Table Of ContentAutism
Relations hips
Workbook
HOW TO THRIVE IN FRIENDSHIPS, DATING,
AND LOVE
Faith G. Harper,
PhD, LPC-S, ACS, ACN
&
Joe Biel
Microcosm Publishing
Portland, OR
AUTISM RELATIONSHIPS WORKBOOK
How to Thrive in Friendships, Dating, and Love
Part of the 5 Minute Therapy Series
© Faith G. Harper, PhD, LPC-S, ACS, ACN &
Joe Biel
This edition © Microcosm Publishing, 2021
First edition, first published August 25, 2021
ISBN 9781621063889
This is Microcosm #551
Cover and design by Joe Biel
Edited by Elly Blue
For a catalog, write or visit:
Microcosm Publishing
2752 N Williams Ave.
Portland, OR 97227
503-799-2698
www.Microcosm.Pub
These worksheets can be used on their own, or as a companion to Autism
Relationships Handbook by Dr. Faith G. Harper and Joe Biel.
These worksheets are free to reproduce but no more than two can be reproduced
in a publication without expressed permission from the publisher.
To join the ranks of high-class stores that feature Microcosm titles, talk to
your rep: In the U.S. Como (Atlantic), Fujii (Midwest), Book Travelers West
(Pacific), Turnaround in Europe, Manda/UTP in Canada, New South in
Australia, and GPS in Asia, India, Africa, and South America. Sold in the gift
market by Gifts of Nature and Faire.
Did you know that you can buy our books directly from us at sliding scale
rates? Support a small, independent publisher and pay less than Amazon’s
price at www.Microcosm.Pub
Global labor conditions are bad, and our roots in industrial Cleveland in the 70s
and 80s made us appreciate the need to treat workers right. Therefore, our books
are MADE IN THE USA.
Microcosm Publishing is Portland’s most diversified publishing
house and distributor with a focus on the colorful, authentic, and
empowering. Our books and zines have put your power in your
hands since 1996, equipping readers to make positive changes in
their lives and in the world around them. Microcosm emphasizes
skill-building, showing hidden histories, and fostering creativity
through challenging conventional publishing wisdom with books
and bookettes about DIY skills, food, bicycling, gender, self-care,
and social justice. What was once a distro and record label was
started by Joe Biel in his bedroom and has become among the
oldest independent publishing houses in Portland, OR. We are a
politically moderate, centrist publisher in a world that has inched
to the right for the past 80 years.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION • 7
S.T.O.P.: A Technique for Getting Back into the Present Moment • 9
Take Your Temperature • 10
Meditation on the Soles of the Feet • 11
Grounding Skills Checklist • 12
PART ONE: UNDERSTAND YOURSELF•
15
Autism Self-Assessment • 15
Your Identity • 19
Trauma • 24
Make a Trauma-Informed Safety Plan • 25
Trauma and Triggers • 28
Trigger Response Plan • 30
Values • 31
Values Clarification • 31
Map Your Values • 34
My Authentic Self • 35
Honoring Your Values • 36
Interoception • 37
Name Your Sensations • 38
Name Your Emotions • 39
Feelings Identification • 40
Needs Inventory • 42
Boundaries Inventory • 45
Learning from Mistakes • 55
Reframing Toxic Self-talk • 56
Relational Images • 58
WOOP Goals • 59
Appreciative Inquiry • 61
PART TWO: YOUR RELATIONSHIPS
WITH OTHERS • 63
General Relational skills • 63
Circle of Closeness • 65
Attachment Styles Map • 66
Your Relationships Growing Up • 68
Your Relationships Now • 69
Relationship Inventory • 71
I See, I Imagine • 74
Practice Compassion • 75
Letter to My Future Self • 76
I Statements • 77
BIFF exercise • 79
Physical Boundaries • 82
Toxic Relational Strategies • 83
The Consent Commandments • 91
STFU • 93
Tips and Tricks for Unfucking Your Conversations • 93
DEAR MAN • 95
Friendships • 96
Types of Friendship • 97
Friendship Assessment • 98
Places to Meet New People • 105
Dating • 106
Dating Assessment • 107
Potential Date Activities • 115
First Date Topics and Questions • 116
Date Log • 118
Relationships • 119
Things that Make Me Feel Loved • 119
\
Things that Make my Partner Feel Loved • 119
What I Appreciate About My Partner • 120
Household Chore Chart • 122
Relationship Timeline • 124
Your Values in Partnership • 129
Learning Your Body’s Responses • 131
PART THREE: SEX • 133
Boundaries Around Sexual Contact • 133
Types of Touch • 136
Sensate Touch Exercise • 139
Senseate Body Work • 143
PART FOUR: SAFETY • 147
The Fuck-you Fund • 147
Coercive Control Checklist • 149
