Receiving counselling when you are autistic

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Thanks for that advice. I will try that and see if it helps. It's just the cost that worries me.

I don't think I know if there is an autistic counsellor in my area. Services are very limited in my area. The closest thing I can find is 4 hours away from where I live so I'm going to try and see if I can get it on private.

I found some counselling helpful to reconcile past behaviour of other people with my reactions and feelings. But that's not to say I thought any better of those people. I just understand myself better as an Aspie. My counselling was always privately paid for, despite the eye-watering expense: I don't seek solace for my autism, nor how I see / feel the world. Because of the counselling I'm aware I like typical Aspie rules that NTs are happy to overlook - behaviour and things I'd question

It could mean explaining to them the difference in how you experience lowness and loneliness as a person with autism to how a typical person would experience them.
Same with family and friendships problems.

Pausing the session to explain why their suggestion wouldn't work for you, but might for another person also helps them to understand.

It takes a particular type of therapist to let the client lead the sessions and a particular type of client to use their limited sessions helping the therapist with their own NT version of theory of mind challenges.

The only counseling I ever found didn't make things worse was when I saw a psychologist who specialized in Autism. He was able to help me understand not only what was just my autism not meshing with other people around me (and so not my being "difficult" or having "mental health" problems), but also coached me on how to do and understand some basic social skills so I didn't get tripped up so badly in the future. I still remember him using the white board in his office and teaching me about "frenemies", for example.

It's a bit annoying to always have to over explain yourself but it might be the only thing I can do. It would at least increase awareness.

BTW - I've been thinking about that since I read it. During my ASD assessment (eight months ago), the assessor asked about life trauma. I asked him to define "trauma". He said it was up to me. Thinking of the "extreme" I mentioned some things that happened to my family. He asked about the impact to me and I couldn't articulate it. I came back to the second session with a list of over 40 things I considered to be traumatic (emotional, sensory). It's hard to talk about these things with just anyone b/c the general response has always been "you're too sensitive". Thank goodness I now have therapists who are beginning to convince me that my sensitivity is not shameful, but can actually be a point of pride. Tough stuff.

Online counseling

My experience with therapy has mostly been negative. I did have one good therapist when I was about 17, but he is really the only one I would consider good.

Most of my therapy was before I learned I have autism, so I didn't really get the chance to tell them about it. However, I did have all kinds of diagnoses thrown at me to explain my traits that they found odd, but never once did they consider that I might have autism, so I'm pretty upset about that.

I think that therapy can be useful, but it really depends on the person. Finding someone who specializes in autism would definitely be a good idea, I think. I know that for me, I don't really find it too useful, and I've mostly given up on it.

I guess I just don't find the methods most therapists use to be very useful. I can usually tell when I'm dealing with a "from the book technique," and that kind of stuff is very off-putting to me. When I see a therapist, I want to see someone who will treat me as an individual rather than using canned techniques. Preferably someone who is a little bit different, like me, and so understands what that is like.

I also haven't yet found a therapist who knows as much about me as I do. I am pretty insightful when it comes to myself, and I have figured out a lot of things just through introspection that I'm sure other folks have paid hundreds of dollars or more and still haven't learned from their therapists. The way I look at it, why pay all that money when I've figured out so much already?

My experience has been that I am my own best advocate. I am the one who is in the best position to figure out what it is about myself or my life that I don't like and to change it. Some folks, on the other hand, do find therapy to be useful, and it probably couldn't hurt to at least give it a try with someone who understands autism just to see what you think.

I wasn't necessarily referring to big traumas, mainly little traumas.

So my first counsellor kept asking me why I didn't share my feelings with others sometimes. I think she was expecting me to have a big trauma or a big thing to talk about. I genuinely just forget to do it sometimes as I have a lack of social-emotional reciprocity sometimes as I'm autistic.

