Cristina Collins
Associate Marriage & Family Therapist | Cassandra Syndrome Specialist
At a Glance:
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Loved an autistic partner deeply — and spent years unable to explain to anyone why it was so difficult at times.
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Knows the specific loneliness of a relationship that looks fine from the outside.
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Survived betrayal in a marriage and knows the long, painful work of rebuilding trust in yourself afterward.
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Nearly fifteen years with a combat veteran partner, learning what safety, boundaries, repair, and growing together actually require.
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Mother of an 18-year-old son.
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Neurodivergent herself — bringing compassion for both partners without requiring either person to become the villain.
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Lifelong learner — degrees in psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, and clinical psychology, with a doctorate in progress.
I Believe You
Maybe you've spent so much time questioning your experience that you've started wondering whether you're too needy, too sensitive, too emotional, or simply asking for too much.
Maybe your relationship looks perfectly fine from the outside, while inside of it you've never felt more alone.
I believe that experience deserves to be taken seriously.
I want to say that first because you may have spent a long time trying to explain what hurts, only to hear why your partner didn't mean it that way.
They probably didn't.
But intent doesn't erase impact.
We can hold compassion for your partner's experience while also becoming deeply curious about yours.
What It's Actually Like
You love someone. You've built a life together. From the outside, there may be nothing obvious to point to — no cruelty, no crisis, nothing dramatic enough to explain how profoundly disconnected you feel.
And that's part of what makes it so difficult to describe.
"He's a good man." Yes.
"He works hard. He's loyal. He'd never intentionally hurt you." Also yes.
"So what's the problem?"
And maybe you don't have an answer that fits neatly into a sentence.
Maybe you've explained the same emotional need forty different ways, and it still doesn't seem to land. Maybe you've started rehearsing conversations in your head, carefully choosing your words, wondering when talking to the person you love became something you had to prepare for.
Somewhere along the way, you may realize you've become so focused on understanding your partner that you've slowly lost touch with yourself.
That's real. It deserves language and understanding. And you don't have to minimize it here.
When Love Wasn't the Problem
I know this from the inside.
I once fell deeply in love with someone who was autistic.
We loved each other intensely. He was brilliant, loyal, genuine, and experienced the world very differently than I did. There was never a lack of love or effort between us — and yet, sometimes we simply couldn't reach each other.
I became completely immersed in the relationship, deeply attuned to him while losing sight of my own needs. We both accommodated, over-functioned, and poured so much of ourselves into caring for the other that we'd eventually reach complete overwhelm.
Conflict revealed another difference. When I became overwhelmed, I needed space and silence to think and process. For him, unresolved tension created an urgent need to reconnect and know that we were okay. So in the very moments when I needed space to feel safe, he needed closeness to feel safe.
We were two people who loved each other deeply, often asking for completely different things from each other in the exact same moment.
At the time, we didn't have language for nervous systems, sensory overwhelm, processing differences, or mixed-neurotype relationships. We just knew we loved each other and couldn't understand why love sometimes felt so hard.
I spent a long time wondering whether I was the problem. Whether I wanted too much. Whether a more reasonable person would have been satisfied with what was plainly, obviously, a good relationship.
I want to help partners find the map I wish I'd had.
Why It Matters That I'm Neurodivergent Too
I'm neurodivergent myself. I have ADHD, significant sensory differences, and a mind that tends to go deeply into whatever captures my attention. I've also spent time exploring whether autism may be part of my own story.
I mention that because I think it matters for this work.
I'm not going to sit across from you and describe your neurodivergent partner as broken. But I'm also not going to become so focused on explaining their neurodivergence that your experience disappears from the room.
Understanding why something happened doesn't mean pretending it didn't hurt.
Intent and impact are two different conversations, and we can make room for both.
Your partner may genuinely be doing the best they know how to do, and you may still be hurting.
Neither truth has to erase the other.
After Betrayal
Some of the people who find this site are also carrying a rupture in trust, so I'll say plainly that I've been there too.
