Neurodivergent Notes: Rupture & Repair – Finding Our Way Back to Connection
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been exploring themes of connection, belonging, and attachment. I had planned to send this essay out last week, but I took a detour to talk about a different kind of rupture and repair.
Speaking of connection, community, and belonging — I have felt deeply supported and held by this community over the past week. The kindness has gotten in. It means more than I can comfortably express. Thank you.
Reflecting on relationships, belonging, and community has been an anchor for me these past six weeks, and I know I’ll return to this theme. But as I (temporarily) wrap up this series, I want to turn toward something woven into the fabric of every lasting relationship: rupture and repair.
Rupture Happens — But So Can Repair
If you’re in a relationship — any relationship — long enough, there will be ruptures. Some are small: a missed bid for connection, a moment of misattunement, an unintentionally harsh tone. Some are bigger: conflicts, misunderstandings, betrayals. Ruptures feel painful because connection matters. We’re wired for connection (see the essay on social-baseline theory for more).*
For a long time, my all-or-nothing thinking told me to tiptoe through relationships, avoiding harm, missteps, or upset — an impossible task. The goal of any meaningful relationship isn’t perfection — it’s contact — and true authentic contact means we’ll bump into each other’s stuff from time to time. Relationship sturdiness isn’t built on the absence of rupture, but on the capacity for repair.*
Someone in the Nook community recently reminded me of a phrase often used in child therapy:
“What’s most important may not be what you did, but what you do after what you have done.”
That line stuck with me.
I won’t pretend I love the idea that rupture is unavoidable — particularly in parenting. But one of the things that gave me hope during my psychological training was learning that what matters just as much (if not more) than the rupture itself is how it’s handled. Is the rupture ignored, left to fester? Or is it acknowledged, opened up, understood, tended to?
Why Can Repair Be Hard for Neurodivergent People?
For many of us, rupture can feel overwhelming — so much so that we may struggle to move toward repair. Some reasons for this might include:
- Not understanding what caused the rupture — Sometimes, we miss an unspoken social rule, or something gets lost in cross-neurotype communication.
- Rejection Sensitivity & Emotional Intensity — Many of us experience rejection-sensitive dysphoria (RSD), which makes hard conversations feel unbearable. Even a supportive repair attempt can feel like confirmation that we’ve failed or are being rejected.
- Repair can look different for us — Standard scripts for apologies or reconnection may not resonate, or we may struggle to express what we feel (thank you delayed emotional processing) or what we need.
- The Double Empathy Problem & Perspective-Taking — Differences in communication and emotional processing between neurotypes can create additional barriers to understanding from both sides.
- Attachment wounds — Many of us may have some pretty intense attachment wounds (and their companion defenses) that we don’t yet fully understand or have processed. During a rupture our attachment system is activated and this can be hard to emotionally manage and reflectively understand.
- All-or-Nothing Thinking – If we’re hurt, we may shut down and assume the entire relationship is broken. Or, if we’ve made a mistake, we may believe we’ve permanently ruined the relationship and retreat entirely.
What Supports Neurodivergent People Move Toward Repair?
A few weeks ago I asked Nookies* what helps them move toward repair, and here are some things that stood out— plus a few I’m adding:
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Navigating Rumination & Overthinking — Many of us get stuck replaying events in our heads. (This article by Michael Greenberg was mentioned as a helpful resource for managing rumination.)
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Support with Perspective-Taking — Others mentioned that perspective-taking in cross-neurotype interactions can be challenging and that talking to a trusted friend, or even using AI to gather insights when another human isn’t available was helpful for opening up their thinking and curiosity into the other person’s experience.
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Identifying Personal Triggers & Raw Spots — Understanding our own sensitivities (e.g., fear of rejection) can help us communicate about our fears and needs as we move toward repair.
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Identifying Core Needs — Emotions are messengers. When we can name the underlying need behind our emotions, we can express ourselves more clearly in moments of repair. The process of getting curious about our emotions is also one that activates our prefrontal cortex and helps us contain these emotions with a bit more care.
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Sensory Support — Repair conversations are often hard. Setting ourselves up for success — choosing a sensory-friendly environment, adding weight or movement, dimming lights — can help.
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Knowing When to Pause — If both people are in their stress response, repair isn’t going to happen in a meaningful way. Sometimes, the best thing we can do is pause and return to the conversation when we are in the headspace to do so. (Also meta-communicating about the pause matters – such as “This conversation/relationship matters to me … and so I want to come back to it when I’m in a space to do so.” (Note this is really important if one person leans more avoidant and the other more anxious/preoccupied).
As we move through the inevitable ruptures of life — big and small — I hope we can all find ways to lean into repair, to soften toward ourselves and others, and to trust that connection can be rebuilt.
A Rupture of My Own
I drafted this essay two weeks ago, then pivoted to send out a different kind of rupture and repair essay last week to provide context for the website issues we’ve been having. And then just this week, I had a rupture with a good friend. We’ve both been under heightened stress, and since we mix friendship and business, we’ve had some difficult decisions to navigate together. As our texting ramped up, I could feel the fire in my belly grow. What started as voice memos turned into rapid back-and-forth texts — misunderstandings piling up. I didn’t see myself in their version of the story, and I suspect they felt the same.
Thankfully, we were quick to catch it. We’re both trained therapists and care about each other deeply, so we paused. We got on the phone. We untangled the pieces — where attachment wounds had been triggered, where defenses had come online. We held space for how the other person’s “stuff” had been activated.
And when we hung up, I felt more connected, more secure in the friendship than before the rupture happened.
Now, I’m not saying we should go around causing ruptures — they happen naturally enough on their own! But when handled with care and curiosity, rupture can actually strengthen the bonds between us. It can deepen communication and expand our understanding of each other’s wounds and needs.
Many of us have had rupture and repair not go well. But when we experience a repair that is done with care, it can create a new internal template — a new experience that tells us repair is possible. And that makes it a little bit easier to do next time.
That said, repair takes two people. We can’t do another person’s work for them. But we can work on bringing curiosity, care, and openness into our part of the process.
I also share this personal story because, right now, a lot of us are moving through rupture — maybe more than usual. We’re living in a time where collective stress, fear, and uncertainty are high. That means our attachment wounds, our defenses, our survival strategies? They’re closer to the surface.
If you’re finding yourself in more misunderstandings, feeling more sensitive to disconnection, or struggling to find the right words — it makes sense. When we’re in a heightened state, the smallest ruptures can feel bigger, and repair can feel harder to access.
So I hope, as we all move through this time, we can be gentle — with ourselves, with each other. I hope we can recognize that rupture doesn’t have to mean the end of something. That repair is possible. And that even in times of deep uncertainty, we can stretch back toward connection, toward belonging, toward each other.**
Footnotes
*This discussion of rupture and repair does not apply to relationships where coercive control is present. In these cases, surface-level repair is often a tactic within the abuse cycle, reinforcing harm rather than resolving it. Lenore E. Walker’s 1979 framework on the ‘cycle of violence’ or ‘cycle of abuse’ outlines these common patterns in relationships where abuse is present
* * Calling members of the Learning Nook “community members” feels distant and a bit clunky — pretty much the opposite of belonging. We’ve had an ongoing conversation about what to call each other outside the community. One suggestion — “Nookies” (a playful nod to Wookiees) — is the one I’m currently trying out to see how it feels.
