By Heather L.E. McKay
TW: contains triggering comments from privileged people, and ableism/racism.
When you’re looking for a therapist, or a course to do about autism or disability, you might want to know what to look out for, and what is a clue that the therapist/ clinic or course is not neuroaffirming. Read on to find out more, or -check out my book “Autism the Big Book Set of Help: Book 3: ABA and Alternatives”: for more information about clues and things to look for when finding a therapist or a course about neurodiversity… the book is a lot more comprehensive than this quick snapshot of ‘what is neuroaffirming’.
Why is it important to get a therapist that is neuroaffirming, or do a course that is trauma informed for neurodivergent or otherwise disabled people? Because non-affirming and non-trauma informed can cause severe harm and considerable damage to a neurodivergent person.
What’s neuroaffirming? Neuroaffirming care/therapy or support -is when the neurodivergent person feels safe and calm, they have everything they need (their needs are fully met), there is no toxic tools (HoH, PECS, restraint, rewards, excessive praise, manipulation or control etc), no abusive techniques or therapies (ABA, PBS, DIR Floortime etc, etc etc etc etc) and the care needs to be trauma informed.
Trauma informed means something slightly different to a disabled person than a person who has no disabilities. No offence – but people who are multiply disabled, oppressed, discriminated against because of their age, sex, ability, sexual orientation, race etc – are more likely to have more complex trauma, and more nuanced needs. Things that trigger a disabled/ LGTBQ+/ BIPOC/ BAME persons trauma are going to be different to that of a person without those things. Because privilege plays a part in trauma – often the less privileged you are, the more trauma or more issues you can experience in this ableist/sexist/racist/etc world.
When we usually talk about trauma informed, people usually mean something along the lines of: being aware of and sympathetic to how trauma impacts individuals and their behaviour. It shifts the blame from ‘what’s wrong with the individual’ – to ‘what harmed you’. It takes an empathetic and experience-based approach to supporting a traumatised person. But if you do not have the lived experience of that person – how truly ‘trauma-informed’ can you really be????
I ask this because you can take a short course and learn how to be trauma-informed, but if the course does not delve into complex trauma, or explore the reasons behind trauma for different cultures, societies and individuals from different backgrounds – how is it truly trauma-informed?
Neurodivergent people (like other minorities) can experience what’s called implicit bias. This is when the minority group feel like the majority don’t understand them or care, but the lack of knowledge about the minority group causes an unconscious bias that leads to unfair treatment. In trauma-informed care – this bias is often when the neurotypical in society have privilege of not experiencing trauma from simply living in this world.
Eg: an autistic person can experience trauma from going supermarket; due to stress about their eating disorders, the noise, the lights, the social expectation to act in a certain way, the number of people etc etc. But a neurotypical person may not realise this due to their implicit bias and lack of lived experience.
The same may happen to a BIPOC /BAME person who will experience trauma from being questioned by police, simply because of the colour of their skin. A privileged white person may not know or understand what this feels like or understand how certain situations that involve authority figures, or the law can trigger and harm them.
Most people when they talk about trauma-informed ignore this critical element- the element that involves lived experience from different groups of people.
For people with invisible disabilities it can be extremely hard for us to achieve truly neuroaffirming and trauma-informed care because the people around us assume that we either don’t have a disability, or if they know we are disabled (because we told them) – they may assume what traumatises us, or what we need.
This knowledge bias is unbelievably rampant in universities and in therapies – all across the globe. The biggest one (that is also one of the most harmful -but they keep telling us is helpful to us) is PBS!!!!(A.K.A: ABA).
In Australia PBS is everywhere. It’s in every single school and it’s in most therapies. It’s in the way people treat us and see us…. And it’s actually deeply disabling and trauma inducing to autistic people.
People will even go so far as to say that they’ve made PBS neuroaffirming…. Which always either triggers my trauma or makes me snort laugh in complete derision. Because if they were neuroaffirming people who were trauma-informed they’d know that it’s actually IMPOSSIBLE to make PBS anything but a toxic abusive waste of time that causes cPTSD and suicide ideology.
You can’t make something that is inherently toxic and was actually invented to gaslight, manipulate, control and erase autistic people from the face of the earth. It’s like telling BIPOC people that they’ve made the K3 affirming, or Jewish people that they’ve made N@zis and the 5wastika affirming. ABA was invented to ‘cure’ us with electric shock treatment and to stop us from appearing autistic – ABA might have changed it’s name to PBS in some countries (like they have in the UK, Ireland and Australia)– but it still has the same goal to make us indistinguishable from NT’s. That’s why it’s sister ‘therapy’ (which is exactly the same as PBS) is called Gay Conversion Therapy… The LGBTQ+ community don’t call gay conversion therapy ‘affirming’ – so you can’t call PBS affirming either – no matter how you practice it! When you polish a turd – it’s still a turd!
I took a course on being trauma informed. It was mostly a good course…. But it was run by people with a huge amount of privilege and no understanding of minorities, disabled people, oppressed people: people with complex trauma. When that occurs – the training is skewed and /or baseless or even causes more trauma. It can actually trigger or harm people from those groups – which makes the training NOT Trauma Informed!
Example 1: The ‘trauma informed’ course I undertook made a comment that ‘in these days, people aren’t experiencing trauma where they fear for their lives or have to stay in a place that is causing that fear’.
