What is the Cassandra Syndrome?
Nay 16, 2024. Revised and Updated.
The Cassandra Syndrome sheds light on the often-overlooked struggles of neurotypical partners (NT) in relationships with neurodiverse partners, where validation from extended family, or professionals is hard to come by.
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was granted the gift of foresight by Apollo, but when she rejected his advances, he cursed her so that no one would believe her prophecies.
Similarly, neurotypical partners, despite their ability to foresee issues in the relationship, often find themselves ignored and marginalized.
Cassandra Syndrome describes the emotional distress faced by neurotypical women married to neurodiverse men, where their truths are dismissed, and support is scarce.
This leads to ambivalence, confusion, and turmoil, with few resources available to help navigate these challenges.
While terms like Cassandra Phenomenon and Emotional Deprivation Disorder have been used to describe these experiences, the term Cassandra Syndrome has persisted. This highlights the struggle within neurodiverse marriages, where the NT partner feels isolated and misunderstood.
The impact of poor social support and ineffective therapy adds to the NT partner's burden. Many therapists are unaware of neurodiversity, leading to further misunderstandings and ineffective treatment.
The core issue of the Cassandra Syndrome lies in the relationship's lack of emotional awareness. This disconnect can lead to internal conflict, poor self-esteem, and other symptoms that strain the relationship.
By recognizing the unique challenges neurodiverse couples face and seeking appropriate therapy, couples can work together to improve communication and emotional expression. Through increased awareness and skills, these relationships can be strengthened, offering hope for a more connected and fulfilling partnership.
The Cassandra Syndrome: A Deeper Dive into the Neurodiverse Relationship Struggle
In delving deeper into the Cassandra Syndrome within neurodiverse relationships, it's crucial to understand the nuanced layers of emotional disconnect and its profound impact on both partners.
The Burden of Emotional Disconnect:
Neurotypical partners often experience a profound sense of loneliness and isolation due to their Aspie partners' inability to reciprocate emotional depth.
Aspies may struggle with alexithymia, making it challenging to identify and express emotions, leading to a lack of emotional intimacy in the relationship.
Communication Breakdowns:
The neurodiverse communication style, often literal and lacking emotional nuance, can lead to misunderstandings and conflict.
Neurotypicals may feel unheard or invalidated as their emotional expressions are not met with the expected empathy or understanding.
Coping with Emotional Overload:
Some neurodiverse ppartners experience sensory overload, leading to emotional shutdowns or meltdowns, further complicating communication and connection.
Neurotypicals may struggle to navigate these intense emotional responses, feeling overwhelmed and unable to provide the support their partner needs.
Seeking Support:
The lack of awareness and understanding of neurodiversity in mainstream therapy can be a significant barrier for couples seeking support.
Neurotypicals may feel further invalidated when professionals fail to recognize or address the unique dynamics of their relationship.
Building Bridges:
Effective therapy for neurodiverse couples involves developing strategies to bridge the communication gap and foster emotional connection.
Both partners can benefit from learning about each other's neurodivergent traits and finding ways to meet each other's emotional needs.
The Role of Neurodiverse Thought Leaders:
Thought leaders like Maxine Aston offer valuable insights into the dynamics of neurodiverse relationships, providing frameworks like Affective Deprivation Disorder (AfDD) to understand and address these challenges.
Their work emphasizes increasing emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills to improve relational dynamics.
The Historical Context:
Coined about 20 years ago, the term Cassandra Syndrome was introduced to describe the emotional distress experienced by NT women married to Aspie men.
It highlights the struggle of NT partners who, like Cassandra, possess insights and foresight into relationship issues but are often dismissed or ridiculed.
The Core of the Syndrome:
The essence of the Cassandra Syndrome lies in the emotional disconnect between NT and Aspie partners.
Neurodiverse partners, often characterized by alexithymia, struggle to recognize and express emotions, leading to a lack of emotional reciprocity in the relationship.
The Impact of Poor Communication:
Communication breakdowns stemming from conflicting communication styles can lead to misunderstandings and conflict.
NT partners may feel isolated and frustrated as their emotional needs are unmet with understanding or empathy.
Seeking Support and Understanding:
NT partners often lack social support and understanding, both within their immediate circle and from professionals.
The lack of awareness and training among therapists regarding neurodiversity can further exacerbate the NT partner's feelings of isolation and distress.
Insights from Neurodiverse Thought Leaders:
Thought leaders like Maxine Aston have contributed valuable frameworks, such as Affective Deprivation Disorder (AfDD), to understand and address the challenges faced by neurodiverse couples.
These frameworks emphasize the importance of enhancing emotional intelligence and communication skills to bridge the gap between NT and Aspie partners.
