Show the full module text
Module 2 — The Connection Exercise
Start each session feeling like a team, not opponents.
Watch first: the Module 2 video
A narrated video of about three and a half minutes in a layered paper-cutout style that opens on the Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center logo. It shows the connection exercise in a video-call session: two chairs turned to face each other with the laptop between them, a “Physical Space Design” diagram for Partner A and Partner B, paper hands held together, the words “I feel uncomfortable,” “Observation Only,” “Solid Ground,” session notes, and a recap of the ten-minute exercise.
Watch the Module 2 video: The Connection Exercise (MP4, about 3 minutes). The written lesson below covers the same ground in full.
The first thing we do in your first session is a short connection exercise, about ten minutes long. This module walks through it in the order it happens, so you know what will be offered before anyone offers it.
The first ten minutes
Summary: what usually happens in the session
1 Your therapist asks you to turn your chairs to face each other. You start out both aimed at the screen. Now you are aimed at each other.
2 The hands are offered. Holding hands, fingertips, or no contact at all. Nothing is read into whichever you pick.
3 A little eye contact. Glances, as much or as little as suits you. Nobody is asked to hold a gaze.
4 Your therapist asks what that was like. Each of you says what was easy and what cost you something.
5 A time you felt most connected. Most in love with, or most connected to, each other. One of you tells the other; then you swap.
6 A feeling word, or what you appreciated. What you felt back then, or what you appreciated about your partner at that time. One answer is plenty.
7 Your therapist carries what came up into the rest of the session. Whatever was easy, and whatever cost you, is where the work starts.
If any of it is too much on the day, we shorten it or skip it. An honest short version tells us more than a compliant long one. One way this session can go, not a script. Your therapist will shape it to the two of you and to their own way of working.
Step 1. Turning the chairs
Sessions are by video, so both of you begin aimed at the therapist on the screen. That quietly makes the hour two people reporting to a third. So your therapist asks you to turn your chairs until you are facing each other. Now it is the relationship again, in the room, where we can see it.
We would like to see the two of you interact with each other, rather than describe each other to us.
Turning the chairs. Before we get into anything difficult, I would like to do a short connection exercise. Could you both turn your chairs so you are facing each other rather than facing me?
The screen does not go anywhere. It just stops being the thing you are both facing.
Step 2. The hands
Your therapist names every option before either of you chooses, so that picking the smallest one is an ordinary answer rather than a refusal. If you would like to change your mind partway through, that is ordinary too. So is fidgeting, or holding something in your free hand.
Offering the hands. If you are comfortable, you are welcome to hold hands. Or touch fingertips, or have no contact at all. I will not read anything into it.
If touch does not feel safe. If closeness with your partner does not feel safe right now, or you do not feel free to say no, tell your therapist on your own. We will skip this exercise and talk with you about what would help.
Step 3. A little eye contact
For some people the touch is the hard part. For many more it is the looking.
Eye contact is not neutral for everyone. In a published analysis of hundreds of first-hand accounts, autistic people described what eye contact is like from the inside. What they described was physical, not shyness or lack of interest: a tightening body, nausea, a sense of being invaded.1 That is why we do not ask for steady eye contact. We invite glances, and we mean it.
The looking. Glance at each other if you would like to, as much or as little as suits you. I am not going to ask you to hold eye contact.
You can always say it. If any of this starts to feel like too much, you can say I am uncomfortable. That is a complete sentence. Nobody has to explain it or defend it. We stop, we look together at what is happening, and we decide as a group whether to stay with it or to understand first what is getting in the way.
For some people the hardest moment of the whole first session is right here: the hands a moment ago, or the first glance. The words are for exactly that moment. Saying them does not end the exercise. It tells us where to start.
Step 4. What that was like
Your therapist now asks each of you, in turn, what the hands and the looking were like. Whatever they cost you goes on the table in the first session, rather than months later. There is no rush to answer. If the words come later, you can bring them to the next session or write them in the workbook below.
Asking what it was like. Before we go on, I would like to hear from both of you what that was like. What was easy, and what cost you something.
It can sting to hear that holding your hand, or looking at you, cost your partner something. Usually that says more about how their body handles touch or looking than about how they feel about you. If you are the one who has missed being looked at, that is real too. Your therapist makes room for both.
