The Neurodivergent Love Lab

Your friend isn't trying to be mean. She loves you. So when she says “you just have a type, hey?” she's smiling.

And you smile back. You laugh, you say “yeahhh.” And then you get in your car and the sentence that shows up isn't kind at all: what's wrong with me?

Because you can see the pattern too. Different names, different jobs, different hair.... and somehow the same ending. The same slow shrinking. So you do the math: they're all different, which means the common denominator is you. Which must mean you're broken.

I don't think that's what's happening - not even a little. In this episode, I'm going to show you the seven mechanisms actually running underneath the choosing, every one of them upstream of the decision and none of them a character flaw. 

Because most dating advice was built for neurotypical brains, and “you just have a type” has no next step. “You've been choosing under conditions that were stacked against you” has three. And I'm giving them all to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why “why do I keep choosing the wrong partners?” is a trap of a question - and the better one that actually has a way out
• The seven mechanisms driving the pattern, and why every single one happens before you ever choose
• How your best mask builds a relationship on an expiry date from date one - and quietly stops you from interviewing them back
• Why rejection sensitivity turns someone's enthusiasm into relief, and relief into something you mistake for love
• The difference between activation and safety in your body - and the three-question check to run after every date
• Why being tolerated got mistaken for being loved - and how to tell them apart
• How to unmask earlier on purpose and treat it as screening, not confessing
• The “your gut is data, not a verdict” rule - how to log what you notice instead of talking yourself out of it

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Free quiz, Is It Actually Me? figure out whether it's your wiring, your relationship, or the two tangled together: JennaDalton.com/quiz
• Episode 13: What Masking Costs Your Relationship (and What Unmasking Actually Looks Like)
• Episode 3: The Neuroscience Of Why You Fall Hard and Then Pull Away

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send this one to the friend who's whispered “what's wrong with me?” She needs to hear that nothing is.

CONNECT

• Website: JennaDalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
• Work with me: book a free 15-minute consultation - Work with Jenna

A NOTE

This podcast 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.

Your partner turns to you - with good intentions - and asks the question every relationship podcast told them to ask: “What do you need from me?”

And you’ve got nothing.

There’s something in there.... pressure in your chest, heat in your throat, a weight you can’t name. But a word for it? You can't put your finger on it. So you say the thing they don’t want to hear. “I don’t know.” And you watch their face flicker - because “I don’t know” sounds like “I won’t tell you.”

Then someone - a therapist, your mom, an Instagram carousel with a nice font - hands you the line: you two just need to communicate your needs better. Directly. Clearly. Kindly.

Cool. Great. Thanks. How?

Here’s what I want you to hear before we start: you’re not a bad communicator. That advice is a hashtag built for neurotypical brains. It’s asking your brain to do something it can’t do in that exact moment, and then blaming you when it doesn’t work. In this episode I pull the advice apart, show you the four reasons it breaks down for neurodivergent women specifically, and hand you three swaps that finally work with your wiring instead of against it.

IN THIS EPISODE

• The five things “just communicate better” secretly assumes are true about you - and why most aren’t, even on a good day
• Why the perfect answer seems to always arrive 40 minutes later in the shower
• Alexithymia in plain words: how you can be flooded with feeling and still have zero words for it
• The double empathy problem - why the miscommunication was never one-sided, and never only your job to fix
• The fawn-response trap that’s specific to us: when “no, it’s fine” comes out sounding like communication but isn’t true
• The Three Swaps: how to change the timing, the format, and the target
• The one placeholder phrase to pre-load now, while you’re calm, for the moment you can barely think straight, let alone formulate a sentence

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Free workbook: How to Feel Understood in Love (a two-way love map you fill in together): JennaDalton.com/lovemap
• Episode 14: You’re Not Overreacting - You’re Flooded (the deep dive on emotional flooding referenced here)
• Free quiz: Is It Actually Me?: JennaDalton.com/quiz
• The double empathy problem: coined by autistic researcher Damian Milton

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send this to the person who’s been told to “just use her words” one too many times. Or to the partner who hears “I don’t know” and doesn’t yet know it means “I’m still in here, still processing.”

CONNECT

• Website: JennaDalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
• Work with Jenna: book a free 15-minute consultation at JennaDalton.com

A NOTE

This podcast 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.

It's the end of a long day and you've finally crawled into bed. Your partner gets in beside you and reaches for you.

Just a hand on your back. Nothing wild. A completely normal, loving gesture from a person who loves you.

And your whole body says no.

