Understanding & Working With Autistic Clients in Therapy

As well as being autistic, the course tutor, Dan Jones, has worked as a psychological therapist and worked supporting children/teens and families for over 20 years.

Between 1 in 68 and 1 in 100 people are autistic, many autistic adults are undiagnosed and may not even realise they could be autistic. Any counsellor or other psychological therapist in full-time practice is likely to encounter diagnosed and undiagnosed autistic clients. It could be that the client doesn't realise they are autistic and most counselling and therapy training doesn't cover autism, so the therapist also may not realise that the client could be autistic, yet knowledge of this could lead to better outcomes for that client and greater awareness of what support and guidance would be helpful.

This course may also be of interest to those who don't do psychological therapy but who want to know more about how autism presents and what the world is like for autistic people and how autism can impact on problems people have and better understanding behaviours you observe. This course focuses more on working with autistic adults rather than on working with autistic children.

Included with this course are:

• 11 PDF supporting documents totalling over 18,000 words of additional content

• A PDF of my autobiography 'Look Into My Eyes' about being autistic which is over 68,500 words

• A PDF Sussex Hypnotherapy Centre certificate of completion which you can print out for Continued Professional Development

"I am autistic and I have over 20 years of experience working with autistic individuals of all ages and working within a variety of contexts from care homes for adults, care homes for children and teens, to working with families, couples and individuals in private practice. In this course I share my knowledge and insights around autism as a professional and an autistic individual.

I share the different challenges and traits autistic people have and how these can manifest and impact on the problem the client is presenting with, how they can manifest and impact on the therapy and how you can work with the client and present your therapy to get the best results. You will also have an idea of the kinds of things which clients may say and do that lead you as a therapist to feel that they could be autistic."

This isn't a course teaching you how to do therapy, the expectation is that you are already trained to do therapy if you are working as a therapist. This course teaches you about the traits, challenges and strengths of autistic clients and how the client being autistic can impact on their life and on how they respond in therapy to give you ideas about understanding autistic clients better and have ideas for how you can best help them.

The course doesn't teach you how to 'treat' autism as autism isn't something you can cure. Autistic people are born autistic and can't be 'cured' of the autism, but I am open about my own personal experiences within the course and share my own examples and examples of experiences of people I have worked with to illustrate what behaviours others might see and what is going on for the autistic person in that moment, and what things can help the autistic person, like what skills they might need to be taught to reduce the impact of certain challenges the client may have on the presenting problem.

Throughout this course you can ask any questions you may have and I will answer them as best I can. I am happy to be open and answer questions from my personal perspective as an autistic individual, or from a psychological therapist perspective.