Did you know that Thrive with Autism/Aspergers has its very own reporting team?

Just kidding.

Michael and Cici, from TWAP054 Happy Aspergers Marriage Secrets, attended AspieCon this year.

And they graciously submitted their report of their time there.

What Is AspieCon?

According to their website,

AspieCon is everything you love about ComicCon combined with the best aspects of a community resource fair. It celebrates the incredibly diverse interests of people on the autism spectrum while also providing valuable resources and support for our awesome Aspies and Auties, their families, and their friends.

Dr. Frank Gaskill and Southeastern Psych help organize this convention.

What You’ll Learn

Aspies sharing their world with the outside public

Sensory free zones

Panels included the following topics:

* advanced cosplay techniques

* what to expect in therapy

* educational advocacy – how parents can navigate the educational systems via IEPs and help their child to take advantage of their skills and traits as a student with autism

* The Epiphany School of Charlotte – a unique school for students with Aspergers and other social communication differences

* a Question and Answer session with Aspie Teens – what it’s like to be on the spectrum as a teen

* Parenting on the spectrum – discussing the experiences, challenges, and joys of raising children on the spectrum

* How To Turn Your Passion Into a Career

* Autism After 18

* Employment for Aspies, and how many tech companies are recognizing the gifts of Aspies and Auties

* Celebrities and Famous People with Aspergers/Autism

* Courtney Love, Andy Warhol, Anthony Hopkins

* Athletes like Clay Marzo, Jessica Applegate, and David Campion

* Possible historical figures like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln

Final Impressions

Cici – it was interactive, out of the box, building a strong community, empowering individuals on the spectrum, not a disease, but a difference

Michael – it was a celebration of who you are as a person with Aspergers, squeeze every bit of who you are out of who you are

Join the Conversation

What topics would you most like covered on the show? Who would you like me to interview? Share you answer in the comments below or Ask me a question via my Contact Page.

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On April 2, we’ll be celebrating Autism Awareness Day.

Gratitude: Be Thankful For How Far Society Has Come

Autism Speaks is a polarizing organization!

To be sure, there’s a lot of misinformation coming out of there.

But it’s important to celebrate increased awareness of autism.

In the words of my colleague, Violet,

As I have observed over time,  Autism Speaks was a voice for those unable to speak. Any group that grows will eventually have conflicting priorities. It seems to me that if the whole world knows what blue lights and puzzle pieces are about- much has been accomplished. what is needed now is the next steps of awareness, the hows and whys of meaningful communication on all sides.

Autism Acceptance: The Next Step For Autism Day

Celebrating an autism day is not enough.  Awareness by itself is insufficient.

Apartheid was a system of segregation enforced by legislation.  It kept the white Afrikaaners in control as the dominant party from 1948 to 1994.  Through Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment and struggles, democracy finally came to South Africa.

Through slavery, United States Caucasians controlled African people from 1619 – 1865.  However, the civil rights movement took years of constant struggle to overcome the effects of racism, culminating in the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968.

In the same way that racism has held peoples hostage in societies, misinformation often leads to discrimination and inequity for minority groups in our country: including autistics.

We need to combine autism awareness with autism acceptance.

Everyone should transform autism awareness day into autism acceptance action every single day.

I’m indebted to Amethyst Schaber and Shannon Des Roches Rosa Souza for showing us how to honor autism awareness day with acceptance and action.

In this video, Amethyst Schaber, a 24-year-old autistic woman and activist, opened my eyes to the difference between autism awareness and autism acceptance.

First, autism awareness day has too often spread misinformation about autistics.  Many of the people who’ve promoted autism awareness come from a place of love, but from a limited point of view.

Too often, those who promote autism awareness think that autism needs to be cured, or loved ones who see autism as something to be cured.

Even though the effort to raise awareness comes from a place of love, this view of autism has mistakenly spread the view of autistics as “sick, broken, missing, kidnapped, suffocating under layer of autism that parents have to fight and combat.”  (quote from Amethyst Schaber)

What we need, instead, just as the civil rights movement needed minority voices, is autism awareness with acceptance.

How can we promote autism acceptance?

Take the negative brand of awareness and turn it around.

1.  Read up on the history of autism acceptance month. 

Here’s the full story.

2. Highlight autistic people and voices, both verbal and non-verbal, rather than non-autistic people talking bout autistic people without them — enabling non-autistics to view autism from an autistic’s point of view.

