There are many different ways that autistic clients present in therapy. Some rock up with a long standing diagnosis of ASD or a long standing recognition of their identity as autistic. But for others, this diagnosis or identity is brand new. Maybe they're just going through or have just completed the process of formal diagnosis with ASD. Maybe they've just recognized for the first time their identity as autistic.
And the reactions to these realizations and discoveries vary enormously. Some people have an incredibly positive reaction to diagnosis or identity. There's a sense of understanding oneself, insights, self awareness, making sense of the world and why these things happen and why I do the things that I do. It can foster a sense of agency and self acceptance and self compassion and self advocacy And people that particularly embrace that identity of autistic very often opens a whole new world of neuroculture and neurokin and neurotribes.
Others have reactions that are not so positive. Some people it brings up self doubt, anxiety. Some people it will trigger self judgment. Some people it will trigger shame or a sense of inadequacy. The reactions from the people around your clients will also vary enormously. We are lucky that we are living in a world where there is increasing recognition, understanding, acceptance of neurodivergence.
There's still lots of context of stigma and judgment and discrimination where disclosing a diagnosis or an identity will not get a positive response from neurotypical folks around you. So particularly clients who are at this new stage of diagnosis or identity, there may be a lot of anxiety about what this means trying to make sense of yourself or your life and that can take you in positive directions of personal growth and self discovery or negative directions of rumination and analysis paralysis. So it's important to remember that ACT is a client centered approach. It's not for the therapist to decide what the client should do or how they should live their life.
It's for us to elicit from the client what they want to get from our therapy. What kind of person they want to be, what kind of life they want to build, What they want to do with their brief time on this planet? So we need to meet clients where they are. We wanna be very careful that we don't impose our own biases and prejudices onto the client. A therapist that has embraced their own identity as autistic and found that very empowering will probably want to get their clients to do the same.
But if the client is not in that same mindset, if the client does not see this as empowering, if the client's having negative reactions to that, you know, the danger is that the therapist may try to impose an identity on the client that the client actually does not want to have. You may, of course, get the complete opposite problem. The client comes into therapy and they have absolutely embraced their identity as autistic and they're super positive about it, but the therapist is not yet in that neurodiversity affirming mindset or at least not fully. And the therapist may be seeing some of these classic autistic behaviors as a problem that needs to be fixed rather than recognizing the client is actually embracing this as part of their identity. So we really need to meet clients where they're at, and we really need to be aware of our own biases and prejudices and come back to the basics of a strong supportive therapeutic relationship as Carl Rogers laid down all of those decades ago, that unconditional positive regard for the client, authenticity, congruence, and really making therapy a safe space where the client can be open with us and explore who they are and what they want.