The Neurodiverse Couples Repair Program

 

A program for couples where one or both partners are autistic, ADHD or AuDHD. Each module tells you what actually happens in a session, in the words your therapist will use, and then gives the two of you something to do afterward. Nothing here needs an account, and nothing you write leaves your own device.

 

29 of 29 modules are written and readable now. The rest are listed by name so you can see the whole shape of the program before you start it.

 

There is a short video at the top of this page. What The Neurodiverse Couples Repair Program is, who it is for, and what its seven parts cover. It runs about 5 minutes.

 

How to read it

 

Parts One and Two run in order and each assumes the ones before it. Part Six does not: it is a shelf of the things neurodiverse couples actually fight about, and you take the ones that are about your life. You do not have to be in therapy to use any of it.

 

Part One - Your First Session

 

1A — Your First Session

 

The first hundred minutes, step by step: nobody is on trial, what stays in the room, the three words that pause anything, and the three parts of the session. Read Your First Session

 

1B — The Connection Exercise

 

The short exercise that opens your first session, step by step: what your therapist will offer, what you will be asked, and what to write down afterward. Read The Connection Exercise

 

1C — Your Goals

 

The middle forty minutes of your first session, where each of you says what you want and it becomes a roadmap. Read Your Goals

 

1D — Neuro-Informed Reflective Listening

 

Reflective listening, adapted for neurodiverse couples: the twelve changes to the standard version, and the last stretch of the first session where the two of you try it. Read Neuro-Informed Reflective Listening

 

Part Two - Is One or Both of Us Autistic or ADHD?

 

2A — Wondering If Your Partner Is Autistic or ADHD

 

One of you thinks the other might be autistic or ADHD and has not said it. What your therapist does with that, and how the work moves anyway. Read Wondering If Your Partner Is Autistic or ADHD

 

2B — Bringing It Up: Autism or ADHD in the Room

 

One of you wants it in the room from the start, or the booking said it. What your therapist does with it in the first sessions, step by step. Read Bringing It Up: Autism or ADHD in the Room

 

2C — Diagnosed, Self-Identified, or Still Wondering

 

Optional. The session where we find out where each of you is on the question, weigh each option, and, if you want, take a set of screeners home. Read Diagnosed, Self-Identified, or Still Wondering

 

2D — What a Diagnosis Changes, and What It Doesn't

 

Once a neurotype is named, we can work on the differences between you as differences, and break the pattern where each of you assumes the worst. Read What a Diagnosis Changes, and What It Doesn't

 

Part Three - Where It Started

 

3A — Drawing the Family

 

The drawing session, step by step: a family tree and a line of your life, drawn on paper while you talk and held up to the camera at the end. Read Drawing the Family

 

3B — Your Childhood Wound

 

Three questions about back then, the same three about now, your partner saying each set back, one thing you need this week, and the wound of not being understood. Read Your Childhood Wound

 

3C — The Family You Grew Up In Was Neurodiverse Too

 

The Neurodiversity Supplement session, step by step: who in your family was wired this way, what it was like to be you, and what your therapist does with those pages. Read The Family You Grew Up In Was Neurodiverse Too

 

3D — Competing Sensory Needs, Then and Now

 

The sensory worksheet about the house you grew up in, and the session that maps where your two nervous systems collide now. Read Competing Sensory Needs, Then and Now

 

Part Four - Two Brains, Mapped

 

4A — What the Labels Were Describing

 

The session where one word you have carried since childhood - lazy, cold, too much - comes down and gets read for what it was actually describing. Read What the Labels Were Describing

 

4B — Your Spiky Profile

 

The Trait Wheel gives every area two ratings, not one - and the session where you read each other's shapes and stop reading the gap between two areas as not trying. Read Your Spiky Profile

 

4C — Where You Misread Each Other

 

The session where the two of you find the places you get each other wrong, in both directions, and write down what was true. Read Where You Misread Each Other

 

4D — The Working Map, Not the Label

 

The session where everything you have gathered so far becomes one page each, ten areas in your own words, dated and updated over time. Read The Working Map, Not the Label

 

Part Five - The Cycle and the Repair

 

5A — Naming the Loop

 

One ordinary fight drawn as a figure eight, a name for the loop, and a pause signal with a return time. Read Naming the Loop

 

5B — Underneath the Loop

 

The program's slowest session: a question sent ahead, a silence asked about rather than guessed, and the deep feeling and want said aloud. Read Underneath the Loop

 

5C — Impact and Intent

 

The session where one recent moment gets taken apart in the order that makes both halves sayable, and the dictionary the two of you keep afterward starts its first row. Read Impact and Intent

 

5D — The Love List

 

The session where you each write twenty very specific things that make you feel loved, read them to each other, and put them up where you will see them every day. Read The Love List

