Emma Kelly Counselling

28/07/2026

♥️

27/07/2026

The autistic masking paradox.

The more successful an autistic person becomes at masking, the less likely they are to be recognised as autistic.

It’s an interesting contradiction.

Many autistic people spend years learning to copy other people, rehearse conversations, suppress stimming, force eye contact, tolerate overwhelming environments and push themselves through situations that feel exhausting.

From the outside, it can look like they are coping.

Inside, it can feel like survival.

The paradox is that the very strategies developed because someone is autistic can become the reason other people doubt that they are autistic.

‘You don’t look autistic.’

‘You seem fine.’

‘But you cope so well.’

What often isn’t seen is the planning beforehand, the recovery afterwards, the sensory overload, the mental exhaustion or the burnout that can follow.

Masking doesn’t make autism disappear.

It makes autism harder for other people to recognise.

Perhaps we need to stop asking, ‘How autistic does this person appear?’ and start asking, ‘What is it costing this person to appear this way?’

Sometimes the greatest evidence of masking isn’t what you can see.

It’s what you can’t.

Emma
The Autistic SENCo
♾️

27/07/2026

👏

16/07/2026

👏

I completed 4 years of psychotherapy training last weekend 🎉

Being honest, the main thing I felt on Monday morning was relief. I felt so much lighter!

I don’t think anyone can really explain how challenging training in counselling or psychotherapy is. (Hang on, you sit in a group and talk with each other for 3 hours?! Why??)

It’s unlike any other form of study. We still do the studying, the research, essays, and presentations like many other courses. But on top of that we see clients, have supervision, and personal therapy (likely over 1.5 days per week all together). Plus the bits no-one tells you: writing a personal journal that gets marked, some serious budgeting as it costs way more than you imagined, the impact on family and friends who either don’t see you much or see you exhausted and grumpy, wondering how the jigsaw of a week is going to fit as something has to move again.

But, honestly I absolutely love it. Sitting with someone as they process whatever it is they came to therapy for is a privilege. I have the deepest respect for every one of my clients as they work through their world.

If you are a trainee counsellor or psychotherapist or have recently qualified, I see you! You're all 🌟

One year to go but for now, as Elle Woods in Legally Blonde says “we did it!”

16/07/2026

This stands for every single Therapist you will ever see in your life…

We all have our own survival stories 🥰

03/07/2026

👏

As a therapist who works with childhood trauma, I have to challenge this meme 😬

Quite often, my clients will be telling me part of their story…

And quite often, they are so used to the story, they can re-tell it with zero emotion…

When I meet their story with a human response…

Expressing authentic distress at how sad, frightening, shocking etc it is…

It’s like giving them permission to start feeling the emotion attached to their experience.

And I absolutely WILL interrupt if it is in the best interests of the client for so many different reasons.

To clarify information, to slow the client down to a more manageable pace…

To help regulate the client so that they can feel safe in the moment and for many other reasons.

I do that because yes, I am trained to hear what’s going on.

To get beneath the surface means to help the client identify unconscious processes from the past which may be affecting how they manage in the present.

I think it’s important to challenge these memes on a deeper level sometimes 👍🏼