Not "no, I don't love you." Not "no, I don't want you." Just a full-body flinch you can feel to your core. And then there's that half-second where you decide whether to pull away, or say something, or hold still and hope your face doesn't tell on you.

Then comes the part that actually hurts. When you think: "Something's wrong with me. Everybody else can do this." And quietly, on their side of the bed: "she doesn't want me anymore."

Two people. Same bed. Both deciding they're the problem.

Today, I'm going to tell you what's actually happening (spoiler: it isn't rejection.) Your body wasn't rejecting your partner. Your body was responding to overwhelm. Those are two completely different things, and almost nobody teaches you the difference.

And then I'm going to talk about the thing nobody talks about with this topic: the upside. Because a sensory system with the volume turned up isn't only turned up on the bad stuff.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why a sensory no is not a rejection of a person - and the exact difference between "not this touch, not right now" and "not you"
• What the intense world theory says about your nervous system, plus the research on sensory hypersensitivity in autistic women (a group that almost never gets studied)
• Why light touch can feel like static while deep pressure feels wonderful - and why "she doesn't like being touched" is almost always the wrong conclusion
• How interoception and alexithymia turn "what do you want in bed?" into a genuinely unanswerable question - and why that's hardware, not a character flaw
• What masking in the bedroom quietly costs you, and how saying yes when your body means no teaches you to distrust your own signals
• The five ways a turned-up sensory system makes closeness better
• A four-step tool you can start this week: your green/yellow/red inventory, adding one green thing on purpose, the three-part translation sentence, and checking capacity before instead of during

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• How to Feel Understood in Love - the free workbook: a two-way love map. One side for you, one for your partner.
• The free quiz: Is It Actually Me? five minutes to sort out what's your wiring, what's your relationship, and what's both.
• Episode 13: What Masking Costs Your Relationship (and What Unmasking Actually Looks Like)
• Love, Sex, and Autism by Candice Christiansen
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Follow the show so you don't miss what's coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send this one to the woman who's been apologizing for her own nervous system since she was six. Or to the partner who's been quietly worried they're getting it wrong.

CONNECT

• Website: jennadalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
• Work with Jenna (free 15-minute consult, Alberta): Book here

A NOTE

This podcast is for educational purposes and is not a substitute for therapy or individualized care. Jenna Dalton is a Registered Provisional Psychologist in Alberta, Canada. If you're in crisis, please reach out to a local crisis line or emergency service.

You’re in the middle of it.

The fight has tipped over the edge, and your whole body is screaming "I have to get out of this room. Right now."

But you know what happens if you walk away. You’ve lived it a hundred times. If you leave, you’re stonewalling. You’re running. You’re shutting them out, you don’t care, you always do this....

So you stay. Because good partners stay and work it out. And your nervous system has nowhere to go, so it goes off like a bomb. Or you finally break and flee anyway, and the leaving becomes the new fight.

Either way, you lose. Stay and detonate, or leave and get convicted of abandonment.

Today, I'm handing you a third option. Because that feeling isn’t you being avoidant or cold or bad at love. It’s a flooded, overloaded, rejection-sensitive nervous system trying to protect a relationship it cares about enormously. Most conflict advice was designed for neurotypical brains, and “just stay in it and communicate” asks you to use the exact part of your brain that has already gone offline. There’s a tool for this. And it’s not "just communicate better."

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why “stay in it and use your words” is reasonable, research-backed advice.... for a nervous system that isn’t yours
• The two flavours of neurodivergent conflict: flooding (too much energy, too fast) and shutdown (the breaker tripped) plus how to easily tell them apart
• The checklist for each one, so you can finally name what’s happening while it’s happening
• Why women flood into fawning and over-explaining instead of yelling - and why we shut down while still nodding, saying “I’m fine”
• What’s going on between your amygdala and your prefrontal cortex that makes a pause necessary, not optional
• The exact line between a pause and stonewalling - same action, two completely opposite messages
• The Pause Protocol: name it, hold it, come back - including the one step you can never, ever skip
• How to regulate during a pause based on your pattern (move the energy vs. cut the input), what to do when the pause turns into an RSD spiral, and what to try if your partner won’t get on board

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Free guide: How to Stop the RSD Spiral: JennaDalton.com/rsd
• Episode 7: How Rejection Sensitivity Hijacks Your Relationship (+ 4 Steps to Slow Its Roll)
• Free quiz: Is It Actually Me?: JennaDalton.com/quiz

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Subscribe so you don’t miss what’s coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send this one to the woman who’s been told she stonewalls when what she was actually doing was trying not to blow up with the person she loves. Or send it to your partner and help them finally get it. 

