Therapy for Autistic Adults and Teens
In my practice, I support adults and teens on the spectrum who are verbally fluent and high-functioning, yet grapple with deep emotional exhaustion from masking, relational misunderstandings, and sensory overwhelm.
As a clinical psychologist with 15 years experience, my focus with clients is on uncovering unconscious patterns, building emotion awareness, and mastering regulation to foster authentic self-acceptance.
Who can Benefit from Autism-Related Therapy ?
Verbally-fluent autistic teens wrestling with identity, friendships, and hidden shutdowns rooted in unprocessed emotions and feelings of chronic invalidation.
Verbally fluent autistic adults facing burnout, relational strains, and late-diagnosis grief. Also adults seeking to understand lifelong emotional undercurrents that drive their life experience.
What Autism Related Challenges Can Be Helped in Therapy?
While therapy for individuals on the autism spectrum is often targeted at making them “acceptable” to neuro-typical friends, family and co-workers, therapy in my office honors autistic neurology. The focus is not just on being ‘“acceptable” to others, but to become comfortable and at peace with one’s self.
We do this by exploring your inner emotional world rather than focus only on surface behaviors. In the long run, this allows for genuine connection with others and resilience.
Other aspects of therapy include:
Deep emotion awareness training to improve one’s ability to tolerate emotions and avoid meltdowns or shutdowns.This means learning to identify, name, and tolerate complex feelings—such as alexithymia-driven confusion or sensory-triggered rage. We use methods such as reflective dialogue and somatic tracking to build internal capacity to understand and tolerate one’s emotions.
Individual sessions create a safe relational space and these methods outperform generic talk therapy by respecting autistic processing, leading to profound shifts in self-understanding, wellbeing, and adaptive coping and improve relational depth
Sometimes families are invited to participate (with the patient’s consent) to address intergenerational patterns, or challenges that family members might have relating to the autistic individual.
What Do Autistic Adults Say About Therapy with Dr Amrit?
"Leah," a 28-year-old young professional accountant, reported feelings of exhaustion and shut-down that were threatening her ability to hold on to her job. Explorations of her emotions in therapy revealed that she was constantly being interrupted at work, which were causing her to mask through feelings of burnout. We explored practical strategies to reduce the social load at work while still allowing her to succeed at her job. More importantly, she came to understand a number of attachment fears in therapy, which meant that she craved intimate relationships while also being fearful of them. Understanding her emotions allowed her to then learn to regulate her exhaustion via internal dialogues. She shared, "Unveiling my true emotions let me drop the act and connect as myself."
"Arjun," is a 17-year-old verbally fluent teen with autism. He is overwhelmed by unspoken rage at school, making it difficult for him to focus or to make friends . We uncovered through our work that his shutdowns mask his grief over constantly feeling "like an alien” compared to others his age. Therapy helped him understand these feelings, and we brainstormed strategies to regulate. With some trial and error, the strategies and self-understanding allowed him to focus on school work, and actually make friends. Said Arjun, "I can finally feel my feelings and be around others without drowning".
Need Help For Yourself or Someone You Care About?
Reach out to us so we can help