A Relationship Without Demands: Therapy as Sanctuary for the Autistic Mind
There is a particular kind of relief that washes over me on my therapy days when I can anticipate my hour-long telehealth session. Therapy, for me, is not just about healing past wounds or the safety of being understood, though those things matter tremendously. It is about entering a space where I am allowed to exist in a relationship without the weight of reciprocity. For an autistic person, that is nothing short of revolutionary.
The Weight of Reciprocity
In most relationships, there is an invisible scoreboard running in the background. I ask about your day, you ask about mine. You share a feeling, I mirror it back. You sigh, and I interpret it. If I fail to do these things well or consistently, it’s interpreted as a lack of care. It is the unspoken rulebook of neurotypical connection: give, take, balance. But for me, those exchanges are anything but natural. They are conscious, deliberate, and effortful. Maintaining and nurturing social and romantic relationships often feels like trying to walk through a crowded room while carrying a tray of full glasses–every movement has to be calculated, every interaction carefully balanced to avoid a spill.
I love the people in my life deeply. My relationships are among the most meaningful parts of my world. I want to maintain them and ensure my people know I care for them. This is not something I am complaining about, nor is it a wish to be alone. I am profoundly grateful to have people I love and who love me in return. But gratitude does not cancel out exhaustion. My very existence as an autistic person makes nurturing and maintaining those connections tiring in a way that most people never see. The constant need to interpret nuance, manage sensory strain, and meet neurotypical expectations of reciprocity creates a kind of fatigue that never fully disappears.
No matter how much I love a person, neurotypical norms of expressing care and affection do not come naturally to me. I express love or fondness by simply being with someone, by sending a meme that made me think of them, or by sharing something I discovered that I believe they would appreciate. Those are my languages of connection–quiet, steady, and often wordless. It takes constant effort and self-monitoring to also express love in the ways that neurotypical people expect: asking about feelings, following up on important events, checking in just to check in, or offering emotional presence on demand. I do those things (or try to) because I value the people in my life, but it rarely feels intuitive. It feels like a language I am always learning yet will never master, leaving me always in the role of translating.
This kind of depletion is at the heart of autistic burnout, a state of chronic exhaustion, emotional overwhelm, and reduced functioning that arises from prolonged masking and social overextension. The social effort required to maintain relationships, especially those shaped by unspoken norms, is one of its primary causes. Masking, or camouflaging one’s natural autistic traits to meet neurotypical expectations, can help people navigate social spaces, but it comes at a significant psychological cost. The one-sided nature of therapy provides a rare form of relief because it removes the pressure to perform and adapt.
The Freedom in Uneven Ground
I have been seeing my therapist for three years, and I care about her as a person. I trust her, respect her, and feel a deep sense of gratitude for how she shows up in my life. But the structure of our relationship means that my care does not need to translate into action. I do not have to hold space for her pain, anticipate her moods, or gauge her energy. That imbalance is not a flaw; it is the point.
Therapy offers an intentional asymmetry that creates emotional spaciousness. Because she does not need anything from me, I can stop running the constant internal calculation that defines most of my interactions: What does the other person expect right now, and how do I meet that expectation? In that absence of expectation, something astonishing happens. I can be fully present. I can exist without editing.
My weekly session has become my weekly decompression. It is the one hour each week where I can drop everything I have been carrying: the self-monitoring, the social translation, the constant management of tone and timing, and simply exist. Knowing that space is there provides a rhythm to my week, a reliable reset that steadies everything else.
That ability to be unfiltered is significant. Masking often begins so early in life that it becomes intertwined with identity. Therapy, for me, has been one of the spaces where I can begin to untangle which parts of myself are authentic and which were built for survival. The permission to exist without performance is not just freeing; it is reparative.
Caring Without Obligation
There is a quiet contradiction here. I do care about my therapist. I like to make her laugh, hope she has good days, and like to believe she doesn’t dread our sessions. But it is not my responsibility to behave or perform in such a way that will contribute to her well-being, to check myself to ensure she leaves our hour feeling like she got what she needed. It is not my job to ensure she is okay, and I’m unlikely to ever find out if I’m the cause of her bad mood or day. That is part of what makes the relationship feel safe. My care for her is not an expectation; it is simply a truth that exists without responsibility attached.
In a world where caring is often synonymous with doing, therapy allows me to experience care as being. I get to practice what it feels like to connect without the compulsive urge to compensate. To be seen, known, and understood, without being required to return the favor in equal measure. It is a model of connection that is rarely available to autistic people, and it is profoundly restorative.
