NAVIGATING STORMY SEAS
I’ve pondered for some time if autism is too narrow a focus for me to support people, in my counselling practice?
It is definitely in the centre of my expertise.
There is definitely a huge benefit in the solidarity parents experience working with me. I have an autistic teenager, and I’m not going to judge you or your child if they’re biting you for example.
Do I then focus more specifically still? What about parents whose autistic boys had no verbal delay?
Can I help parents outside of this? Yes! I know from experience and clients’ feedback, I can help people profoundly turn their lives around. Autism is one of a heap of challenges I’ve lived through, found many blessings and learnings in. And it continues to affect me; not least bringing me the joy of helping other parents find easier paths through it.
So I’m definitely staying with it. And I’m deeply committed to the parents I support 1-1, through couples counselling, or in my free Facebook group experience Special Parenting Together.
As always, my amazing clients themselves point me the way. The ones who’ve benefitted the most from sessions, have multiple challenges: juggling work, their physical health, loss, grief, adoption, trauma, school anxiety, as well as their autistic children.
I chose an approach to counselling which helps the explorer find their own answers. I believe they can identify their most useful way forward, as they walk in their shoes, not me. Rather than me advising them based on my life experience. Just as our autistic son knows his own mind better than I could ever know it!
When I look at the highs and lows I’ve faced in my life, they’ve been
SEN diagnoses of our sons’ autism and dyslexia
Working with schools and others to help our sons thrive
Setting up alternative schools
Caring for elderly parents and in laws
Loss, end of life care, and grieving
Bringing up three beautiful children
Depression and the mental health system
Health, logistics, running several small businesses….
Each of these has taught me lessons I’m deeply grateful for, however hard it’s been in the midst of it. I’ve developed a way of living and gathered people around me who bring me joy, because of these challenges.
That doesn’t mean it’s always rosy in the garden or I live superficially and gloss over the pain.
I have, however, a toolbox I use myself and seek to share widely. It allows me to stay mostly! Playful and reflective in these uncertain times we’re living in.
So just as I wasn’t an ‘autism expert’ (I never claimed I was, simply a mother experienced with her son who’s helped clients with their sons and daughters). I’m not now pretending to be any kind of ‘life expert’: HA, the thought! I’m simply a human who has – partly because of my son’s autism – focused on learning some excellent life skills:
Due to my own challenges of:
· Working with schools and others to help our sons thrive
· Setting up alternative schools
· Loss, end of life care, and grieving
· Depression and the mental health system
· Health, logistics, running several small businesses….
I’ve developed some seriously useful skills I now guide others in:
Being present
Taking daring action
Knowing there’s always a gift (even when it’s hiding deep in the shadows)
Stepping back from judgments
Tenacity
A dark sense of humour!
Loving what is
Finding purpose
Loving myself
Being useful to those around
Making gluten free pasties!
(Joke, I don’t tend to teach that, but they’re a way I’m useful to our son.)
So whatever difficulty is making life feel hard right now, I’m here for you.
If you’d like a generous slice of any or all of those ways to guide your life around the rocks, and buoy you through your current life challenges life and beyond, get in touch.
Together we can find the light in what sometimes feels a dark and stormy place.