3 Kinds of couples therapy for neurodiverse couples

Friday, December 1, 2023. The is for C & L.

Among American couples therapists, there is an ethic that we call “marriage friendly” vs. being relationally agnostic, that is to say, willing to sacrifice intimate bonds on the altar of personal growth.

We believe that good couples therapy will likely result if a couple has a shared agenda and abiding motivation.

Science-based couples therapy is 70-92% effective for motivated couples. For couples lacking motivation, we offer Discernment Counseling.

However, when working with neurodiverse couples using the Brain-Informed Neurodiverse Couples Therapy Model, the work is not a fetish of motivations. From the start of clinical work, we clearly understood we were working in one of 3 silos of specific effort:

• Relationship-Building Couples Therapy

• Relationship Clarity-Seeking Couples Therapy

• Relationship-Closing Couples Therapy

Relationship-Building Couples Therapy

Relationship-building couples Therapy is the right path for ND couples in which each partner has a commitment (perhaps narrow in scope) to some specific relational improvement.

In this silo, in addition to supplying appropriate psycho-education, the couples therapist helps the couple compose a concrete AF working definition of relational success. What will be required from each partner? Is this relational improvement authentic, sustainable, and attainable?

How can they honor each other’s unique personhood, needs, and values? Is sharing life goals preferred, or will they support one another on more differentiated paths?

The therapist will offer a process for unpacking wounds from old historic paradoxes and dilemmas. Healthy boundaries and guided practice with new interpersonal skills are a common approach in relationship-building

Concrete AF Relationship Mission Statement Exercise:

This is a statement of bullet-point brevity that succinctly summarizes core relationship values:

“Our marriage will—————- , as evidenced by —————————-.”

Relationship Clarity-Seeking Couples Therapy

This silo most resembles the Discernment Counseling approach used with neurotypical (NT) couples.

If a couple chooses therapy predicated on Relationship Clarity-Seeking Therapy, the therapist shifts attention to individual wellness as they wrangle with a possibly mixed agenda for moving forward.

Self-Care, Self-Regulation, and especially communication skills are the order of the day for this cohort.

This is a decisional process, often emerging from a recent betrayal, profound disagreement, value clash, it may not necessarily be an existential crisis, as in Discernment Counseling, but the gravitas of the subject matter is readily apparent.

Concrete AF Relationship-Clarity Statement Exercise:

“We want to understand whether we are better off together or apart.

This means deciding if certain factual differences about our brains and nervous systems are dealbreakers.

We will do this by________ and _________________ (such as)_____________ necessary detail (for example,

a shared agenda couples therapy work product divied out by each partner).”

Relationship-Closing Therapy

In Relationship-Closing Couples Therapy, the work is to help the couple manage the transition stress from being intimate partners to collaborative co-parents after separation or divorce.

Here, the focus is on managing powerful emotions such as grief and the transition to new family boundaries. This silo may require a great deal of focus on self-regulation and establishing respectful routines and habits.

The goal is for healthy closure, and an open display of respectful collaborative skills.

Concrete AF Relationship-Closing Statement Exercise:

“We want to learn how to be (for example, healthy co-parents) instead of (for example, intimate partners).

We each, separately, pledge to be healthy co-parents instead of (husband and wife), and prioritize both our individual mental health and our children’s needs.

We want to learn how to be healthy co-parents as evidenced by_________ ( enter measurable concrete AF goal)”

Final Thoughts

I should also mention a few of the essential first-line interventions here, such as psychoeducation, self-noticing, interception (in service of enhanced emotional regulation), and building interpersonal communicative skills. I’ll be unpacking them in some upcoming blog posts.

The main point is that neurodiverse couples work lacks the vagueness of bad couples therapy, but prioritizes the significance of motivation quite differently, (some might opine more forgivingly), than most model-based NT couples therapies, such as EFT or Gottman.

Be well, stay Kind, and Godspeed.