Moving Towards Healing:
Recognizing the Cassandra Syndrome is crucial for both partners to acknowledge and address the emotional barriers in their relationship.
Couples can work together to improve communication and emotional connection through education, empathy, and effective therapy.
A challenge for the newly emerging Neurodiversity Rights Movement will be to reconcile their critique of the “hegemony of normalcy” with the real problems that present in an Aspie/NT marriage, particularly for the NT partner who is also a victim of the oppressive normative paradigm.
Many objected that we were already awash with too many “syndromes,” and the alternate term, Cassandra Phenomenon, was proposed but never gained traction.
Emotional Deprivation Disorder is another term that has been offered. EDD is a syndrome (a grouping of symptoms) that results from a lack of authentic affirmation and emotional strengthening by a significant other.
This term is confusing because it was initially coined by a Dutch Catholic psychiatrist in the 1950s, Dr. Anna Terruwe. She originally posited that emotional deprivation in early life fueled an adult anxiety disorder.
Since we’re talking about marriage and not early life, it’s not a useful term, although it was probably seized upon because it sure sounded like one.
However, if you’ve had an emotionally deprived childhood, resulting in an Anxious Attachment Style, and then married an Aspie, your early history could be a force multiplier for marital problems.
Complex PTSD?
Some therapists feel that the undiagnosed Neurodivergent relationship inadvertently creates conditions of an unusual variant of complex trauma (C-PTSD). The NT partner does tend to meet some of the C-PTSD criteria:
Trouble regulating emotions
Developing a negative image of self
Problems with interpersonal relationships
Some of the most critical trauma symptoms, nightmares, exaggerated startle reactions, and flashbacks may also be present in the undiagnosed Neurodiverse Marriage.
However, the issues of the NT partner are sufficiently unique and merit careful study independent of conventional classification. There is typically no singular “traumatic event.” There is, instead, an ongoing traumatic context, an ongoing poverty of intimacy coupled with poor communication. The struggle of the NT partner is not one of being deliberately afflicted. It’s more like being inadvertently deprived.
Affective Deprivation Disorder?
I think Asperger thought leader Maxine Aston nailed it when she proposed the term Affective Deprivation Disorder (AfDD) with, as you can see, a nod to the Cassandra Syndrome (“the other half of Asperger’s Syndrome…the new Cassandra Workshop”). I like how Maxine describes her conception of AfDD:
Unlike other Axis and corresponding to the proposed category of Relational Disorders, AfDD is not an enduring disorder of the self stemming from childhood deprivation, emotional trauma, or congenital defect, but rather is a relationship-dependent condition generated by the operation of low emotional intelligence or alexithymia (lack of emotional awareness) in one or both partners of a relationship.
Further, the symptoms of AfDD are more likely than individual disorders to be responsive to therapeutic intervention or a change in relationship status. In fact, the very knowledge of the primary condition underlying the relational imbalance can in and of itself be healing. Since AfDD is a consequence of individuals’ relational dynamics, it is possible to reduce the disorder level by increasing awareness and interactional skills.
Relationships can work if both partners work together to understand their differences and develop a better way of communicating, showing emotional expression and loving that works for both of them. Maxine Aston.
Since Maxine concurs, I will focus on the more user-friendly term Cassandra Syndrome to avoid confusing our gentle readers. What’s one more little syndrome between friends?
Something important is going on with the frustrated neurotypical partner. As you will soon learn, it’s a two-pronged attachment injury. But I think our thought leaders are overthinking it a wee bit.
The uncomfortable core of the Cassandra Syndrome…
I like Maxine’s core ideas; although Affective Deprivation Disorder may be a mouthful, the term “disorder” may be offensive to some.
She dismisses the idea of a childhood wound (although I think it could be aggravating) and focuses on relational disconnection.
Maxine describes an intimate relationship that is being actively thwarted by alexithymia or low emotional awareness. But she offers real hope for Neurodiverse Couples. By increasing your interpersonal skills, you can repair the relationship.
In other words, once you learn that you’re in an Aspie/NT relationship and you are both willing to work on it, good science-based couples therapy can help. Interestingly, what these thought leaders are all trying to convey is the interlocking sense of isolation Neurodiverse Couples experience when they get poor social support… and really bad couples therapy.
The role bad therapy plays in the Cassandra Syndrome…
It’s been my experience that many individually oriented therapists and couples therapists are utterly oblivious to the idea of Neurodiversity, but that is rapidly beginning to change.
Living with a neurodiverse partner with no external support creates intense internal conflict, poor self-esteem, frustration, rage, anxiety, depression, and a constellation of other symptoms that thought leaders described twenty years ago as the Cassandra Phenomenon or Cassandra Syndrome.
