A Working Map of Two Brains

This is not a diagnosis and it is not a label. It is a working map — a plain description of how each of you is built, written down so it can be pointed at instead of argued about. Maps get corrected as you travel. Expect to change yours.

Do this one with your therapist: This map goes into territory that is easy to turn into ammunition — where you struggle, what overwhelms you, what you are sensitive to. Having a third person in the room keeps it a description rather than a case being built. If you have done screeners, bring those scores too; they are one input here, not the verdict.

Each partner fills in their own copy about themselves. Nobody fills in a section about the other person. That rule matters more than it sounds like it does.

How to use it

Four ground rules

• Describe, do not evaluate. "I lose the thread after about forty minutes of people" beats "I'm antisocial."
• Blank is allowed. If you do not know yet, leave it and come back.
• Neither of you is the standard the other is measured against. Both of you have a map.
• This is version one. Date it. You will want to update it in a few months.

1. Strengths

Where are you genuinely good, and under what conditions? Skills matter less than context here — a lot of people are excellent at something at 10pm alone and useless at it at 6pm in a kitchen.

What I am good at, and the conditions that let me be good at it

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2. Hard parts

What is genuinely hard for me, and when it is hardest

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3. Sensory

Sensory profile

Light — brightness, flicker, screens, overhead lighting

• Too much looks like: ____________________
• What helps: ____________________

Sound — volume, layered noise, particular sounds, sudden noise

• Too much looks like: ____________________
• What helps: ____________________

Touch — fabrics, tags, unexpected touch, temperature, wet or sticky

• Too much looks like: ____________________
• What helps: ____________________

Smell and taste — cooking, perfume, cleaning products, food textures

• Too much looks like: ____________________
• What helps: ____________________

Crowding — how many people, how close, how long

• Too much looks like: ____________________
• What helps: ____________________

Movement — needing to move, needing stillness, motion, balance

• Too much looks like: ____________________
• What helps: ____________________

4. Focus

Left to yourself, where does your attention sit?

Rate from 0 (Locks on and stays) to 10 (Moves constantly): ____

What reliably pulls you into deep focus?

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5. Getting things started and finished

For each one, write how it actually shows up in your week and anything that already works. "Already works" is the important column — most people have more supports than they give themselves credit for.

Executive function

Starting — getting from knowing to doing

• How it shows up for me: ____________________
• What already helps: ____________________

Planning — seeing the steps before you are in them

• How it shows up for me: ____________________
• What already helps: ____________________

Sequencing — doing the steps in an order that works

• How it shows up for me: ____________________
• What already helps: ____________________

Holding information — keeping it in mind long enough to use it

• How it shows up for me: ____________________
• What already helps: ____________________

Time — knowing how long something takes, and how much has passed

• How it shows up for me: ____________________
• What already helps: ____________________

6. Social energy

Roughly how many hours of people before you are running on empty? (0–24)

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What does recovery need to look like, and how long?

e.g. e.g. two hours alone, no talking, low light

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How can your partner tell you are past the line — before you say so?

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7. Emotional capacity

How you can tell you are still inside your window

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Your early signs of heading up and out — louder, faster, hotter

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Your early signs of heading down and out — flat, silent, far away, done

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8. What you are carrying right now

Worth accounting for

• Sleep over the last month
• Health, pain, medication changes
• Caretaking of children or parents
• Work load and work conditions
• Recent change of any kind, including good change

What is loading the system right now

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Where are you on the road to burnout today?

Rate from 0 (Full tank) to 10 (Running on fumes): ____

9. Rejection and autonomy

What criticism, or the hint of it, does to you — and what helps afterward

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Where your need to choose for yourself spikes — and what a good way to meet it looks like

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Trade maps

Read each other's all the way through before saying anything. Then take turns on the three questions below. Curiosity only — no corrections to the other person's map, even if you think they are being hard on themselves.

Ask each other

• What on here did I not know about you?
• What on here have I been reading as a choice?
• Which one line, if I remembered it every day, would change the most?

The one line from your partner's map you are going to hold onto

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When will you review and update these?

e.g. a date, roughly three months out

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A map, not a verdict: Nothing here says who you are. It says how you are built, on the day you wrote it. The reason to put it on paper is not to settle anything — it is so that the next time something goes sideways, you have something to point at other than each other.

Go deeper

Ready for more? These lessons pick up where this worksheet leaves off.

• Who I Am, in My Own Words, from The Neurodiverse Couples Repair Program. Each partner finishes five plain sentences about who they are and how they work, reads the page to the other, and is heard.
• Your Spiky Profile, from The Neurodiverse Couples Repair Program. The Trait Wheel gives every area two ratings, not one - and the couples session that stops a gap between two areas being read as not trying.
• Building Your Couple Operating Manual, from The Neurodiverse Couple. The capstone: turn everything you've learned into one shared couple operating manual — map your two systems and write agreements that actually stick.