Why "Who Has the Power?" Is the Wrong Question in Neurodiverse Relationships

When we talk about power in relationships, we tend to imagine something visible: money, physical size, a raised voice, a slammed door. We picture control that looks like control: someone who dominates, someone who submits. This framework has served us reasonably well in many contexts. But in relationships where two people have genuinely different neurologies, it consistently fails. And that failure has real consequences for families, for clinicians, and for the courts and institutions that are supposed to protect people (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012; Stark & Hester, 2019).

This is the first post in a series introducing a concept called Neurology-Based Power™, or NBP. It's a framework for understanding how the structure and functioning of our nervous systems shape the kinds of influence we can exert in relationships, and how those forms of influence become invisible, misread, or weaponized in ways that traditional power analysis simply doesn't capture (Bird & Viding, 2014; Frith & Frith, 2006; Stark & Hester, 2019).

Power Isn't Just What It Looks Like

Here's the problem with asking "who has the power?" in a mixed-neurology relationship: the answer changes completely depending on which room you're standing in.

Consider a couple, one autistic partner and one non-autistic partner, navigating a contentious divorce. In the courtroom, the autistic partner's precise, affect-neutral account of events may read as composed and credible. Outside the courtroom, that same partner may be rigidly controlling the household schedule, finances, and documented history of the marriage in ways that have slowly eroded their partner's autonomy. Meanwhile, the non-autistic partner, who can read the emotional temperature of any room in seconds and adjust accordingly, may appear "unstable" to a judge, even while they have been doing the invisible labor of holding the entire family system together for years (Hardesty et al., 2015; Sasson et al., 2017; Stark & Hester, 2019).

Who has the power? The honest answer is: both of them do, in completely different ways that neither of them fully recognizes.

What Is Neurology-Based Power™ (NBP™)?

Neurology-Based Power™ refers to the capacities that arise from how a person's nervous system is structured and how it functions. This includes things like:

• How rapidly someone tracks emotional shifts in a conversation
• How coherently they can reconstruct a sequence of events
• How fluently they translate internal experience into language
• How reliably they anticipate procedural sequences or rules
• How intensely they register other people's internal states

These aren't personality traits. They're not moral qualities. They emerge from neurobiology, from the architecture of perception, processing, and response that each person brings into every interaction (Bird & Viding, 2014; Frith & Frith, 2006; Lamm et al., 2016).

Critically, none of these capacities are inherently harmful. In regulated, respectful relationships, they support coordination, empathy, fairness, and repair. The problem arises when neurological differences meet relational stress, systemic imbalance, or structural power disparities, because that's when these same capacities can quietly become vehicles for coercion (Hardesty et al., 2015; Stark & Hester, 2019).

Each Neurotype Has Its Own Forms of Power

Research and clinical experience across neurodiverse family systems consistently point to recognizable patterns, though these are tendencies rather than absolutes, and no individual maps perfectly onto any category (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012).

Non-autistic individuals often hold greater emotional and social power in moment-to-moment interactions. Their nervous systems are typically well-calibrated for tracking micro-shifts in tone, facial expression, and relational timing. In healthy contexts, this capacity supports empathy and connection. Under chronic stress or in harmful relational dynamics, it can be used, consciously or not, to redirect blame, minimize a partner's experience, or create a perception of shared responsibility where power is, in fact, unevenly distributed (Bird & Viding, 2014; Lamm et al., 2016; Stark & Hester, 2019).

Autistic individuals often hold greater procedural, structural, and narrative-literal power. Strengths in pattern recognition, rule-based reasoning, and detailed recall can translate into significant influence over routines, documentation, schedules, and shared resources. In regulated relationships, these capacities increase fairness and consistency. In abusive or chronically imbalanced systems, they can be mobilized to control environments, define which interpretations of events are permitted, and shape how the family appears to outside institutions, sometimes devastating in effect, even when not recognized as harmful in intent (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Sasson et al., 2017; Stark & Hester, 2019).

