Self-Perception Differences and How These Are Addressed In Autistic-Centered Therapy

Differences in self-perception in Autistic folks and how it can manifest in reassurance/validation seeking

Most of my insights as a therapist are around correctly identifying and categorizing what types of experiences my clients are experiencing. Generally, these categories are #1. Their experience with a phenomenon that all humans experience (eg. their experience needing to engage in care tasks, survive, eat, wear clothing, etc and how these tasks/actions/experiences are hard due to being Autistic), #2. An experience that non-Autistic people don't experience that this person does that is causing some type of issue (e.g. lack of social cue awareness/understanding, special interests, repetitive behaviors) or #3. Some mix of both of those and/or the client’s reaction to both or one of those. #4. Trauma/History/other issues outside of Autism such as cPTSD, personality disorders, etc.

Many clients will bring up seemingly unrelated issues and it is always fun to be the one to help them connect them. For example, someone can come in and talk about needing validation from others and how this is an issue for them because they would like to independently validate themselves yet they cannot. This at first appeared like an issue from low self-esteem or lack of self-trust or just insecurity / anxiety. Not to say that it wasn’t those things, those things could be factors however, upon further reflection, it was clear that a large part of this need for validation was because they had limited access to feeling like a complete person due to being autistic and therefore, needed to seek that reassurance and validation from others.

It is in fact quite common for Autistic people to have differences in their experiences of existence than others due to alexithymia, proprioception and interoception issues. A lot of us have expressed that we feel like brains floating in space sometimes or don’t quite feel like we fully exist. This can cause anxiety, lack of self-trust, and outside-of-self reassurance seeking behaviors because something doesn’t feel quite right. That is just one example of how the complexity and divergence from the “typical” can cause an issue that seems unrelated but was actually a reaction to an autism-related experience.