The Emotional Architecture of Sanctuary
For autistic people, the social world often feels like it was built for someone else, full of hidden rules, sensory noise, and emotional puzzles that do not quite fit our logic. This mismatch in communication and perception is sometimes described as the double empathy problem, a concept introduced by Damian Milton. It challenges the idea that autistic people simply lack social understanding. Instead, it suggests that autistic and non-autistic people experience mutual misunderstanding because they perceive, process, and express the world differently.
Therapy, when done well, counters this imbalance. My therapist does not interpret my quiet moments as disinterest or my flat tone as indifference. She understands that processing and connection look different for me. The therapeutic relationship, even when it exists virtually, becomes a bridge between two communication systems that often miss each other.
Within that space, I can unmask. I can react flatly without hurting anyone’s feelings. I can pause for long stretches to find words without worrying about awkward silence. My therapist does not need me to perform social fluency or mirror her affect. That gives me permission to rest, which, for many autistic people, is missing from much of our daily lives. This kind of rest, deep and neurological, is what prevents or repairs autistic burnout.
Reimagining Connection
I sometimes think the cultural ideal of “mutual” connection is overrated, or at least incomplete. It assumes that equal give-and-take is the healthiest form of relationship, but that framework ignores neurodivergent needs. What if some relationships, like therapy, are meant to be unbalanced? What if connection can also mean rest, the freedom to show up without the expectation of anticipating and mirroring someone else’s inner world?
For me, the perfect kind of relationship would not be one of constant conversation or emotional exchange, but one of parallel play. Two people existing together, quietly but comfortably, each immersed in their own world while still sharing space and presence. It is the kind of connection that feels natural, rhythmic, and safe. Therapy is often the closest I can get to that kind of peace: existing beside another person, fully seen, but never demanded upon.
Therapy has taught me that relationships do not have to be symmetrical to be meaningful. Some of the deepest healing happens when we are allowed to lean without worrying who is holding the other side. For autistic people who live their lives trying to balance invisible scales, that kind of unevenness can be the first taste of equilibrium.
When Therapy Has No End Point
Traditional therapy models often emphasize progress toward an endpoint, a place where the client internalizes the work and no longer needs regular sessions. But I am not sure that model fits autistic needs.
What if therapy for autistic people is not something that moves toward an end, but something that exists without one? What if therapy is not a bridge we cross and then leave behind, but a foundation we return to again and again because the world around us never stops demanding energy we do not have to spare?
For many of us, therapy is not a short-term intervention or a transitional support. It is an essential part of life, a consistent structure that counterbalances a world built on constant social labor. It isn’t a lack of progress that keeps us here; it’s the ongoing reality that the world we live in does not adjust to our neurology. We are the ones expected to bend, translate, and mask. Therapy becomes the space where we can unbend again, where we can breathe in our own rhythm without apology.
In a culture that often treats long-term therapy as a sign of failure or dependency, this perspective may seem radical. Nobody questions the person who uses glasses every day of their life, or the person who takes medication to stay well. Ongoing therapy for autistic people serves a similar function–it supports access, regulation, and self-connection in an environment that constantly strains those systems. It is a tool of autonomy, not dependence.
The idea that therapy should eventually terminate assumes that the neurotypical world will someday become easier to navigate, or that we will somehow grow out of the exhaustion it causes. That is not how it works. The systems that drain us do not go away, and neither does the need for a space that restores us.
For me, social relationships and therapy are not unlike strength training. I love strength training, but without rest and recovery, the muscles never rebuild. They only break down. My muscles will never be so big or so strong that they no longer need recovery. Relationships are much the same. The effort of connection strengthens me and allows for fulfilling relationships, but therapy provides the rest and repair that make sustaining connection possible.
As a counseling graduate student, this dual perspective of client and counselor-in-training feels especially meaningful. I study the very dynamics I experience firsthand: the relational repair, the holding environment, and the balance of empathy and boundary. My education gives me the language for what my nervous system already understands: that therapy is not just intervention, but regulation; not just treatment, but relationship. Learning the theory deepens my appreciation for the practice, and living the practice reshapes how I understand the theory.
For autistic people, this kind of ongoing therapeutic relationship can mean the difference between surviving and thriving. It is not a sign of regression or something to further pathologize, but a commitment to care. Because if social relationships are vital to human survival, then so, too, is therapy for autistic people—not as an alternative to connection, but as the reprieve that makes connection possible and sustainable.