High body empathic non-autistic individuals, those with heightened embodied simulation and interoceptive sensitivity and awareness who register others' distress with unusual immediacy, often hold a distinct kind of power: the power to regulate the emotional climate of a family system. But in harm-based systems, this capacity is turned inward. Their empathic attunement becomes a mechanism of self-erasure. They absorb dysregulation, preempt conflict, and alter their own behavior to protect others, at profound cost to themselves (Bird & Viding, 2014; Lamm et al., 2016; Porges, 2011).

The Invisibility Problem

What makes NBP so clinically important is precisely that it is so rarely recognized, including by the people exercising it.

An autistic partner who controls finances and routines may experience themselves as simply trying to maintain order in a chaotic world. A non-autistic partner who repeatedly redirects emotional conversations may not understand this as a form of influence at all; it simply feels like "keeping the peace." A highly empathic partner who has restructured their entire life around managing someone else's dysregulation may frame this as love, or sensitivity, rather than as a survival strategy that has come at immense personal cost (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012; Stark & Hester, 2019).

Without a framework for NBP, each person in a mixed-neurology system tends to see only their own vulnerabilities, not their own forms of influence. This is not dishonesty. It is the predictable outcome of navigating a relationship without adequate language for what is actually happening (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012).

Why This Matters Beyond the Relationship

The stakes of misunderstanding NBP extend well beyond any individual couple. When clinicians, courts, schools, and community systems encounter mixed-neurology families in conflict, they bring their own interpretive frameworks, frameworks that were not designed with neurological diversity in mind (Austin, 2008; Holt et al., 2008; Sasson et al., 2017).

A therapist who interprets a non-autistic partner's visible distress as "emotional instability" rather than as a physiological response to chronic relational strain will arrive at the wrong clinical picture. A judge who reads an autistic partner's composed, procedurally precise testimony as evidence of trustworthiness, without understanding how literal, context-stripped narratives can omit critical relational truth, may make custody determinations that cause lasting harm. A school counselor who sees a child's dysregulation as a parenting problem rather than as a response to an unrecognized neurodiverse family system will miss the real source of distress entirely (Austin, 2008; Holt et al., 2008; Sasson et al., 2017; Wolfe et al., 2003).

This series will map all of these dynamics in detail. We will look at emotional, narrative, and interpretive power; at how legal systems can be mobilized as instruments of procedural coercion; at how reputations are made and destroyed through neurologically shaped storytelling; and at how institutions and communities amplify the very inequities they are meant to address (Hardesty et al., 2015; Stark & Hester, 2019).

But it begins here, with the recognition that power in neurodiverse relationships is not one thing. It is many things, flowing through different channels, often invisible to the people most affected by it. And until we learn to see it clearly, we will keep asking the wrong question (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012).

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Neurology-Based Power™ is a term coined by Anne MacMillan, MLA

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Next in this series: The Power You Don't Know You Have — how emotional, narrative, and interpretive power shape meaning-making in mixed-neurology relationships, and when those capacities become coercive.

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The Power You Don't Know You Have: Emotional, Narrative, and Interpretive Power in Mixed-Neurology Relationships

Most people who cause relational harm know they are doing it. They feel the intent. They make a choice. This is the model most of us carry when we think about coercion or abuse: someone who knows what they are doing and does it anyway (Stark, 2007; Stark & Hester, 2019).

But in mixed-neurology relationships, some of the most consequential forms of harm operate very differently. They arise not from malice but from the ordinary exercise of neurological strengths, capacities that work beautifully in healthy relational contexts, and become damaging in dysregulated or imbalanced ones. Understanding this is not about excusing harm. It is about seeing it clearly enough to actually address it (Hardesty et al., 2015; Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012).

In the first post in this series, we introduced the concept of Neurology-Based Power™ (NBP): the forms of influence that emerge from the structure and functioning of each person's nervous system. In this post, we look closely at three of the most pervasive and least recognized forms of NBP in mixed-neurology relationships: emotional power, narrative power, and interpretive power (Bird & Viding, 2014; Frith & Frith, 2006; Gallese, 2007; Lamm et al., 2016).

Emotional Power: The Ability to Reshape a Room

Non-autistic nervous systems are typically well-equipped for what researchers call embodied simulation: the rapid, largely automatic process of tracking another person's emotional state through micro-shifts in tone, facial expression, posture, and pacing. This capacity operates in real time, allowing non-autistic individuals to modulate conversations, anticipate reactions, and reorganize the emotional field of an interaction moment to moment (Bird & Viding, 2014; Gallese, 2007; Lamm et al., 2016).

