esteem.
For example, someone who exploited me as a child once told me that no one in my life liked me, and nobody ever really would, because I'd done modelling. This comment has stayed with me and impacts my ability to trust relationships, despite me knowing how irrational it is!
Our challenges in emotional regulation can be very dangerous, as it can lead to isolation and making us distrust other people in our life, leaving us vulnerable to abuse and manipulation. It's very important to try and take extra effort to maintain your friendships and other relationships if you have ADHD and are in a new relationship - despite how exciting it might feel in the moment.
If you're the loved one of a person with ADHD in this situation, please try to make extra effort to reach out to them: the 'object permanence' we experience might make it harder for us to remember to do so. Having clear times set in the calendar, like a standing weekly dinner slot, can be very helpful to help us with routines. Please approach these conversations with no judgement, and just listen - we can easily shut down, and having someone who we know will accept us is incredibly important.
5) Motivation
As people with ADHD are said to have an 'interest-based nervous system', we may be excellent at hyper focusing on areas of interest, and find things we're not so interested in extremely difficult. These are often tasks deemed 'easy' by society, such as cleaning, administration, or cooking.
This can make people with ADHD extremely vulnerable in relationships, as we may happily hand over control of our life to another person. As making decisions can use up a lot of our energy, especially ones involving prioritising such as deciding what to eat for dinner or what to wear, we may even enjoy the outsourcing of these decisions to another person.
However, we can very quickly lose this control, and find it difficult to regain. I found myself living on autopilot as directed by a variety of previous partners, because it felt too difficult to figure out how to set boundaries and decide things like how I was going to spend the weekend by myself again. I once crashed my car and had no idea what insurance provider I was even with, because it was all controlled by a previous partner.
This can also result in financial exploitation and abuse, as we let our partners decide the 'boring bits' for us. I can see how this pattern has led me to repeatedly get caught up in hyper-focus and trusting a person completely, before handing over my life to them (even moving into their house!) and realising I have no control over it anymore.
It can also be extremely difficult for us to leave - and to sustain this. On average, survivors of abuse return to the relationship 7 times before leaving for good. In a previous relationship, I must have attempted to leave at least 7 times before I even managed to make it out the door. I'd start packing, before my partner picked the clothes up and put them back in the wardrobe, telling me I'd change my mind in the morning.
ADHD coaching helped me to eventually get out, by identifying the blockers and understanding that these were strongly related to my ADHD challenges of motivation and procrastination. The way I eventually left was by asking a friend over when the person was at work and packing all of my belongings up that day. It will always be one of the best decisions I have ever made (even if I went back repeatedly), and I will be eternally grateful to Tina Squire for the conversation that sparked this off.
6) Problem Solving
Having ADHD means that we may solve problems differently to 'most' people. We might work and connect the dots looking backwards, instead of forwards. Unfortunately, this means we might be prone to making mistakes instead of preventing them.
The last time I moved into a new partner's house, my flatmate at the time begged me not to. I said I was aware it was a pattern, but that I thought 'you just need to repeat the patterns until they're broken'. She understandably did not agree with this and questioned why I couldn't just not go.
Looking back, I can see how this pattern helped me with the problems I experienced in dating because of my ADHD. I struggle with planning ahead and organisation, and dating can feel extremely difficult and fraught with uncertainty about how things 'should' be. So I removed the anxiety by moving into people's houses (bad idea!).
This also relates to actively solving problems such as conflict. One partner kept asking me if I wanted tea in the mornings, and I'd say no, I wanted coffee. Every morning, they would make me a tea, not a coffee. I was moderately annoyed the first few times, then just accepted it, starting to drink tea instead in the mornings. It was only from having a conversation with a third party about this that the person admitted they did actually do it on purpose, because they thought I was 'aggressive' when I drank coffee!
It's extremely important that people with ADHD become aware of the problems they experience and how they tend to solve these with 'creative adjustments' we may have learned from growing up neurodivergent. These adjustments may be at the detriment of our own sanity and wellbeing, leaving us open to potential exploitation.
They can also contribute to us feeling as though we are abusive or toxic. If you're unsure, remember that bad people don't usually spend much time wondering whether they're bad people. 93% of defendants in domestic abuse cases are male; 84% of victims are female. And yet, women are three times more likely to be arrested for incidents of abuse. Your own participation in a toxic dynamic does not negate the abuse you have experienced.
7) Having ADHD at all!
Living with ADHD means we may be easily prone to linking our ADHD to 'negative' experiences, such as arguments in relationships, where the fact we have ADHD is used against us.
It's important to remember that ADHD can be a disability (even if it doesn't always feel like it) - which makes us vulnerable. I once painted a huge sign hung on my door for months that said 'PROTECT YOURSELF' as a reminder to think about my own safety and wellbeing, because things were so bad for a while.
This can bring an imbalance into a relationship because we are reliant on the other person to understand our differences without using them against us. I have been in several relationships where my partners have tried to get me to stop taking my ADHD medication, for example.
Having ADHD or experiencing RSD is not a reason, excuse, or justification for someone to abuse you. Just as we do not use our ADHD as an excuse, but an explanation, as we take responsibility for our behaviour and actions, so should others. It is not a character flaw: it's a part of who you are, but it should never be used against you - especially by someone you trust.
Emotional abuse is rarely a 'one off' situation: it happens over time, through endless conversations and comments and moments. Like the frog that's in water that's slowly heated up until it boils alive without realising, we may not realise it's happening at all until it's too late.
If we have ADHD, that 'too late' point might be when it's too overwhelming to get out. When we've already impulsively argued with our loved ones because they don't 'understand'. When we've moved into their house. When we've given them control over our finances. When we've agreed to start working with them. When we've realised we're dependent on them. When the thought of setting boundaries feels impossible.
Basically, when your life doesn't feel like it belongs to you anymore.
If this resonates with you, I have good news. You can get out. Yes, it's hard and lonely, but there is also no greater joy in life than knowing your life belongs to you. Yes, you will probably gaslight yourself and ask whether things are 'really' that bad.
However, if things feel off, it's because they are. You can trust yourself. You are not the abuser. You have survived up until this point, and you can survive whatever the future has ahead for you, regardless of how old you are or how long you've been in this situation. Your life belongs to you.
You do not need to have relationships with abusive people. It doesn’t matter who they are, whether they’re family or colleagues or your best friend since childhood. You are better off being alone than abused. This may have been your story until now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. There are literally billions of people in this world who will treat you the way you deserve to be treated: with kindness, love, and respect. Your existence on this planet makes you worthy of healthy relationships with other people, and most importantly, yourself.
The cracks are how the light gets in: our greatest struggles are also the blueprint for our greatest potential. If you’ve survived this far: well done. There’s a whole life waiting for you to enjoy.
Freedom can start with the small realisation that maybe what we're experiencing isn't 'normal'. If this has resonated with you, please do call Refuge to access support.
Resources
Refuge: a free helpline for women who fear their partners. They are desperately in need of funding and support, so please do contribute if you can.
111: if you tell someone not to contact you and they continue to do so 2 more times, you can call the police to report this as harassment. 111 are helpful to call as a non-emergency police line to help validate your concerns and give you tangible options of what to do next.
If you'd like to become an ADHD coach with me in April, head here
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