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 and what the session is for, 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

 

A framework, not a script. Each module describes one way a session can go. Every therapist at our center is an experienced clinician with their own way of working, and yours will shape each session to the two of you: changing the order, spending longer on some steps, skipping others, or trying something different. Use the modules to know roughly what to expect, not as a checklist your sessions have to follow.

 

Parts One to Five 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. Part Seven is about keeping it going: Building on Your Strengths, Staying Close, and Knowing When to Come Back. You do not have to be in therapy to use any of it.

 

Part One - Your First Session

 

1A — Your First Session

 

How we make your first session safe for both of you. Read Your First Session

 

1B — The Connection Exercise

 

Start each session feeling like a team, not opponents. Read The Connection Exercise

 

1C — Your Goals

 

Leave your first session with a plan you both want. Read Your Goals

 

1D — Neuro-Informed Reflective Listening

 

Feel heard at last, and help your partner feel heard too. 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

 

The work can move forward without a label. Read Wondering If Your Partner Is Autistic or ADHD

 

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

 

Let autism or ADHD help you understand each other, not become one more thing to blame. Read Bringing It Up: Autism or ADHD in the Room

 

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

 

Optional: decide, without pressure, whether getting assessed is right for either of you. Read Diagnosed, Self-Identified, or Still Wondering

 

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

 

See your old arguments in a new and kinder light. Read What a Diagnosis Changes, and What It Doesn't

 

Part Three - Where It Started

 

3A — Drawing the Family

 

See the patterns you both grew up with, so you stop repeating the ones you never chose. Read Drawing the Family

 

3B — Your Childhood Wound

 

Learn to care for the hurt your partner carried out of childhood, and let them care for yours. Read Your Childhood Wound

 

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

 

Make sense of how the family you grew up in shapes the two of you now. Read The Family You Grew Up In Was Neurodiverse Too

 

3D — Competing Sensory Needs, Then and Now

 

Make your shared home easier on both of your nervous systems. Read Competing Sensory Needs, Then and Now

 

Part Four - Two Brains, Mapped

 

4A — What the Labels Were Describing

 

Put down an old label, and see yourself more fairly. Read What the Labels Were Describing

 

4B — Your Spiky Profile

 

Understand why you can shine at one thing and struggle with another. Read Your Spiky Profile

 

4C — Where You Misread Each Other

 

Stop turning misread feelings into fights. Read Where You Misread Each Other

 

4D — Who I Am, in My Own Words

 

Be understood for who you are. Read Who I Am, in My Own Words

 

Part Five - The Cycle and the Repair

 

5A — Naming the Loop

 

Stop being opponents in the same argument, and face it together. Read Naming the Loop

 

5B — Underneath the Loop

 

Finally get to what matters in the argument you keep having. Read Underneath the Loop

 

5C — Impact and Intent

 

Let the hurt be heard before anyone explains. Read Impact and Intent

 

5D — The Love List

 

Know exactly what makes your partner feel loved, and tell them what works for you. Read The Love List

 

Part Six - What You Actually Fight About

 

6A — Money

 

Stop fighting about money and start understanding each other. Read Money

 

6B — Sex and Intimacy

 

Bring closeness back without pressure. Read Sex and Intimacy

 

6C — Parenting

 

Parent as a team again. Read Parenting

 

6D — In-Laws and Family

 

Get through family visits without paying for them afterward. Read In-Laws and Family

 

6E — Chores, Duties, and Who Carries the Load

 

Stop one of you carrying the home alone. Read Chores, Duties, and Who Carries the Load

 

6F — Time Together and Apart

 

Feel close, whether you are side by side or apart. Read Time Together and Apart

 

Part Seven - Keeping It Going

 

7A — Building on Your Strengths

 

Lean on what each of you does well, on purpose. Read Building on Your Strengths

 

7B — Staying Close

 

Keep the closeness you worked for. Read Staying Close

 

7C — Knowing When to Come Back

 

Leave regular therapy with a plan for keeping what you built. Read Knowing When to Come Back

 

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 planning ahead what you will do when a hard moment comes

 

 

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