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Module 15 — Brakes and Accelerators
Ease what switches desire off before adding anything new.
One of you has been reading about how to bring the spark back: candles, a weekend away, something new to try. The other knows the trouble is not a lack of anything exciting. It is the phone, the open argument, the day spent holding it together. This module walks through a session where you each list what turns desire on and what shuts it down.
What turns desire on, and what shuts it down
Summary: what usually happens in the session
1 Your therapist explains the two lists. What speeds desire up, and what slows it down or shuts it off.
2 You each list what slows your desire down. Privately, in writing: stress, pressure, pain, a busy mind.
3 You add the brakes that come with neurodivergence. Masking, a full sensory tank, shutdown, an ask that feels like a demand.
4 You each list what speeds your desire up. Including the ones standard advice rarely names, such as knowing the plan.
5 You read each other’s lists, brakes first. Then your therapist asks what surprised you.
6 You choose one brake to ease and one accelerator to add. The smallest and most concrete of each, agreed by both of you.
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. Your therapist explains the two lists
Your therapist may start with a simple idea. Desire responds to two separate things. One is what turns you on, which speeds it up. The other is what turns you off or shuts you down, which slows it. Sex researchers call this the dual control model.1 A popular book for general readers explains it as brakes and accelerators, the words this session uses.2
The two lists act separately, so adding more to the left side rarely helps while the right side is full.
Many couples start by adding more. When desire fades, the usual advice is a new place, a new outfit, more romance. In our work, the bigger change usually comes from easing a brake. Pressing harder on the accelerator does little while the brake is on.
The two lists. Let’s not ask what is wrong with your desire. Let’s ask what turns it on for each of you, and what keeps switching it off.
Step 2. You each list what slows your desire down
Your therapist asks each of you to jot down your own brakes on paper, privately, without looking at your partner’s. It helps to be specific. “I’m just stressed” says less than “work email on my phone at ten at night”.
Your therapist may name some common brakes to jog your memory. Stress, tiredness or hunger. An argument that never got finished. Feeling rushed, or pressure to perform or to finish. Worry about your body, or about your partner’s pleasure. Watching yourself from the outside instead of feeling what is happening. Messages about sex you grew up with.
Pain is a brake that needs a doctor too. If sex hurts, or if desire, arousal, erections or orgasm have changed suddenly, your therapist will usually suggest seeing a doctor as well. Some medications can also lower desire, and that is a question for whoever prescribed them. A medical check runs alongside therapy, not instead of it. Some problems need a specialist, such as a pelvic floor physical therapist, and your therapist will help you decide.
Finding your brakes. Think of the last time you wanted to be close and then didn’t. What got in the way?
Step 3. You add the brakes that come with neurodivergence
Most lists of brakes were written for neurotypical bodies. So your therapist may go through a second set, the ones that often come with autism or ADHD. In our experience these tend to be the heaviest, and the least often said out loud.
A neurotypical partner will recognize few of these. That is why they are worth saying out loud.
Shutdown is not rejection. A partner in shutdown can look cold or far away. Usually they have simply run out of capacity. Saying so turns a silent no into information you can both use.
Being asked can be the brake. For some people, even a kind invitation turns sex into a demand, and the wanting switches off. That is about how their nervous system meets pressure. It is not a judgment of the person who asked.
Some people also expect to be turned down or criticized, and that fear is louder than desire. This is sometimes called rejection sensitivity. It is a description, not a diagnosis, and When “No” Lands Hard goes further into it. Masking and switching over are the subject of Energy, Masking, and the Onramp, and the senses of Your Sensory Map. Here you only mark which brakes are yours.
Step 4. You each list what speeds your desire up
Next comes the other list, again privately. Common accelerators include feeling close earlier in the day, a calm body that is rested and fed, a slow build-up without pressure, and feeling safe to say no. Some people like anticipation. Others like a surprise, within limits you have agreed.
Accelerators standard advice rarely names. Knowing the plan. Predictability is not unsexy. For many, it is permission.
Written words. A note or an agreed phrase, instead of an ask in the moment.
One thing at a time. One sense, or one area of the body, at once.
Room to be yourself. Permission to stim, make sound, move or be still, without performing.
In autistic people’s own accounts, touch, sight, sound and smell made sex better for some and worse for others.3 So one person’s brake can be another’s accelerator. A strong interest can work either way too: for some it pulls attention away, for others a story or setting they love draws them in.