Checklist of Coercive control strategies wielded toward lesbian, gay,
plurisexual, trans, and nonbinary individuals • 151
Red Flags Checklist • 152
The “No” Test • 153
Green Flags • 154
My Red Flags/Green Flags • 156
Conclusion •157
Further Reading •158
66
\
INTRODUCTION
S
ocial isolation and loneliness is its own epidemic in this
country, and it’s an even bigger issue among autistic people,
leading to an increase in mental health issues and dying by
suicide. Which means that having healthy friendships and
relationships isn’t just a nice thing, it can be lifesaving. And it can seem
pretty impossible if you never learned the skills to do so. But since it is
a skill, that means you can learn it now. No matter how old you are, or
how much you have struggled to do so in the past. We may not be able
to teach you how to master every aspect of this with only a workbook,
but we can help you build up your skills in developing and maintaining
relationships. Our goal in this workbook is to help you get to where you
want to be. By applying yourself and being willing to learn and change,
you can absolutely do this on your own.
This book is for any autistic person who wants help with this stuff:
maybe you’re new to friendships and/or dating, are not satisfied with
your current relationships, are single again, or want to improve your
marriage, long-term relationships, or existing friendships. It’s for you
all! You don’t have to do all the exercises, you can skip around. Maybe
you want to skip the whole part on sex, or maybe you’ll head straight
there. We recommend that anyone do the stuff in part one because that
helps in every part of life.
We (Faith and Joe) wrote the companion book, Autism Relationships
Handbook, to save lives. And we’ve put together this workbook to make
relationship skills even more within reach. Don’t forget that this stuff is
hard for neurotypicals, too. Joe is an autistic person who mentors a half
dozen young autistic people at a time, mostly about relationships. Faith
is a licensed professional counselor and certified sexologist who favors
autistic clients. Between the two of us we’ve heard every question and
dealt with every relationship problem that an autistic person may have.
You can use our two books together, or you can also use each one
separately. If you’ve read a lot of Dr. Faith workbooks, you’ll probably
recognize some of these exercises; so we made a bunch of new ones and
77
chose the already-published ones we thought would be most helpful, and
reframed them for this book.
The important concepts here are:
• Knowing yourself better will always help
• Good boundaries create healthy relationships
• You have the right to walk away from people who you don’t have a
mutually respectful relationship with
The rest is all a matter of practice and patience. You’ve got this!
But first! We each need to remember our coping skills. There might be
some parts of this book that wear you out. If we were teaching you to
swim, you would be getting chlorine in your eyes and swallowing water
and you would need to stop and get yourself resuscitated periodically.
Same with learning emotional skills. So we are including some self-care
exercises that are designed to get you re-situated in your body when
the other work wears you out. For many autistic people, these repetitive
motions are called “stimming,” and honestly, in Western Capitalist
Society, it’s the only socially unacceptable coping skill. For some people,
you can practice subtle, innocuous ones like wiggling your feet inside
your shoes. Joe scratches, rubs, bites, picks, and plays with hair. Some
people open and close their hands or drum on the table or their legs. This
might be a good time to begin to get comfortable with yourself, your own
feelings, and to worry less about how other people might feel about your
basic survival mechanisms. Faith is pretty sure that her dad only became
a drummer in order to be able to drum with his fingers under the table
to cope with anxiety.
No matter how you center yourself back into the present in your body,
you aren’t doing anything wrong if you notice you are sad, or angry,
or frustrated during this process. Emotions are a sign you are on the
right track with building these kinds of skills. But it shouldn’t be
overwhelming. Skip around as need be and come back to these skills to
get yourself re-grounded as often as you need to.
88
