Am I Anxiously Attached, or Is It My ADHD? What Attachment Styles Miss About Neurodivergent Brains

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It’s 10:47pm on a Friday night.

Your partner’s out with their friends. You texted them at 6:15. “Have fun! How’s it going?” with a little smiley face. They read it at 6:22.

No reply.

You’ve checked your phone twenty times. You’ve typed “no worries if you’re busy!!” and deleted it. Twice. And somewhere in the middle of the spiral, you remember the attachment quiz you took at two in the morning last spring. Your result? Anxious. Of course. That’s what this is. You’re too much. You’re needy.

Then Saturday morning comes. Your partner wants to cuddle and cook breakfast and make plans. And all you want is to be alone in the bath with a playlist that matches your mood. So you’re a little short with them, and they say, “You’re so hot and cold with me.”

And now you’re thinking, wait. Am I avoidant too?

You’re not too needy. And you’re not cold. What you’ve been calling your attachment style might actually be your wiring: a brain that sounds the alarm really fast, and a battery that runs out a lot sooner than other people’s.

About this episode

If you’ve spent any time on Instagram or TikTok, you’ve probably taken an attachment quiz. Maybe a few. And I’m guessing you’ve used your result to explain yourself at least once, or, let’s be honest, to beat yourself up with it.

Attachment theory is useful. I use it in my work all the time. But attachment styles get measured from the outside, by what you do. And for neurodivergent women, the same behaviour can come from a completely different engine. Reaching for reassurance can come from old hurt, or from a brain that reads a delayed text like an emergency. Pulling away can come from fear of closeness, or from nine hours of masking.

So in Episode 26, I walk through the three big lookalikes I see in my practice: “anxious” that might be rejection sensitivity, “avoidant” that might be a dead battery, and “disorganized” that might be two operating systems (plus your hormones) taking turns at the wheel. Then I’m honest about the part where it’s both, and give you four steps to untangle your own pattern and explain it to your partner in words that actually land.

What you’ll learn

• Attachment theory in plain words, and why it’s measured by behaviour, which is exactly where neurodivergent women get misread
• How rejection sensitivity can look exactly like anxious attachment, and the clue that tells them apart (it shows up with everyone, not just your partner)
• Why you’re probably not missing the signals, you’re catching all of them, and where your brain fills in the blank with the scariest story
• How a drained battery from masking can look like avoidance, and the big tell: after you recharge, you come back warmer
• Why “hot and cold” might be your ADHD and autistic needs taking turns, with your cycle in the mix too
• The honest part: your patterns in love are wiring plus history, and what earned secure attachment means for you
• Four steps to untangle your pattern: track the moment, ask three sorting questions, translate it for your partner, and build in clarity and a planned return

Your relationship can be one of the places you earn secure attachment. Not by becoming less neurodivergent. By being understood as neurodivergent.

Resources mentioned

• Free guide, How to Stop the RSD Spiral: four tools sorted by time, from what to do right in the moment to what to change long-term.
• Free quiz, Is It Actually Me?: twelve questions, about five minutes, to sort out whether it’s your wiring, your relationship, or a bit of both.
• Episode 7, How Rejection Sensitivity Hijacks Your Relationship: the full rejection sensitivity episode.
• Episode 13, What Masking Costs Your Relationship: why home is where the crash happens.
• Episode 14, You’re Not Overreacting, You’re Flooded: shutting down in a fight, and why it isn’t stonewalling.
• Episode 16, “Just Communicate Your Needs Better” Is Not a Helpful Strategy: where we talked about the return time.
• Episode 20, Why You Crave Closeness and Need Space at the Exact Same Time: the two operating systems.
• Episode 22, “I’m Fine for Two Weeks, Then Everything Falls Apart”: how your cycle changes your capacity.
• Follow me on Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab

Ready to go deeper?

If you saw yourself in the Friday-night spiral and want to figure out what’s really driving it:

• Grab the free guide: How to Stop the RSD Spiral, four tools for the moment the alarm goes off and the hours after.
• Take the free quiz: Is It Actually Me? to figure out whether it’s your wiring, your relationship, or both.
• Book a free 15-minute consultation: Work with me if you’re in Alberta and curious about working together one-on-one.

Loved this episode?

Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming, leave a rating wherever you listen (it genuinely helps this reach the women who need it), and send this one to the friend who’s convinced she’s “anxiously attached,” or to the partner who keeps asking why you’re so hot and cold.

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Episode transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.

Open

It’s 10:47pm on a Friday night.

Your partner’s out with their friends. You texted them at 6:15. “Have fun! How’s it going?” with a little smiley face.

