Cassandra Syndrome

[00:00:02] Marie Vakakis: [00:00:00] Have you ever shared something that felt important and the other person just waved it away? You said, Hey, that felt off, or that was rude, and you were told you’re overreacting, or that’s not what happened, and you start questioning yourself. Maybe you feel confused, even distressed. You can’t quite explain why it’s.

[00:00:20] Marie Vakakis: Gaslighting, and it’s not malicious, but it still leaves you feeling unseen and unheard, and this is the space that we’re sitting in today. In this episode of this Complex life, I’m talking about Cassandra syndrome. I’ll explore how the term has been used in the past, and how it’s being picked up in pop culture.

[00:00:37] Marie Vakakis: With a slightly different understanding and interpretation. I wanna take a look at where it’s showing up in relationships. I’ll share some of my initial hesitations around the term and what changed my mind, and I’ll give you some examples of how I see this show up in couples therapy and how I work with this dynamic in the therapy room.

[00:00:55] Marie Vakakis: And hopefully it gives you some ideas of what you can do if this is something happening in your own life. [00:01:00] Now, Cassandra Syndrome originally was used to describe. People who spoke up and weren’t believed. Think of climate scientists warning about climate change and warming oceans and told Yeah, nah. Or activists warning about racism, abuse, and inequality, and not being believed and maybe sometimes even being punished for it.

[00:01:21] Marie Vakakis: In medical settings, people often women reporting symptoms and being dismissed. These experiences are about seeing something clearly and being ignored or told. That’s not real. More recently, however, how I heard the term was around this in the context of neurodiverse relationships, sometimes it’s used by the neurotypical partners, so a neurotypical partner with a autistic partner, often male to female.

[00:01:47] Marie Vakakis: A male autistic. Partner with a neurotypical female partner, and as I was digging a bit deeper. I’ve seen it actually be used by the autistic partner as well, but this can happen in any combination of relationships.

[00:01:59] Marie Vakakis: Neurodivergent, [00:02:00] neurotypical, both having neurodivergent traits or being neurodivergent, both being neurotypical. It actually goes, it can be used in a number of ways. But commonly in the pop culture and in the blogs and the videos that I’ve been reading and watching and the things I’ve been listening to, it tends to be used in this way to explain the impact on the neurotypical partner.

[00:02:19] Marie Vakakis: Now, the term has been used in very different ways and not always kindly, and it captures a very real emotional experience and I’m, I’m always hesitant to use labels, and I’ll explain why in a little bit, but. It’s something that people have been asking for. So who is Cassandra now? Cassandra is a figure from Greek mythology, and I don’t remember learning about her back at Greek school when I was younger because I’m sure I would’ve used it as a, probably would’ve used it many times and I thought I wasn’t getting my way, or I can see the truth.

[00:02:49] Marie Vakakis: I’m sure my parents would’ve loved that. So Cassandra was a princess of Troy and Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy. Based on her sleeping with him. Now [00:03:00] she backs out of this arrangement. He doesn’t take away the gift. So Polo still gives her the gift of prophecy, but he curses her that she will tell the truth, but no one will ever believe what she says.

[00:03:11] Marie Vakakis: And she warns people of Troy about the Trojan horse. If you can remember that story where the big wooden horse is wheeled in, she speaks the truth, but is ignored, and her story is. Tragic, but also incredibly relevant. It’s about holding the truth and still being dismissed. Now, her plight has been associated with the struggle shed by anybody telling the truth but not being believed.

[00:03:34] Marie Vakakis: Think Sarah Connor in the Terminator. You know, judgment days coming. And not only do people not believe her, they lock her up in a psychiatric institution. Okay? So that’s the kind of stuff we’re talking about here. There is an impact that this has on people, and sometimes it’s used as Cassandra syndrome,

[00:03:52] Marie Vakakis: I’ve also heard it called Cassandra, affective Deprivation Disorder, CADD. Again, these are not formal [00:04:00] diagnostic terms, but that’s to describe the long-term deprivation of emotional attention and affection caused by traumatic suffering in the neurotypical partner and. If that has its whole, uh, there’s a whole history behind that.

