An “Autism Handbook”
If there’s one thing I’ve heard, in some form or another, from almost every autistic person with whom I’ve worked, it’s “It seems like everyone else has a handbook that I just didn’t get.” I think a lot of it has to do with the “double empathy problem,” which explains that autistic people and allistic (non-autistic) people have significant differences in social communication. For more information on that, Dr. Megan Anna Neff has written a great article, “The Double Empathy Problem: Why Autistic Communication is a Difference Not a Deficit”.
Many people approach this “problem” by arguing that autistic people should be taught “social skills.” That, essentially, implies that an autistic social communication style is somehow insufficient or problematic (as the long-held “theory of mind” hypothesis of autism previously suggested) and that allistic communication is somehow superior. Several other theories about the overarching themes of the autistic neurotype have since been posited, most of them with increasingly more neurodiversity-affirming underpinnings.
This concept prompted me to start working on an “autism handbook” of my own. This handbook, however, would not be designed to teach autistic people how to act more allistic, but would offer autistic folks tools for better understanding their neurotype and existing in a world that is not (yet) adequately accommodating. All the while, we would continue to move toward the promise of the neurodiversity paradigm: once society gets to a place where all neurotypes are “enabled” no one will feel like they need the handbook that they just, somehow, didn’t get.
I’ve been creating graphic organizers and worksheets since my earliest days as a stage manager and then as a teacher. What started as handwritten pages brought to the local copy shop, gradually morphed into line art with stock photos in a word-processing program and has now has become documents I can create with full color and a huge variety of images in a graphic design platform. I’ve come to realize that it’s actually one of my most long-standing hobbies.
As a therapist, I started making graphics to share with the folks with whom I worked to both reinforce concepts with clearer explanations than what I might have given them in session and as worksheets to guide conversations around specific topics. While I still often share articles and videos from other sources, the idea of having my own “brand kit,” with a limited color palette and uniform font use, was like sensory euphoria for my brain. My collection has gradually grown into an 80+ page workbook from which I can easily pull out specific pages or sections, as needed. Plus, if I don’t have exactly what I’m looking for on a particular topic, I can make something new!
So far, I’ve mostly just shared the whole collection with folks who participate in my Autistic Connections group- sending them a .pdf with all the graphics and resources I’d shared over the course of the 12-14 group section. I dare say it’s started looking like one of my favorite resources: The Neurodivergent Friendly Workbook of DBT Skillsby Sonny Jane Wise, now in its second edition. Since I already have this blog started on my website started and haven’t done a great job keeping it up, I thought a good way to use it might be to start sharing the workbook, one section at a time, in the form of individual blog posts. Of course, I’m not going to promise I’ll have a consistent “release date” for each post, but I do hope to gradually start publishing new pieces as I have the time and inspiration.
If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations and thank you! Hopefully there will be more to read soon. If you’d like to chat with me about this or any of my other potential posts, feel free to head over to a copy of this article on Substack: https://njbaker.substack.com/p/an-autism-handbook