They read it at 6:22.

No reply.

You’ve checked your phone fourteen times. Okay, maybe twenty. You’ve written “no worries if you’re busy!!” and deleted it. Twice. You’ve decided they’re bored of you. Then you decided you’re being ridiculous. Then you decided they’re probably having way more fun without you. Then you decided you’re being ridiculous again.

And somewhere in the middle of all that, you remember the attachment style quiz you took at two in the morning last spring.

Your result? Anxious.

Of course. That’s what this is. This is the anxious thing. You’re too much. You’re needy. You need to work on being more cool as a cucumber.

So you try. But holy toledo is it hard being cool as a cucumber.

Your partner comes home at 11:15. “Sorry,” they say. “My phone died. It was so fun.” They kiss your forehead and they’re asleep in about four minutes.

You’re awake until two.

And then Saturday morning comes. And your partner wants to cuddle, and chat about their night, and cook breakfast together, and make some fun plans for the rest of the weekend.

And you want to be alone in the bath with a playlist that matches your mood. So you’re a little short with them. And they say, “What’s going on? You’re so hot and cold with me.”

And now you’re thinking, wait. Am I avoidant too?

So which is it? Anxious on Friday, avoidant on Saturday? Is that the disorganized one? Is that what I am?

This is so confusing, right?

That’s why today I want to clear the air and help you see that perhaps what you’ve been calling your attachment style is actually your wiring.

Perhaps you’re not anxious or avoidant or disorganized. At least not just that. Perhaps there’s more to this than meets the eye.

Intro

This is the Neurodivergent Love Lab. I’m Jenna Dalton, a psychologist who’s AuDHD. I help ADHD, autistic, and AuDHD women feel truly understood and deeply loved. And this is Episode 26: Am I Anxiously Attached, or Is It My ADHD? What Attachment Styles Miss About Neurodivergent Brains.

Now, if you’ve spent any time on Instagram or TikTok, you’ve probably taken an attachment quiz. Maybe a few. And I’m guessing you’ve used your result to explain yourself at least once. Or, let’s be honest, to beat yourself up.

So today I want to answer two questions.

One. Is what I’m feeling in my relationship actually my attachment style, or is it my brain?

And two. Whatever it is, how do I stop it from running the show?

Let’s get into it.

Attachment theory, in plain words

Okay. Quick refresher, so we’re all on the same page.

Attachment theory came out of research on babies and their caregivers. The basic idea is that the way you were cared for when you were little shapes how safe you feel getting close to people as an adult.

If you felt pretty safe, you’re probably what they call securely attached. You can be close, you can be apart, and you trust that the relationship is still there either way.

If care was unpredictable, sometimes there and sometimes not, you might tend to be more anxious. You watch closely for signs of the other person pulling away, and you reach for reassurance often.

If you learned that needing people wasn’t safe, or wasn’t something you could rely on, you might lean avoidant. You pull back when things get close, and you feel safest doing it on your own.

And disorganized is a bit of both. Wanting closeness and feeling scared of it at the same time.

Now, I want to be really clear. Attachment theory is useful. It’s backed by decades of research. I use it in my work all the time. For a lot of people, especially neurotypical people, it explains a whole lot.

But here’s the thing.

Attachment styles get measured from the outside. By what you do. Do you reach for reassurance? Do you pull away? Do you go hot and cold?

And for neurodivergent women, the same behaviour can come from a completely different engine.

You can reach for reassurance because you learned as a kid that love disappears. Or you can reach for reassurance because your nervous system registers a delayed response to a text like something has gone deeply wrong.

You can pull away because closeness feels dangerous. Or you can pull away because you’ve been masking for nine hours and your battery is at two percent.

From the outside? Same behaviour. From the inside? Totally different thing. And they need totally different fixes.

Three lookalikes

So let’s go through the three big lookalikes I see all the time in my practice.

Lookalike one: “Anxious” might be rejection sensitivity

If you’ve listened to Episode 7, you already know about rejection sensitivity. If you haven’t, here’s the short version.

It’s a really common part of ADHD where your brain reacts to rejection, or even the possibility of rejection, super fast and super hard. Like a punch to the gut. In one study of adults with ADHD, most of them women, about three quarters said they struggle with it. It’s not in the official diagnostic manual, but it’s very, very real.

So think about what that does in a relationship.

Your partner’s text is a little shorter than normal. Their tone shifts for half a second. They’re quiet on the drive home. And your brain goes from zero to “they’re going to leave me” before you’ve even taken a breath.