In healthy relationships, this is the engine of empathy. It enables attunement, repair, and genuine responsiveness to another person's inner world. But in dysregulated or chronically imbalanced systems, the same capacity can function as emotional power: the ability to rapidly escalate or de-escalate, to deploy vulnerability or distress in ways that redirect a conversation, or to shift perceived responsibility for conflict without either party fully registering what has happened (Bird & Viding, 2014; Hardesty et al., 2015; Stark & Hester, 2019).

Crucially, this is rarely strategic in any conscious sense. Non-autistic partners operating under chronic stress are not typically running a calculated manipulation playbook. They are doing what their nervous systems do: reading the room and responding. The problem is that in mixed-neurology relationships, the impact of this capacity is asymmetrical. Autistic partners are frequently overwhelmed by emotional intensity, struggle to track implicit meaning in real time, and may experience strong emotional expression as a form of sensory and cognitive pressure that compels compliance simply to restore equilibrium. What one partner experiences as authentic emotional expression, the other may experience as coercive force, not because anyone intended harm, but because neurological differences make the exchange structurally unequal (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012; Stark, 2007).

Narrative Power: Who Gets to Be the Reliable Witness?

Both autistic and non-autistic individuals tell stories. But they tell them very differently, and those differences have profound consequences for how each person is perceived by clinicians, mediators, and courts (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Lim et al., 2022; Maras et al., 2019).

Autistic individuals tend toward what we might call narrative-literal accounts: precise, chronologically ordered, affectively compressed, and grounded in observable detail. These accounts often read as objective to outside observers, particularly in institutional settings that prize neutrality and factual consistency. Non-autistic narratives, by contrast, are typically woven through with emotional meaning, relational context, and subjective interpretation. They aim to convey how something felt, not just what happened, and they are more likely to circle back, expand, and incorporate the perspectives of others (Frith & Frith, 2006; Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Lim et al., 2022; Sasson et al., 2017).

Here is where an important asymmetry emerges. Institutional systems, including courts, evaluators, and many clinical settings, tend to privilege the first type of narrative over the second. Affect-neutral, linear, detail-rich accounts are read as reliable. Emotionally expressive, contextually rich accounts are more easily dismissed as unstable, exaggerated, or "too much." This creates what researchers have described as a credibility gap: non-autistic individuals, particularly those who are traumatized or chronically dysregulated, may have the most accurate relational account and the least institutional credibility for delivering it (Lim et al., 2022; Maras et al., 2019; Sasson et al., 2017).

But narrative power cuts in both directions. Autistic literal accounts, while appearing objective, can omit the relational context that would fundamentally change the meaning of the events described. A chronological account of what happened, stripped of the accumulated emotional history that explains why it happened, can function as a distortion even while being technically accurate. In harmful systems, this form of narrative power can be used, intentionally or not, to control interpretive authority: to define which version of events is the "real" one, and to render a partner's experience of the relationship invisible (Frith & Frith, 2006; Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Stark & Hester, 2019).

Interpretive Power: Who Decides What Things Mean?

Of the three forms of NBP examined here, interpretive power is perhaps the most subtle and the most consequential. It refers to the capacity to define the meaning of an interaction: to assign responsibility, determine what constitutes harm, and shape the relational story that the system organizes itself around (Frith & Frith, 2006; Hardesty et al., 2015; Stark, 2007).

Non-autistic individuals, whose processing integrates social cues rapidly and continuously, often hold significant interpretive power in interpersonal contexts. They can read between lines, reframe conversations quickly, and anticipate how a situation will be understood by others. Autistic individuals may hold interpretive power in contexts where rules, logic, or established structures dominate: they can define which procedures are being followed correctly, which agreements were made and whether they have been honored, and which sequence of events is factually accurate (Bird & Viding, 2014; Frith & Frith, 2006; Heasman & Gillespie, 2018).