Call to Action:

Tweet out these articles, whose authors deserved to be heard:

[Tweet “Check Out These Top Ten #Autism Blogs, by Spectrum Writers  http://bit.ly/10-autism-blogs “]

[Tweet “Listen to the Loud Mute Radio Show http://bit.ly/loud-mute-show #asd #awareness”]

[Tweet “”Autistics are full, whole people, who possess full personhood, deserving the same thoughts as every other perso...

What’s autism and the workplace all about?

In this episode, I speak with Holly Anonymous, a Thrive with Aspergers/Autism community member about her background and her autism advocacy in corporate America.

You’ll Find Out

* How Holly found out about Aspergers

* How she discovered she has Aspergers

* Holly’s experience with selective mutism growing up

* How the school system failed Holly growing up

* How society’s failures have inspired Holly to increase awareness of autism in the workplace

* “I want to help adults understand this condition [autism], and to help other people, so that others don’t have to go what I went through.”

Holly’s Insights From Her Workplace Presentation

* Myths and Stereotypes About Autism – Not everyone is Rain Man, Not All Aspies Are Male, and More

* The stress of “fitting in” with facial expressions in the workplace

* How Holly uses humor strategically to “disarm” non-autistics

* Holly’s definition of autism – “a neurological condition that affects the way a person experiences the world: the way that they think, the way that they interpret information, the way they take in that information, and the way they project information.”

* Possible Autism Characteristics in the Workplace (combinations and intensity of traits vary per individual)

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash

I still remember hanging out with Brazilian kids after being away in the United States the previous year.

I’d forgotten a lot of the Portuguese I’d learned, and I found myself smiling, nodding my head, and trying to put phrases together.

It was uncomfortable, to say the least!

But I wanted to fit in with my peers, so I gave it my best effort.

In today’s show, I’ll be talking about camouflaging autism.

Camouflaging Autism: You’ll Learn

* What camouflaging is

* Motivations for camouflaging

* Benefits of camouflaging

* The Costs of camouflaging

* How autistic adults have learned to cope with camouflaging

Links and Resources

The Costs of Camouflaging Autism, an article in Spectrum News.

Spectrum Stories, podcast episode about Camouflaging Autism

“Putting On My Best Normal”: Social Camouflaging in Adults with Autism Spectrum Conditions [Hull, L., Petrides, K.V., Allison, C. et al. J Autism Dev Disord (2017) 47: 2519. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10803-017-3166-5]

Join the Conversation

What topics would you most like covered on the show? Who would you like me to interview? Share you answer in the comments below or Ask me a question via my Contact Page.

Do you enjoy this podcast?

Subscribe to the Thrive with Aspergers Podcast via Stitcher, iTunes, or RSS

Please leave a review on iTunes! Your positive reviews will help drive awareness of the podcast so that many more can see it!

Photo by Reptile Pod on Unsplash

Anger Management and Molding Clay

All my life I’ve had an explosive temper with a hair trigger.

Can anyone suggest a way – any way to keep it under wraps and on a tight leash?

Anonymous, Wrong Planet

I love the picture in this article.

I picked it because I think of learning to manage anger as a skill much like creating a pot out of clay.

Our anger is an emotion – raw, untamed, unfamiliar.

If we’ve never created pottery, we’ll make a mess out of the lump of clay, which represents anger.

But if we learn pottery making skills from a skilled craftsman, we can learn to make progressively better creations out of the clay.

In the same way, you and I can become progressively better at managing anger by applying techniques from those who have learned to manage their anger.

Unmanaged Anger Costs Us

As I shared in the last episode, unmanaged anger costs us!

Unmanaged anger (yelling, throwing things, even hitting people or ourselves):

* Destroys our personal relationships

* Destroys our school or work relationships

* Very often makes bad situations worse

* Anger often leads to aggression (either verbal or physical)

“So What Can We Do To Improve Our Anger Management?”

Here are 3 anger management techniques I gathered via a combination of reading up on autistics and Aspergians stories and also from the general research literature.

Apply these three techniques with a growth mindset and I promise you you’ll see better results with your anger management.

Anger Management Technique 1 –  Self Awareness 

Self-awareness is the first key technique to help us manage our anger.

Self-awareness, according to Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, defines self-awareness as “knowing one’s internal states, preference, resources, and intuitions.” (Source, Why Self-Awareness Matters, and How You Can Be More Self-Aware).