Not trauma informed: the comment above triggered me. As a female who (in the past) was working in a foreign country, and was attacked in my workplace- and who had to work to stay in the country and to pay my way… I felt invalidated, but also gaslit and further traumatised by the comment. It’s alright for a rich white male who has never experienced physical violence or assault, and has been privileged enough to just move to another job with ease… but for a disabled person (me in this case) who is told constantly that I ‘don’t fit into the culture’ and I can’t get or keep a job due to bias and discrimination – comments that nullify peoples existence or experience of trauma is not trauma informed.
Example 2: My children were in therapy with an Occupational Therapist. You’d think that an OT would be trauma informed, since their whole profession is about helping people, but this one wasn’t. This therapist used the “first -then” tactic to manipulate my children to do something they didn’t want to do. My children had already been traumatised by this tactic at school, so having a therapist use it on them really triggered/harmed them. They cried, and I fired the therapist. If the OT had been trauma informed, they would’ve known the techniques that commonly trigger and cause harm to autistic people. “First- Then” is one of those harmful techniques that is used to manipulate and control – not to help. (If you want to learn more about these tools or techniques that harm us – reach out to me and I’ll be happy to do some workplace training, or you could find another neuroaffirming/ trauma informed trainer to help you, or you could look into my books, or perhaps follow “Trauma Geek” Janae Elizabeth on Facebook).
If you work with autistic individuals, you should understand what are the common things that trigger and harm us, and the things that are abusive. But, unfortunately the market is flooded with therapists and courses that use abusive tools and tactics all the time – and it can be extremely hard to figure out which courses and trainers are really neurodiversity affirming or trauma-informed. Many of the toxic ones have learnt that if they use the words “Neuroaffirming” or use IFL – they can trick you or con you into spending your hard earned money on something that will just cause more harm.
The universities that train OT’s and SLP’s even teach new students to use these toxic abusive things – and they call their courses neuroaffirming. There is no oversite from the autistic community on these university courses… most even hire ABA technicians to run them… which again raises my hackles, or triggers my trauma, or makes me snort in mockery. If you are looking for a course in Australia – I will say that I don’t believe there are any (from a university) that I’d do – because all of them teach PBS in some form. I’ve looked them all up, I’ve even asked questions – none of them are truly neuroaffirmingly run or properly trauma informed.
So how do we tell if something is truly neuroaffirming or not? We look for the common things that non-neuroaffirming businesses use in their advertising and speech that tell us they know nothing about neurodiversity at all – and are just parroting behaviouralism and the medical model of disability – but also have to no idea about how to recognise trauma-informed for ND people.
Not Affirming: PFL (ASD, “with autism”, “on the spectrum”, “suffers from”, “Lives with autism”, “Severe” or “profound autism”), medical model of disability, PBS, ABA, DIR Floortime, withholding anything, planned ignoring, rewards, excessive praise, “evidence based”, ‘treating’ or ‘curing’, setting goals that are introduced by the parent or the therapist instead of the ND person.
Affirming: IFL (Autistic person), social model of disability, child led, control and choice remail with child at all times, ensure mutual respect, ask them what they need and want.
See the rest of the list in my Book 3: available from libraries, bookstores and online – in e-book and paperback.
Remember – if you are ‘Neuroaffirming’: you don’t’ use behaviourism in ANY form. You may have been trained and informed by ND people on ND affirming principles and techniques – not in behaviourism or the medical model of disability, and not by people who can’t answer simple questions about why certain things are not affirming, and why specific things harm us or cause us trauma. A person with lived experience will be able to answer questions about neuroaffirming without making excuses for why they believe PBS or other behavioural methods are now not toxic.
If you are truly ‘Trauma Informed’: you won’t just know what things harm NT people, you will have been trained by an ND person/minority/disabled person or other person who can speak to the lived experience of trauma, and how it can affect us in different ways than the typical, but also how we gain and retain trauma in different ways as well.
Trauma is more complex for people with more complex issues. For people with complex trauma or from different backgrounds or who have diverse needs (who I focus on in my training, information and courses) – we experience trauma all day everyday from simply living in a world that is not built for us, doesn’t understand us, and doesn’t include us when they deliver training about us.
Please…. You don’t have to use my services or my free blogs to learn – but please learn from truly neuroaffirming/trauma informed people when learning about Neurodiversity. Just like you’d seek out BIPOC/BAME people to learn about BIPOC/BAME issues, or disabled people to learn about specific disabilities, or women/LGBTQ+ to learn about gender issues. Please stop paying people who do not have the lived experience and do not in truth understand our experience or our needs and wants.
Disabled people deserve to be paid for our work and be respected and listened to for our expertise and knowledge (especially when it comes to teaching society how to help us), and I promise- you won’t get a better education from a University that you would from actually learning from the people you are wanting to help -the people with the disability. Until Universities sack all behaviour technicians and remove any sign of behaviourism from all their courses (not just the ones about autism)– they are just farms that churn out torturers and abusers.
If you want to be serious and respectful about Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility, as well as not harming ND people – you will learn directly from us and stop using services that promote/ and use things like PBS or other behavioural techniques to harm us. Your school or therapy office is not Neuroaffirming if you keep using them, and you should never advertise yourself as neuroaffirming if you do not know what neuroaffirming is or what it entails. Perhaps start by listening to us and believing us when we say PBS never was- and never will be affirming, and start learning from us – what IS Affirming and Trauma Informed.