Therapist encouraging autistic behaviour

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Hi everyone,
Today I had a meeting with my therapist.
I started consultation after a complete burnout combined with depression.

I have the impression that my therapist really understands me, and autism in general, but today, because I was doubting I clearly understood what steps she recommended to aid recovery, I asked the following question. (I don't read between lines, you best tell me things bluntly in my face)

Me:"So, if I correctly understand you, you're encouraging me to behave more abnormal/autistic"

(With abnormal, I mean: using sensory aids, stimming, rigid routines,...)

I was surprised that she replied with a YES.

We have talked before about sensitivities of mine, and she encourages using earmuffs, sunglasses, alone time, etc. to recover.

Now, I'm lucky I know how to pass quite well, but it is so tiring to pretend to be someone else / hide autism... I came home from university every day shutting down completely, not able to understand verbal language (amongst other issues).

Is this a correct approach, to be more openly autie, to aid in recovery?

I thought a therapist should make me more normal?
I know i need earmuffs/plugs in public, sunglasses for fluorescent lights, stimming and routines to stay calm and focused.
I was quite shocked to be met with a therapist suggesting to stop hiding my autism as means to conserve energy.

Is this a correct approach?
Has anyone had similar advice by a therapist?
If yes, can you specify encouraged and discouraged autistic behaviour?
(Example: discourage stimming, encourage sensory aids...)

Please enlighten me!

My therapist encourages harmless autistic behaviors as a way for me to gain self-regulation of emotions, stress levels and anxiety, so yes, I am receiving this advice...better than "masking" or suppressing them and thus worsening my mental and physical health.

I don't know that "more normal" is a realistic goal...but lower stress levels, anxiety, and greater self-regulation can lead to fewer meltdowns, and emotional outbursts etc. That can lead to being more comfortable in public and greater functioning in unfamiliar and stressful situations. That might make me more "normal".

Watching your post. I'm at the onset of this journey.

My mask was so good, I didn't even know I am likely ASD, my therapists definitely not. However, my mask is falling apart under the minor to moderate emotional abuse of new management at work. Now I am very interested in how to balance masking and "being myself" (with confidence). I just had my first consultation with an ASD therapist last week - so I'll find out her advice soon. I am also picking up the book "Pretending to be Normal" from the library tonight.

Last week I would have told that I don't stim. But now that I am watching myself... holy cow - staff meeting (boring with the new management): doodle, stop, pull the hair, stop, spin the pen, stop, rub the neck, stop...

It's sounds like you've found a good therapist. An ally.

Bias alert for the next statement in italics.......while it seems to me child autism therapists work to 'scrub the autism out of the child', both of you have found adult autism therapists that encourage you to refrain from stifling your autistic traits. My autism therapist is....the same way and I'm very grateful for that. I just saw her yesterday, as a matter of fact. She told me that she has patients who, rather than sitting in a chair, will stand, sit on the floor, pace around in the small room, lie on the floor or spin in circles. She's 100% fine with any of the above as well as stimming in various forms.

I think it's more important for autistic adults that can successfully perform activities of daily living, hold a job, etc to learn how to "be themselves" as much as possible to regulate stress than it is to suppress such things.

I have always felt better among artists and others who value eccentricity. I think your odds of success as an oddball have a great deal to do with style. My counsellor used to suggest behaviours that would elicit sympathy for herself, but only scorn for men. I'm glad I noticed.

As for me, I wouldn't want a therapist who encouraged me to do anything that would attract negative attention or make me appear tense and unsure of myself. I already suffered from low expectations, and it dulled my abilities over the years.

I had a school counselor "who was teaching me to be Asperger's" my mom said. She fired him when she found out. He wasn't telling me to act this way or tact that way because of it. I was supposed to get better, not worse and I was letting myself go because of excuses he was giving me and telling me how boring life would be if everyone were the same. I never noticed myself I was getting worse. She was so mad at him she acted like he was some sort of predator because he told him to stay away from me.