According to researchers David. R. Vago and David A. Silbersweig, from the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA,

“through training in FA, OM, and EE styles of meditation, a sustainable healthy mind is proposed to be supported—reducing maladaptive emotions and cognitions common to most ordinary experience, such as lustful desire, greed, anger, hatred, worry, etc., increasing pro-social dispositions (e.g., compassion, empathy, and forgiveness) toward self and other, reducing attachments to thoughts and feelings, and removing biases inherent in habitual forms of cognition.” (source, article, Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness).

Bottom line: As we improve our self-awareness, we’re able to reduce “knee-jerk” unhealthy reactions to ange...

Online learning never sleeps.

It’s always there for you.

You don’t need to travel, you don’t need to get dressed up.  All you need is a computer and some spare time.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing 7 Online Learning Links to help you increase your life skills.

Perhaps you’re new to the autism community, whether you received a late diagnosis of Aspergers/autism, or your child did, or you’re a professional new to autism.

What I’d Like You To Do With These Online Learning Links

First, adopt a growth mindset.  This just means that you say to yourself, “Perhaps I’m not as good as I’d like to be at social skills (for example).  It’s okay.  I’m going to spend 1 hour a week learning as much as I can about social skills via one of these online learning links, and I’ll get much better than I am now!”

Second, repeat the first thing – keep on learning!

7 Online Learning Links

1. Autism Internet Modules

Autism Internet Modules is a site organized by the Ohio Department of Education and various other notable autism non-profit organizations.

All module content has been written by ASD experts from across the U.S., including the Arizona Department of Education, the Indiana Resource Center for Autism, and the University of Miami Center for Autism and Related Disorders.

2.  Second Life (?)

The jury is out on this one.  I’ve heard and read both positive and negative reviews of this online platform.  If you know of a better low cost/free virtual reality platform on which to practice social and other life skills, let me know in the chat button on the lower right of every page of this site.

I explored this site because of this article from The Center for Brain Health at the University of Texas Dallas.

Autistic children were paired with a coach in a virtual learning environment

“Neurocognitive testing showed significant gains in emotional recognition, understanding the perspective of others and the ability to problem solve.” (Source: https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/2230/metafocus-interview-with-maria-johnson-of-ut-dallas-virtual-reality-social-cognition-training-department)

This article from the American Psychological Association made me think that maybe we can adopt a platform like Second Life to help each other learn the same types of social skills that kids are learning.

3. College Preparation and Success

This course is self-paced and was originally designed for students who were seeking services from disability learning centers at different colleges.

It’s only $19 [I’m not an affiliate].  Consider buying it even if you’re not a student!  There are resiliency skills, social skills, and other learning modules that will make your purchase worth the price.

4.

Abuse – it’s a big word that’s hard to talk about.  Aspergian and autistic women can find themselves particularly vulnerable to it.

Awareness is the greatest way to reduce your likelihood of becoming a victim.

In this episode, Dr. Liane Holliday Wiley shares her own hard-earned experiences and lessons with us.

Today’s Guest

Dr. Liane Holliday Willey

Website: http://www.aspie.com/

Twitter: Aspie101

You’ll Learn:

4 Types of Abuse You Need To Understand

What is abuse?

Here’s an extensive listing of the different types of abuse, listed by Wikipedia.

In this episode, Dr. Willey covered four types of abuse.

* Sexual Abuse

* Physical Abuse

* Economic Abuse

* Emotional Abuse

She speaks candidly about her own experiences with these different types of abuse.

By listening to these examples, you can empower yourself to be alert for these types of abuse in your relationships and guard against them.

Resources:

Sexual Abuse Resource – About Sexual Assault

Definition of Physical Abuse (and how to get treatment)

Article from the Thinking Person’s Guide To Autism – Identifying Good People and Avoiding Bad People: How Can An Autistic Person Stay Safe?  by Maxfield Sparrow.

Economic Abuse Defined

Live Bold and Bloom article – 30 Signs of Emotional Abuse

Dr. Liane Holliday Willey’s books:

Pretending To Be Normal

Safety Skills For Aspergers Women

I’ll be sending a few more resources in my newsletter.  If you haven’t subscribed, do so now to receive those extra resources!

Copyright: kmiragaya / 123RF Stock Photo

I want you to imagine something with me.

Imagine that you are told that you need to learn to drive a car.

You’re taught how to brake, how to use your mirrors, and how to stay on the road.

But pretend with me that your instructor never taught you about the rules of the road.

He never told you that you need to let the person on your right go first at a four way stop.

You’d feel like you only got part of the education of driving!

It’s the same thing with social skills training.

You need to understand the context within social skills fits.

And that’s where social thinking comes in.