In healthy relationships, these different interpretive styles complement each other. In harmful systems, one partner's interpretation begins to systematically override the other's. This becomes coercive when a partner's emotional or cognitive experience is consistently reframed to fit a dominant narrative; when misunderstandings are attributed to deficits rather than differences; or when relational accountability is determined by whichever interpretation sounds more coherent to whoever is listening (Hardesty et al., 2015; Milton, 2012; Stark & Hester, 2019).

There is an additional layer here that clinicians and institutional actors need to understand. Institutional systems carry their own interpretive biases. They tend to privilege linear, affect-neutral, highly detailed accounts, which align more closely with autistic communication styles, and to pathologize emotionally grounded, contextually rich accounts, which align more closely with non-autistic communication styles. This means that whoever holds power in the institutional setting effectively amplifies the interpretive authority of the partner whose narrative style best fits institutional expectations. Interpretive power and institutional power become mutually reinforcing (Lim et al., 2022; Lim et al., 2022; Maras et al., 2019; Sasson et al., 2017).

When These Forms of Power Converge

In many mixed-neurology relationships marked by harm, no single dramatic act produces the damage. Instead, harm accumulates through the convergence of emotional intensity, narrative shaping, and interpretive dominance over time. These forces reorganize relational reality gradually, determining which experiences are believed, which are erased, and which partner can locate their own perspective within the relationship at all (Hardesty et al., 2015; Stark, 2007; Stark & Hester, 2019).

For autistic individuals, this can manifest as progressively relinquishing interpretive authority because the emotional texture of interactions becomes overwhelming. For non-autistic individuals, it can manifest as corrosive self-doubt in the face of a partner's unwavering literalism or procedural certainty. For both, it can produce significant distortions in identity and agency, the quiet erosion of a person's ability to trust their own experience (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012; Stark & Hester, 2019).

What This Means in Practice

For clinicians working with mixed-neurology couples or families, the first implication is this: the partner who appears more emotionally regulated is not necessarily more reliable, and the partner who appears more distressed is not necessarily less accurate. Trauma physiology and neurological difference both shape how people present, and both can be profoundly misleading when viewed through a neurotypical interpretive lens (Lim et al., 2022; Maras et al., 2019; Sasson et al., 2017).

For individuals navigating these dynamics, naming these forms of power can itself be clarifying. Many people in mixed-neurology relationships carry a persistent sense that something is wrong without being able to articulate what. The concept of NBP offers language for an experience that has often been invisible: the recognition that influence in a relationship does not always look like control, that you can be significantly affected by a form of power that neither you nor your partner has a name for (Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012; Stark, 2007).

This is not about assigning blame by neurotype. Autistic and non-autistic individuals can both be harmed by these dynamics, and both can exercise forms of influence that cause harm. The goal of this framework is not to establish who is the victim and who is the aggressor. It is to make visible the mechanisms through which power operates in neurologically diverse relationships, so that those mechanisms can be understood, interrupted, and, where possible, repaired (Hardesty et al., 2015; Heasman & Gillespie, 2018; Milton, 2012; Stark & Hester, 2019).

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Neuology-Based Power is a term coined by Anne MacMillan, MLA
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Next in this series: "When the Courthouse Becomes a Weapon" — how autistic cognition, legal incentives, and adversarial systems can converge into a devastating form of procedural coercive control, and why mediation so often fails in mixed-neurology divorces.
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If the dynamics described in this series are familiar, and if divorce is something you are facing or considering, it is worth knowing that the standard process, real-time negotiation across a table, is not the only option. Sequential Divorce™ is a structured, written alternative designed specifically for couples who need time, privacy, and a sequential process rather than the pressure of in-session negotiation. Because autistic individuals tend toward deliberative, step-by-step processing, and because both partners in a neurodiverse divorce often carry significant accumulated stress, a written process that allows each person to work through one topic at a time, privately and at their own pace, is not just a convenience. It is a neurologically better fit.

Each person works through decisions independently in writing before anything is exchanged, and before any agreement is signed or filed, a qualified legal professional in your jurisdiction should review it to ensure it is complete and reasonable under local law. For a fuller explanation of why this approach works particularly well for neurodiverse couples, read Sequential Divorce™: A Structured Alternative for Neurodiverse Couples.

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