Preparing for Counselling

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ASD is not really about getting social things wrong.
Getting social things wrong is much broader than ASD and affects plenty of people in general population without being diagnosable disorder.
ASD is more about lacking social cognition, particularly lack of deploying in real-time and lack of having the same implicit responses as NT.
Children or adults who do spontaneously apply social cognition but get things wrong may have distorted thinking, like they might think that other people are thinking bad things about them or picking out all their faults or lying to them when other people are saying the truth.
The reason this thread stood out to me is because I heard some of the same things from NT adults in group therapy, like they were saying similar things due to their distorted negative thinking.

Eventually we start to recognize others have thoughts and perspectives that are different from ours. Like, it seems to me that we are thinking about and speculating about this child's thinking separate from our own.

I feel very unsure anyone knows exactly what having ASD means yet.

People without ASD think they know what having it means, I don't think they generally get it.

People with ASD think we know what it means, and we get it for ourselves and people like us.

We are all people though.

I heard a lot of NT adults say that they were bad people for not doing some minor thing right or up to some impossible high standard, or that other people were lying about loving them or that they were unlovable and no one could love them. Their thinking was negative and distorted due to issues like low self-esteem, depression, anxiety. Some of the things they said were similar to some of the things the OP's daugther said. And I was surprised that an autistic child would worry about a therapist getting things about her from her drawings and also be able to state that worry in words, which is part of what alerted me to maybe something else being primary problem instead of ASD. ASD misdiagnosis could cause lots of problems to be attributed to ASD and mask other primary problem, which would help the child more if it was understood. Basically, I am posting in this thread to say what I noticed based on the descriptions, that a child who has neurotypical traits of spontaneous social cognition and social awareness of what are correct things to do and ability to do them at school and therapist's office combined with negative distorted thoughts about herself and others may not have ASD as the root cause of these behaviors. This is what I mean when I say that ASD is not about getting social things wrong. That is not the core. ASD is about not getting social things due to lack of spontaneous social cognition in real-time. Regardless of other autistic traits, this core is critical.

No way is that level of awareness impossible for an asd kid. Nope. A bright, introspective aspie eight year old could do it. And at the same time not have thetools to deal with the knowledge.

Give her hugs from princess beebee, who remembers being the kid who self harmed as punishment for mistakes. Tell her Inhave been there and done that, and I have a dent in my skull becausebthe last time I did that it was over forgetting some beans on the stove, for which crime I hit myself overnthe head with a full three quart steel pot. I think that would be about a litre and a half in metric. It hurt, and the point of this is thatbshe has to get better tools, an dthe youngernthe better, because self harm tends to degenerate over time to greater harm for more trifling mistakes.

Me, I would tell her that flat out. "Mim, the tools you are using might do the job, but it is like using a screwdriver to pound a nail. Therenare better tools, toolsnthatbdont hurt you and scare the crap out of mummy. This lady can help you find those tools and learn to use them."

I dont find it patronizing. In fact it is the argument that, at thirty six, keeps me marching to the therapist every Thursday when it is not proceeding fast enough to suit me and I have a long list of better things to do.

Sorry about the typos. Our laptop died.and I am using anstupid horrible tablet with tinkntouchscreen keys.

Knowing that PEOPLE FAKE STUFF is not spontaneous social cognition in real time. It might be spontaneous social cognition, but it does not happen in real time. It happens in unreal time, lol but thats how it feels. It happens too slow and in a vacuum... Laying awake in bed and thinking it over after the fac tor whatever.

THEN, once it has happened in unreal time a few times, it is with you ALL THE TIME. Especially with a bright female who is mild enough to have made it to eight without a dx.

I still cant socially cognate well in the moment. I can scroll through a list of rules and function in groups of two or three people I dont kniw well. In larger groups I can remember to.speak only when spoken to and only from a mental rolodex of universally safe responses. I knownthat people fake stuff, but I cannot pick up even a mediocre fake until they do something glaringly obvious.

And I STILL end up dropping the ball, and things like playdates scare me spitless.

That was actually the issue that forced me into therapy and got me the unofficial dx at nineteen.

Beebee, your response made me cry. I don't have the words to express why, so I will settle for saying: Thank-you, with all my heart. Your words for Mim are perfect, and I will use them.