Today’s Guest:

Michelle Garcia Winner

Website:

Social Thinking

Twitter:

socialthinking

You’ll Learn:

* Who is Michelle Garcia Winner, and how did she develop the concept of social thinking

* What social thinking is, as compared to social skills

* The metaphor of the social brain versus the science brain

* Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Communication Profiles

* Practical steps to improve your social competency

* The importance of developing a growth mindset when learning social thinking.

Resources:

Social Thinking Articles on this blog

Social Thinking Channel on YouTube

Find a professional trained in social thinking methods here

Join the Conversation

What topics would you most like covered on the show?

Who would you like me to interview?

Share you answer in the comments below or Ask me a question via my Contact Page.

Also, please leave an honest review for The Thrive with Aspergers Podcast on iTunes!

Ratings and reviews are extremely helpful and greatly appreciated!

They do matter in the rankings of the show, and I read every one of them.

Did You Enjoy This Episode?

Subscribe to the Thrive with Aspergers Podcast via Stitcher, iTunes, or RSS

Please leave a review on iTunes!  Your positive reviews will help drive awareness of the podcast so that many more can see it!

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

 

What is regulation and why is it so important for kids, teens, and adults both on and off the spectrum?

Key Takeaways Regarding This Zones of Regulation Podcast Episode:

* Neurological differences in the autism brain can impact the ability to control impulses and emotions

*  The Zones of Regulation Curriculum was researched and developed by Ms. Leah Keypers specifically for autistic people.  (But I say the Zones work for everyone.  In fact, I’m using it for my own personal growth and development.  Listen to the episode to find out how.

* Learning the zones of regulation can give you tools to develop emotional regulation for yourself.

Get The Bonus Content:  Sign in Below for Free

Check out a list of resources regarding the zones of regulation.

Do you fear hospitals, doctors, and/or medical procedures?

Here’s what one of our Thrive with Autism/Aspergers community members said one day:

“Hi guys. I have to get surgery Tuesday for my foot (running injury) and I’m anxious. Any tips? I hate blood draws and IVs. Mostly I just don’t know how surgery really works, like how do they control the bleeding so I don’t bleed out? I’ve never had surgery just many endoscopies.”

Everybody needs to know about medical phobias, or treatment anxiety, because lack of knowledge fans the flames of anxiety.

What Is Treatment Anxiety?

Guess what?  You’re not alone if you have fears of hospitals, medicine, or surgery/surgical procedures.

There’s even a name for these fears.

Nosocomephobia is the name of the phobia relating to the fear of hospitals. Tomophobia is a fear of surgery or surgical operations. Pharmacophobia is a fear of medicine.  source – 5 Ways to Cure Hospital Anxiety, Surgery Fear, Fear of Medicine

Fear of medical procedures falls under a broader category of  fears, called “Blood, Injection, and Injury Phobias”.

Formally, medical fear is defined (by Steward and Steward, see Further reading) as “any experience that involves medical personnel or procedures involved in the process of evaluating or modifying health status in traditional health care settings”.[1]  

(source: Wikipedia)

Other medically related phobias include.

Fear of surgery

Fear of Dental Work

Fear of Doctors/Fear of Needles

Why Do People Have Medically Related Treatment Anxiety?

Here’s a number of reasons I uncovered from my reading:

* feeling out of control.

* genetics – according to researchers, phobias tend to run in families.

* a person may have experienced a past traumatic event at a hospital, whether a death of a loved one, or a diagnosis if a fatal disease.

* if a person struggles with sensory difficulties, being touched or dealing with fluorescents nights, then hospitals or clinics may make them uncomfortable.

What Can You Do To Reduce Treatment Anxiety?

Suggestions from My Thrive with Aspergers/Autism Group Members

Trust the doctor/dentist/medical professional

[Remember] they’re pros at what they do. I’d be nervous as well, but I know the people doing surgery these days have so much training and the methods are getting cleaner and more streamlined.   A few years ago my mom had a lung transplant. I was so nervous for her. The surgeon came out to meet with me just before the surgery to talk about the procedure. She was so kind, and she not only answered all of my questions, she showed me a lot of compassion. I bet you could request a meeting for yourself.

Educate The Professionals

Tell them you’re autistic. Explain that you’re anxious and that you’d like to have each step explained to you. If you’ll be staying longer than just for an outpatient procedure, bring earplugs and an eye-mask so you can control sensory input.

I found this, but it may be geared more toward kids.

http://www.autism.org.uk/pro…/health-workers/guidance.aspx