51% of neurodivergent people have joint hypermobility, and nearly 4 in 10 autistic people meet criteria for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (1,2).
That’s not a coincidence, and in a 2024 survey of The Zebra Club’s own members, the number came out almost exactly the same, just over half of respondents identified as neurodivergent in some form (3).
For many in the hypermobile community, this connection has been recognized for a while: ADHD showing up again and again alongside hypermobility, long before the research caught up.
Neurodivergence is an umbrella term for differences in how the brain processes information, including ADHD, autism, dyspraxia, dyslexia, and Tourette syndrome, among others (4).
ADHD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, is a neurodevelopmental condition affecting attention regulation, impulsivity, and activity levels (5). It looks different depending on the person, and can present with difficulty focusing, restlessness, impulsive decisions, or some combination of all three.
The connection with hEDS and HSD has been studied across several of these conditions, and this piece focuses on what the research shows for ADHD specifically, and what it means for movement, sensory overload, and pacing.
Key Takeaways
- About half of neurodivergent people have joint hypermobility, with a well-documented link across autism, ADHD, and Tourette syndrome. This piece focuses on ADHD.
- Autonomic reactivity, not just co-occurrence, explains why connective tissue differences and neurodivergent traits go together.
- Sensory-motor differences are among the most consistently reported traits in hypermobile people.
- Pacing may need to work differently when ADHD and hypermobility overlap.
Is There a Link Between Hypermobility and ADHD?
Yes. Hypermobility is significantly more common in people with ADHD, autism, and Tourette syndrome than in the general population, and researchers have found a specific, measurable link for each.
In a 2022 study of 109 adults with a formal diagnosis of autism, ADHD, or Tourette syndrome, researchers found that 51% were hypermobile, compared to about 20% in the general population.
Hypermobility was roughly four times more common in those with an autism or ADHD diagnosis specifically, and around seven times more common in those with Tourette syndrome (1).
The gap was even wider for women specifically: 69% of neurodivergent women in the study were hypermobile, compared to 22.6% of the comparison group. The same study found that hypermobility itself helped explain why neurodivergent participants reported more pain and lightheadedness (orthostatic intolerance) than others. That points to connective tissue differences as a possible physical driver behind those symptoms.
A separate case-control study of 431 adults with ADHD found joint hypermobility roughly 4-5 times more common than in 417 non-ADHD controls, even after accounting for age, sex, and ethnicity (6).
Dr. Jessica Eccles, a liaison psychiatrist and researcher at Brighton and Sussex Medical School who has studied hypermobility since 2009, explained the finding this way at a Zebra Club member meetup in 2023:
“If you had a diagnosis of ADHD, autism, [or tics], you were four times more likely to be hypermobile than the comparison group or the general population.”
Autism shows a similar, well-documented pattern, one we’ve covered in more depth. This piece focuses on the ADHD-specific research and what it means for pacing and sensory experience.
In The Zebra Club’s own community, a 2024 member survey found that just over half of the 231 respondents identified as neurodivergent in some form, with ADHD and autism each represented at roughly 1 in 5 members (3). It’s a small, self-reported snapshot rather than a clinical study, but it lines up closely with what the published research shows.
Why Does Hypermobility Affect Sensory Processing?
Hypermobility appears to affect sensory processing because looser connective tissue makes the body’s signals to the brain less precise, and a more reactive nervous system has a harder time sorting reliable signals from noise.
A 2026 study looked at 99 adults with joint hypermobility and anxiety, none of whom had a prior autism or ADHD diagnosis (7).
Using validated screening tools, the researchers found 47% scored above the threshold for likely autism and 20% for likely ADHD. The standout finding: 60% scored above the threshold specifically on sensory-motor traits, a mix of sensory sensitivities and movement-related differences, the highest of any category measured.
More importantly, the study found that the number of connective tissue features someone had predicted the strength of their neurodivergent traits, and that this relationship ran through autonomic reactivity, how keyed-up the fight-or-flight nervous system is, even after accounting for anxiety levels.
That’s what points to a real mechanism rather than just two things that happen to occur together.
Dr. Eccles put it this way at the same 2023 Zebra Club member meetup: “There is sensory stuff that’s aversive and sensory stuff that’s soothing, and I think we can really regulate ourselves through sensory stuff, providing you find the right combo… Sensory differences are differences. They’re not just sensitivities. Some people are hyposensitive.”
Knowing your own sensory profile, what overwhelms you and what soothes you, is usually the first step. That might mean noise-cancelling headphones or earplugs for sound sensitivity, or it might mean recognizing that you don’t register temperature or hunger cues the way other people do.
What Does This Mean for Pacing?
For a hypermobile body with ADHD, pacing may need to work differently from the start, not just be applied more strictly.
