Accessing and utilising therapy can be a challenge for autistic and neurodivergent clients, compared to the general population. Equally, therapists are facing major challenges when interacting and communicating across neurotypes, potentially triggering and re-traumatising autistic people. Therapists can be inclined to adapt protocol to account for autism as a collection of deficits. A therapeutic approach should include up-to-date training in autism in order to improve access to treatment and outcomes and therapists must be aware of, and confident in adapting their practice in line with the needs of autistic people.
This experiential workshop will introduce you to the Autism Dialogue Approach®, a holistic-relational framework, co-designed by autistic people, and will provide you with the skills and confidence to help achieve mutual understanding and work towards overcoming barriers.
Client-therapist neurodivergent and intersectional encounters can be greatly enhanced and enriched with integration of a set of practices based on robust social-cognition sciences and the strengths and uniqueness of autism and interaction processes, rather than guided by deficit and behavioural views. ADA® provides both autistic and non-autistic people with the skills and confidence to achieve mutual understanding and work towards overcoming what is described by Damian Milton as the Double Empathy Problem (2012). You will introduced to processes of embodied and alternative communication and learn to meet neurodivergent individuals where they are.
We particularly welcome professionals and trainees who identify as autistic or neurodivergent, and those who may use AAC (augmented and alternative communication).
Part One:
Introduction to the practices, principles and background of ADA, some major themes in Autism (such as communication preferences, the Double Empathy problem (Milton) and Monotropism (Murray & Lawson) and challenges therapists are currently facing. We will hold a Dialogic enquiry into Autism, how it is socially constructed as a deficit and how the Autism paradigm influences therapists and coaches and their professions.
Part Two:
Using knowledge from embodied communication (De Jaegher), interaction processes and enaction theory, we will explore safe silences and active listening in the contexts of authenticity, masking and camouflaging as a developmental trauma response, and learn how to avoid professional gaslighting.
Part Three:
We will conclude the series with a review and a 90-minute generative dialogue using the Autism Dialogue Approach® and consider how we might bring our learnings into therapy spaces.
Learning Objective Participants Can Expect From This Event
- Introduce you to major themes in Autism including trauma, deficit narratives, autistic culture and sensory perception
- Introduction to the basic ADA practices for application in therapy and other cross-neurotype situations.
- Experiment with ADA® in our group setting.
Who is This Workshop Appropriate For?
- Counsellors, therapists, OTs, SLTs, coaches and health professionals.
How May This Workshop Impact Your Practice?
- ADA will place you and your practice at the cutting edge of emerging autistic, social and cognitive science, and improve access to treatment and outcomes for your autistic clients and patients.
Additional Resources:
- Autistic and non-autistic worlds may then be brought together, not by one-sided, normative adjustment of one to the other, but by understanding the differences and similarities between how they are constituted in perception and movement, and building bridges on this basis.” – Dr.Hanne De Jaegher. | https://hannedejaegher.net/research/autism/
- Adapting Psychological Therapies for Autism – Therapist Experience, Skills and Confidence | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6150418
- Why Doesn’t Standard Talking Therapy Work for Autistic People? | https://www.dralicenicholls.com/why-doesnt-standard-talking-therapy-work-for-autistic-people
- ADA training events at Dialogic Action CIC | https://dialogica.uk/events/
- We invite you to also book onto our public Autism Dialogue Series, which follows this course on 29th November for three weeks. Please sign up to our newsletter to receive booking information about this and all our other events including our major new training course starting in 2024 | mailchi.mp/1903d109cf81/dialogica
Course Content
Presenter
Jonny is an informal researcher, coach and dialogue facilitator, influenced by a life of Eastern and Western disciplines including in contemporary fine arts, dialogue and spiritual practice. After a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome he trained in Coaching and Autism studies, then formulated the Autism Dialogue Approach® and Mindfulness for Autism (M4A).
Dialogic Action CIC was founded by a team of autistic people, academics, philosophers, coaches and third-sector experts, who believe generative dialogue is a framework for moving beyond individual consciousness into an emergent wholeness, and the key to a more harmonious existence.
Kate Salinsky is co-founder and co-facilitator at Dialogic Action CIC, where she also co-designs and manages training. She has a master’s in Autism, is a trainer at the National Autism Trainer Programme (NHS/Anna Freud Centre/AT-Autism) and parent to a neurodivergent child. Previously, Kate worked as a training manager and counsellor in the voluntary sector for over 20 years, managing a team of trainers to design and deliver accredited training to people working in substance misuse, counselling and mediation.