The way this goes wrong. One of you does every part of it perfectly while quietly running out of capacity, and says it was fine. Many neurodivergent adults learned long ago to hide what things cost them; this is often called masking. The other goes home believing hand-holding is easy, and the truth surfaces later as an argument about something else. If a part of it cost you, see if you can say so here.
Step 5. A time you felt most connected
Your therapist asks each of you to think of a time you felt most in love with, or most connected to, the other. Any time at all: a holiday, an ordinary Sunday, something last week. If several come, pick one. If none comes, or the good times feel far away right now, you can say that. Nobody is judged for it.
Not when you met. We do not ask about when you met, or when you first fell in love. For couples in trouble that question often lands badly, and plenty of neurodiverse couples had a rough beginning that does not represent what they built afterward.
Your therapist asks you to picture the moment rather than summarize it: who was there, what the weather was doing, what your partner was wearing. A scene you can picture tends to bring the feeling back. If pictures are not how your mind works, whatever you get is fine.
Then, one at a time, you tell your partner, not us.
It is easier to describe the memory to the therapist while your partner listens in, and couples do that without noticing. It turns the warmest thing in the session into a report. Your therapist redirects you, kindly, as many times as it takes.
The memory. Think of a time when you were most in love with, or most connected to, each other. Just pick one. Now tell each other what you were thinking of. Say it to them, not to me.
Step 6. A feeling word, or what you appreciated
While the memory is still in the room, your therapist asks two questions: what you were feeling back then, and what you appreciated about your partner. One, both or neither is a fine answer.
One word is plenty for the first. Naming an emotion is a different skill from having it. For a large share of autistic people it is the naming that is hard, not the feeling.2 So if we ask for an emotion word and none arrives, nothing has gone wrong and nobody is avoiding anything. Some people reach their own experience through a feeling, and some through a thought.
The feeling, then the appreciation. Can you feel what you felt at the time? What emotion was that? And what did you most appreciate about your partner, back then?
The second door is not a consolation prize for people who could not open the first. Both open onto the same room.
Step 7. What your therapist does with the answers
Nothing in the exercise is graded. What your therapist has been collecting is a first honest reading of how the two of you are wired: what touch costs, what a glance costs, whether a feeling word or a thought comes first. That reading shapes the conversation about goals that follows, and every session after it.
Neither of you communicates worse than the other.
The difficulty is not in one of you, and it is not politely split down the middle either. It lives in the crossing between two ways of sending and receiving. That is why this is couples work, and why the exercise is watched rather than reported.
A made-up couple. Partner A found the looking costly and no feeling word came, yet the question about what they appreciated still reached the memory. That is where the work starts, not a sign that anything went wrong.
After the session
The workbook below is for afterward. Try to write down the specifics, not a summary: what each of you found out about touch, about eye contact, and which of the two questions was easier. Later modules refer back to those details.
What you did not say. Write that down too. If something cost you and you said it was fine, this is the place to correct that, and the next session is the place to say it early. It is a kind thing to do for your partner as well.
If this is hard to do. If this exercise is too much right now, there is no need to push through it. Spend some time with your partner talking about what makes it hard, and share the feelings that come up: the embarrassment, the sadness that closeness is not easier, the worry about hurting each other. That conversation is part of the work, and the part that is hard for you is the part we most want to hear about.
Will I be asked to hold eye contact with my partner?
No. Your therapist invites glances, as much or as little as suits you, and does not ask anyone to hold a gaze. Many autistic people describe eye contact as physical rather than shyness: a tightening body, nausea, a sense of being invaded. That is why only glances are invited, and why what the looking cost you is something your therapist wants to hear.
What if holding hands does not feel safe or comfortable?
Your therapist names every option first, holding hands, touching fingertips or no contact at all, so picking the smallest one is an ordinary answer and nothing is read into it. You can change your mind partway through. If closeness with your partner does not feel safe right now, or you do not feel free to say no, tell your therapist on your own and the exercise is skipped.
What if I cannot think of a happy memory or a feeling word?
You can say so. If no time comes to mind, or the good times feel far away right now, nobody is judged for it. One feeling word is plenty, and for a large share of autistic people it is naming the emotion that is hard, not having it. You can answer with what you appreciated about your partner instead, which opens onto the same room.
