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Module 27 — Building on Your Strengths
Lean on what each of you does well, on purpose.
Ask a couple at this point in therapy what goes wrong between them, and both of them can tell you in detail. Ask what goes right, and there is often a long pause. This session stays with that second question.
What is already strong between you
Summary: what happens in the session
1 You each name one thing that is better than when you started. And who made it happen. A short look back, not a review.
2 You each name your own strengths. Specific things you do, from your wheel and your page.
3 You each name a strength in your partner that does not look like yours. The kind that is easy to miss, or to read as a flaw.
4 You look at the other side of one trait that has caused friction. The hurt it caused, and the strength it also is. Both are true.
5 You remember a time your differences made you a better team. What each of you brought, and why it took both.
6 You choose one strength to lean on in your hardest area. A small way to use it, said out loud and written on a page you keep.
Your therapist asks and notices. The two of you decide which strengths ring true, and what to do with them.
Step 1. You each name one thing that is better than when you started
Your therapist opens by asking each of you for one thing that is better now than when you began. Not a summary of everything you have done. One thing, and who helped it happen.
The kind of thing couples name. We can stop a fight before it takes over the whole evening.
I tell you when I need quiet, instead of just disappearing.
You ask me before you fill up the weekend.
Often it took both of you. One partner tried something new, and the other noticed and made room for it. Your therapist asks the partner who is listening what it is like to hear it named.
That moment is worth slowing down for. Research on sharing good news found that when a partner responds with real interest, couples tend to feel closer and more satisfied.1
Looking back. What is one thing that is better between you than when you started? Who helped it happen?
Step 2. You each name your own strengths
Next, each of you names your own strengths. Many people find this harder than naming their flaws. Many neurodivergent adults have heard far more about what they get wrong than about what they do well.
Start from what you already wrote. If you did Your Spiky Profile, look at the green side of your Trait Wheel, the strength ratings. Your page from Who I Am, in My Own Words may hold some too, in the line about when you do best.
What a strength sounds like here. Too general: I am a good person. I am nice to be around.
Specific: I remember what matters to people. I can stay with a hard problem long after others stop.
A strength here is something you do, that your partner has seen, not a compliment.
If saying it out loud feels awkward, that is common. You can read it from your wheel, or your therapist can ask your partner whether they have seen it too. Our Strengths and Support Exercise has more questions to start from.
Your own strengths. On a good day, what do you do well? When has your partner seen it?
Step 3. You each name a strength in your partner that does not look like yours
Then your therapist asks each of you to name a strength in your partner, especially one that works differently from your own. These are the easiest to miss. Some can even look like a flaw from where you stand.
Strengths partners often name. Steady: deep focus, honesty, loyalty, noticing patterns and details, a reliable routine.
Quick: fast thinking, warmth, humor, spontaneity, calm in a crisis, big ideas.
Connecting: reading a room, planning ahead, keeping friends and family close.
Some people recognize themselves in one line more than the others. Any of these can belong to anyone, whatever their neurotype. When autistic adults were asked about their strengths at work, they named focus, memory, creativity, honesty and dedication.2 That study was about work, not couples, but the list will sound familiar to many partners.
These two lists are only an example. Your own will look different, and may overlap.
Why they get missed. Misunderstanding between two different kinds of mind runs both ways.3 Each of you may have been looking for a strength shaped like your own. Honesty can land as bluntness. Spontaneity can land as not caring about the plan.
A strength you have missed. What does your partner do well that you would never do the same way? Tell them, not me.
Step 4. You look at the other side of one trait that has caused friction
Earlier in the program you looked closely at the traits that cause friction between you. Now your therapist invites each of you to pick one of your own, and look at its other side. Often the very trait that caused the hurt is also a strength.
Autistic adults interviewed about the good sides of being autistic described the same thing in their own lives: a trait helped or got in the way depending on the situation, and on how much of it there was.4
Pick one trait of your own. Your therapist asks about the left side first, so the hurt is heard before the strength is named.
