Why Some Autistic Adults Go No-Contact

As I approach my 26th year being “no-contact” with my dad, my peace with this decision is firmly in place. As a late-diagnosed autistic adult who spends their days supporting other autistic adults as a therapist, I find so many of my clients telling what feels like my “life story.”

We seem to be the generation that is open to the idea of exploring our own neurodivergence, better ways of parenting, openness to people who are different than ourselves, and if I’m being honest, leading less rigid and self-focused lives. Many of us are forced to make a call about how to navigate our “elders,” many of whom are undiagnosed autistic adults themselves and also responsible for the majority of the trauma that sent us to therapy in the first place.

The reasons vary. For some, it’s irreconcilable differences over politics or religion. For others, it’s watching parents repeat harmful parenting patterns with grandchildren. It might be body shaming, untreated addiction, or boundary violations that never stop. Sometimes it’s one big thing. More often, it’s a thousand small cuts that finally add up to “I can’t do this anymore.”

But underneath the specific trigger, there’s usually a common thread: autistic adults are questioning their need to maintain relationships with parents who seem uninterested in revisiting the harm they caused their undiagnosed autistic kids in childhood. Many of us are weighing the pros and cons of going no-contact, or at least revisiting our boundaries with parents who seem determined to repeat the same patterns.

The Weight of What Was

In my case, my father was a textbook study in how abuse wires a child’s nervous system for suffering. He paved a visceral pathway of fear and people-pleasing so deep into my body that decades later, I can still feel the tremor of waiting for his rage.

His rules never made sense. His warmth was entirely absent.

He told me directly that having me was a mistake. He destroyed the self-esteem of my half-brother and sister with the same casual cruelty he used to butter his toast. And between these moments of targeted destruction, he spent his days entirely focused on what mattered to him…or, if I’m being more charitable now, what kept his own “struggle-bussing” nervous system from flying apart.

He worked two jobs. He organized his record collection with the precision of a jeweler. He read his newspaper at the same time each day, leisurely, as if he had nowhere to be and no children watching him for scraps of attention. He ate the same meals. Made the same terrible jokes. Wore the same horrific 80’s clothes well into the 2000s.

What he didn’t do was put any effort into getting to know me or my siblings.

He certainly didn’t hug us. He never made us feel safe. He never “wasted” a casual moment on thoughts of whether or not we felt loved.

We grew up fearing him. That was the point.

Physically, he made it known that he wasn’t afraid to put his hands on us or destroy us emotionally with whatever tool fit the moment. He was aloof and disconnected right until he wasn’t, and then he was horribly, unpredictably mean when we broke any of his unspoken rules. From as early as I can remember, it was clear that when he was hurting, he would make sure we hurt too.

If he was late to work, we were going to be called names.

If he had a bad day at the office, we were going to get chased to our rooms with threats of violence.

If he hated his body, he was going to call us fat or a “whore.” Children, mind you. Small children.

His problems were our problems. His pain was our punishment. And we feared him the way he demanded to be feared…completely, constantly, without question.

What I See Now

Now, I’m eerily aware that what I thought was narcissism was likely the same PDA, autism, and trauma I accommodate in my own family today. I look back at his rigid routines, his need for control, his complete inability to flex or attune or connect, and I see a dysregulated autistic nervous system left entirely untended. His needs became our problem because no one had ever helped him understand or meet his own.

But here’s the thing: Understanding the why doesn’t erase the what.

I can hold both truths. He was probably autistic and traumatized. And he was abusive. And he had decades of adulthood to choose differently. And he didn’t.

He seemed to feel nothing for us…whereas my own children’s feelings are the most important concern in my life.

Where he used intimidation, I use low-demand parenting.

Where his expectations were unreasonable and rigid, mine are flexible and unique to each member of my family.

Where he looked to dominate, I seek to understand and accommodate.

Where he wanted to be right, I want to get it right. And “it” is my relationship with my kids and my family.

I will never be him. That’s the promise I made the day I left.

The Pattern I See Every Day

I will never miss my father. He’s the symbol of everything I’m determined not to be. But as I sit with my clients each day and witness the struggles of those who weren’t able to cut ties at 18, I feel both anger and sadness for the work that we, the abused and late-diagnosed autistics, are still carrying.

We had to find ourselves on our own.

We’ve had to undo the damage of rigid and unhealthy parenting methods that were never made for our brains and bodies.

We have to grow our own self-esteem in our 40s and try to quiet the voices in our heads that don’t belong to us.

Many of us will struggle with partners who continue our unfinished business because these patterns feel like home instead of harm. Our nervous systems learned that love comes with conditions, with unpredictability, with the constant work of feeling “less than” or “too much.”  So we choose people who are good to us most of the time, until they’re not, because at least we know how to navigate that terrain. At least the explosions feel familiar. At least we learned young how to make ourselves small enough to fit around someone else’s dysregulation.

