How I work: Neurodiversity
About half the people I see are autistic adults
Clearly, autism can’t be treated and desensitised in the same way we resolve trauma symptoms. So I see myself more as a sounding board and a coach for people on the spectrum, helping them better understand and manage their emotional lives, resolving trauma where we can.
I work from the neuro-affirmative perspective. In my practice, I see that many difficulties experienced by neurodiverse people are actually challenges created by the neurotypical majority’s social assumptions and norms. Indeed, many autistic adults have spent years being told, implicitly or explicitly, that the way they think, feel, and communicate is the problem. This can itself be traumatic.
Yet so many of those difficulties are no more or less than a mismatch between two different operating systems trying to understand each other. That’s why I tend to use cognitive reframing more than EMDR with autistic clients.