[00:04:12] Marie Vakakis: You can kind of have a bit of a look around and see how that was created. But I wanna talk about it in more general terms. And firstly, I wanna start off by talking about how this is different to gaslighting. And I’ve got a lot of bones to pick with this term gaslighting. It is used poorly incorrectly so many times now.

[00:04:30] Marie Vakakis: Cassandra Syndrome describes the emotional pain of being repeatedly dismissed or invalidated. One subjective experience of feel, feeling hurt, uncomfortable, isn’t acknowledged, often unintentional, and comes from a mismatch in emotional stalls or communication can lead to loneliness, self-doubt, relational trauma, and physical symptoms In the long term gaslighting, however, this is the key bit, is a deliberate manipulation tactic where somebody actively undermines another person’s [00:05:00] reality.

[00:05:00] Marie Vakakis: So gaslighting is deliberate. It involves denial, trivialising feelings, lying and blame shifting to gain control or power. Typically, a pattern of emotional abuse, often in an unequal power dynamic. This causes deep or can cause deep self-doubt, dependency on the manipulator and real long lasting harm. So the key difference here is in deliberate and manipulative.

[00:05:26] Marie Vakakis: So when we compare Cassandra’s syndrome to gaslighting, the intent is different. So in Cassandra’s syndrome it’s usually unintentional. In gaslighting, we see a deliberate and manipulative. Intention there, the power dynamics change. So in Cassandra’s syndrome, this is often based on a miscommunication mismatch in emotional styles.

[00:05:44] Marie Vakakis: Kind of like speaking different languages. In gaslighting, it’s often involves control, dominance, or abuse. The experience for people can feel similar, so we might see Cassandra syndrome feeling unheard, ined, and emotionally exhausted. In [00:06:00] gaslighting, we see some of those, but being made to doubt perception, memory, and emotional experience.

[00:06:05] Marie Vakakis: There are some similarities in the emotional outcome of these. So in Cassandra syndrome, we’re likely to see isolation, anxiety and then diminished self-worth, and in gaslighting deep confusion, dependency, and trauma. Now, the context changes a bit here as well. So Cassandra syndrome, how it’s been used in pop culture at the moment, often talks about a neurodiverse neurotypical relationship or a relational mismatch.

[00:06:29] Marie Vakakis: For gaslighting. It comes across in various settings, intimate partnerships, family, workplaces, and institutions. So it extends to other contexts, but the biggest difference, which really I can’t stress enough, is the deliberate manipulative intent for gaslighting.

[00:06:45] Marie Vakakis: Now, how this shows up in relationships it shows up in a number of ways. So one person might say something like, oh, your mum was really rude to me and the other rep applies. She wasn’t rude to, you’re being dramatic. Or they say, this conversation made me feel small, and their response is, that’s not what happened at [00:07:00] all.

[00:07:00] Marie Vakakis: You know, the listener might be trying to reassure or correct. What they’re doing is invalidating the other person’s emotional experience. Now, this isn’t gaslighting, it’s not manipulative or abusive. It’s often coming from fear, confusion, discomfort, or not even recognising the importance of what that person’s saying, but the impact on the on the speaker is still real.

[00:07:25] Marie Vakakis: That person can start to shut down. They might stop sharing and they lose trust in their own feelings and their relationship becomes less emotionally safe. Now, I was hesitant to talk about this. I used to cringe a bit when I first heard this term, and I feel like it was shorthand for my autistic partner is the problem.

[00:07:45] Marie Vakakis: And the initial things that I read, it came across in a very blamey way, and I worried that it ignored relational patterns and complexity. He kept showing up. My clients were mentioning it, and so I started looking into it a little bit more closely. I said, read [00:08:00] heaps of blogs, watched videos, listened to different voices.

[00:08:03] Marie Vakakis: And then I started to realise that it wasn’t just about neurodivergent relationships, it was about the emotional experience of being unheard. And I’ve seen this happen across all kinds of couples, but we do see it in the, in the in pop culture be talked about specifically too. That combination of autistic to neurotypical partnership, and there are some reasons for that.

