Autism Spectrum Disorder from the Inside: Five Autism Tips from a Clinician with Lived Experience
While recently giving a presentation on counseling clients with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), I had a more than professional concern: I am on the spectrum as well. Not that far along, true, but still on it, and if you were not to suspect this meeting me, it is only because a lifetime of learning to function successfully in the neurotypical world has borne fruit. As an autistic clinician, I offer these insights to help colleagues better understand and effectively support neuroalternate clients. (Note: “Neuroalternate” is a term I have personally coined and will be used in place of the clinical term “neurodivergent” for the purposes of this article.)
What is the Neuroalternative Experience?
The neuroalternate experience is like listening to someone who is not a native speaker of your language; while you may understand them, it takes extra effort. In contrast to a richly diverse and kinetic environment, what we prefer, long for, and even need is one that is straightforward, structured, predictable, and low in stimulation. Any deviation from this is unwelcome, stressful, and overloads our circuits. Social rituals and expectations appear strange and nonsensical, and the cues that accompany them are perplexing and inscrutable. There seems no good reason to pay attention to them (despite often getting us, obviously, into hot water).
Direct Communication: Clarity Over Social Rituals
From a neuroalternate perspective, communication the way we want it is direct and straightforward, even blunt. There’s no need for niceties. Just say what you mean, mean what you say, and get on with it. Keeping up with a group conversation is like keeping your eyes on each ant in a swarm of ants. Sarcasm, double meanings, plays on words, idioms, and colloquialisms can go over our heads. Thus, we can sometimes come across as painfully earnest in conversation. True, we don’t enjoy the misunderstandings resulting from all this, but it’s hard for us to see what to do about them. That’s where counseling comes in.
Key Considerations for Clinicians Working with Neuroalternate Clients
Drawing from my clinical experience and personal perspective as an autistic counselor, here are key insights for working with neuroalternate clients.
- Don’t try to make them into someone they’re not and can’t be. By the time they get to us, most clients are already beaten up by years of expectations they cannot meet and have failed at, leaving them feeling excluded and often ashamed.
- Remember that neuroalternates do have a need for human relationships. However, after repeated collisions with the neurotypical world, isolation becomes preferable to pain.
- Accept that to the neuroalternate, relationships built purely on social interactions – hanging out, chatting, bantering – will likely be unrewarding. Likewise, acknowledge that acquiring an instinctive feel for social cues will not happen. It would be like trying to get someone who is color-blind to see color.
- Use concepts from physical objects to engage. Neuroalternates are drawn to concrete things, so progress can be made on this basis. Think of signals or gauges; if we know what they mean, we can react even if we do not understand the processes behind them. Thus, identifying social cues and learning how to respond to them must be framed in terms of reading instruments that tell the operator to take specific actions. To a neurotypical, this may come across as mechanistic and off-putting; however, it is something the neuroalternate mind can embrace and work with.
- Be quiet, calm, and patient, and let the client approach you. Buy-in – the alliance – is even more critical than with other clients, since change can feel especially threatening to the neuroalternate client’s sense of self. Reassure them that you will help them learn to cope with the world only as much as they need to yet still remain themselves.
In conclusion, think of a brick wall, with the neurotypical as the bricks and the neuroalternate the mortar. Stacking the bricks on top of one another would result in a wall that is easy to push over. Likewise, mortar by itself does not a wall make. But with mortar to hold the bricks in place, you get a strong and lasting wall. We need each other.
About the Author
James P. Bruner is the high school ASACS counselor in Vicenza, Italy. He has been with ASACS since 2001 and served at three sites in Germany prior to moving to Italy. He grew up in the Upper Ohio Valley and will eventually move with his wife to be with their family in Oklahoma. His interests are in anything that’s alive, any kind of machinery, and any kind of science – frankly, just about anything.