It is World Autism Awareness Week 2019 from Monday 1st April. As a pre-WAAW2019 I wanted to tell you some exciting news. This is so new it isn’t even on my site on the courses page yet. I wanted you to be among the first to know about a new course I have created ‘Understanding and Working With Autistic Client’s in Therapy‘ which you can access here for just $9.99 USD (or equivalent price based on exchange rate and taxes for your country).

As well as having 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, I am also autistic, so this isn’t just a course by an autism professional about working with autistic clients. It is course from someone who can share their own lived experience of being autistic as well as professional experience with autistic clients.

Between 1 in 68 and 1 in 100 people are autistic depending on what data you look at. Many autistic adults are undiagnosed and may not even realise they could be autistic. Any counsellor, psychological therapist or coach in full-time practice is likely to encounter diagnosed and undiagnosed autistic clients. It could be that the client doesn’t realise that they are autistic. Most counselling, therapy and coaching 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 or coaching 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 that you observe. This course focuses more on working with autistic adults rather than on working with autistic children but includes examples involving behaviours of autistic children and teens and includes a PDF of my autobiography which gives a frank description and insight at all ages of being autistic and shares my professional views as well as personal insights.

You can join the course here for just $9.99 USD (or equivalent exchange rate and taxes for your country) or follow the link to learn more and sample the first 30 or so minutes of video lectures.

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 on completion of the course

In this Understanding and Working With Autistic Client’s in Therapy course 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 could lead to you as a therapist to feel that the client could be autistic.

This isn’t a course teaching you how to do therapy or coaching, the expectation is that you are already trained to do therapy or coaching if you are working as a therapist or coach. 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 and insights 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.

You can follow this link to check out the first 30 minutes or so of video lectures for free and find out more about the course.

What you’ll learn

• Learn about what autism is and the thoughts around what causes autism
• Understand autistic traits, challenges and strengths and how these can relate to a client’s presenting problem and in therapy
• Learn ways you can interact with autistic clients and what you can do to help and support the client therapeutically

Are there any course requirements or prerequisites?

• To get the most out of this course you will ideally already be working as a psychological therapist or with people in a support, coaching or therapeutic capacity where knowledge of autistic clients would be helpful
• If you want to print off the resources you will require a printer

Who this course is for:

• Counsellors and psychological therapists, hypnotherapists and coaches who work may encounter diagnosed and undiagnosed autistic clients
• This course isn’t for those who are looking for training in how to treat autism itself, there are ideas around helping autistic people with challenges they face by being autistic, but autism itself isn’t curable