CONNECT

• Website: JennaDalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
• Work with Jenna: book a free 15-minute consult at JennaDalton.com

A NOTE

This podcast 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.

You make it through the whole day.

You're friendly with the barista. You're on in the meeting. You read the room, you smooth things over, you remember to ask your coworker about her mom. By every external measure, you're fine. Good, even.

And then you walk through your own front door.... and you have absolutely nothing left. The person you love looks up and says “hey, how was your day?" and you can't even find the words. You're flat. You're quiet. You need the lights low and everyone to stop needing things from you for one merciful hour.

And then they say the thing that breaks your heart: “You're so good with everyone else. You save your worst for me.”

Here's what you need to know: that's not what's happening. Today I'm going to explain what masking really is, why women do so much more of it, the quiet ways it taxes your relationship, and what unmasking actually looks like with your partner. Because it's not the terrifying, all-or-nothing thing you're picturing. And that misunderstanding is exactly what keeps a lot of women masking in the one place they should finally get to put it down.

IN THIS EPISODE

• What masking really is: the three pieces researchers break it into, in plain language
• Why women mask so much more, and how good-girl conditioning got bolted onto an already-overworked nervous system
• The come-home collapse that gets read as rejection (and why it's actually the opposite)
• How fawning, resentment, and the invisible mental-load quietly tax your relationship
• What unmasking is not (becoming a different person, trauma-dumping, losing control....) and what it actually is
• The real, undramatic timeline of unmasking, plus three moves for coming home as yourself

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• How to Feel Understood in Love: the free workbook that gives you and your partner the same map, so unmasking lands as trust instead of distance: JennaDalton.com/lovemap
• Free quiz: Is It Actually Me?: JennaDalton.com/quiz
• Come say hey on Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send this one to the woman who lights up for everyone else all day and comes home with nothing left (and has spent years believing that makes her a bad partner.) She needs to hear this.

CONNECT

• Website: JennaDalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
• Work with Jenna: book a free 15-minute consultation at JennaDalton.com

A NOTE

This episode references the documented link between masking and mental-health risk, including suicidality. If any of this is hitting close to home for you personally, please reach out to a local crisis line or a professional you trust. This podcast 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.

You've rehearsed it a hundred times. In the shower. In the car. Lying awake next to them while they sleep.

"I think I'm autistic."

"I think I'm ADHD."

And every time you run the tape, it ends the same way: them not getting it. So you say nothing. For weeks. Months. Because telling the person you've built a life with about the most important thing you've ever understood about yourself, and having them shrug and say "Oh. Okay. What am I supposed to do with that?".... For a woman raised to keep everyone else comfortable, that's a special kind of rejection.

This episode is for you if you've been sitting on your diagnosis (or your strong suspicion) because you're terrified of how it'll land. If some quiet part of you is doing the math: if I let them see the real me, will they still want her?

I'll be honest. The reason this is so scary isn't that you're being dramatic. There's a good chance your partner fell in love with a version of you that took an enormous amount of energy to produce. So today I'm not just naming why this conversation is so heavy. I'm handing you the actual words to have it, plus exactly what to say when it doesn't go the way you hoped.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• Why disclosure is so much heavier for women specifically (masking, the "good girl" conditioning, and the fawn response most of us are running without a name for it)
• The most common dismissive reactions, decoded, so "everyone's a little ADHD" and "you don't seem autistic" stop feeling like proof that you're too much
• Why a partner going quiet is usually grief, not rejection (and why misreading it makes everything worse)
• The double empathy problem, in plain words: why the misunderstanding was never one-directional, and never all your fault
• The one reframe that changes the whole conversation
• Six moves for the actual conversation, from picking your moment to leading with experience over the label
• Word-for-word scripts for when it goes sideways
• What to do after you disclose (when your nervous system crashes from the sheer bravery of it)

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Free workbook: How to Feel Understood in Love a two-way love map, so you're not the one doing all the translating forever
• Free quiz: "Is It Actually Me?" figure out whether it's your wiring, your relationship, or both

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Follow the show so you don't miss what's coming, leave a rating wherever you're listening, and send this to the friend who's been rehearsing this conversation in the shower for months and still hasn't said a word.

CONNECT:

• Website: JennaDalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
• In Alberta and want support having these conversations? Book a free 15-minute consult.

A NOTE: The Neurodivergent Love Lab is for educational purposes and isn't a substitute for therapy or mental health care. If you're in crisis, please reach out to a local crisis line or emergency service.