[00:08:24] Marie Vakakis: I’ll talk about a little bit more, some of the challenges that those couples might face. Require additional support. I know as a therapist trying to understand people’s communication style, their history, how they’ve learned, what they’ve learned, how their brain interprets things, is a really important piece of the work that we do, so that we can support those skills, that relational skill.

[00:08:45] Marie Vakakis: Not masking and not being fake, but evolving and adapting those skills to meet that context. Now, the Cassandra metaphor has been expanded to include the effects of autism and A DHD, and not only on the [00:09:00] neurotypical partner, but on both partners who struggle. When we look at the both way. Struggle communication.

[00:09:06] Marie Vakakis: That’s often called the double empathy problem, where each person thinks they’re communicating really clearly and neither feels like they understand, and so.

[00:09:14] Marie Vakakis: So the double empathy problem is that we communicate experience and display emotions. How we interact with people form, form, friendships and the world around us is different. Autistic people experience that different to non-autistic people, and that can create some difficulties there in that communication style.

[00:09:35] Marie Vakakis: So when people with very different experiences in the world interact with one another, they will struggle to empathise with one another. And this is likely. To be exacerbated through differences in language use, comprehension and brain styles. So that’s the double empathy problem when we come back to Cassandra syndrome.

[00:09:52] Marie Vakakis: , Regardless of why the Cassandra syndrome term continues to resonate with people, it does. And sometimes [00:10:00] people hearing that and knowing that provides some insight and relief. Now when I see this in my work, it is really quite difficult and people come into couples therapy to talk about communication or conflict.

[00:10:13] Marie Vakakis: They’re usually the most common ones, and I see this play out in conversation. So one partner might say something like, I felt embarrassed when you made that joke and dinner. And the other person says, it was just a joke. You’re too sensitive. Someone might say, I need you to back me up when your dad was rude.

[00:10:28] Marie Vakakis: The other replies, he wasn’t being rude, or You misunderstood, or You’re always being so dramatic. He didn’t mean them like that. These moments are not often meant to be cruel, but they dismiss the other person’s emotional reality. Over time, the person that receives that on the receiving end starts to pull back.

[00:10:45] Marie Vakakis: Maybe they lash out or maybe they go quiet. Either way, that emotional connection suffers. Loneliness starts to creep in, you start to feel disconnected and rely on your partner less and less, or maybe communicate with them less and less, [00:11:00] or get angry and get really heightened. Now, this is not just about autism or neurodivergent.

[00:11:04] Marie Vakakis: When I was doing some research for this, , little r research, not a formal project. I was seeing people talk about this from both sides. I was seeing autistic people talk about this from their experience of being like, yeah, I’ve told the truth, and no one is believing me. No one’s understanding my point of view.

[00:11:19] Marie Vakakis: And then I’m seeing neurotypical people say. I’ve shared all this stuff and they’re ignoring it, or they’re saying that wasn’t true, or that’s not how it was meant, and getting really defensive and over time, that can lead to some really difficult dynamics in the relationship. So this is, while it’s used in this, in this context of autism and neurotypical relationships, it can happen in any relationships between two neurotypical people, between two neurodivergent people, between friends, colleagues, parents, and teens.

[00:11:46] Marie Vakakis: What it really comes down to in my understanding of it, is emotional misattunement. The belief that validating someone’s experience means agreeing with them. Often I see people try to fix things or fact check [00:12:00] or defend or try and p rovide perspective or context or justify the intention wasn’t that instead of just sitting with the discomfort, they think that they’re offering perspective, but what the other person needed in that moment is often empathy and validation.

[00:12:16] Marie Vakakis: And I’m going to say it again. Validating someone’s experience does not mean you agree with them. If you say that must. have felt awful to be at a dinner table and someone make a joke at your expense. That doesn’t mean that you agree that that joke was meant to be hurtful, but if your partner says, I felt embarrassed when you made that joke at dinner, then saying it makes sense that you would feel embarrassed.