I think some of the confusion regarding Mim in this thread maybe my fault. As she doesn't have a diagnosis, and hasn't been seen by a specialist, I didn't want to imply a specific condition. To this end I posted that we suspected she had an ASD, thinking this covered all conditions on the autisic spectrum. I now realize my error, and I apologize for any insult/arguments my ignorant confusion has caused. For the record, we believe she's somewhere on the high functioning end of the spectrum. I, personally, believe she may have AS. However I am happy to be wrong, and will just accept Mim as she is. I hope that if she is NT with other issues you don't mind me seeking advice here.

Thank you all. :flowers:

Though I have to add, yes there is more going on here than ASD. That might be the organic thing, the rootstock so to speak, but you are seeing the first tendrils of depression, social anxiety, and crap self esteem.

I remember watching it unfold in myself. I was a little older, but not much. It was in full, ugly bloom by the time Inwas twelve. I dont EVER remember not having the awareness to know I didnt fit.

The sooner those tendrils are nipped off, the better. Especially when it is very mild, the collateral damage and the cotnitive distortions that come with it ar eworse than the autism. More painful. More debilitating.

Autism has made me strange and my life harder. The depression, social anxiety more then social errors, and sucking black hole of negative self perception have at times crippled.and damn near killed.me.

Thanks Beebee.

I think you are right about the other issues at play. Mim has always been "quirky", as you might expect, but it is only in the last year that she has become so unhappy. Maybe part of it is caused by the frustrations her different brain has to deal with, but I wonder if there is something genetic in it too...

I was about Mim's age when I became very unhappy. My mum blamed it on bullying, but as an adult I have wondered which came first. Maybe a larger factor is that we have a disposition towards anxieties and depressions as our hormones kick in our family.

It is my hope that whatever the case, we will find a way to support Mim through it so she can do whatever it is she's wishes to.

Thank you so much for sharing what you have done. I hope, with all my heart, that you continue to hack away at those tendrils Beebee, and that you receive all the support you need to do so.

She sounds so very much like me at that age, particularly not liking the lady for "being too nice".

You have given her very vague information and she does not trust this lady because lady is not a job description and she knows she is missing some information. She is already preoccupied with the possibility of being lied to so being asked questions when she has limited information about the other person is very very stressful. Possibly one of the reasons that she wants to go back is to find out what this 'lady' does. All psychological professionals who work with children are likely to be extremely patronising towards ASD children, because they are trained to put understanding first and check that the child understands. SInce intellectual functioning is likely to be the one area where children like your daughter find their self esteem validated positively, patronising her is pretty much the number 1 trust destroyer, and it would probably be lest damaging if she didn't understand and looked a word up later.

My experience of being assessed for an ASD was very similar to what you describe- I was taken to see a 'lady', I was given scanty details about what the purpose was, when I was adamant that I didn't want help with anything and was fine, the lady decided to come at it from the position of my mother needing help to parent me. I was unimpressed that my mother needed such help, repulsed that she hadn't asked my consent before discussing anything about me and it permanently broke our relationship. It was an incredibly violating experience in which I felt probed for information I considered to be personal (like feelings), and felt highly anxious trying to give the cagiest possible answers while trying to work out WHY this was being done to me and how I could derail it and screw over my mother as much as possible, I was 11 when this happened. I am 26 now, and still haven't forgiven her. For two years during my early twenties I didn't speak to her and refused to allow the police to tell her I was alive when she reported me missing. I only speak to her now because my grandparents are old, and I will permanently cut contact again when they die. This is at least 80% a direct consequence of this betrayal of trust. It didn;t help that she tried to pretend school wanted it done- when I demanded my notes at 21 I found that school had nothing to do with it except my mother coopting them to help her get access, which only made me more furious.

The experience also permanently put me off psychological/psychiatric help, vastly delaying my access to help for depression when I actually needed that help, with devastating and disabling consequences.

I also don't think therapy can ever work on someone who doesn't feel that they have a problem which they need help with. It sounds like your daughter 1) likes the room and 2) is curious about what this is about and thinks that going back there may give her some answers. I didn't appreciate being given these answers by mother gradually over later years, rather than at the time by professionals. I hated that things were behind by back. And if they are diagnosing her they won;'t not tell you= so it won't be confidential.

Never ever lie to us. Never ever give us incomplete information in a way that could be considered misleading. It is ALWAYS more hurtful to be lied to than to receive the truth, trust will never be rebuilt once it is broken, and not knowing whether you are being lied to all the time is exhaustingly stressful.