Cassandra was a mythological character who was given the gift of foreseeing the future and the curse that no one would ever believe her. Interestingly, they chose this term because the epicenter of the problem is not in the speaker of the truth. Cassandra knows what’s up. The problem is in the extended family and therapists…who do not believe her.
Often it is only those closest to the individual with Asperger syndrome, such as their parents and partners, who are truly aware of the problems the syndrome can cause.
“By the time the couple gets to the counseling room, the NT partner may appear quite desperate and frustrated by the difficulties and strain, the relationship has placed on her.
She will be saying things like, ‘He can’t talk about his feelings. He treats me like an object he is obsessed with routine. He constantly accuses me of criticizing him.’ Finally, a thought that most NT women seem to express is, ‘I think I am going mad!’ Maxine Aston.
To me, the most important aspect of this term…is that the problem is, once again, a lack of emotional awareness. Only this time with the NT’s extended family and helping professionals.
Here is the irony. The “hegemony of normalcy” is now oppressing its own kind. The NT spouse is neither understood by their Aspie partner…or by family and helping professionals who could reasonably be expected to be empathetic.
Although awareness is increasing thanks to organizations like AANE, most couples therapists are unaware of the traumatic impact of the communication challenges inherent in Neurodiverse Relationships.
Untrained therapists are readily deceived by “… a man who is quite likely to be very intelligent and hold down a very responsible job; announce that he really does not understand why she is never happy,” Maxine Aston.
Cassandra Syndrome, symptoms and certainty
The Cassandra Syndrome underscores the existential loneliness of the NT partner. One of my clients described her husband this way:
By all outside measures, my husband is a success. He’s a multi-millionaire and is deeply respected in his field. He has a vast command of many different forms of knowledge. People see his quirky sense of humor.
But they didn’t see the 7 months he spent focusing on his humorous routines as a “special project.” After a party, on the drive home, this all exhausts him. He believes that he has a responsibility to pass as neurotypical…and when the show is over, there is precious little left over for me or the kids.
It’s typical for Neurodiverse Couples like this to enter couples therapy because of a lack of emotional connection and poor communication. The NT had certain conventional expectations that marriage would include a mutual sharing of thoughts and feelings, and conversation about important topics would be relatively easy and effortless.
Clashing needs and expectations in a tangled mess of disconnection and poor communication
Expectations and emotional needs clash. The Aspie partner may have an entirely different set of expectations and a contrary sense of emotional closeness.
The Cassandra Syndrome describes a mismatch of needs and expectations arising from interlocking misunderstandings, which is typical for Neurodiverse Couples.
Many Aspies have more emotional awareness than NTs give them credit for. Sometimes, their intensity overwhelms them.
Some neurodiverse partners who eventually find good couples therapy disclose that they live with a constant overload of feelings, and they go through their days in a hyper-aroused state for much of the time. These marriages need to build dialogic skills that offer safety.
And some Aspies are overwhelmed by their thoughts and struggle to reach out beyond themselves.
More familiar are the neurodiverse folks who are alexithymia and can not quickly identify their emotions. And then there are the Aspies who have very intellectualized emotions and require more processing time than their neurotypical spouse.
Some neurodiverse partners may struggle to string 3 sentences together. Others can’t stop talking and crowd out their NT partner. There is no one set pattern of emotional disconnection and poor communication in a Neurodiverse Marriage. However, connection and communication challenges are the center of gravity in neurodiverse marriage.
As you can see, the ways a Neurodivergent Couple can become emotionally gridlocked are complex and numerous. That’s why training for therapists assessing and treating Neurodivergent Couples is essential.
A well-trained couples therapist will carefully assess what symptoms are causing the most distress and how this couple can collaborate to find ways to curb the Cassandra Syndrome. And that’s the promise of science-based couples therapy for treating Neurodiverse Couples.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
Are you in a neurodivergent marriage?
RESEARCH:
Aston, M. (2009) The Asperger Couple’s Workbook. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Aston, Maxine. (2001) The Other Half of Asperger syndrome. London. The National Autistic Society.
Aston, Maxine. (2003) Asperger in Love: Couple relationships and family affairs. London. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Carter, R. (1998) Mapping the Mind. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Fletcher, P.C., Happe, F., Frith, U., Baker, S.C., Dolan, R.J., Frackowiak, R.S.J., Frith, C.D. (1995) Other Minds in the Brain: a functional imaging study of “theory of mind” in story comprehension Cognition 57 pp109-128
Slater-Walker, Gisela, and Chris. (2002) An Asperger Marriage. London. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Stanford, Ashley. (2003) Asperger Syndrome and Long-Term Relationships. London. Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Wing. L. (1981) Asperger’s Syndrome: a clinical account Psychological
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