Five books for autistic people in therapy
Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Adults by Luke Beardon A practical guide to living a less anxious life as an autistic adult, this short book by autistic academic Luke Beardon contains many wise and sensible ideas. I often revisit it when working with anxious autistic people, and find things I had missed before that are useful both to them and to me.
NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman This exhaustive, award-winning history of the concept and politics of neurodiversity puts autistic life into a fascinating context. While it contains no practical advice, it may help you to think critically about how autism came to be understood as it is today. It can be grim in places, with a harrowing section about Hans Asperger and the Nazis, as well as the abusive origins of an autism ‘treatment’ now known as ABA, but that is all part of the autistic story.
Neuroqueer Heresies by Nick Walker A collection of strident essays by the autistic academic Nick Walker, this book calls for a radical rethink of what it is to be autistic. It argues passionately for embracing the neurodiversity paradigm and rejecting a medical model of autism, as well as for using identity-first language and embracing self-diagnosis. It is, at the very least, powerful food for thought.
Looking After Your Autistic Self by Niamh Garvey A straight-talking guide to life and self-care by an autistic author, this book is full of tips and tricks for avoiding sensory overload (including during sex), coping with triggers and minimising meltdowns. With detailed summaries and sections for people with wildly different sensory profiles, it’s unlikely all of it will be right for you, but almost certain that some of it will be.
A Mismatch of Salience by Damian Milton This collection of academic writings explains the double empathy problem, a scientific finding which turns the idea that autistic people have poor communication skills upside down. Studies have found that, in fact, two autistic people communicate just as well as two allistic people. Issues only arise between people of different neurotypes. In other words, you don’t struggle because you’re autistic, but because you’re in a minority and forced to communicate in the style of the majority. They understand you just as poorly as you understand them, it just doesn’t cause them nearly as many problems.
