Running From the Fire: A Life Shaped by Conflict Avoidance on the Autism Spectrum

By David Wetherelt

I’ve lost more to conflict avoidance than to addiction, divorce, financial hardship, or depression. That may sound dramatic, but for someone like me, someone living unknowingly for decades with Autism and ADHD, it’s the truth. Conflict, for me, has always felt like a life-threatening event. My nervous system reacts not with curiosity or composure, but with terror. I freeze, I flee, or I shut down completely. I disappear. And for most of my life, I didn’t know why.

Until recently, I never had the language, or the understanding, to connect the dots. I was just “bad at relationships,” or “not cut out for confrontation.” But now I see clearly: conflict has always felt existentially dangerous to me. And the instinct to avoid it has silently governed my entire life. It’s led me to walk out of marriages, ghost friends, abandon jobs, ignore phone calls, leave bills unopened, and let mail stack up like snowdrifts on a doorstep I couldn’t bring myself to open.

When Conflict Feels Like Death

Most people misunderstand those of us who are conflict avoidant, especially when we’re neurodivergent. To others, we may seem evasive, manipulative, passive-aggressive, or even secretive. I’ve had people accuse me of hiding something during tense moments, of checking out emotionally when things got hard. But the truth is far more painful and vulnerable than that: the only thing I was hiding was my raw, debilitating reaction to conflict itself.

My entire body, from the time I was a little boy, would scream: “Danger! Run!” Even now, with years of therapeutic work behind me and a growing understanding of my Autism diagnosis, my system still lights up the same way in moments of perceived conflict. My stomach knots. My throat closes. My thoughts scatter. And it doesn’t even need to be a shouting match, just the tension of misaligned expectations or an emotional tone I can’t fully process will trigger it.

Autistic people like me often struggle with interpreting social cues, vocal tone, or body language. That ambiguity, when someone’s upset but not saying it outright, can be agonizing. It’s like trying to read a book in a language I never learned. So I default to old habits: freeze, fix, or flee.

Fixing, Fleeing, and Apologizing for Existing

Many of the clients I coach experience similar dynamics in their relationships. They come to me with histories of trauma, low self-esteem, anxiety, and depressive episodes that no one ever thought to link to undiagnosed neurodivergence. They blame themselves for failed relationships or chronic people-pleasing behaviors. But more often than not, they’re simply reacting to overwhelming internal signals that were never named or understood.

In relationships, neurodivergent individuals may:

• Try to “fix” the issue without actually understanding it

• Over-apologize, even when they’ve done nothing wrong

• Numb out, dissociate, or walk away entirely

• Take on the caretaker role, at the expense of their own needs

• Stay silent out of fear of saying the wrong thing

• Constantly shape-shift to please their partner

• Confuse their identity with their ability to avoid discomfort
  

These behaviors aren’t flaws. They’re trauma responses. And for many of us on the spectrum, the trauma isn’t always a singular violent event, it’s a lifetime of misattunement, rejection, misunderstanding, and feeling “too much” or “not enough” in every room we enter.

The Legacy of Undiagnosed Autism

In my case, I can trace much of my conflict avoidance to the decades I spent not knowing I was autistic. I was called sensitive, dramatic, lazy, stubborn, and difficult. Teachers told me I had so much potential if only I would focus. Friends told me I needed to “get over it.” Romantic partners told me I was emotionally unavailable. And I believed all of it.

No one ever considered Autism. Or ADHD. Or the complex interplay between the two that makes emotional processing feel like trying to navigate a crowded freeway in a go-kart. I internalized the idea that I was defective. That my reactions were wrong. That my silence meant guilt. That my tears meant weakness. That my inability to “talk things out” meant I wasn’t trying hard enough.

In reality, I was drowning.

When Safety Means Running Away

Avoidance, I now understand, was my safety. My system was protecting me in the only way it knew how. Conflict was registered not as a challenge to work through, but as a mortal threat. Walking away felt safer than speaking. Letting things go unresolved felt safer than being misunderstood or attacked. Silence became a survival skill.

But that survival skill came at a steep cost.

I’ve lost the love of my life because I couldn’t show up for hard conversations. I’ve abandoned jobs that meant the world to me because I couldn’t face performance reviews. I’ve burned bridges with friends because I disappeared instead of expressing a boundary. And perhaps most painfully, I’ve failed to stand up for myself countless times, shrinking in shame when what I really needed was compassion and clarity.

The Cost of Avoidance

The financial toll of this pattern has been staggering, avoiding conflict around money has cost me homes, cars, jobs, and security. The emotional toll is harder to quantify, but it’s there in every “what if” and every apology I never got to say. Every time someone mistook my silence for cruelty or deception instead of overwhelm and paralysis. Every time I hurt someone not with malice, but with my absence.

People assume that avoidance means you don’t care. In truth, it often means you care too much and don’t know how to handle the enormity of emotion that comes with it.

A Path Forward

I won’t pretend I’ve solved this. Despite all the inner work I’ve done, Internal Family Systems therapy, trauma work, peer coaching, mindfulness, and somatic practices. Conflict is still the sharpest edge in my life. But now I see it. I name it. I can say to someone I love, “Hey, this is really hard for me. I need a moment.” That simple phrase has changed everything.

Here’s what I now coach my clients to do—and what I practice myself every day:

• Identify your triggers. Know what sends your system into shutdown mode. Is it tone of voice? Raised voices? Being misunderstood?
  

• Communicate your needs ahead of time. Let partners or colleagues know that you sometimes need space during difficult conversations and why.
  

• Pause before you apologize. Ask yourself, “Am I apologizing because I did something wrong, or because I’m afraid of disconnection?”
  

• Learn to validate without self-erasing. You can validate someone’s feelings without agreeing that you’re the villain in the story.
  

• Recognize that avoiding conflict is a form of self-protection, but it’s not always self-care. True care means staying in the room, even when it’s uncomfortable.
  

For the Neurodivergent Souls Still Running

If you recognize yourself in my story, know this: you are not alone. You’re not broken. You’re not weak. You’re responding to a world that often feels too loud, too fast, too hostile. And you are worthy of love, even when you struggle to find the words. Even when you freeze. Even when you run.

Understanding your neurodivergence is not an excuse. It’s an explanation. And from that place of self-understanding, you can begin to rewrite the story. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But honestly, bravely, and with your feet planted—finally—on solid ground.