Exact words help. If a kind of touch is on your list, “soft” or “gentle” tells your partner very little. Your therapist may ask where, how firm and how slow. Plain words are fine. Nobody needs to be poetic.
Step 5. You read each other’s lists, brakes first
Now you swap lists, or read them out in turn. Your therapist usually suggests starting with the brakes, because that side tends to hold the bigger surprises. Try to take in your partner’s list before asking or explaining anything.
It can sting to find something you do on your partner’s brake list, such as the way you reach for them or the hour you usually ask. That is news about what slows their body down. It is not a verdict on you, and the care behind what you did still counts.
A brake is a condition you can change, not a flaw in either of you.
After reading. Which of your partner’s brakes did you not know about? And which one feels easiest for you to help with?
Step 6. You choose one brake to ease and one accelerator to add
From your two sets of lists, you choose together one brake to ease and one accelerator to add. Your therapist will often steer you to the smallest, most concrete of each: phones charging in another room, a hard conversation moved out of the bedroom, a note in the morning instead of a question at night.
The morning note fits both lists: for Partner A it is a note, not a question, and it lets Partner B feel chosen.
The goal is not more sex. Easing a brake makes closeness easier to reach. Either of you can still say no on any evening, and the change has still done its job.
Two yeses, and a safe no. Anything you try at home is something you have both agreed to here first, at the pace of whichever of you needs it slower. These tools are for relationships where both of you can say yes, no, wait or stop without being punished for it. If sex has happened under pressure, or if either of you is afraid of the other, tell your therapist on your own. The work on sex pauses while that is looked at.
Choosing. What is the smallest brake we could ease this week? And what is one accelerator you would like to ask for?
After the session
The Brakes & Accelerators worksheet on our site has the full lists and four questions to talk over once you have compared. If you want to go deeper, Sexual Brakes and Sexual Accelerators each have a page for the ones that come with neurodivergence. If a kind of touch is on your list, Pleasure Mapping helps you find words for where and how. Fill in your own copy privately. You decide what, if anything, to share.
Try the two changes you chose, and notice what happens, without grading it. Brakes shift with stress, health and the seasons of life, so many couples look at their lists again after a month: what lifted, and what is still there. The workbook below is for after the session, on your own first.
If this is hard to do. If this is too much right now, there is no need to push through. Spend some time with your partner talking about what makes it hard, and share what comes up: hurt at seeing yourself on your partner’s brake list, embarrassment at naming what turns you on, or discouragement at how long one list is. That conversation is part of the work.
Why does adding romance not fix low desire?
Desire responds to two separate lists: what speeds it up and what slows it down or shuts it off. When desire fades, the usual advice is to add something new. In our work, the bigger change usually comes from easing a brake, such as stress, an open argument or pressure to perform. Pressing harder on the accelerator does little while the brake is on.
What sexual brakes come with autism or ADHD?
Many are rarely named in standard advice: masking all day, a sensory tank that is already full, shutdown, an invitation that feels like a demand, being pulled out of deep focus, and touch you did not expect. In our experience these tend to be the heaviest brakes. A partner in shutdown can look cold, but usually they have simply run out of capacity.
What turns desire on for neurodivergent people?
Common accelerators include feeling close earlier in the day, a calm body and feeling safe to say no. Some that standard advice rarely names are knowing the plan ahead, a written note instead of an ask in the moment, one sense or one area of the body at a time, and room to stim, move or be still without performing.
What if I am on my partner's list of brakes?
It can sting to find something you do on your partner's brake list, such as the way you reach for them or the hour you usually ask. That is news about what slows their body down, not a verdict on you, and the care behind what you did still counts. A brake is a condition you can change, not a flaw in either of you.
Your workbook
Your answers save to this device only - we cannot see a word of what you write. Fill this in AFTER the session, on your own first.
My lists, after the session
Answer these on your own first. Your answers stay on this device, so if you share it, your partner may be able to see them. Pick the closest option even if none is exact.
Which kind of brake is heaviest for me right now? — Stress or tiredness, The senses, Masking or shutdown, Pressure or feeling rushed, A busy mind, Something between us, Pain or my body, Not sure
Did my partner already know about my biggest brake? — Yes, Partly, No, I have not told them yet
What surprised me more on my partner's lists? — Their brakes, Their accelerators, Neither, We have not compared yet
Did I name an accelerator that standard advice rarely mentions? — Yes, No, Not sure
What we chose, and how it went
Fill in the first two after the session. Come back to the last one after you have tried the changes.
