How to increase therapy engagement with autistic clients
Recently I've been thinking alot about authenticity and the role it plays in our support of our little gems.
I love deep dives and making new connections (aka new gems of understanding).
What I've noticed are two (very much) interrelated phenomena.
Neurodivergent children feeling reluctant to engage with health professionals.
Dissatisfaction and burnout amongst health professionals.
I think that these two interrelated phenomena deserve further exploration.
The first is the reluctance many neurodivergent children feel when it comes to engaging with health professionals. Too often, I hear from parents that their little gem has had difficulties engaging with their therapy sessions.
Could it be that these children are sensing a lack of authenticity when meeting with health professionals? Or perhaps it’s that they sense an agenda (I know, our agenda is to be helpful…but hear me out). Despite our best intentions, sometimes the children we wish to support are reluctant, because they know a deeper truth that the systems don’t - they don’t need ‘fixing’. They sense that we are somehow part of an effort to get them to behave differently, to acquire certain skills - according to what we have been told our roles are. If we feel the mis-alignment in ourselves, if we feel the need to do as we are expected in order to demonstrate our professionalism - our clients will very much sense incongruence on a neurobiological level. It’s hard for us, it’s tough for them too.
Barriers to authentic practice
We’ve been educated to set specific goals for the little gems we work with and MAKE. IT. HAPPEN. We have essentially been programmed to be movers and shakers- and indeed, many of us are brilliant at making things happen.
The systems want us to ‘fix’ behaviours or ways of being instead of changing the neuronormative environments that cause said behaviours or challenges.
Issues may arise in sessions because the gems we are working with are not on the same page as the neuronormative systems we live and work within (thank goodness!). They rarely have the same goals as the NDIS or the Department of Education. If they’re PDA-ers they are even more likely to have very cool and unique ideas about what’s important and what they want - and they ain’t gonna be aligned with oppressive systems.
Truth be told, you and I also don’t genuinely want to encourage these kinds of goals. There’s that niggling (or loud) voice within that tells us that maybe we should join our precious gems in their own agendas and let go of the imposed stuff. But we are in a seriously tricky situation when working within systems that want us to play this game.
And if we speak up about our niggles or full-blown frustrations with the wrong people we place ourselves at risk of being dismissed or devalued.
Unfortunately, voicing such doubts can jeopardize our professional standing. Playing by the rules avoids repercussions but over time our joy and connection to our vocations wither.
Playing the game hurts us all
Unfortunately, our formal education and the systems we work within have very little to offer in relation to becoming authentic practitioners who are genuinely able to connect with our clients and support them in ways that are meaningful for both them and for ourselves.
The risk of working within oppressive systems and models of care for too long is that we burn out. When ticking boxes, goals, profit or performative professionalism come before authentic connection to ourselves and the people we support - our vocation becomes unsustainable.
One of the most beautiful gifts of neurodivergence is the capacity for unvarnished perception. Neurodivergent people possess exquisitely sensitive inner worlds attuned to pretense and dismissiveness. What we crave is to be seen, heard, and accepted without masking our true selves.
transforming our work through authenticy
By granting full permission for ourselves and those we support to show up as we truly are in each moment, freely exploring needs, sensory experiences and joys as they arise with no predetermined agendas, no conformity scripts, just radical acceptance and human connection - we provide the medicine we all crave - authentic connection.
What a liberating idea – that we can shed artificial constructs and simply be, nurturing the inherent value in ourselves and every neurodivergent person we're honored to know. When we live authentically in our practice, we celebrate neurodivergence not as a deficiency, but as vital threads in the wondrous tapestry of humankind.
This is what I seek to offer all of the wonderful families and professionals I work with - full permission to be their true selves, arrive in the ‘here and now’ as they are - and we move from there. The need arises as ‘in the moment’ and is truly moment-to-moment.
What a wonderful permission slip for all of us, to be as we are, in all our human-ness, in the here and now.
