- My Cart
0
No items in cart
- My Cart
0
No items in cart
PCCS pays your UK postage
This book is about working as autistic counsellors and psychotherapists. It is a collection of stand-alone chapters put together by members of the international online collective Autistic Counsellors and Psychotherapists (ACP). It shares their main aims: to tackle the lack of appropriate therapy available to autistic clients and to challenge the common stereotypes about autistic people, which are still very much alive and can bar them both from therapy and therapy training. But, because the writers have lived experience of the issues they are working with, they are also writing about ways of working most effectively and helpfully with autistic people. And that is what makes it unique. Each chapter describes both how the writer perceives and processes the world and how they work with clients. Their stories provide incontrovertible evidence that the existence of autistic therapists, far from being problematic or even a contradiction, is quite simply normal. And that neurodiversity, just like biodiversity, enriches, broadens and benefits all. It offers readers - autistic, allistic, therapists and would-be therapists, clients and would-be clients - the chance to meet the contributors and see them as humans, therapists and supervisors. Their hope is that, in its small way, this collection may give readers the understanding that they need to join them in changing the world.
Introduction
Section A: Finding what works: modalities and adaptations
1. Autism in therapy: Monotropism, meditation and autistic flow - River Marino
2. Training and working as an autistic cognitive behavioural therapist - Danielle Goddard
3. Autism and the body: Dance/movement psychotherapy - Kristina Takashina
4. Art therapy as an AuDHDer - Fiona Villarreal
5. Finding what works - Sally Nilsson
6. Art therapy, somatic experiencing and empathy - Chan Shu Yin
Section B: To be that self which one truly is
7. Finding congruence - Natalie Furdek
8. Don't be you - Leo Ricketts
9. Trauma and the autistic therapist - Wendy Reiersen
10. The journey from research knowledge to lived wisdom - Silvia Liu
11. Befriending the beast: A therapist and her meltdowns - Debbie Luck
12. Asian American autistic alien - Sharon Xie
13. Working in one's own community: Self-disclosure and being the self one truly is - Max Marnau
14. The autistic sense of justice and moral injury: Battling the system and blowing the whistle - Shirley Moore
Section C: Autistic therapists for autistic people
15. Complex trauma, language and culture in autistic counselling - Katharine Balthazor
16. To be the supervisor I wished I'd had - Amy Walters
17. Making environments accessible: permission to exist - Elinor Rowlands
18. Neurodiversity-affirming supervision - Romy Graichen
19. Kathryn's call: The lost generation - Wilma Wake
20. Working with my neurokin - Kathy Carter
21. The autistic therapist and chronic illness - Rebecca Antrim
Section D: Training, trainers and trainees
22. The autistic trainer's perspective: Educating therapists - Vauna Beauvais and Eoin Stephens
23. The autistic student's perspective: Training the trainers - Katharine Balthazor, Danielle Goddard, Sylvia Liu, River Marino, Max Marnau, Shirley Moore, Wendy Reiersen, Elinor Rowlands, Chan Shu Yin, Kristina Takashina and Amy Walters
Max Marnau is a person-centred therapist, artist and poet living in the Scottish Borders. As the autistic daughter of refugees from Hitler's Nazis, she feels a particular affinity with all the exiled, the othered and the displaced. Her special interest is Gaelic language, poetry, and music. Circumstances made it possible for her to train as a counsellor in late middle age, having previously volunteered for Samaritans and Cruse Bereavement Care Scotland, and that was where she immediately found her niche.
Since qualifying, she has worked for various charities, for a university counselling service and, since 2013, in private practice. Since discovering that she is autistic, she has branched out into training, writing and, for her the most important of all after her work as a therapist, the foundation of the international online peer group Autistic Counsellors and Psychotherapists, which now has some 1500 members.
