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Module 2 — The Connection Exercise
The short exercise that opens your first session, what your therapist will ask, and what to write down afterward.
The first thing we do in your first session is a short connection exercise. It takes about ten minutes. This module walks through it, so you know what will be offered and in what order.
What this is about
Your first session with us is a double session with three parts. The connection exercise is the first part. It is also the part people worry about in advance, which is why it gets its own module.
We want to see the two of you interact with each other, rather than describe each other to us.
We also want to give you a chance to connect before we start talking about what is not working. Everything after it goes better if that happens first.
None of it is a test. None of it is compulsory. The parts that are hard for either of you are the parts we most want to know about, and your therapist will say so before anything starts.
What happens in the session
Sessions are by video, so both of you start out aimed at the therapist on the screen. That quietly turns the session into two people reporting on a relationship to a third person. So the first thing your therapist does is ask you to turn your chairs to face each other. Now it is the relationship again, in the room, where we can see it.
Turning the chairs sounds trivial, but almost nothing else in a first session works until it has happened.
Your therapist says what is coming before each part begins. Here is the whole thing, in order.
The Connection Exercise
1 You turn to face each other. Chairs turned in, so you are face to face rather than side by side at a screen. If you are comfortable, you are invited to hold hands. Fingertips, a hand on your own knee, or no contact at all are all ordinary answers.
2 You look at each other, a little. Partial, occasional, glancing eye contact. Nobody is asked to hold a gaze, and nothing is timed. Looking at the floor part of the time is a completely ordinary way to do it.
3 You both say what that was like. The hands and the looking. What was easy, what cost you something, what you would rather not do again. If a part of it was hard, that is not a failure. It is the first thing we will work on together.
4 A memory, and then a word. A time you felt most in love with, or most connected to, each other. You tell your partner, not us. Then the emotion you felt back then, or what you appreciated about your partner at that time.
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.
The memory
We ask 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. Most people find several. Pick one.
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 will ask 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 with it. If pictures are not how your mind works, whatever you do get is fine.
Then you tell your partner, not us.
It is easier to describe the memory to the therapist while your partner listens in, and couples do it without noticing. That turns the warmest thing in the session into a report. Your therapist will redirect you, kindly, as many times as it takes.
Then two questions. What emotion were you feeling back then, in that moment?
What did you appreciate about your partner at that time?
You can answer either one, and one word is plenty for the first. Some people reach their own experience through a feeling, and some reach it through a thought. One answer is fine, and so are both. If neither comes today, that is information, and we will come back to it.
The second question is not a fallback for people who could not answer the first. Both routes arrive in the same place, and we are equally happy with either.
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? 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.
The looking, then what it was like. 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, and looking away is not something I will read anything into. Before we go on, I would like to hear from both of you what that was like. The hands, the looking. What was easy, and what cost you something.
The memory. Think of a time when you were most in love with, or most connected to, each other. Most people have a few. Just pick one. Now tell each other what you were thinking of. Say it to them, not to me. Can you feel what you felt at the time? What emotion was that? And what did you most appreciate about your partner, back then?
Every option is named before anyone chooses, so saying no to one of them is an ordinary answer, not a failure.
Almost every couple can point at a time when the contact and the looking were easy. If that has gone quiet, it is not a verdict on the relationship. It is the ordinary result of years, load, and many small avoidances nobody decided on. It comes back with practice.
The way this goes wrong. The most common thing that goes wrong: one of you does every part of it perfectly while quietly running out of capacity, and says the whole thing was fine. The other partner then 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, say so in step three. That is what step three is for.
Why we do it this way
Most neurodiverse couples can do the turn without difficulty. What varies is what comes next, and that variation is exactly what we are looking for. Step three puts what touch and eye contact actually cost each of you on the table in the first session, rather than months later.
Eye contact is not neutral for everyone. In the largest published collection of first-hand accounts, autistic people described what eye contact is actually like from the inside. The themes were physical, not shyness or lack of interest: a tightening body, a numb jaw, nausea, a sense of being invaded.1 That is why we never ask for steady eye contact. We invite glances, and we mean it.
A feeling can be real and still have no word yet.
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. The appreciation question is a second way in, and we like it just as much.
If the hand-holding is unbearable, or the eye contact costs more than the conversation, that is the first piece of information about how the two of you are wired, not a failed exercise.
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 rather than a course in fixing one of you, and why the exercise is built to be watched rather than reported.
Where this comes from. None of this comes from a trial. It comes from what thousands of neurodiverse couples have told us about the usual version, where eye contact and touch are instructions rather than invitations. It reliably costs the partner it is hardest for, and it hands the therapist a wrong reading of that partner.
After the session
The workbook below is for afterward. 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 to answer. The rest of the work is built on those details, and later modules refer back to them.
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. Bring it to the next session and say it early. It saves a lot of guessing.
The one thing, if that is all you have. If you remember one thing: nothing in the exercise is compulsory, and the part that is hard for you is the part we most want to hear about.
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 one and two. 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
Step four. 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 three 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 lesson cites two studies. The eye contact finding comes from a qualitative analysis of first-hand accounts by autistic people, gathered from public videos and forum posts.1 The point about naming feelings comes from a meta-analysis of fifteen studies on alexithymia in autism.2 Both are peer-reviewed and reported at the size they found. Each describes a population; neither tested this exercise.
No trial has compared a connection exercise offered as an invitation against the same one delivered as instructions, so we cannot tell you the first produces better outcomes. What stands behind the design is what we have watched happen, thousands of times, when the standard version is used: it reliably costs the partner it is hardest for, and it hands the therapist an inaccurate reading of that partner. That is clinical judgment built on volume of cases, and we would rather say so plainly.
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.
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. Five themes emerged: 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 genuinely 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.
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