It hurts to hear that holding my hand cost my partner something. What does it mean?
It can sting to hear that. Usually it says more about how your partner's body handles touch or looking than about how they feel about you. If you are the one who has missed being looked at, that is real too, and your therapist makes room for both. Neither of you communicates worse than the other; the difficulty lives in the crossing between you.
Your workbook
Your answers save to this device only - we cannot see a word of what you write. Fill this in after your first session.
Touch and eye contact
Steps 2 and 3. Say what you actually chose, including if it changed partway through.
What I chose with my hands (holding, fingertips, no contact), and whether I wanted to change it
What the eye contact was like for me: what was good about it, and what it cost me, if anything
Next time, you would rather — About the same, Fewer glances, Skip the eye contact, Not sure
The memory
Steps 5 and 6. Not a test of what either of you picked.
The emotion you were feeling back then, if a word came
What you appreciated about your partner at that time
Which of the two questions was easier for you? — The feeling, The thing I appreciated, Both were fine, Neither came today
What you did not say
Step 4 is the important one. Write what you said out loud, and anything you did not.
What came up during the exercise that you did not say in the room?
One thing from the exercise you want to work on, if there is one
Where this comes from
Every source below was checked against the published record. They are grouped by the kind of evidence they are, so the numbers may not run straight down the page — a number points back to where the source is used in the lesson.
Research discussion
The connection exercise is the practice’s own. The sequence and the words come from our first session outline, not from a published protocol. It opens the first double session, before the conversation about goals.
The steps come from clinical practice and have not been tested in a trial.
The eye contact finding comes from researchers who read hundreds of first-hand accounts by autistic people, posted in public videos and online forums, and sorted what they described.1 Many described eye contact as physically unpleasant or overwhelming. The people chose to post and said themselves that they were autistic, so the study shows the experience exists, not how common it is.
The point about naming feelings comes from a review that pooled fifteen studies. Trouble identifying and describing one's own feelings was far more common among the autistic people in them than among the others.2 The main limit: the questionnaire used has mostly been tested with autistic people who have strong language skills. Neither study tested this exercise.
What stands behind inviting rather than instructing is clinical judgment: asking for held hands or steady eye contact tends to cost the partner it is hardest for, and gives the therapist a less accurate picture of that partner.
Who this research was done with. The couples studies behind most of this module drew heavily on white, comparatively well-off, English-speaking participants. If your household carries pressures those samples did not — money, immigration, racism, disability, unsafe housing — the practice still applies, but the room you are practicing in is harder. That is the room, not you.
Clinically reviewed by Harry Motro, PsyD, LMFT · California LMFT #53452 · Founder and Clinical Director, Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center · Clinical supervisor · Updated September 27, 2026
Peer-reviewed research
1. Trevisan DA, Roberts N, Lin C, Birmingham E (2017) How do adults and teens with self-declared Autism Spectrum Disorder experience eye contact? A qualitative analysis of first-hand accounts. PLOS ONE, 12(11), e0188446. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188446 Qualitative analysis of first-hand accounts from 364 people with self-declared autism, drawn from public YouTube videos and WrongPlanet forum posts. The themes describing the experience itself were adverse reactions, invasion, sensory overload, social nuances and nonverbal communication, with participants describing a tensing body and nausea during enforced eye contact. Limitation: self-declared rather than clinically confirmed autism, and publicly posted accounts, so people with strong feelings about eye contact are likelier to be represented than those without.
2. Kinnaird E, Stewart C, Tchanturia K (2019) Investigating alexithymia in autism: A systematic review and meta-analysis. European Psychiatry, 55, 80-89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2018.09.004 Meta-analysis of 15 studies comparing 366 autistic and 348 non-autistic participants. Alexithymia was present in 49.93 per cent of the autistic group against 4.89 per cent of controls, risk ratio 6.50 (95 per cent CI 3.26 to 12.93). Limitation: the authors note the TAS measure has only been validated in samples previously described as high-functioning, so it may not generalize to autistic people with greater language or communication difficulty.
This is how our first session starts
The Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center works with couples where one or both partners are autistic, ADHD or AuDHD. The exercise above is offered exactly as it is written here. Therapy for clients in California, coaching worldwide, all by telehealth. A first conversation costs nothing.
Up next