Hope Therapy and Counselling Services
Online and in-person counselling across the UK for individuals and couples, including workplace counselling
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Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference that can shape how a person experiences, understands, and interacts with the world. Autistic people may experience differences in communication, social interaction, sensory processing, routines, emotional regulation, and the way they focus on particular interests, although every autistic person is different. In this section you’ll find a collection of articles exploring autistic experiences, sensory needs, communication, relationships, mental wellbeing, masking, burnout, and everyday life. If you’re looking for professional support, use the links below to learn more about our autism counselling services or book a free consultation.
It starts with a slow build. The noise in the office, the change of plan you weren’t told about, the conversation that went wrong, the scratchy label in your jumper. You hold it together for as long as you can. … Read more
It’s been a long day of noise, conversation and demands. Then, almost without warning, something switches off. You can’t find words, can’t make decisions and can barely move. Someone asks if you’re okay and all you can manage is a … Read more
Most descriptions of autism are written from the outside, lists of behaviours as they appear to an observer, and usually an observer watching a child. That turns out to be of very limited use to an adult sitting at home … Read more
The diagnostic picture of autism was built, almost entirely, from studying boys. That single fact explains a great deal about why so many women reach adulthood, frequently middle age, and sometimes later still, before anyone raises the possibility at all. Read more
Many people reach adulthood without a formal autism diagnosis — not because autism was absent, but because it was not identified, or because their particular presentation did not trigger assessment at the time. For autistic adults who received a late … Read more
AuDHD is the informal but widely used term for the experience of being both autistic and having ADHD. It is not a clinical diagnosis in its own right, a person receives a diagnosis of autism spectrum condition, ADHD, or both, … Read more
There is a particular kind of exhaustion that autistic adults describe, not tiredness in the ordinary sense, but a collapse of the systems that have kept them functioning. Read more
For many autistic people — particularly those with a PDA profile — the ordinary demands of daily life can generate a level of anxiety that neurotypical frameworks simply do not account for. Getting dressed, choosing what to eat, being asked … Read more
You have spent your whole life feeling slightly out of step. You can hold a conversation, do your job, keep things running, but it costs you far more than it seems to cost everyone else, and by the end of … Read more
There was a time when you managed. You held down the job, answered the messages, kept the plans, and looked, from the outside, as though everything was fine. Then, slowly or all at once, it stopped working. Getting dressed feels … Read more