Or maybe we choose partners who are kind but emotionally distant, recreating the ache of trying to earn warmth from someone who has none to give. We keep trying to be enough…smart enough, helpful enough, quiet enough, interesting enough…performing the same impossible audition we failed as children, hoping this time the grade will be different.

The pattern doesn’t feel like a pattern. It feels like love. Until we do the work. Until we realize we’ve been carrying our parents’ dysfunction into every relationship we build.

Why Autistic People Go No-Contact

Here’s what people don’t understand about autistic people and no-contact: We don’t cut people off lightly.

By the time we go no-contact, we’ve analyzed every angle, given every opportunity, and exhausted every option. We’ve tried everything else first.

We stated boundaries clearly, not once, but forty-seven times. We explained our needs in explicit detail, breaking them down into digestible pieces. We gave second chances, seventieth chances, seven-hundredth chances. We wrote letters. We had conversations. We tried family therapy. We read books on communication and brought highlighted passages to show them. We practiced scripts in the mirror. We stayed calm when they escalated. We apologized for things that weren’t our fault just to keep the peace.

And it didn’t matter.

We go no-contact when people refuse to respect our boundaries after we’ve clearly stated them.

I think of my client Sarah, who told her mother eleven times…(she counted) that surprise visits triggered her nervous system and she needed 24-hour notice before anyone came to her home. Her mother showed up unannounced on her birthday “because that’s what family does,” then cried to other relatives about how “sensitive” Sarah was being.

We go no-contact when someone insists we’re “too sensitive” instead of stopping the thing that hurts us.

“You’re overreacting.” “You’re too emotional.” “You take everything so personally.” These phrases are weapons used to avoid accountability. They reframe our legitimate pain as our personal failing. They make the problem about our perception rather than their behavior.

My client Marcus spent years hearing he was “dramatic” when he asked his father to stop making jokes about his stimming. The jokes continued. The gaslighting escalated. When Marcus finally went no-contact, his father told everyone Marcus “abandoned the family over nothing.”

We go no-contact when other neurodivergent family members refuse to see their own problematic behaviors but have no problem seeing, and blaming ours.

This one is particularly painful. The undiagnosed autistic parent who can spot every autistic trait in their child and weaponize it, but cannot see the same patterns in themselves. They notice when we’re “too rigid” but not when they’ve eaten the same meal for thirty years. They critique our social difficulties while having no friends themselves. They mock our sensory needs while wearing the same style of clothing since 1987.

They see autism as the problem in us, not as an explanation for the family patterns they’re perpetuating.

We go no-contact when family pathologizes our autistic traits while demanding we accept their unregulated emotional outbursts.

My client Devon’s mother would scream, throw objects, and give the silent treatment for days. But when Devon needed to leave a loud family gathering early due to sensory overload, she was accused of “not trying hard enough” and “making everything about her autism.”

My client Missy’s husband is quick to talk down to their three children, and often snaps at them, telling them they’re lazy and rude (just like her dad did to her).  When Missy tries to talk to him about how he hurts people’s feelings when he’s mad, he can’t tolerate her raising her voice. “You don’t get to talk to me that way.”

The double standard is staggering. But many of the people causing the harm don’t see these traits in themselves. All they see is their own pain in the moment. One person’s emotional dysregulation is just “having feelings” or “being passionate.” Yet autistic self-protection is “manipulation” or “being difficult.”

The Cycle We’re Breaking

But here’s the one that breaks my heart most: When parents try to hurt our kids the same way they hurt us, and call it “discipline” or “tough love.”

We’re using low-demand strategies for our PDA kids. We’re using approaches backed by research and trauma-informed care. We’re preventing the exact trauma that was done to us. We’re seeing our children as whole human beings whose nervous systems deserve protection, not domination.

But family calls it “letting them get away with everything.” They roll their eyes at our “gentle parenting.” They make comments about how “kids these days” need more structure, more consequences, more of what destroyed us. They tell us that “everyone needs a label these days.”

They’d rather we traumatize our kids the way they traumatized us than wonder if there’s a better way.

I think of my client Jamie, whose mother insisted her PDA grandson needed “a firm hand” and “to learn the word no.” When Jamie explained PDA and asked her mother to use collaborative language with her son, her mother said, “This is exactly why your generation is raising entitled brats. I raised you just fine.”

Jamie didn’t feel “just fine.” She felt like she’d spent thirty-eight years trying to be small enough, quiet enough, good enough to avoid her mother’s rage. She has complex PTSD. She spent two decades in therapy undoing the damage of a childhood where every autistic trait was met with punishment.

That’s not “just fine.”