That looks exactly like anxious attachment. You check your phone. You ask “are you mad at me?” You need to hear that you’re okay.

But here’s one way to start telling them apart. Rejection sensitivity usually isn’t picky about who it shows up with. It shows up when your boss says “can we chat later?” It shows up when your friend leaves you on read. It shows up when the barista seems a bit off with you. It’s not just your partner. It’s everyone.

And here’s another piece, because it matters so much.

Neurodivergent women aren’t usually the ones missing the signals. We’re the ones catching all of them. The flat text. The half-second pause. The slight change in how they said “fine.” A lot of the time, you’re not making it up. You really did pick up on something.

Where it goes sideways is the meaning your brain attaches to it. You caught a real signal, and your brain filled in the blank with the scariest possible story. They were tired. Your brain said they’re angry at you.

You simply have very sensitive radar that doesn’t always get the facts right.

Lookalike two: “Avoidant” might be a dead battery

A lot of autistic and AuDHD women need real, actual alone time to recover after peopling. After work. After being around family. After a party. Sometimes even after a really lovely day with your partner.

What may look like avoidance is actually just you needing to recharge.

And if you mask all week, at work, at school pickup, in the group chat, then by the weekend you’re running on empty. We talked about this back in Episode 13. Home is the one place you finally get to put the mask down. So that’s where the crash happens.

Here’s a way to tell them apart. Avoidance tends to kick in when things get emotionally close. A deep conversation, an “I love you,” a big step forward, and suddenly you want out.

Recharging kicks in when your battery is empty. It doesn’t really care how close things are. You could adore your partner and be having the best week ever and still need to lie in a dark room for two hours. And then, here’s the big tell, you come back warmer. You come back wanting them.

There’s a second version of this, too. Shutting down in a fight. Going quiet. Not being able to get words out. We covered that in Episode 14. From the outside, it looks a whole lot like stonewalling, which is a classic avoidant move. From the inside, your system just went offline. You’re not refusing to talk. You can’t talk. Not yet.

Lookalike three: “Disorganized” might be two operating systems

And then there’s the one that freaks everyone out. Disorganized. Wanting closeness and wanting space, sometimes in the same hour.

If you’re AuDHD, you might remember Episode 20, where we talked about craving closeness and needing space at the same time. The ADHD part of you wants connection and novelty and fun. The autistic part of you needs predictability and recovery time. Both are real. Both are you.

That can look a lot like push-pull. But it’s not fear of love. It’s two different sets of needs taking turns at the wheel.

And I’ve got to add hormones here, because of course that matters. If you caught Episode 22, you know your capacity and your emotions can shift a lot across your cycle, and in perimenopause too. So you might need way more reassurance the week before your period, and way more space in another week. That’s just hormones doing their thing.

And now, the honest part

I don’t want you to walk away from this thinking, “Great, it’s all my brain, attachment doesn’t apply to me.”

Because for a lot of us, it’s both.

If you grew up neurodivergent and nobody knew, there’s a good chance you got corrected a lot. Told you were too sensitive. Too much. Too dramatic. Too weird. And when you’re a little kid and you keep getting the message that the real you is a problem, that can absolutely shape how safe you feel in love later on.

Plus, a lot of us were raised on the good girl script. Be easy. Don’t need too much. Keep everyone happy. So you either hold your needs in until they burst out unexpectedly, or you ask, and then immediately apologize for asking.

So here’s how I’d put it. Your patterns in love are wiring plus history. Both and.

The good news: getting the right label changes the fix

Here’s why all of this matters so much.

If you think you’re anxiously attached, the usual advice is to work on self-soothing and stop seeking so much reassurance. If what’s actually going on is rejection sensitivity, that advice can leave you feeling like a failure. Because you can’t just stop your nervous system from reacting to a perceived threat that feels very, very real.

If you think you’re avoidant, the usual advice is to push yourself to stay close when you want to pull away. If what’s actually going on is a dead battery, pushing yourself to stay close is the exact opposite of what you need. That’s how you end up in burnout.

So when you know which engine is driving the behaviour, you stop using the wrong tool on it. And you can finally explain it to your partner in a way that makes sense.

The lovely news is that feeling secure isn’t something you’re born into, and attachment styles aren’t fixed.

People build a sense of secure attachment as adults, all the time. Through relationships where they’re understood, where their needs get met, where repair happens after the hard moments. There’s even a name for it in the research. Earned secure attachment.

Your relationship can be one of the places you earn it. Not by becoming less neurodivergent. By being understood as neurodivergent.

The tool: four steps to untangle your pattern

Okay. Let’s make this practical.

