Conor Cunningham

Neurodiverse Couples Specialist | Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (APCC)

At a Glance

• Autistic adult with ADHD and OCD — navigating neurodivergence firsthand while supporting my daughter with the same diagnoses

• 5+ years in recovery from alcohol addiction; faith-based recovery is foundational to how I understand myself and relationships

• Navigated dating, long-term cohabitation, and co-parenting while neurodivergent — I've lived the couple dynamics I help you untangle

• Decades of masking followed by diagnosis in adulthood — I know the cost of trying to fit into a neurotypical world

• Grew up in the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program — I know the gifts and the costs of being a gifted kid from the inside, and I help parents navigate both for their own children

• Spent 15+ years in clinical settings before becoming a therapist: crisis intervention, case management, substance use treatment, behavioral health

• Walked through homelessness, incarceration, and psychiatric hospitalization — I know how systems fail people, and I know what recovery looks like

• Direct, literal, plainspoken — I won't expect you to perform emotions on cue or hide your authentic communication style

I Know What It Costs

I know what it is to love someone whose brain works differently than the world expects. And I know what it costs both people when the tools available to them weren't designed with either of them in mind.

If you're in a neurodivergent-neurotypical relationship, you're already navigating a real structural challenge. One of you experiences the world in ways that feel obvious and natural; the other experiences it in ways that feel baffling, exhausting, or even impossible.

You're probably both convinced you're the one telling the truth about what's happening. You're both right. And that's the problem.

I'm here because I've been on both sides of that equation — the neurodiverse partner causing confusion, the one who couldn't quite understand why my communication style felt hurtful, why my intensity was too much, why I needed things a certain way.

I've also been on the receiving end of neurodivergent behavior that I couldn't make sense of. I've fathered a child with autism and ADHD. I've co-parented across a divorce. I've done the relentless work of understanding what I couldn't intuitively grasp.

This work changed me. And it's exactly what I bring to couples therapy.

The GATE Kid Nobody Diagnosed

I grew up in Southern California in a family that worked hard, valued education, and expected their kids to succeed. The problem was that I was already failing — not academically, but behaviorally. By first grade, my teachers were calling home. I was too much: too loud, too impulsive, too whatever. But my parents also recognized something else: I was sharp. I could think in complex ways. I could see patterns.

So I got tested and placed in GATE — Gifted and Talented Education. I was the gifted kid. Case closed. What nobody figured out was that I was also autistic, ADHD, and OCD. I was just smart enough to compensate. I learned early that I could study the people around me, figure out what was expected, and reshape how I presented myself to meet those expectations. For decades, this was my survival strategy. It was also my slow poison.

Looking back, I can see the pattern clearly: the sensory overwhelm I didn't have language for, the social rules that made no sense to me, the obsessive thoughts I couldn't turn off, the impulsivity I masked so thoroughly that people thought I was just "spirited."

A teacher would complain about my behavior; my parents would respond with stricter consequences. Nobody asked what was actually happening in my nervous system.

I wasn't diagnosed until adulthood. By then, the masking was so complete that I didn't recognize myself underneath it.

Decades of Masking: The Real Cost

Here's what nobody tells you about masking: it works. You can become so good at performing the neurotypical role that the people around you have no idea you're burning yourself alive to do it. You earn good grades. You make friends. You navigate relationships. You're successful by every external measure.

What they don't see is the exhaustion. The constant mental calculation of how to sit, where to look, what to say, when to speak, how much emotion to show, which part of yourself to hide. I spent decades reshaping how I presented myself to meet neurotypical expectations. I was a high-functioning mask walking around in a human suit.

The cost accumulated in ways I didn't even recognize at the time. Social awkwardness I couldn't explain. Relationships that felt confusing and painful. A persistent sense that something was fundamentally wrong with me — not because I was failing at being neurotypical, but because I was trying to be neurotypical at all.

Then I found alcohol. And for a long time, it seemed to solve the problem. It quieted the obsessive thoughts. It made social interaction feel possible. It numbed the relentless effort of masking. It let me be around other people without the constant internal calculation of whether I was doing it right. I didn't understand at the time that I was medicating undiagnosed neurodivergence, social anxiety I didn't have a name for, and trauma I hadn't processed.

For much of my life, alcohol was how I managed the weight of undiagnosed neurodivergence, social awkwardness, unprocessed trauma, and the relentless effort of masking.

Getting sober meant losing that numbing agent. But it also meant finally being forced to look at what was actually happening underneath. And that's when I started to understand myself.

Fatherhood, Parenting, Loss, and Advocacy

Becoming a parent while still in active addiction and undiagnosed neurodivergence was chaotic. My daughter was born after a traumatic delivery with global developmental delays. At age three, she was diagnosed with autism, dyslexia, ADHD, and OCD — the same constellation of diagnoses I would receive years later.

In some ways, watching her journey awakened me. I recognized myself in her struggles, but I also saw something different: she had advocates. She had early intervention services. She had parents and a family who collaborated to support her and fight for her rights. By age twenty, she's navigated college and is learning to drive. She's not a polished success story, but she's a person who knows herself and has resources.