It's nearly midnight and you're seventeen videos deep, watching a stranger on the internet describe your entire life in a way that makes you go, "how does she know?"

The way you script conversations before you have them. The way one shift in someone's tone can wreck your whole afternoon. The way you read a room before you've finished walking into it, and somehow feel like it's your fault if even one person is in a bad mood.

Every single thing she says lands as "that's me." And then, about four seconds later, the second voice shows up: "oh please, everybody's like that, you're not autistic, you're not ADHD, you just want a label to feel special."

The honest truth? That second voice, the one calling you a fraud, is not the voice of reason. It's the single most biased person in the room.

Today I'm walking through the five researched reasons that imposter voice is so much louder for women, why being "too functional" isn't proof you're actually fine, and the difference between diagnosing yourself from a thirty-second video and getting a search term from one. Because the fear that you're faking it was never proof you're faking it. For women, it's almost a calling card of the real thing.

IN THIS EPISODE

• The five researched reasons diagnosis imposter syndrome hits women so much harder
• Why "I'm too functional to be neurodivergent" might be evidence of how much it costs you to look fine, not proof that you are
• The difference between diagnosing yourself from TikTok and getting a search term from TikTok (and why late-identified women are the demographic the system overlooked, not trend-chasers)
• Whether self-identification is valid, when a formal assessment is actually worth pursuing, and why even gold-standard assessments might miss you
• How the doubt climbs out of your head and into your relationship, quietly filing every recurring fight under "I'm the problem"
• The reframe to leave with: imposter syndrome can be a sign you really are neurodivergent, not proof that you're not
  
  

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

• Free quiz: Is It Actually Me? Twelve questions to help you see whether what you keep bumping into is your wiring, your relationship, or both together
• Come say hey on Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
  
  

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send this one to the friend who keeps saying "I think I might be ADHD or autistic, but I'm probably just making it up." She's the reason this episode exists.

CONNECT

• Website: JennaDalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab 
• Work with Jenna: book a free 15-minute consultation
  
  

A NOTE

This podcast 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.

You've heard it for as long as you can remember.

"You're so cold."

"Why do you take everything so personally?"

"Really? You're crying again?"

"You're so controlling. Why can't you just go with the flow?"

Cold and aloof. Then somehow, in the very same breath, too sensitive and too dramatic. You don't mean to be any of those things. You don't want to be labelled any of those things. And yet it's been the pattern your whole life, and you've never quite been able to explain why.

Today, I'm going to show you the autism that hides in women. The version nobody was looking for. The you that was missed. We'll go through eight traits that get  completely misread by the people closest to you, and I'll show you what's actually going on underneath, so you can finally start translating it, for yourself first, and then for your partner.

Because it was never coldness, and it was never drama. It was wiring, wearing a mask nobody taught you how to take off.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why autism got missed in girls and women for decades, and the two contradictory stereotypes we got handed instead of trains 
• The empathy myth, and the double empathy problem (spoiler: the misunderstanding was always a two-way street, and you've been doing the translating for both sides, alone, for years)
• Why info-dumping about your special interest is one of the most vulnerable bids for connection there is, and the gendered knife in being met with "yeah, sure, anyway...."
• Parallel play and monotropism: why being alone-together is closeness, not distance, and why your attention is a spotlight, not a floodlight
• Alexithymia, and why "I don't know what I feel" is not the same as "I feel nothing" (and how cruel it is to be called too emotional when the real experience was a wall of feeling you couldn't even name)
• Masking and the collapse that looks like withdrawal: why the mask drops at home, and why "you save your worst for me" gets the whole thing exactly backwards
• Sensory needs and routine: why "not tonight" was never about your partner, and why your routines are scaffolding, not control
• Directness, and the masking twist that turns it into an exhausting niceness where you lose the thread of what you even want

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Get the free workbook: How to Feel Understood in Love

Get on the waitlist for Wired For Love to get even more support understanding how you want to be loved and how to be loved and accepted for you (not the masked you.)

Come say hey on Instagram @neurodivergentlovelab

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

If this one felt like a warm, weighted blanket, hit follow so you don't miss what's coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send it to the woman who has spent her whole life being told she was cold and too much, and never had the words for what was actually going on. You might be handing her the key to finally understanding herself, and being understood in love.

CONNECT

Find me at JennaDalton.com 

Come say hey on Instagram @neurodivergentlovelab

If you're in Alberta, book a free 15-minute consultation

A NOTE

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.