The second counsellor essentially convinced me that my social confusion was due to one person calling me creepy, which really trivializes the feelings I felt, and is the reason I felt like I wasn't autistic. I later realised this was just due to excessive gaslighting in the past and not enough nurturing of my special interests. I didn't think I was different from anyone else as I wasn't interested in my peers so I just never knew or cared that they did different things.

Depends on the kind of person you are. As long as you're used to making your own decisions, and know better than to reveal too much to people you don't know enough about to justifiably feel you can trust, there's not a lot to lose except time. If you're easily led or tend to overshare to your detriment, you might be risking trouble.

I'm fairly autonomous and careful what I tell strangers, so I've never come to any harm. I was undiagnosed for a long time so that probably limited the usefulness of a lot of my counselling, but even so, the more non-directive counsellors were helpful here and there. These days I'd be checking carefully how much a counsellor understood about ASD and I'd be weighing that against how much they thought they knew, and if they were coming out with strong suggestions that seemed glibly thought out or otherwise didn't feel right for me then I'd probably stop going. I'm afraid there are a lot of posers out there who don't really know what they're doing.

I've being included in a lot of my wife's counselling sessions. The counsellor didn't know a lot about ASD to begin with but she doesn't push badly-thought-out ideas onto us at all, and she's interested in ASD, so sometimes we tell her things about it. I don't have much trouble talking with her and I think it does some good. I've come to trust her quite well. My wife and I don't get to discuss a lot of things in our life with others very much, so it's good to be able to talk to somebody who's always interested and supportive without reinforcing our prejudices. She doesn't talk to us as if we're mentally ill, inferior or stupid. It feels a bit like having a good friend with unusual rules about the interaction, e.g. obviously it's nearly all about us, which it wouldn't be with a friend.

Same here. (FYI - Twice I have tried to agree with you but somehow have missed the mark. Sorry. I'm trying to relate, not instigate. (I used that latter word because it rhymes, not that it's a good fit.) I recently heard that humans miscommunicate 80% of the time. That seems so very inefficient and since I have a passion for efficiency I can see why I get frustrated with human communication - thinking of my husband there, not WP.)


Very self aware. I hope you find a counselor who appreciates that and can work effectively with it. I also didn't realize I was as different socially as I am until recently - although now that I look back my yearbooks are full of "you're strange". My (ASD-like) mom has a bumper sticker that says "You're unique, like everyone else." Seemed normal to me.

Are you thinking more seriously to try the counselling again?

I stopped my individual therapy during the stay-at-home time b/c telehealth is uncomfortable, but am seriously considering restarting. I'm on the fence: I can totally get by without it, I TOTALLY NEED IT.

Oh I realised you were agreeing I was just trying to clarify my situation. Only because I know some people are a bit iffy with the word trauma, I know some people don't like using it to refer to small situations. Which is why I just wanted to clarify that nothing big had happened and that I felt therapists were exaggerating the link between past things and present problems. I was referring to it as traumas, because they either treated it like that or they may have referred to them as such.

Thanks for saying I'm self-aware. I actually was approached by my clinicians about my autism diagnosis, and I kept denying every single trait they told me that they noticed. It took me ages to realise that I do exhibit these traits. It's possible I'm more self-aware about my inner self and inner tendencies, but it's a process that occurs after an autism diagnosis.

I am thinking of trying counselling again, but like everyone here suggested, I'm going to go to a therapist that is best suited to me. In the meanwhile, whilst I save up I will try to create a society for autistics in my university so that we can all have a community.

Honestly, during this time if you think you need it and can afford it then get it. Because we don't know if things will get worse or not and we just need really good support systems to help us get through this. The fact that you are considering it shows that you probably should restart again. It's super important to maintain connections during this time, and therapy is one of those connections. That's why I was thinking of getting counselling because I need connection which I don't have so much as I don't have real-life friends. I now realise that if I'm going to do counselling remotely, which I will need to regardless of the virus situation because I don't have any services within 1.5 hours from me, then I can basically choose whichever place I want which gives me a lot of freedom.