Neurodivergence

There’s More to You Than the Way You’ve Been Explained

By now you’ve read the articles, watched the videos, and sat through more than one person explaining your own mind back to you.

Some of it landed. A good deal of it didn’t, and you had to be polite about that too.

What none of it told you is what to do on a Thursday afternoon, when the feeling arrives at full size and there’s a meeting in ten minutes.

That’s the part you were looking for, and it’s the part I actually teach.

Nothing About You Gets Assumed

Nobody has handed me a certificate that says I know what being autistic feels like from the inside, and I’m not going to perform one.

So I ask, you tell me, and I take your word for it.

I’d rather be corrected in your first session than guess politely for six months.

And you can skip the part where you explain why you are the way you are, because the skills work without that question being settled.

Two Things Worth Getting Right

The first is emotional overwhelm, and the skills for it are CBT skills.

Catch the feeling while it’s smaller, put a name on it, and run the response you chose back when you were calm instead of the one that shows up on its own.

The second is social situations nobody ever handed you a manual for, so we start from what you want out of a particular conversation and work backward to how you’d ask for it.

Existential therapy is where the big words come off and we talk about what you want the next few years of your life to look like.

Support That Fits Into Your Life, Not the Other Way Around

Some of the clients I keep on a monthly schedule don’t need crisis care. That’s the point of those appointments.

You bring me whatever came up since the last time, we run it through the skills you already have, and you don’t have to start from scratch or explain yourself all over again.

We’ll start closer together while the skills are new, then space the appointments out until monthly feels right. You can keep that rhythm for as long as it continues to be useful.