Mont Rose Counseling, LLC

Handouts for the Autism Class

All handouts can be shared for free under a Creative Commons license.

The Autistic Experience

  1. Synaptic Pruning Differences
  2. Intense World Theory
  3. Hyper-empathy
  4. Monotropism
  5. Monteiro Descriptive Triangle for Autism
  6. Neuro-states in Autism
  7. Autistic BIMS
  8. Traffic Metaphor for Processing Differences
  9. Autism and Co-occurring Identities and Experiences
  10. Autism and Common Chronic Medical Conditions by All Brains Belong
  11. PDA
  12. Identifying as Autistic

Autism and Social Connection

  1. Oxytocin and Social Differences
  2. The Double Empathy Problem
  3. Double Empathy Part 2
  4. Overview of Communication Differences
  5. How to Speak Allistic and Autistic
  6. Thin Slice Judgment Study Series
  7. Autistic Socializing

Autism and Vulnerabilities

  1. Autistic Trauma
  2. Autism and Suicide
  3. Sexual Violence Against Autistic Females

Autism and Strategies

  1. Interoception
  2. Polyvagal Chart
  3. Stress First Aid
  4. Emotional Processing

Autism and the Neuro-affirming Model

  1. Autistic and Allistic
  2. Autistic Person vs Person with Autism
  3. Traditional Model vs the Affirming Model
  4. The Pathology Model vs the Neurotype Model

Trainings / Presentations

PDF’s of Powerpoint Slides

10/20/25 Mentor Training for Partners of Montrose, Delta, and Ouray

9/30/25 Neurodiversity Special Interest Group Workshop for the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science

4/25/25 Neuro-affirming Workshop for therapists, prescribers, and service providers on the Western Slope of Colorado

Resources

Marilyn Monteiro’s new book: A Clinician’s Guide to Delivering Neuro-Informed Care: Revealing the Autism Story. (Must have!) (Amazon link)

For PCPs and Health Care Clinicians: Common Medical Conditions Commonly Seen in Autistic and ADHD Adults from All Brains Belong

Bottom-Up Executive Functioning Class

PDF’s of Powerpoint Slides

A Note about References

    References are listed and linked on each handout page. Most of the references I use will have the full text available.

    Please know that the overwhelming majority of research papers on autism were conducted from a pathologizing perspective. Almost everything observed about autism is described in the literature as a deficit or limitation or aberration. For example, they may describe reluctance to commit moral transgressions as “insensitivity,” “behavioral rigidity,” and being “inflexible following a moral rule” (Hu, 2021). My sharing these references does not mean I endorse these pathologizing viewpoints. My intention is to “translate” their findings into affirming perspectives the best I can. For this particular example, I called the behavior, “adherence to moral principles.”

    Hu, Y., Pereira, A. M., Gao, X., Campos, B. M., Derrington, E., Corgnet, B., Zhou, X., Cendes, F. and Dreher, J.-C. (2021). Right Temporoparietal Junction Underlies Avoidance of Moral Transgression in Autism Spectrum Disorder. Journal of Neuroscience, 41 (8) 1699-1715.
    https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1237-20.2020