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CBT

MiniBluberryMuffin

Ello

Has anyone received cbt adapted to the challenges autistic people face? If so, what did you cover? The psychiatrist at the autism team said I'll benefit from it

I went under a mental health service and they didn't send me to a therapy team. They said the autism team offering this form of cbt would deal with my mental health (ocd and trauma). The autism team said they don't deal with mental health so I'm a bit confused

Thnxs

  • in reply to JJ

    Thank you for explaining your experiences. It has been helpful. You have not put my off of cbt. There was no need to apologise. Thnxs for ur time :)

  • in reply to MiniBluberryMuffin

    No

    I'm still awful with change, the message was more like 'you can make any choice you want, there will still be support here for you and change won't be as bad as you imagine'

    Meltdowns: I don't think I really understood the term at the time, but I learned some tools to deconstruct the situation in front of me and make an intellectual choice about what to do.

    For relaying how I was feeling, in the end I would turn up and just say the facts of what had happened that week and not put any emotional or causative context in to it. (For example - 'I walked down the street and a man bumped in to me. He nodded. Then I went to a shop'.) I think the idea was that I didn't have to carry this burden of re-interpretation, guessing people's (incomprehensible) motivations etc etc...

    What I am feeling right now, though, is that I might be putting you off from doing something potentially really helpful. Sorry.

    This is all framed in 'If I had understood Autism at the time, I may have been able to use CBT a lot more wisely'.

  • in reply to JJ

    Thank you for your response. So you didn't get taught how to better deal with change? Or how to deal with meltdowns? How to better explain how you are feeling?

  • I had lots (and lots...) of CBT before I was diagnosed. In hindsight I'm not sure if the psychologist thought I was Autistic or not... 

    I feel that what happened was that it was hardcore practice for trying to maintain a mask - ie learning how to fit in to a world which  takes me quite a bit of effort to fit in to. And obviously it didn't really 'take'.

    Having said that - had I gone in to it with a diagnosis and understood that this is just a method of learning to cope in a Neurotypical world, then maybe it might have been the ideal solution... If I had been able to go home and shut the door and admit that was just a show or a way of getting by in the outer world and didn't mean that I had to do it constantly.

    I once described it as 'driving lessons for the psyche'.

    Lots of trying to understand other people's motivations, why much of their behavior was not a reaction to me, how to jump out of repetitive thinking / loops, mindfulness+++.

  • When I spoke to the psychiatrist, she said that in this form of cbt I would learn about social cues and if I am being taken advantage of. On my report it did say they don't deal with mental health but only autism

    Does anyone have any experience with something like this?