[00:12:38] Marie Vakakis: I can see that this is an awkward environment. It doesn’t mean that that was your intention. So validating does not mean you have to agree. It’s understanding from their perspective or their position, how what they’re feeling, thinking makes sense to them

[00:12:55] Marie Vakakis: In a therapy context. I would probably be pausing these conversations and be pointing out [00:13:00] when someone’s experience is being dismissed and. When I come back to some of the challenges I had with this term, I felt like it was forcing autistic people to mask that they had to be more palatable in their approach.

[00:13:11] Marie Vakakis: That it meant that they had to adapt and manipulate their beha, manipulate. They had to adapt and mask essentially, and that’s not what I wanna do. I want to create an environment where people can be themselves and develop relationship skills or relational intelligence. To have difficult conversations where both people feel heard.

[00:13:30] Marie Vakakis: So when this is happening, I would be asking someone, you know, can we just stay with what was said

[00:13:36] Marie Vakakis: without needing to correct it? Right now, I help people notice when they’re moving into logic or defense. I might help people explore those four horsemen that I’ve talked about in previous episodes. . I’ll pop a link to that in the show notes so you can check it out.

[00:13:49] Marie Vakakis: I might say things like that sounded like a rebuttal. Can we come back to what they were feeling? So giving people the skill to reflect on what their partner is saying. And [00:14:00] I often talk about why it can be really hard to validate something you don’t agree with. I hear people practicing by saying things like, I can see why that hurt, even if I wouldn’t have read it that way.

[00:14:10] Marie Vakakis: We don’t wanna add that bit. Just saying, I can see why that hurt. I know that sometimes we think if they can just see it from my point of view, they wouldn’t feel that way if they could just understand that that wasn’t my intention. They wouldn’t be upset, and then I wouldn’t be uncomfortable with the fact that they’re upset.

[00:14:24] Marie Vakakis: That’s not helpful in this scenario. Being able to say, I can see why that hurt. It makes sense that you felt disappointed. I understand why you would’ve felt rejected in that moment. You don’t have to feel the exact same thing yourself in that scenario. You don’t have to think, well, that’s not what the person meant, so they shouldn’t feel that way.

[00:14:43] Marie Vakakis: It’s what that person’s reality is. I unpack why validation feels dangerous to some people. That it feels like they’re losing ground, that they’re losing respect, that they’re admitting to something that they didn’t think was wrong. And it’s not about that because that fear of feeling like [00:15:00] you did something wrong or you’re going to get into trouble, and then not being able to validate that person’s experience, it really shuts the conversation down.

[00:15:08] Marie Vakakis: So trying to support both partners to see how dismissiveness can be protective. But it’s not helpful in these conversations. That work we do needs to slow things down and stay in the moment, especially when emotions show up. Try to practice curiosity over correction and connection over correction.

[00:15:29] Marie Vakakis: Nobody wants to go into all their relationships and just be given feedback and corrected and adjusted and improved and optimised We want to feel connected. Okay? We want to find as many small moments to build emotional safety again and start to reduce the impact of Cassandra syndrome.

[00:15:48] Marie Vakakis: ’cause what can happen if you’ve been feeling like this? If you’ve been feeling disconnected, that your emotions aren’t valid, that your subjective experience wrong at best. It can lead to some [00:16:00] disconnection and loneliness. At worst, it can lead to some very severe symptoms of mental ill health. We can see significant symptoms of anxiety and depression, and nobody wants that.

[00:16:11] Marie Vakakis: Nobody wants that for their partner either. So this is a really important piece of work to understand, to get some support around so that you can have the thriving, happy connector relationship that you want if you are the one who feels like you’re waving the flag and then being told to calm down, or you’ve started to doubt your own perceptions, maybe you’ve stopped speaking up because it never lands.

[00:16:34] Marie Vakakis: You are not making it up. It might not be intentional. It still matters. It can still hurt and repair is possible. If the right support, it is possible to feel heard, respected, and safe again. If this has made you reflect on some of your own reactions.

[00:16:49] Marie Vakakis: Maybe you are the one who struggles to validate. That’s okay too. These patterns are common, but they’re also changeable. I.