I was married to my son's father when, six months into our marriage, I learned that he had been unfaithful and another woman was pregnant. I still remember the day I found out like it was yesterday — curled into the fetal position on the black-and-white tiled floor of my bathroom, crying for what felt like hours.
I questioned everything.
Was it my fault? What had I missed? Why wasn't I enough?
Slowly and painfully, I had to reconstruct who I was. Eventually, I understood that healing wasn't only about whether I could trust another person again.
I had to learn how to trust myself again.
There is something about betrayal that can deeply disrupt your trust in your own perception.
How didn't I know? What did I miss? Can I trust my instincts again?
And I recognize echoes of those same questions in people who have spent years feeling confused or unseen in their relationships.
Sometimes the first step isn't making a decision about the relationship.
Sometimes it's getting steady enough to hear yourself again.
What Our Work Looks Like
I'm not going to rush you toward staying, and I'm not going to rush you toward leaving. People arrive at those decisions on their own timeline, and usually after they've regained some ground, not before.
Together, we may:
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Reconnect with your own experience. Put accurate language to what you've been feeling without minimizing or immediately explaining it away.
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Grieve honestly. Make room for the relationship you hoped for, the parts of yourself you may have lost touch with, and the years you may have spent trying to be understood.
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Untangle intent from impact, so you can hold compassion for your partner without erasing what the relationship has cost you.
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Rebuild boundaries and self-advocacy so your needs have a place in the relationship too.
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Address the isolation. These experiences can be incredibly lonely, especially when they're difficult to explain to friends and family.
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Decide what you want once you're grounded enough for that decision to come from clarity rather than exhaustion.
How I Work
My approach is relational, neurodiversity-affirming, trauma-informed, culturally responsive, and deeply strengths-based. I lean most on Emotionally Focused Therapy and Family Systems Theory.
I'm warm, curious, compassionate, and direct. I'll ask questions, notice patterns, and gently challenge you when there's something worth looking at.
I don't need your partner to be wrong in order for your pain to be real.
We'll make room for complexity — for intent and impact, love and hurt, compassion and boundaries, hope and exhaustion — without requiring one truth to cancel out another.
Who I Work With
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Partners of autistic and neurodivergent people who feel unseen, unheard, or alone
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Partners experiencing Cassandra Syndrome, whether or not their partner is formally identified
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People who've spent years wondering whether they're too sensitive, too demanding, or too much
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Partners rebuilding after betrayal, attachment injuries, and ruptures in trust
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Partners exhausted by years of over-functioning, translating, and managing
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People deciding whether to stay, leave, or redefine what their relationship needs to become
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Partners navigating trauma, PTSD, or the impact of high-stress work on their relationship
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Individuals moving through grief, anxiety, burnout, and major life transitions
What to Expect With Me
You don't have to arrive with your story perfectly organized. You don't have to prove anything to me, and you don't need a diagnosis in hand for your experience to matter.
You also don't have to protect your partner in this room. You can tell me what you love about them and what hurts. You can be angry and compassionate. You can want to stay one week and wonder whether you can do this anymore the next.
There is room for all of it.
My job isn't to tell you what your relationship means or what you should do with it. It's to help you hear yourself clearly enough to decide what you need.
Because sometimes healing begins with something very simple:
Being believed.
License & Education
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Associate Marriage and Family Therapist (AMFT) — AMFT #156870
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All sessions are virtual. I coach clients worldwide and provide therapy to clients in California.
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Supervised by Dr. Harry Motro, LMFT #53452
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Employed by New Path Family of Therapy Centers
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Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in International and Multicultural Education, Racial Equity and Justice concentration — University of San Francisco (in progress)
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M.A. in Clinical Psychology, Marriage and Family Therapy — University of San Francisco
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M.S. in Industrial-Organizational Psychology — Carlos Albizu University, Miami
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A.A. in Emergency Management — Community College of the Air Force
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B.A. in Psychology — San Francisco State University
Training & Modalities
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Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, USF Center for Community Counseling and Wellness. Earlier work as a Behavioral Intervention Specialist with Seneca Family of Agencies and a Family Advocate with the Family Mosaic Project.
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Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), Family Systems Theory, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), and neurodiversity-affirming psychoeducation