Conor Cunningham

At a Glance

• Autistic male myself — I know the territory from the inside
   

• Diagnosed ASD, ADHD, OCD; in recovery from addiction with 5+ years sobriety
   

• 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
   

• Worked in refinery engineering, emergency response, behavioral health, and recovery services before becoming a therapist
   

• I speak your language: direct, no-nonsense, no expectation that you'll perform emotions on cue
   

• Trained in CBT, DBT, trauma-informed care, and specialized LIGHT therapy and hypnotherapy
   

• I've navigated homelessness, the legal system, psychiatric hospitalization, and fatherhood — and I'm still here
   

• Faith and recovery work are foundational to how I understand my own neurodivergence and how I show up for others

What I Know About Being an Autistic Man in America

You didn't get here by being easy to read. You got here by being smart enough to figure out the game, and disciplined enough to play it even when it was exhausting.

Maybe you're too quiet in meetings. Maybe you're too intense. Maybe your literalism gets misread as coldness or rudeness when really you're just being precise. Maybe people think you don't care because your emotional expression doesn't match their expectations.

I see discrepancies in every aspect of our American society that the neurodivergent man must overcome. There's constant pressure to perform, yet very little support.

Nobody hands you a manual for how to navigate relationships, careers, or even yourself when your brain works differently than the world expects.

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I know what it is to spend decades reshaping how you present yourself to meet other people's expectations. I know the cost of that effort. And I know that unmasking doesn't mean you suddenly become neurotypical — it means you stop setting yourself on fire to keep everyone else warm.

My Story: The Long Route to Understanding Myself

The Gifted Kid with No Idea He Was Struggling

I grew up in Southern California. From first grade, I was flagged as a behavior problem.

But my intelligence was obvious enough that I got placed in the GATE program — Gifted and Talented Education. This became the perfect cover. I was smart, so nobody looked too closely at the fact that I didn't fit the social mold. My learning disabilities and neurodivergent wiring weren't just invisible; they were actively masked by academic performance.

For decades, I had no framework to understand why basic social interactions felt like decoding an alien language, or why the effort of being "normal" left me depleted.

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The Years of Masking

I studied the people around me. Figured out what was expected. Spent years reshaping how I presented myself to meet those expectations.

This was all at high personal cost. I wore different masks for different contexts — one at school, one at work, one with family, one with romantic partners. Each mask was convincing. Each one also took something from me.

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I navigated dating while neurodivergent. Long-term cohabitation. Becoming a parent. All while carrying undiagnosed autism, ADHD, and OCD.

I didn't know why social exhaustion felt so profound. I didn't know why I needed so much recovery time alone. I didn't know why I defaulted to alcohol to manage the weight of it all.

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When Everything Falls Apart (And You Actually Get Clarity)

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. I experienced homelessness. I navigated incarceration. I was hospitalized for psychiatric crisis.

These weren't isolated incidents — they were the natural outcome of being a neurodivergent man with no support system and no understanding of himself.

I also experienced grief that will never fully leave me. I lost a child. That changes you. It clarifies what actually matters.

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But here's what I found in the wreckage: I got sober. I stayed sober — over 5 years now. I found recovery work and faith-based community. I got formally diagnosed with autism, ADHD, and OCD as an adult.

And instead of seeing these diagnoses as deficits, I started to understand them as the actual architecture of who I am. The same architecture that made the masking so costly also gives me clarity, directness, precision, and loyalty that matters.

Fatherhood, Parenting, and Learning What Advocacy Actually Means

My daughter was diagnosed with autism at age three, after a traumatic birth that left her with significant developmental delays.

Watching her navigate the early intervention system, fighting for her rights, being her translator and advocate — this taught me something crucial: the institutions are not designed with either of us in mind. They're designed for a neurotype that most of us don't fit.

But when you know that, you can stop blaming yourself for not fitting. You can get to work on building what actually serves you.

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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. Now 20, she's navigating college and driving and becoming herself.

Being her father has made me a better clinician and a more honest person. Parenting a neurodivergent child has been my deepest teacher — in patience, in advocacy, in genuine attunement — and it shapes how I show up for other fathers and parents walking the same road.

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From Chaos to Purpose

Since 2021, I've volunteered at First Step House North County, supporting people in early recovery.

Before I became a therapist, I worked as a clinical technician in behavioral health, a case manager, a client advocate in recovery settings. I've been an engineer at a refinery, watching shutdown operations — work that required precision, technical knowledge, and the ability to hold complexity. I've worked in emergency response, healthcare, laboratories.

These experiences weren't stepping stones to therapy. They were my education in what it actually means to be a human being navigating systems that weren't built for you.

How I Work