Counselling/Psychotherapy

Supporting Adult Autistic Mental Health (minimum age 18)

At the moment I rarely have appointments available, but if you want to contact me I can recommend other suitable therapists (or see Useful Resources page).

What is Autism-Informed Therapy?

There is growing awareness in the field of counselling/psychotherapy of the need to be more Autism-Informed. These are my current thoughts, very much ongoing work in progress.

As an autistic person, working as a therapist with other autistic people, I understand Autism-Informed Therapy (or Counselling, or Psychotherapy) to simply be therapy that sees Autistic Neurodivergence positively rather than just as a problem, and adapts therapeutic settings, approaches, & goals to the particular ways autistic people process the world, especially the social/interpersonal world.

For me, Autism-Informed Therapy isn't about helping an autistic client to not be autistic, it is about helping them, as an autistic person

  • to better understand, "unmask", & own their autistic identity, and live more happily and productively with it
  • to recover from & manage the life issues & mental health problems they bring to therapy (e.g. Anxiety, Depression, Low Self-Esteem, Addictions, Complex PTSD, Developmental Trauma, Relationship Issues, etc). Often these are the result of having to adjust in unhealthy ways to a largely unaccepting world.

If a client is wondering whether or not they might be autistic, I can help them explore this question via a Collaborative Guided Discovery process, but I don't provide a formal assessment/diagnosis service.

 

* IAITT is a neurodiversity-affirming practice *

In line with our therapeutic emphasis on the autistic person's inner world, learning style, feelings, motivations, goals, strengths & autonomous choices, IAITT does not support the use of compliance-focused behaviour modification interventions such as Applied Behaviour Analysis.

How do I work?

In therapy, autistic clients need to be met and appreciated as the individual they are, with their unique goals,  strengths, and history. A practical, relatively structured, problem-solving approach is often also welcome. In my work, I take a pragmatist, pluralist, interdisciplinary, Cognitive-Humanistic therapeutic approach, which aims to be:

  • Person-Centred, in order to convey proper appreciation of the client's individual perspective, and help the client understand themselves better through the use of counselling skills such as Reflection, Paraphrasing, Summarising, Reframing, Self-Disclosure etc.
  • Motivation-Focused, (via e.g. Motivational Interviewing) in order to ensure that therapy tracks the personal values & life goals of the client
  • Strengths-Focused, to counteract the invalidation & disempowerment experienced by many autistic people
  • Trauma-Informed, given that many adult autistic clients have had multiple traumatic experiences as they tried to survive in a largely unaccepting world.

Building on these foundations, elements of various Cognitive Behavioural Therapies (including "third generation" CBT approaches, such as Compassion-Focused Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Schema Therapy)  can often be useful and relevant, as these approaches tend to be:

  • issue-focused, skill-focused, & problem-solving
  • concerned with internal processes of thinking, meaning, interpreting, feeling etc, rather than just behaviour
  • structured, psychoeducational, coaching, experimental (e.g. Socratic Questioning)
  • explicit regarding the rationale for any therapeutic work that is suggested
  • tried and tested in relation to many of the issues autistic adults struggle with, e.g. anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, eating disorders, etc.

A framework of Evolutionary Theory can also be valuable, as it assumes that diversity in populations is the norm, not the exception.

See blog post on Autism-Informed Therapy here

 

Contact details:

Email: eoinstephens@gmail.com

Phone: 0863814366