Both sides are true. The strength does not cancel the hurt, and the hurt does not cancel the strength.
This is not a way to excuse what hurt. The partner who felt alone at dinner still felt alone. Your therapist makes room for that first, and only then asks about the other side.
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.
This step can sting, especially for the partner who was hurt by the trait being named. Either of you can stop here.
The other side. Think of a trait of yours that has caused friction between you. When has that same trait helped the two of you?
Step 5. You remember a time your differences made you a better team
Next, your therapist asks for a time the two of you handled something well together, and your differences were part of the reason. It might be a move, a hard week with a child, a family emergency or a trip that went sideways.
What couples often remember. One of you saw the detail. The other saw the whole picture.
One of you stayed calm. The other got everyone moving.
One of you read the room. The other said the honest thing.
It took both kinds. Your therapist asks what each of you did, and what the other made possible. Neither kind of strength is the better one. The moment went well because there were two.
Your team. Tell me about a time you got through something hard together. What did each of you bring?
Step 6. You choose one strength to lean on in your hardest area
Last, your therapist asks which part of your life together is hardest right now: money, sex, parenting, family, chores, or time together and apart. Then you choose one strength to use there. It can be yours, your partner’s, or one you share.
Small, and on purpose. Pick a way to use it that fits your energy this month. If money is hardest and one of you is good with detail, that partner might read the bank app while the calmer one sits with them. A plan that suits a tired week is more likely to happen than a big one.
Say it out loud. Before you finish, each of you tells your partner one thing you admire in them, and one thing you rely on them for. Your therapist invites you to say it to each other, not to the screen.
Leaning on a strength. Which area is hardest for you right now? Which strength could help there, in one small way?
Saying it. Tell your partner one thing you admire in them, and one thing you rely on them for.
One couple’s page. A few lines is enough, typed or by hand.
Then you write it on one short page, as you did with The Love List, and decide where it will go at home: somewhere both of you will see it on an ordinary day.
After the session
Try it for a few weeks. Use the strength in the small way you chose, and notice when your partner uses theirs. Saying so when you see it, even briefly, helps it last.
Our Appreciation Practice worksheet has a simple way to keep noticing. If the hard area is still hard after a few weeks, bring your page to your next session and look at it together. The workbook below is a place to write it down first.
If this is hard to do. If naming strengths feels false right now, there is no need to force it. Spend some time with your partner talking about what makes it hard, and share the feelings that come up: hurt that is still raw, embarrassment at being praised, or worry that the good things will not last. That conversation is part of the work.
Why are a partner's strengths so easy to miss in a neurodiverse couple?
Each of you may be looking for a strength shaped like your own. A strength that works differently can be easy to overlook, or can even look like a flaw from where you stand. Honesty can land as bluntness, and spontaneity can land as not caring about the plan.
Does calling a trait a strength excuse the hurt it caused?
No. The partner who was hurt still felt that hurt, and your therapist makes room for it first. Only then does the session look at the other side of the same trait. Both are true: the strength does not cancel the hurt, and the hurt does not cancel the strength.
What if naming strengths feels false right now?
There is no need to force it. You can spend some time talking with your partner about what makes it hard, such as hurt that is still raw, embarrassment at being praised, or worry that the good things will not last. That conversation is part of the work too.
Are some strengths autistic strengths and others ADHD strengths?
Any strength can belong to anyone, whatever their neurotype. Partners often name things like deep focus, honesty, warmth, humor, calm in a crisis or keeping family close. What matters is what your partner actually does well, as you have seen it, not a list.
Your workbook
Your answers save to this device only - we cannot see a word of what you write. Write down what is already better, the strengths each of you sees, and the one you will lean on in your hardest area.
What is already better
One thing is enough. Name who helped it happen.
One thing that is better than when we started, and who helped it happen
Your own strengths
Something you do that your partner has seen, not a compliment.
Partner A: a strength of mine, and a time it showed
Partner B: a strength of mine, and a time it showed
Strengths that do not look like yours
The ones that are easy to miss, or that you once read as a flaw.
