04/07/2023
“Compliance is the death of authenticity.” -Dr. Gillian Boudreau
Like many of us service providers, we were taught to provide specialized services through the medical model of disability. This model aims to “correct” or “fix” deficits seen through a set of criteria that is mainly based off of trauma responses. Now, as I step into my more authentic self, I see how the way I was trained goes against what morally feels right to me. That is, to lead with love and compassion and aim to be a safe place for my clients to grow, learn, and connect through communication. As a speech and language therapist, I should be supporting my clients to be their most authentic self and helping them to achieve autonomous communication, or saying what they want, when they want, and how they want. In order to promote authenticity in the clients and families I serve, I have learned and unlearned many things. The work that therapists like Meg Proctor from and Dr. Gillian Boudreau from have done is paving the way for supporting other professionals in the “helping people” fields to drop the behaviorist approaches we have been taught, and to go back to the basics of making sure our clients feel safe, regulated, and connected to their bodies. Part of that work is learning how to regulate ourselves, keeping an open mind, and not spreading the energy of fear in the classroom and therapy settings. Learning to drop the idea of compliance as a way to teach and learn may be hard, as it has been ingrained in many of our minds for so long, but it is critical for supporting young people to be creative, happy, and thriving stakeholders in their own futures.
Check out Two Sides of the Spectrum podcast for more amazing insight and stories from Autistic individuals and the families and professionals that love and support them.
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* Traducido al español en los comentarios.*
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