I recently started a new course of therapy. I interviewed a few people, but the first one I actually spoke to ended up being the for me. She isn’t autistic as far as I know, and she isn’t a mirror of my personal style, particularly. However, we are neurocompatible.
What do I mean? Something about how I feel in her presence, cared for and understood, at ease and able to be myself, free from judgement, pressure, or expectation. (At least, I don’t think she’s judging me!) And for me, there is this very important factor of empathic resonance, and she, or we, have it.
What is this empathic resonance? It is the feeling of being gotten on a visceral level, or the feeling of relational contact in a resonant intersubjective field (Larson, 1987; Strong, 2021). In the fields of interpersonal neurobiology and affective neuroscience, it has been suggested that such phenomena are the result of right-brain-to-right-brain implicit communication (Schore, 2003). In this view, the therapist is able to help the client regulate their emotions via implicit nonverbal emotional communications (Hill, 2015).
This is important for helping therapy clients earn more attachment security, especially for those who tend towards avoidant or disorganized insecure attachment states (Hill, 2015). Of course, folks with preoccupied insecure attachment states also need attuned relationship— however, they often need help learning how to self-regulate, and therapy can help with that, too (Hill, 2015.)
resonance and attunement
Personally, I have found that a good capacity for empathic attunement and dyadic regulation is a fundamental need for me as a therapy client. It may be that I have a stronger hunger for this kind of contact than many people; or perhaps, as a therapist myself, I am simply an informed consumer who won’t settle for less. In any case, I know that my nervous system needs the feeling of empathic attunement to be able to relax and deepen into good therapy.
My therapist has other traits that are neurocompatible for me, including taking my sensory needs seriously (esp. around light in the office) and actually listening to me. (I know that these are pretty basic, but you’d be surprised…)
To be clear, I’m not writing in order to brag about how great my therapist is. Rather, I want to put forward this ‘neurocompatibility’ concept in case it helps you, dear reader, think about the relationships in your life. What’s working well? Who do you just ‘click’ with? Where are the hot spots? Are those things that can be overcome with more communication or other skills? Or is it more a… neurocompatibility issue?
To put it differently, do some brains simply resonate better together? I don’t want to reduce everything to neuroscience, but talking about the wetware substrate of experience (so much of which remains a mystery) can be a helpful model for including aspects of experience that we don’t understand conceptually but can get a felt sense for (Gendlin, 1981).
As a therapist, I have trained my capacity for empathic resonance (i.e. my embodied brain’s ability to resonate with other embodied brains), and even so, I can’t resonate with just anybody. There is some ineffable goodness-of-fit in relationship that you can’t just get out of a box or a degree program. While some relationships can be cultivated and the members can dial up their compatibility, others simply don’t have enough traction, i.e. neurocompatibility.
relational neurocompatibility
I’d like to give another example. I was in a relationship with someone recently, and we clicked really well. She really got me, and even though she wasn’t autistic, she understood me as an autistic person really well. It was my first serious relationship since self-identifying a few years ago (Strong, 2024), and it felt really good to know how to ask for my sensory needs to be met and not to have to mask all the damn time.
Things ended recently due to a life-situation-incompatibility-issue, and although I am sad about that, I also found it really healthy, helpful, and healing to be in such a lovely neurocompatible situation. And I would never have picked this person from a list of people I might get along well with- on paper (or egad— on the apps!), she wouldn’t even have been in my top 10. But it was wonderful, and such a refreshing experience.
So my advice, if you want to hear it, is to keep seeking out the people who are neurocompatible with you, whatever your neurotype. Friends, therapists, lovers, coaches, clients, teachers, bosses, whatever. Of course, we all have to work with people who are different from us, and interpersonal friction can produce growth and new learning— of course, of course. However, you can make it easy on yourself, things don’t have to be hard all the time, you do get to choose, and autistic, neurodivergent, and disabled people already have enough hassles (i.e. oppression) to deal with.
In summary, neurocompatible people are out there. I’m an autistic person, but I won’t necessarily get along with all autistic people. However, I know (most of) my needs, and I’m able to identify people I’m a good fit with in pretty short order, when I actually meet them in an environment that’s not overstimulating. Empathic resonance is a key factor in deep relationships, at least for me. Identifying the factors that lead to satisfying relationships can help autistic and other neurodivergent people optimize their social activities and live more satisfying lives.
References
Gendlin, E. T. (1981). Focusing. Bantam Books.
Hill, D. (2015). Affect regulation theory: A clinical model. Norton.
Larson, V. A. (1987). An exploration of psychotherapeutic resonance. Psychotherapy, 24(3), 321–324. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0085722
Schore, A. (2003). Affect regulation and the repair of the self. Norton.
Strong, S. D. (2021). Contemplative psychotherapy: Clinician mindfulness, Buddhist psychology, and the therapeutic common factors. Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, 31(2). https://doi.org/10.1037/int0000191