When her mother grabbed her son’s arm during a meltdown and said, “Stop this nonsense right now,” Jamie made a choice. She chose her child’s nervous system over her mother’s approval. She went no-contact that day.

We’re used to taking the pain ourselves. We’ve endured it our whole lives. But we cannot, we will not stand by and watch that same cycle destroy our children, when family rejects our parenting approach without even trying to understand it.

“In my day, we just powered through.” “You’re making excuses for bad behavior.” “If you’d just be consistent with consequences…”

They don’t want to learn about PDA. They don’t want to read about demand avoidance or autonomy-supportive parenting. They don’t want to understand that what looks like defiance is actually a nervous system in fight-or-flight. They want us to do what was done to us, and when we refuse, they make us the problem.

So we choose our kids. We go no-contact. We protect their nervous systems even when it costs us our family of origin.

What No-Contact Actually Is

No-contact isn’t cruelty. It’s self-preservation.

It’s saying: “I have explained, boundaried, and tried. And nothing changes. Leaving is safety.”

It’s recognizing that some people cannot or will not do the work required to be safe for us. And that’s not our responsibility to fix.

It’s acknowledging that we don’t owe anyone access to us or our children simply because we share DNA.

It’s understanding that “but they’re family” is not a magic phrase that erases harm.

It’s accepting that the parent who gave us life is not capable of seeing us as fully human, and continuing to offer ourselves up for dehumanization is not love, it’s self-abandonment.

No-contact is the boundary we set when every other boundary has been violated.

The Grief No One Talks About

Going no-contact doesn’t mean we don’t grieve. We do.

We grieve the parent we needed but never had.

We grieve the childhood we deserved but were denied.

We grieve the fantasy that they might change, that they might see us, that they might finally say, “I was wrong. I hurt you. I’m sorry.”

We grieve watching other people have easy relationships with their parents. The phone calls, the holiday traditions, the unconditional support, the connection, the care…we can’t even imagine being on the receiving end.

We grieve the family gatherings we’re no longer invited to, and the people who closed their eyes to the abuse they tried not to see.

We grieve the other parents who weren’t strong enough to leave.

We grieve the extended family members who still choose the abuser over the abused because it is easier.

But we do not grieve the relationship we actually had. Because what we had was never a relationship.

The Stories That Keep Me Going

I think of my client Rachel, who went no-contact with her father five years ago. Last month, her nine-year-old daughter said, “Mom, I love that I can tell you anything and you don’t get mad.” Rachel cried in my office, not from sadness, but from the profound relief of knowing she broke the cycle.

I think of my client Theo, whose mother still recruits family members to do her dirty work. Aunts who text “just give her another chance,” cousins who show up at his door with guilt trips wrapped in concern, siblings who tell him he’s “being dramatic” and “tearing the family apart.” He stands firm. “My peace is not negotiable,” he tells me. “I spent thirty-five years negotiating my right to exist. I’m done.”

I think of my client Mei, who went no-contact with her entire family of origin to protect her autistic son. “They think I’m overreacting,” she said. “But I know what they did to me. I saw what they did to my autistic brother. I will not let them do it to my child.” Her son is thriving. She is healing. The family who rejected her calls her “mentally ill” for protecting her child. The irony is not lost on either of us.

To the PDA Parents Who’ve Had to Cut Off Family

Your child will know they were worth protecting. They will grow up understanding that their needs matter, that their nervous system deserves respect, that they are not too much.

That matters more than anyone’s opinion about your parenting.

Your child won’t remember the grandparent they never knew. But they will remember that you chose them. They will internalize safety instead of survival. They will learn that love is protection, not performance.

During the Holidays

When the holiday season arrives, if you’re struggling with your own choices to go no-contact, to stay home, or to finally say the quiet part out loud about what your undiagnosed parents did, know that you’re not alone.

Those of us who want to are here with you.

We’re having small, quiet Thanksgivings with chosen family who actually see us.

We’re creating new traditions that don’t include walking on eggshells.

We’re teaching our children that family is about safety, not obligation.

We’re owning our own emotions and apologizing to children when we, the adults, make mistakes.

We’re sitting with the grief and the relief in equal measure.

We’re blocking the guilt-trip texts and the “but it’s Christmas” manipulations.

We’re protecting the peace we fought so hard to build.

Leaving is sometimes the most loving thing you can do for yourself and your kids.

Twenty-six years later, I don’t regret going no-contact with my father for a single moment. What I regret is that I had a father who made that choice necessary.

But I don’t regret the life I built without him. I don’t regret the parent I became in opposition to everything he was. I don’t regret choosing peace over pain, safety over sorry.

And neither will you.

If this resonates with you, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. Sometimes the most radical thing we can do is give each other permission to choose ourselves.