A social enterprise helping people on the autistic spectrum and the people around them.
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4 Conversation techniques to add to your social script
Posted: 10 months ago
Many autistic people create for themselves a 'social script' to help them know how to interact in social situations. A social script is a guide for planning what to do and say inside a social setting.
The Girl With The Curly Hair uses a social script whenever she meets up with her friends. Specifically, she uses 4 conversation techniques:
4 Golden Rules for Surviving the Covid-19 Pandemic
Posted: October 5, 2020
I hope you are keeping safe and doing as well as you can during the pandemic. 4 Golden Rules for Surviving the Covid-19 Pandemic Keep to a routine. Autistic people tend to be most productive and happiest when they are following a routine. This might be a lot easier when you are at work or at school because you must wake up at a certain time and be somewhere at a certain time. You know what you are meant to be doing at any given moment. When at home (especially when you’re not used to being at home…
Why do I feel anxious and not excited?
Posted: September 28, 2020
One of the ways I tend to feel most isolated from others is when other people are feeling excited about something, I am feeling anxious. Or they might be expecting me to be feeling excited about something, but instead I'm feeling anxious. Having autism can dampen one's mood. For me, it's as though anxiety masks any positive feeling. Anxiety is always there, even when I am trying to feel positive emotions. This experience is very common for autistic people.
How to make decision making easier for autistic people
Posted: September 17, 2020
This is a follow up article to: Why might decision making be difficult for autistic people? Now I will look at some strategies autistic people could use to help make decision making a bit more straightforward. Also, I'm excited to show you a new animation in this article!
The Freeze Response (animation)
Posted:
When something happens that I did not expect, I feel as though I freeze. It feels as though the cogs in my brain have come to a halt! This freezing happens for at least two reasons: 1. I struggle with flexible thinking (a part of executive function), which means it is hard to imagine or work out alternative outcomes to things 2. I feel highly anxious, because something has happened unexpectedly. Remember that to 'freeze' is one of the three primary responses to anxiety (the other two are fight and flight). I created an animation to explain The Freeze Response and to provide a strategy that really helps me to deal with it. You can watch it below. I hope you enjoy it! Why might decision making be difficult for autistic people?
Posted: September 7, 2020
Autistic people can have some difficulty with making decisions. Here are some reasons why this might be: Autistic people might have a preference for sameness A decision usually means that there is a possibility of change. For someone with a need for sameness and repetition, being faced with a decision can cause anxiety or an autistic person may simply feel the fact there has to be a decision is unnecessary.
Understanding your personal ceiling
Posted: August 27, 2020
In psychology, the term 'personal ceiling' describes the metaphorical barrier between where a person is now and where they want to get to. I suppose I could also use my glass jar analogy to describe this. My glass jar seems to have many different meanings! It has been a very useful idea! Feel free to use either of the diagrams below in your understanding of the personal ceiling, whichever one makes more sense to you:
The importance of good habits
Posted: August 16, 2020
Positive habits are hugely significant in helping us along in life. They teach us to be disciplined and responsible and encourage us to put the values that drive us into practice. These attributes make it easier to achieve our goals. One positive aspect of being on the autism spectrum is that many of us are naturally inclined to want routines and consistency. One of the criteria for being diagnosed with autism is the person must have "restricted, repetitive behaviours or activities." Therefore, I think some autistic people can often have a slight advantage over neurotypical people because they may be more inclined to create habits that contribute to getting things done consistently. Three things are needed in order to have positive habits:
The Supercompensation Theory
Posted: August 5, 2020
I came up with the idea of Supercompensation (inspired by a concept in sports science) a long time ago and we recently made it into an animation.
Are we 80% colleagues and 20% friends, or are we 100% friends?
Posted: July 25, 2020
My social network is quite big but there are only a very small number of people who I would call my friends. This is because when I met these people, the only mutual motivation we had, was that we liked each other's company and wanted to carry on seeing each other. There was a natural spark between us. This is in comparison to the people I've known through education and work. My initial reason for being around those people is that we were doing the same course or worked for the same company. If we had a spark, it came after the first link we had which was that mutual work project. A mutual project is a really strong way to support my attempts at friendships initially. That's why I have sometimes advised in my work that a helpful way for an autistic person to make friends might be through a particular setting, such as an art club or through swimming lessons. That common interest is an ice-breaker and makes socialising so much easier because you can talk about what you are doing.
How to have an efficient workflow
Posted: July 14, 2020
I recently embarked on a very very big project that took a few months. The project was big already, but what made it bigger was that I did not have an efficient, planned out workflow. I learned a lesson about workflow that could be applied to many other activities. This lesson may be helpful to others who have difficulty seeing a project through to an end because they feel frustrated or confused. A workflow is defined as the sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from start to finish. When you do something for the first time, you probably do not have an efficient workflow yet. This is because you don't really know what the project involves, how long things will take, what order to do things in, or even what the final work is going to look like. There is a lot of 'trial and error', figuring things out as you go along, and going back to change things along the way. You might also be asking other people lots of questions. All of this adds a lot of time to the project. You might feel exhausted and stressed by the amount of work you are doing. You might wonder how on earth other people do this seemingly so smoothly. I too have been there! The positive of all your stress and additional time is that, by the time you get to the end of your project, you will undoubtedly have learned an enormous amount. In fact, the best thing that can come out of these time-consuming and stressful projects is that you have discovered an efficient workflow.