You weren't the little boy bouncing off the walls.

You were the one staring out the window, daydreaming. The one who waited until the last minute and still got the A. The one teachers praised for being "so bright and so well behaved." 

So nobody assessed you. Honestly, nobody even thought to.

"She's just sensitive."

"She's such a daydreamer."

"She's so organized, she can't have ADHD."

And now you're decades in, finally putting words to something you've carried your whole life. And underneath the relief, there's a quieter voice asking: if it was always there, why did everyone miss it? Why did I miss it?

This episode is for you if you got told you were too sensitive, too scattered, too much, and not enough, all at the same time.

You weren't missed because you were fine. You were missed because the checklists were built almost entirely by studying wiggly little boys, and your ADHD turned inward instead of outward. Today, I'm going to walk you through what your ADHD actually looks like, why it stayed invisible for so long, and how every one of those quiet, internal traits has been quietly shaping your relationships this whole time. And then I'm going to hand you a simple tool to start translating your wiring out loud, before it gets misread.

It was never your fault. The tools just weren't built for your brain.

IN THIS EPISODE:

• How the ADHD checklist was built around disruptive little boys, and who that template leaves out completely
• The distinction that changes everything
• What the missed traits actually look like
• The hyperactivity that doesn't look hyperactive at all
• Why emotional dysregulation and RSD are often the loudest part, even though they aren't in the formal diagnostic criteria
• How masking kept you off the radar, and the cruel trap inside it
• Why your traits genuinely shift with your hormones, premenstrually, in pregnancy and postpartum, and through perimenopause
• The relationship shadow of every quiet trait, and a three-step translation tool to close the gap between what you mean and how it lands

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Free quiz: Is This My Brain or My Relationship? 
• Episode 3: The Neuroscience Of Why You Fall Hard and Then Pull Away
• Episode 7 and the free RSD guide (the spiral that turns a neutral comment into a catastrophe)
• Instagram: DM me with your questions @neurodivergentlovelab 

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Subscribe so you don't miss what's next, leave a quick rating wherever you listen (it genuinely helps the show reach the people who need it), and send this one to the woman in your life who got missed too.

CONNECT:

• Website: JennaDalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
• Work with me: book a free 15-minute consultation at JennaDalton.com

A NOTE:

This podcast 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.

You were the kid who never got the memo.

Everyone else seemed to know where to stand, what to do with their hands, how to slip into a conversation like it was the most natural thing in the world. You were a half-second behind - studying what to do, taking mental notes, hoping nobody would notice.

And later, in relationships, you heard it again and again:

"You're too much."

"You're too sensitive."

"You're too emotional."

"Why can't you just be chill?"

So you tried to bottle it up. Be cool. Act like nothing was a big deal.... when the truth was, so many things felt like a really big deal.

This episode is for you if you've spent your life quietly wondering why connection seems to come easily to everyone but you (and blaming yourself for it.)

Today, I'm doing something I've never done on this show: I'm telling you my own story. The summer camp where no one wanted to pair up with me. The relationships where I felt like too much. And the assessment, at 40, that finally explained who I'd been the whole time: Level 2 autism and severe ADHD. 

I'll walk you through what AuDHD actually is, the relief and the grief that show up together with a late diagnosis, and why understanding your wiring changes everything. Because it was never that you were bad at being a person. You were just doing it with a brain nobody ever explained to you.

IN THIS EPISODE

• The summer-camp memory that shaped how I saw myself for decades (and why it still matters)
• How I went from psychology student to realizing I might be neurodivergent myself
• What my assessment actually revealed (and why the word "severe" caught me off guard)
• What AuDHD really is (and why it pulls you in two directions at once)
• The relief AND the grief that arrive together with a late diagnosis
• The everyday tools I'd been quietly building since childhood to mask executive dysfunction (spoiler: it was never laziness)
• The AuDHD strengths I finally stopped apologizing for: pattern recognition, deep empathy, fierce loyalty, justice sensitivity....
• Why "too much" and "too sensitive" were never flaws to fix (and what they actually are)

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

- Free quiz: Is This My Brain or My Relationship?

LOVED THIS EPISODE?

Subscribe so you don't miss what's coming, leave a rating wherever you listen, and send this one to the person in your life who's always been told they're "too much" - and is just starting to wonder if there might be another explanation.

CONNECT

• Website: JennaDalton.com
• Instagram: @neurodivergentlovelab
• Work with Jenna: book a free 15-minute consultation at JennaDalton.com

A NOTE

This podcast 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.