Autism Spectrum Disorder

Recognizing if your young adult possesses the unique characteristics of the ASD brain can help provide a framework that helps interactions with the neurotypical world make sense; and can help focus treatment so it is specific for the challenges of this neurotype.

Our ASD Package supports your young adult with building skills in the key areas needed to successfully manage interactions with the neurotypical world, as well as to take pride in their own very special neurotype. This includes social skills development, executive function support, emotional awareness/ self-regulation, gender/ sexual identity expression, body awareness/ fitness, self-care/ presentation, and management of electronics overuse.

Know Your Neurotype

The ASD Evaluation provides the foundational data that identifies the key challenges that arise from a spectrum brain in the behavioral, social, emotional and cognitive realms. Depending on the specific needs of the patient, this evaluation might also be used for accommodations and for completing documentation for academic and government services.

Organize and Prep Your Day

Our Executive Function Coaches/ Accountability Partners can help develop the scaffolding and provide the daily check-ins to help the young adult prepare for the logistical and emotional challenges of each day. Individual and group work includes developing and pursuing specific life goals, setting sleep schedules, previewing the logistical and emotional demands of the upcoming day, improving grooming and planning/ following through on tasks.

Learn and Practice Social Skills

Thrive offers several groups that can help the young adult with ASD improve social skills and communications, including:

Our Social Skills Group – specific skills training based on the PEERS model
The Farm – an outdoor, peer-based, life skills development group focused around work teams that – through physical projects – encourage accountability, team building, communications, self advocacy, self expression and mutual support. Raising chickens is part of this group that appeals to the caring for and connection with living things so important to many of our young adults.
The Core Group – this support group allows for deeper emotional connection and self expression that helps build a sense of being valued and belonging.

Regulate Your Nervous System

Emotional overwhelm and intolerable affect are common experiences for the neurodivergent brain that can derail progress in all areas of life. Our services to promote skills development in this arena include:

Self-Regulation/ Grounding Group – Art therapy and polyvagal training provides foundational skills for managing the high levels of anxiety that can keep the young adult from progressing socially, academically and in employment.
Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Group – DBT is a skills-based approach to distress tolerance and mindfulness that can help the young adult manage the emotional storms common to the dysregulated brain.
Medication Management – medications to regulate anxiety, depression, ADHD and sleep can have a powerful settling effect for the struggling young adult. This can allow for the acquisition of self-management skills that are much harder to access when emotionally overwrought.

Find Clarity + Pride in Your Sexual and Gender Identity

Sexual and gender identity concerns occur more frequently in the ASD neurotype than for neuroatypical brains, but is an active area of exploration for many young adults. Our Sexual and Gender Identity Group provides a safe, accepting forum for young adults to express their concerns around these issue, get validation from peers and explore next step to develop a sense of pride and comfort with these aspects of an adult self.

Explore and Modify Electronics and Substance Overuse

Electronics and substances – while providing comfort, escape and social contact for our young adults – can also be a way to numb, avoid and ultimate derail daily structure and the movement towards a productive adult life. Our Addictions and Overuse Group encourages the young adults to build an awareness and understanding of their electronics as well as substance overuse and moves them gently towards healthier coping skills using medication management and emotional self-regulation tools.

Deal with Underlying Emotional Issues

Individual Therapy can help the person with ASD come to grips with the emotional challenges, self esteem and identity issues associated with the small “t” trauma of operating in a neurotypical world. Improved emotional self management, self acceptance and pride in oneself can lead to to a resilience and readiness to tackle the demands of independent life.

Help Parents Better Guide Their Young Adults Toward Independence

There is no road map for how to parent your young adult successfully towards independence. Thrive provides several services that help parents better understand ASD, set realistic expectations for their child, deal with their own emotional issues around parenting a neurodivergent family member, improve communications and emotional tone at home, and strengthen the parents’ ability to create a consistent and coordinated approach for their child. These services include:

Family Support/ Parent Skills Training Groups – These multi-family, twice monthly groups provide a forum for mutual support, problem solving and skills development.
Family/ Parent Coaching – Families meet individually with the clinician to explore family dynamics and develop approaches to create a more harmonious household that better supports the young adult’s movement towards independence.

Build Body Awareness, Physical Health and Emotional Stamina

Our Movement Group challenges the often physically “dormant” young adults to gently push their physical limits, improve their fitness, build flexibility, get to know their bodies and find emotional stability through better connection with the physical self.