What’s Brain-Informed Neurodiverse Couples Therapy?

Saturday, November 25, 2023.

What is Brain-Informed Neurodiverse Couples Therapy?

Brain-Informed Neurodiverse Couple Therapy (BINCT) is a new model based on 2 abundant wellsprings.

My supervisor and colleague Grace Myhill’s Myhill & Jekel Treatment Model for Neurodiverse couples, which was first introduced in 2015, and Chapman and Botha’s model, Neurodivergence-Informed Therapy, which was introduced recently in 2022.

Four Stages to Brain-Informed Neurodiverse Couple Therapy

• Joining, Assessing, Psycho-education, and Teaching.

• Practicing and Collecting Data

• Leaning into the New

• Maintaining Resilience

Kelli Murgado-Willard is a neurodivergent Marriage and Family Therapist and thought leader from Georgia. She has written a passionate and intellectually rigorous new book; Neurodiverse Couple Therapy, a Practical Guide to Brain-Informed Care.

Kelli addresses a gaping knowledge gap in couples therapy, and can instruct therapists on how to develop and maintain an ethical standard of care for neurodiverse couples.

Her book also introduces a new approach to couple therapy with the neurodivergent: Brain-Informed Neurodiverse Couple Therapy (BINCT).

Kelli begin by providing some historical context of neurodiversity before offering invaluable training on best practices, assessment, treatment planning, and the significance of employing non-ableist, pragmatic interventions for neurodivergent clients and their partners.

I also admire how she uses an abundance of case studies that present a rich tapestry of neurodiverse couples.

“Working with neurodiverse couples is more complicated than neurotypical couples.

In order to help the couple work as a unified team, the therapist first has to help the partners understand each other’s neurological differences.

The therapist has to understand each partner’s unique language so that they can help the couple begin to build a language of common connection.”

– Grace Myhill, MSW, from Training 101: Fundamentals of Working with Neurodiverse Couples in Therapy

Learning about Neurodiversity is your responsibility as a clinician…

Kelli kinda says the quiet part out loud.

Respect for human differences is a essential ethic for any trained mental health clinician, because each client should feel accepted and validated, safe, and cared for while on our therapy sofa.

Neurodiversity, as a human difference has received little academic attention in mental health training programs, until recently.

Kelli and I are both Marriage and family therapists. We are charged with our own compliance to our Code of Ethics. The gap of care currently experienced by neurodivergent clients is similar to how leaps forward in our understanding of trauma in the 1970’s lead to a career imperative for the community of practice at that time, to learn about, and implement an emerging protocol of Trauma-Informed Care.

It is with this rather apt analogy, Kelli lays the foundation for a new set of therapeutic guidelines to address Brain-Informed Care.

The Intentional recognition and de-stimatization of neurodiversity is seen by Kelli as a logical extension of trauma -informed care, as being so essentially misunderstood by a poorly trained therapist can be pretty fu*king traumatizing, I suppose.

It took many fine minds and clean hearts to finally arrive at the 6 Principles of Trauma-Informed Care:

• Safety

• Trustworthiness & Transparency

• Peer Support

• Collaboration & Mutuality

• Empowerment, Voice, & Choice.

• Cultural Historical, and Gender issues

The Power of an intentional dialogue about neurodiversity

When we realized as a community of practice that we needed to become more trauma informed, we stepped up. Trauma-Informed Care opened up an intentional dialogue about trauma, and the relational consequences that allowed for wide spread de-stigmatization, and a massive uptick in cultural awareness of the mechanics of trauma.

The more we knew, the more we grew. Increasing the knowledge about trauma radically upended mental health training. It’s time for the same sort of paradigm shift for neurodivergent couples right now.

Learning to support neurodivergent couples…

Kelli is suggesting that any notion of Brain-Informed Care must have 6 foundational tenets. What’s crucial is that each foundational value is either keenly focused on the therapist’s mindset, or an aspect of their professional deportment.

It’s best to think of Kelli’s model as an environment of care.

The 6 Tenets of Brain-Informed Care

• Commitment to Non-Ableist Practices.

• Promotion of Sensory Security.

• Presumption of Competence and Strengths.

• Acceptance of Atypicality Without Manipulation or Toxic Positivity.

• Validation of Neurodivergent Lived Experience.

• Therapist Authenticity.

  In 2017, AANE surveyed partners in neurodiverse relationships to learn about their needs. Of the 469 respondents:

• Almost 100% felt that neurodiverse couples have unique challenges.

• Almost 70% who had worked with therapists experienced with neurodiverse couples rated the therapy “helpful” or “very helpful.”

• Of those who worked with couples, therapists who did not have experience with neurodiverse couples, less than 20% found it helpful and 44% found it to be “harmful” or “very harmful.”

• Consequently, the knowledge gap of therapists concerning neuro-divergency is a social justice issue.

Final thoughts…

I’ll be doing a series of posts to discuss not only the 6 tenets of Brain-Informed Care, I’ll also be discussing specific and practical interventions to better help neurodivergent couples tend to their intimate bonds.

Be well, stay kind, and Godspeed.