The one brake we agreed to ease
The one accelerator we agreed to add
What I noticed when we tried them
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 from our worksheets. They have not been tested in a formal trial. The idea that easing a brake often helps more than adding an accelerator is our clinical observation, not a tested finding.
The dual control model was set out by Erick Janssen and John Bancroft.1 It describes sexual response as a balance between two separate systems, one that excites and one that inhibits, which differ from person to person. Their chapter reviews questionnaire and laboratory research with volunteers. It did not study couples or autistic and ADHD adults, and it did not test easing brakes as a treatment.
Emily Nagoski’s book2 explains the same model for general readers as brakes and accelerators. It is popular science, not a study.
The accounts of sex and the senses come from more than 120 autistic people writing in books, online forums and a survey.3 They show that the same sensation can help or hinder, but not how common each experience is.
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 5, 2026
Peer-reviewed research
1. Janssen E, Bancroft J (2007) The dual control model: The role of sexual inhibition and excitation in sexual arousal and behavior. In E. Janssen (Ed.), The Psychophysiology of Sex (pp. 197-222). Indiana University Press, Bloomington. https://iupress.org/9780253348982/the-psychophysiology-of-sex Book chapter setting out the dual control model: sexual arousal and behavior depend on the balance between a sexual excitation system and a sexual inhibition system, which vary between individuals. The academic source the /sex page gives for brakes and accelerators. Limitation: a theoretical review of questionnaire and laboratory research with volunteers; not a study of couples or of autistic or ADHD adults, and not a treatment trial.
3. Gray S, Kirby AV, Holmes LG (2021) Autistic narratives of sensory features, sexuality, and relationships. Autism in Adulthood, 3(3), 238-246. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2020.0049 Qualitative analysis of publicly available narratives from 5 books and 13 online forums (72 usernames) plus 49 survey responses, over 120 autistic people in total, coded deductively against Dunn's model of sensory processing and inductively for further themes. Touch, sight, sound and smell shaped sexual experience in both positive and negative ways; some described distress at particular sensations, others sought more intense sensation or used intimacy to calm and regulate; strategies included talking with partners and using substances to dull sensation. Limitation: qualitative and self-selected; cannot say how common any pattern is.
Clinical sources and public data
2. Nagoski E (2015) Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster, New York. https://openlibrary.org/isbn/9781476762098 A book for general readers that translates the dual control model into sexual brakes and accelerators, and gives as much weight to reducing what hits the brakes as to adding stimulation. Limitation: popular science, not a study; written mainly with women in mind.
Further reading
• Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center (2026) Brakes & Accelerators. Practice materials, Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center. https://www.neurodiversecouplescounseling.com/worksheets/brakes-accelerators The practice's worksheet for listing what slows desire down and what speeds it up, filled in privately, compared brakes first, and ending with one brake to remove and one accelerator to add. Limitation: a clinical tool developed in use, not a validated instrument.
• Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center (2026) Sexual Brakes. Practice materials, Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center. https://www.neurodiversecouplescounseling.com/worksheets/sexual-brakes The practice's deeper worksheet on brakes, with a page of brakes that often come with neurodivergence and a removal plan. Limitation: a clinical tool developed in use, not a validated instrument.
• Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center (2026) Sexual Accelerators. Practice materials, Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center. https://www.neurodiversecouplescounseling.com/worksheets/sexual-accelerators The practice's deeper worksheet on accelerators, starting with the ones that often come with neurodivergence (predictability, written communication, one channel at a time, sensory accommodations, unmasked safety). Limitation: a clinical tool developed in use, not a validated instrument.
• Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center (2026) Pleasure Mapping. Practice materials, Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center. https://www.neurodiversecouplescounseling.com/worksheets/pleasure-mapping The practice's worksheet for building exact words for what touch feels good, and where, filled in privately and then shared. Limitation: a clinical tool developed in use, not a validated instrument.
Find the brakes, together
The Neurodiverse Couples Counseling Center helps couples where one or both partners are autistic, ADHD or AuDHD find what turns desire on and what shuts it down, including the brakes standard advice rarely names. Nothing sexual happens in our sessions. Therapy for clients in California, coaching worldwide, all by telehealth. A first conversation costs nothing.
Up next
Module 16 — Aftercare and Repair