Partner A: a strength I see in you that does not look like mine
Partner B: a strength I see in you that does not look like mine
One trait that has caused friction, and the strength it also is
Leaning on one strength
Small enough to happen in a tired week.
The area that is hardest for us right now — Money, Sex and affection, Parenting, Family, Chores, Time together or apart, Something else
The strength we will lean on there, and one small way to use it
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 steps in this session come from our clinical work with neurodiverse couples and the strengths-based, neuro-affirming view the program uses throughout: two different minds, neither of them the problem. The session as a whole has not been tested in a trial. The four sources below support single ideas in it, and none of them studied neurodiverse couples.
The research on sharing good news1 found that people who tell others about good things, and get an interested response, feel better, and that couples whose partners usually respond that way feel closer. It shows a link, not that practicing it in a session causes the benefit.
The two strengths studies asked autistic adults directly. One was a survey about strengths at work,2 the other a set of interviews about the advantages of being autistic, where the same trait could help or hinder depending on the situation.4 Both describe what people said; neither can say how common any strength is, and neither is about ADHD or about couples.
The idea that misunderstanding between autistic and non-autistic people runs both ways comes from a short essay,3 not a study. We use it for the frame: when a strength is missed, it is often because it is not shaped like the observer’s own.
Who this research was done with. The studies behind this module, none of them of neurodiverse couples, 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 October 3, 2026
Peer-reviewed research
1. Gable SL, Reis HT, Impett EA, Asher ER (2004) What do you do when things go right? The intrapersonal and interpersonal benefits of sharing positive events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(2), 228-245. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.87.2.228 Four studies of capitalization, sharing personal positive events with others. Sharing was associated with increased daily positive affect and well-being beyond the event itself, more so when others responded actively and constructively; close relationships in which a partner typically responded enthusiastically showed higher relationship well-being, including intimacy and daily marital satisfaction. Limitation: correlational and diary-based; shows an association, not that coaching the response causes the benefit.
2. Cope R, Remington A (2022) The strengths and abilities of autistic people in the workplace. Autism in Adulthood, 4(1), 22-31. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2021.0037 Online questionnaire completed by 66 autistic adults about their employment-related strengths, analyzed thematically. Reported strengths included cognitive advantages such as creativity, focus and memory; efficiency and personal qualities such as honesty and dedication; and the ability to offer a unique autism-specific perspective. Limitation: self-report by people able to complete an online questionnaire, in a sample that was predominantly female and from the education sector.
3. Milton DEM (2012) On the ontological status of autism: The 'double empathy problem'. Disability & Society, 27(6), 883-887. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2012.710008 A current-issues piece introducing the term double empathy problem, critiquing the definition of autism as a deficit in theory of mind and reframing the difficulty as a question of reciprocity and mutuality in interaction. Limitation: a four-page sociological essay, not a study; cited as the origin of the idea named on the practice's slide.
4. Russell G, Kapp SK, Elliott D, Elphick C, Gwernan-Jones R, Owens C (2019) Mapping the autistic advantage from the accounts of adults diagnosed with autism: A qualitative study. Autism in Adulthood, 1(2), 124-133. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2018.0035 28 semi-structured interviews with autistic adults, sampled for maximum variation in support needs, analyzed by content and thematic analysis in two stages. The traits most often cited as advantages were hyperfocus, attention to detail, memory and creativity, with honesty, loyalty and empathy for animals and other autistic people on the social side; traits functioned as advantageous or disadvantageous depending on social context, controllability and extent of expression, and the authors suggest strengths and weaknesses may be a false dichotomy. Limitation: a qualitative study that excluded people with severe intellectual or language impairment; it cannot say how common any trait is.
Build on what is already strong between you
The Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center works with couples where one or both partners are autistic, ADHD or AuDHD. We help you see the strengths each of you brings, including the ones that do not look like your own, and use them where things are hardest. Therapy for clients in California, coaching worldwide, all by telehealth. A first conversation costs nothing.
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