Autism and social stories in counselling

If you are autistic, navigating the complexities of social interactions can be confusing, contradictory, and require lots of energy. Joe McCann captures this complexity with "The unwritten rules..." 

Some unwritten rules are deliberately secret - they have to be probed - they're mini shibboleths. They can change without notice, warning, or even any real reason. Something is being negotiated. Not meaning to be sexist, but this method of bullying is more popular with women than men - when they say "you're meant to know!!" You, in fact, are not meant to know. Probably the version men do is worse, they don't even bother with the "you're meant to know!!" They do long uncomfortable silences... And that look ..slightly wide eyed and blank... But just enough of something to see, there's something up. The Faux Faux Pas. You're constantly on your toes.

Joe McCann commenting in the Guardian
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Navigating with a social story

Social stories were developed by Gray & Garand [1] in the early 90's as a means of helping autistic children. A social story is a way of explaining a social situation in a way an autistic person can understand. 

They contain four elements,

• Descriptive Sentences - Accurately describing the situation. They are truthful and assumption free, "Most people have friends"
• Perspective Sentences - Describing the emotional perspectives of other people, "Steven wants to be your friend"
• Directive sentences - Describes a desired response to the social situation, "When Steven asks you to play, it would be good to say yes"
• Affirmative statement - a statement of a shared value or belief, "Its good to have friends"

A social story is written by the adults supporting the child. The most effective ones take into account the child's preferences and communication style. If the child has an interest in a particular TV show, then the themes, ways of talking, and characters can be incorporated into the social story. 

Although social stories are used extensively they are not a panacea. When Reynhout & Carter [2] researched social stories, they found that not one of the social stories they studied could be classified as a complete social story. However they were found to be very effective around 50% of the time, and somewhat effective the rest of the time. 

Counselling social stories

In my previous career, I used social stories with a good degree of success, so when I started counselling autistic adolescents and later adults, I adapted a social story approach to use in these settings. A counselling social story is made up from these elements,

• Accurate Description This comes from you what you tell me. While we talk. I may ask you questions about anything I do not understand. If I am confused by something then the chances are you will be too. For more complex situations it can help to use objects to represent the people involved. 
• Emotional Perspectives By understanding what each person is feeling, can help you work out why people are behaving the way they are, and help you work out how best to respond. Your own feelings and thoughts on the situation matter too.
• Desired Direction In the social stories I talked about above this was provided by the expectations of the adults supporting the children. In counselling the most important aspect is what you want to happen.
• How to get there In this part we plan together how best to respond to the situation. I might make some suggestions for you to consider trying out

The way I use this in the counselling room, is as a checklist. It helps me to identify areas to focus on. If there is some confusion over what people are feeling then we will spend more time with that. If you are unsure at what you want to happen, then we will focus more on this part. From your perspective it feels like a conversation. Social stories only help guide what the conversation covers. 

The other important part of a social story is trying it out. I like to think of it as an experiment. We look at the data, and then draw a hypothesis about what might be happening. From this we devise an experiment to test the hypothesis. This is the 'how to get there part'. In the experiment you try out the 'how to get there', and then look at the results.  

There are two other elements which can be useful,
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• Who or what can help Sometimes it is helpful to identify who may be able to help, and explore ways of engaging their help.
• Illustrative Stories Looking at how other people manage, especially if they are a role model, can help you work out how to respond. Seemingly unrelated stories can also be helpful. So if you are interested in say Formula One, then looking at how pit crews work as a team, can serve as a useful model for understanding how you might work in a team setting. 

A social story approach is a useful way of looking at problems in social settings. It's best used for discrete well defined problems.  

For me personally I really like the depth that this way of working entails. How it allows me, and the person I am with, to focus in a very detailed way on a particular aspect of their lives. I also really enjoy the creativity that it requires. It is always a very creative way of working together. 

photo by StockSnap via Pixabay.com

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References

[1] Gray & Garand (1993) Social Stories via carolgraysocialstories.com
[2] Reynhout & Carter (2009) The use of social stories by teachers via Science Direct
[3] Gavin Cosgrove Social Stories via Educate Autism

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I am an experienced therapist in private practice in the Southampton area of England, UK. I see people from all walks of life, dealing with all sorts of problems.

Counselling with Mark