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Powerful skills grounded in internal family systems therapy (IFS), polyvagal theory, and neuroscience to help you navigate your autistic brain, body, and mind.
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There’s a saying: “If you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.” Autistic individuals are as varied and different from one another as non-autistics. The difference is that we are often measured against societal standards we cannot functionally meet. Before we can navigate an ableist world and create the change needed to thrive, we must first understand our unique neurotypes and sensory sensitivities, and learn to feel at home in our autistic bodies.
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In this groundbreaking book, autistic writer and educator Sarah Bergenfield explains how and why autism is an embodied condition of sensory surplus—a conclusion she has reached through personal experience and empirical evidence. Psychotherapist Martha Sweezy joins Bergenfield in offering an adaptation of the internal family systems (IFS) therapy approach, as well as skills grounded in neuroscience and polyvagal theory to help you manage the sensory disorganization caused by an overwhelming world, so you can understand and advocate for your needs and cultivate lasting self-acceptance.
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Autism is a condition of perceptual diversity—characterized by differences rooted in heightened sensory awareness and intensity, and experienced simultaneously in the body, brain, and mind. Our responses to sensory stimuli, changes in routine, and lack of predictability manifest as the symptoms that others may observe, such as difficulties with communication, socialization, shutdowns, and sensitivities.
This book will guide you as you let go of the negative effects of being marginalized, othered, shamed, or stigmatized—so you can reclaim your confidence, live authentically, and flourish.
×´For years I’ve been asked how IFS works with autistic people. not being autistic myself and not having a lot of experience with autistics, I would tell them I don’t know. Now I happily refer them to this amazing book. Sarah is autistic and has extensive experience using IFS with autistics. In addition, she conveys her experience and those of her clients in ways that make it clear that while their brains process the world differently, and society’s reaction to those differences have been painful and forced parts into protective and exiled roles, they also have unusual strengths and access to Self. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is autistic, or is working with someone who is, or who wonders whether they might be..×´
Dr. Richard Schwartz
Creator of Internal Family Systems