I remember when I was seeing him it was like "Poor you, people need to be more understanding." "Oh your mom has a hard time with your disability." "Oh your Mom gets frustrated with you sometimes because of your disability" and telling me AS related things I can do to help me like "you can work as a tour guide and talk about trivia stuff all day long" and I thought even then "I don't want to spend my life giving out tours." Or "We should do a field trip sometime and I will time you to see how long it takes for you to pick out a game" and sometimes he would sound patronizing like the time I was selling my Game Boy for $20, he brought it up and asked me what if a middle school kid wanted to buy it from me. I told him he would have to have the money then. He then asked me what he said he would bring it the next day and I said he would have to bring it to me the next day before getting it from me and he said "If you gave him that game Boy, you might never see that kid again" as if I had said I would give him the Game Boy anyway and get the money from him the next day. It was as if he wanted me to say I would give him that Game Boy.

I even felt sometimes he wanted me to be AS than "normal" because he would ask me things like "what is your new obsession now, have you found a new obsession yet?"

I was still myself and I didn't give into him or anything but my mom feels I did. It's not like I faked anything or decided to have more symptoms or anything but I feel that is what my mom thinks of me like I acted out all those daily meltdowns or acted out severe anxiety.


And also he didn't even have a PH.D and I don't know if he was a school psychologist or just a school counselor but he wasn't a real therapist my mom said. She said he was trying to do things he wasn't even trained in. Years later he was caught committing Medicare fraud and faced ten years in prison but he didn't get sentenced. He must have had a good lawyer. But it cost him his job. He was billing the state for kids he wasn't even seeing but claimed he saw this child until one parent said "My kid never saw him once" and bam the whole investigation started and it took them a few years to convict him. Turns out he was claiming he saw other students and none of them said they ever saw him.
I wonder if he was so horrible parents weren't using him to see their child and work with them so he resorted to this. My mom says he was a horrible counselor.


The other therapist I saw had a PhD and he was more for fixing me and he compared it to taking care of your diabetes by taking insulin shots and keeping a good diet to stay healthy so you had to do the same with your AS behavior wise. Learn the rules and stuff. He wasn't a autism specialist but knew enough about AS to know what it is.

Masking takes a lot of energy. That you can't use for anything else.

Allowing autistic behavior will help find a baseline for what you can do.

As a crude analogy, how fast can the Starship Enterprise go on impulse power?
How fast can it go with its shields up?
Can it go faster if the shields are taken down?

Another one. How fast can you run a mile carrying a 20 lb backpack? Can you run faster without it?

I tell a lot of jokes, etc., pertaining to the situation if possible. This gives me some feedback on my social success, and also lets me pass off AS type mistakes as failed humour. As the pro comics say, I've died sometimes, but I've also killed, and I remember those better, fortunately.

I think just trust your intuition about the correct path to take. I do know that always having to pretend to be something that you are not can be absolutely fruitless, and can really stress a person out. You should be able to just be yourself all of the time, and be happy with YOURSELF, exactly the way that you are. You don't have to change for anyone else.

I think the goal of a therapist is to help you improve your mental health, rather than to simply make you appear more normal (which could be to a detriment to your mental health because 'pretending to be normal' is hugely energy consuming).

It's definitely a balance-yes, improving your functional skills will be beneficial, but suppressing autistic traits or ignoring sensory issues for the sake of appearing more normal won't. Sure, maybe you'll fit in better, but at the cost of having to expend even more energy and put more stress upon yourself (whilst also denying yourself valuable tools to deal with that stress; i.e. stimming helps you regulate emotions and sensory input, having a routine can reduce the stress from too much change or uncertainty). It makes far more sense to take away the reasons for your stress i.e. having to 'pretend to be normal' all the time, by not pretending to be 'normal' and addressing things in a practical manner, than to (somehow???) find some way to just power through it. That is definitely not going to make you any happier or less stressed. I think your therapist is right, being 'more autistic' might actually help you function better by giving you more energy (e.g. if I don't put myself in situations where I have to socialise all the time, I conserve more of my energy for when I do really need to or want to socialise and do better at them).

I think you might also want to think through why it makes you uncomfortable to think of being 'more autistic'. What's so bad about stimming? What's bad about using headphones etc or sticking with your routines? Just because it's different doesn't make it 'wrong'.