Step one. Track the moment, not the label.

For the next two weeks, every time you notice one of those moments, the “are they mad at me” spiral or the “I need to get away from everyone” pull, grab your notes app and jot down a few things.

What happened right before? How full was your battery, from one to ten? How many hours did you mask today? Where are you in your cycle, if you have one? And did this feeling show up anywhere else today, with anyone else?

You’re not trying to make oodles of notes or diagnose yourself. You’re just collecting clues.

Step two. Ask yourself three sorting questions.

After a couple of weeks, look back at your notes and ask:

One. Is this about this person, or does it show up with everyone? If it shows up with your boss and your friends and your mom, that suggests it could be rejection sensitivity over an attachment pattern.

Two. Is this about closeness, or about capacity? If you pull away when things get emotionally close, that suggests you have some avoidant tendencies. If you pull away when you’re tapped out, no matter how close things are, that’s your battery.

Three. What happens when I get clarity, or rest? If a clear answer from your partner calms the alarm, or a couple hours alone brings you back to wanting them, that’s a really good sign it’s your wiring.

And if it’s a mix? Totally normal. Most of us are a mix. The goal is just to know which one is driving the bus at that particular moment.

Step three. Translate it for your partner.

This is where it stops being a private puzzle and starts being something you two can work on together.

Here’s a simple formula. This is what it looks like. This is what it actually is. This is what helps.

So it might sound like:

“When I go quiet after work and head straight for the bath, I know it looks like I’m pulling away from you. It’s actually my battery. I’m soooo drained. What helps is an hour on my own, and then I’ll come find you.”

Or:

“When I ask if you’re mad at me three times in one night, I know it looks like I don’t trust you. It’s actually my brain on high alert. What helps is a short, clear answer. And if something is up, don’t pretend you’re okay. Tell me what it’s about, so my brain doesn’t fill in the blank.”

Or:

“The week before my period, I’m going to need more reassurance than usual. It’s not that anything’s wrong with us. It’s that my brain struggles to believe we’re okay. A couple of extra ‘love you’ texts that week go a really long way.”

Notice what those do. You’re not apologizing for having needs. You’re giving your partner a way to support you in some tough moments.

Step four. Build in clarity and a planned return.

Now you two set up a couple of small systems so you’re not relying on willpower.

For the rejection sensitivity side, less guessing. Your partner agrees to send a quick heads up when plans change, or when they’ll be out of touch. “Phone’s at ten percent, home by eleven, love you.” That’s it. Not because you’re needy. Because clarity is regulating for your brain, and ambiguity is gasoline for your anxious parts.

For the battery side, a return time. When you need to recharge, you say when you’ll be back. “I’m going to recharge for a bit. I’ll come find you at eight.” We talked about this in Episode 16. A pause with a return time feels like processing. A pause with no return time can feel like abandonment to the person waiting.

And here’s your partner’s side of the deal. They get to know that your space isn’t a rejection of them. And that your reassurance-seeking isn’t a lack of trust. With the map in hand, they can stop taking it personally and start supporting you.

So instead of a relationship where you’re anxious on Friday and avoidant on Saturday, you’ve got a relationship that knows Friday requires a heads-up text and Saturday requires a long soak in the bath. Followed by pancakes and fun plans.

The free guide

Now, if lookalike number one hit a little close to home, I’ve got something for you.

Rejection sensitivity is the piece I see a lot in my practice. Which is why I made a free guide called How to Stop the RSD Spiral. It’s four tools, sorted by time. What to do right in the moment. What to do in the next twenty minutes, before your brain writes a whole horror story. How to reality-check with your partner once you’re back. And what to change long-term, so there’s less ambiguity for your brain to fill in.

Grab it free at JennaDalton.com/rsd. That’s JennaDalton.com/rsd.

Close

Okay. Here’s what I want you to take with you today.

You’re not too needy. And you’re not cold. You might have a brain that sounds the alarm bells really fast, and a battery that runs out a lot sooner than other people’s. That doesn’t make you bad at love.

Attachment styles can be a really helpful starting point. But they’re a description of part of what’s happening, not the full story. And when you look underneath the behaviour, you might find wiring that just needs a different kind of support.

So this week, start small. Track a few of those moments. Look for the pattern. And try one translation sentence out loud with your partner.

This is what it looks like. This is what it actually is. This is what helps.

Thanks for hanging out with me today. Remember, you deserve to feel truly understood and deeply loved. I’ll talk to you soon.

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The Neurodivergent Love Lab is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for therapy or mental health care. If you’re in crisis, please reach out to a local crisis line or emergency service.