My family as a whole has collaborated to support and advocate for her services during her lifetime, and she is a poster-child for the success of early intervention services.

But fatherhood also brought me face-to-face with grief. I experienced the loss of a child, and it broke me open in ways I needed. It forced me to stop performing and start feeling. It made me understand what really matters.

Co-parenting across a divorce, navigating my own recovery, and watching my daughter grow up neurodivergent taught me something crucial: the systems designed to help people are often designed by people who don't understand neurodivergent minds. They expect compliance, they miss the actual struggles, they measure success by neurotypical standards.

My daughter has had to fight for access to tools that should have been obvious. And I've had to fight to understand what she's experiencing — not intuitively, but deliberately, carefully, with humility.

That's the work I do with couples. The NT partner saying "I don't understand why you can't just do this." The ND partner saying "I'm trying my best and it's still not enough." Both of them are right. Both of them are exhausted. And the systems they've inherited aren't designed to help them meet in the middle.

Rock Bottom and Recovery

Sobriety didn't come easily. I walked through homelessness. I experienced incarceration. I was psychiatrically hospitalized. I hit bottom hard, and there was a long time when I wasn't sure I'd come back up.

But I did. And the thing that saved me wasn't willpower or bootstraps or any of that mythology we tell ourselves. It was spiritual recovery. Faith became my keystone. Not in a dogmatic way — it's foundational to how I understand myself now, how I understand other people, how I understand the work of therapy.

I'm five years sober. That doesn't mean I've arrived at some polished place of stability. It means I wake up and choose recovery every day. It means I understand viscerally what it costs to be an outsider in this world. It means I've experienced systems that were designed to fail me, and I've learned to build my own recovery anyway.

For the past five years, I've been volunteering at First Step House North County. I work with people in early recovery. I know what they're facing because I've faced it. I know what the shame feels like. I know what it looks like when someone is desperate to change but the world keeps telling them they're fundamentally broken. I know how to sit with someone in that place without trying to fix it or minimize it.

This experience is part of how I show up for couples. I don't judge the chaos. I don't expect you to be further along than you are. I know what it looks like when people are trying their absolute best with tools that don't fit them.

From the Other Side of the System

Before I became a therapist, I spent fifteen years on the other side of clinical work.

I was a Behavioral Health Technician at Hope Canyon Recovery. A Case Manager at Telecare Corp, working with conserved clients, doing discharge planning, navigating co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. A Clinician at Telecare providing ACT services, counseling, and crisis intervention. A Client Advocate at Teen Challenge.

I've also been a refinery engineer managing shutdowns. A firefighter and paramedic. A travel nurse recruiter. A hospice care specialist. A lab technician. My background is deliberately broad — not because I was directionless, but because I was searching for something I couldn't name. Work that mattered. Work where I could be direct and authentic. Work that aligned with my values instead of fighting against my neurology.

This unconventional path taught me something crucial: systems fail people. Mental health systems, criminal justice systems, social service systems — they're all designed by people who think linearly, who expect compliance, who measure success by narrow metrics. And they fail the people who think differently, who have trauma histories, who need something outside the standard box.

I've seen it from every angle. I've been the crisis counselor and the person in crisis. I've been the case manager and the conserved client. I've been the one trying to help and the one receiving services that weren't designed for me. This perspective is invaluable in couples therapy. I don't expect you to fit into the system. I expect the system is probably failing you in predictable ways.

What You'll Actually Get in Sessions With Me

I'm direct. I won't expect you to perform emotions on cue or package your experience in neurotypical terms. I won't misread your communication style as a character flaw. If I don't understand something, I'll ask. If I see a pattern, I'll name it clearly.

I've trained in CBT, DBT, Motivational Interviewing, trauma-informed care, and substance use treatment. I'm also trained in LIGHT Therapy (Light-Induced Guided Healing Therapy) and hypnotherapy. But I don't lead with clinical frameworks — I lead with understanding. We'll talk about your actual relationship, the patterns you're stuck in, the ways you're trying and failing, the things that make no sense to one of you and complete sense to the other.

For neurodivergent folks, I accommodate movement, fidgeting, reduced eye contact, and needing written summaries of what we discussed. I won't expect you to maintain constant verbal engagement or fill every silence. I won't interpret your communication style as disrespect or distance. I understand that neurotype shapes how we show up.

For neurotypical partners, I get the confusion. I've been the ND partner causing it. I understand what it costs to love someone whose brain works differently and to feel like your needs don't matter because you "should just understand them." We'll work on that real dynamic.

What to expect: vulnerability, directness, real conversation about real problems. No corporate therapy language. No pretending your relationship should look like someone else's. No shame about how stuck you are — that's what I'm here for.

License, Training & More

License & Supervision:

• Associate Professional Clinical Counselor (APCC), California BBS #19221

• Supervised by Dr. Harry Motro, LMFT #53452

• Employed by New Path Family of Therapy Centers

Education & Credentials:

• M.S. Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Walden University

• B.A. Human Services, Columbia College

• LIGHT Certification (Light-Induced Guided Healing Therapy), UCSD

• Hypnotherapist Certification, UCSD

• Training in CBT, DBT, Motivational Interviewing, Trauma-Informed Care, Substance Use Treatment