Pacing, managing energy across a day or a week rather than pushing through until you crash, is already central to how many people with hEDS and HSD learn to live with their bodies.
When ADHD is also part of the picture, pacing can get more complicated, and recent research points to a specific reason why.
A 2024 study looked at how hypermobility, neurodivergent traits, and emotional regulation relate to each other in 182 adults (8). For hypermobile participants, difficulty regulating emotion wasn’t explained by hypermobility on its own. It was explained by how imprecisely the body signals where it is in space, something researchers call proprioceptive surprise.
For neurodivergent participants, that same imprecision accounted for much of the link to emotional dysregulation, and when hypermobility and neurodivergence occurred together, the strength of that connection nearly doubled.
Dr. Eccles made a related point at the same 2023 meetup, speaking more broadly about burnout in neurodivergent people:
“Burnout, exhaustion is probably more common in neurodivergent people… it is the convergence of the brain and the body that predispose to potentially burning out. It is not being driven purely by psychological things or thinking styles.”
Pacing advice that assumes a predictable, linear pattern of exertion and recovery doesn’t always fit a neurodivergent, hypermobile body, because the body’s own signals about how much is too much may themselves be harder to read.
For the practical side of pacing, finding your baseline, the spoon theory, daily strategies from the community, see our guide to pacing with EDS and hypermobility.
Is Movement Safe if You’re Hypermobile and Neurodivergent?
Movement is safe for a hypermobile, neurodivergent body when it’s adjusted to what that body actually needs, though there’s an honest gap in the research: no published study has looked specifically at exercise or movement intervention in people who are both hypermobile and neurodivergent.
Research on movement and neurodivergence exists. Research on movement and hypermobility exists. Nobody has yet studied the combination.
There is one relevant piece of the puzzle, though. Interoception is the sense of what’s happening inside your own body, hunger, heart rate, pain (9).
Research on ADHD and interoception is mixed for adults specifically, but the clearest, most-repeated finding across the field is that people with more inattention symptoms tend to feel less confident reading those internal signals in the first place.
That’s a plausible reason why noticing “I’ve pushed too far” during movement may be harder with ADHD, compounding whatever proprioceptive issue hypermobility itself may already be causing.
That gap is exactly where the Integral Movement Method (IMM) was built from lived clinical experience rather than a single trial. IMM’s approach is slow and low: nervous-system-first, with proprioception and stability worked on before strength, trying to pay attention to what the body is signalling instead of pushing through it.
We’ve written more about what that looks like in practice in You Don’t Have to Earn Rest, including how The Zebra Club’s Rest & Restore program was built for the days that aren’t a full workout and aren’t complete rest either, just movement matched to what the body can actually handle that day.
The Zebra Club platform builds movement work around a body that’s both hypermobile and processing the world differently, instead of fitting members into a generic program built for neither.
Ready to Move With Your Whole Body in Mind?
The Zebra Club supports members who live at this overlap, hypermobility and neurodivergence together, not as separate issues. Inside, the Embracing Neurodiversity subgroup connects you with other members living this exact combination, alongside movement built around your whole body. Join The Zebra Club today.
Works Cited
- Csecs, Iodice, Rae, Brooke, Simmons, Quadt, Savage, Dowell, Prowse, Themelis, Mathias, Critchley & Eccles (2022). Joint Hypermobility Links Neurodivergence to Dysautonomia and Pain. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 12:786916.
- Baeza-Velasco et al. (2025). Autism in the context of joint hypermobility, hypermobility spectrum disorders, and Ehlers–Danlos syndromes: A systematic review and prevalence meta-analyses. Autism.
- The Zebra Club member survey (2024), n=231
- Grant, Leigh, Botha, Macdonald, Williams, Williams, Rose, Memmott & Pearson (2025). ‘A Lovely Safe Umbrella to Describe Yourself With’ or ‘Meaningless’: An Online Survey of UK-Based Neurodivergent Adults’ Views of Neurodiversity-Related Terminology.
- National Institute of Mental Health. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: What You Need to Know.
- Glans, Thelin, Humble, Elwin & Bejerot (2021). Association between adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and generalised joint hypermobility: A cross-sectional case control comparison. J Psychiatr Res.
- Quadt, Csecs, Savage et al. (2026). Beyond bendy joints: number of variant connective tissue features predicts neurodivergent characteristics in hypermobile individuals with anxiety. npj Mental Health Research.
- Eccles, Quadt, Garfinkel & Critchley (2024). A model linking emotional dysregulation in neurodivergent people to the proprioceptive impact of joint hypermobility. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, 379(1908): 20230247.
- Bruton, Levy, Rai, Colgan & Johnstone (2025). Diminished Interoceptive Awareness in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder: A Systematic Review. Psychophysiology, 62(2): e14750.