 

Part Six - What You Actually Fight About

 

6A — Money

 

The money session, step by step: the mechanism before the character, who can see what, a system built for a bad week, and what the job costs after five. Read Money

 

6B — Sex and Intimacy

 

The session that names the five difficulties behind a sexless marriage, agrees an opening move that commits nobody, and writes down the words for no. Read Sex and Intimacy

 

6C — Parenting

 

The session that sorts which argument you are really having, prices the household work instead of counting it, and shortens the list the two of you hold completely. Read Parenting

 

6D — In-Laws and Family

 

The session where the two of you plan the next family visit in advance: leaving time, signal, who says what, and the year. Read In-Laws and Family

 

6E — The Mental Load

 

The session where the noticing nobody has listed gets counted, and whole areas of the household change hands with the noticing attached. Read The Mental Load

 

6F — Work and Time Apart

 

The session that counts where your week really goes, separates alone time from withdrawal, and buys one thing back at a size you can finish. Read Work and Time Apart

 

Part Seven - Making It Hold

 

7A — Micro-Agreements

 

How an agreement is built in the session so that it survives an ordinary week at home. Read Micro-Agreements

 

7B — Eight Dates, Neurodiverse

 

How your therapist assigns one of the eight conversations: no outing required, fun first, questions sent ahead, forty minutes. Read Eight Dates, Neurodiverse

 

7C — Knowing It Is Working

 

The ninety-day review: the four questions that show whether this work is moving, and what a flat quarter can mean. Read Knowing It Is Working

 

Working with us

 

The Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center works with couples where one or both partners are autistic, ADHD or AuDHD. Therapy for clients in California, coaching worldwide, all by telehealth. Talk with our team.

 

Acknowledgments

 

The Neurodiverse Couples Repair Program was compiled by, and written under the direction of, Harry Motro, LMFT, founder and clinical director of the Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center. It represents the input of the whole clinical team. Every session it describes is one the center’s therapists run, in the way they run it, and the program exists because they were willing to say, in detail, what they actually do in the room.

 

The clinical team. Our deepest thanks go to the therapists of the center. Their sessions are what these modules describe. Their worksheets and slides, refined over thousands of hours with neurodiverse couples, are what the modules draw on: the Love List, Intent versus Impact, the Scheduled Intimacy Agreement, the Conversation Calendar, the Family of Origin worksheets and their Neurodiversity Supplement, the Relationship Check-Up, and many others. Where a module says “we,” it means them. Meet the team.

 

The couples. And to the couples. Everything here that is true was learned from people who sat in the room, tried it, told us when it did not work, and came back the next week. Nobody’s story is in these pages. Everybody’s is.

 

The research. Each module lists its sources, with what each one can and cannot support, at the foot of its page. Across the program, the work we lean on most, and are most grateful for:

 

 

• Damian Milton on the double empathy problem

 

• Catherine Crompton and colleagues on information transfer between autistic and non-autistic people

 

• Noah Sasson and colleagues on first impressions of autistic people

 

• Dinah Murray, Mike Lesser and Wenn Lawson on monotropism

 

• Laura Hull and colleagues on social camouflaging

 

• Eilidh Cage and Zoe Troxell-Whitman on the reasons, contexts and costs of camouflaging

 

• Dora Raymaker and colleagues on autistic burnout

 

• Karen Leneh Buckle and colleagues on autistic inertia

 

• Emma Kinnaird, Catherine Stewart and Kate Tchanturia on alexithymia in autism

 

• Beheshti, Chavanon and Christiansen on emotion dysregulation in adult ADHD

 

• Laura Foran Lewis on discovering that a partner is autistic

 

• Sarah Bargiela, Robyn Steward and Will Mandy on late-diagnosed autistic women

 

• Meng-Chuan Lai and Simon Baron-Cohen on the lost generation of undiagnosed adults

 

• Elizabeth O’Nions and colleagues on how many autistic adults in England have never been diagnosed

 

• Leslie Greenberg and Wanda Malcolm on resolving unfinished business from childhood

 

• Rathgeber, Bürkner, Schiller and Holling on the efficacy of emotionally focused couples therapy

 

• Paul Schrodt, Paul Witt and Jenna Shimkowski on the demand/withdraw pattern

 

• Eli Finkel and colleagues on reappraising conflict from a third party’s view

 

• Roy Lewicki, Beth Polin and Robert Lount on what makes an apology work

 

• Shelly Gable and colleagues on what you do when things go right

 

• Allison Daminger on the cognitive dimension of household labor

 

• Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran on implementation intentions, the science behind micro-agreements

 

• John and Julie Gottman on Eight Dates, which Part Seven adapts

 

 

We have tried to say what each study shows and no more. Where the program goes past the evidence, the module says so.