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The Foundation for Self-Determination and Resilience
Why Autonomy is Vital for Autistic People
Autonomy is an innate basic need. For autistic people, however, it is far more than that: it is the prerequisite for physical and mental integrity. We understand Aut-is-m as a profound knowledge of this necessity: Autonomy is a Must.
Inner Space and Outer Barriers
When the environment is not adapted to the specific sensory needs of autistic children, barriers arise. These are often so massive that they can profoundly affect the vegetative nervous system and motor skills, among other things. Without a healthy distance – the ability to set boundaries against these overwhelming demands – the child/human system enters a permanent state of emergency [1].
Insights that help:
(further information linked)
Maintaining the resting state
Enabling learning and communication
Supporting stimming
Respecting one’s own experience in everyday life
Meeting being autistic with acceptance
Designing barriers to be adjustable/regulatable
Dissolving the Prohibition of Setting Boundaries
Often, autistic children learn at an early age to ignore their own boundaries in order to meet the expectations of their environment. This "prohibition of setting boundaries" prevents them from protecting their own space. The consequences are chronic stress, deep exhaustion, and a painful loss of connection to their own needs. This can even lead to the standstill of essential basic life functions such as sleep or food intake.
Healthy distance means:
Perception: Taking one's own feelings seriously and naming barriers.
Protection: Preserving an inner space that is free from pressure to perform and external determination [2].
Resilience: Developing the strength to find solutions to problems without breaking under them.
Our Approach: Resilience Training
We encourage children, adolescents, and their caregivers to recognize and dissolve the prohibition of setting boundaries [3].
Only those who practice self-protection have the freedom to live healthily and to make new decisions for their own autonomy.
The goal is a self-determined life in which the individual way of learning, communicating, and being is not merely tolerated, but lived as a valuable gift. Only those who experience respect for themselves can return this respect to others.
Character Play / Symbolic Play
Our Methodology: Symbolic Empowerment
Instead of rigid theory, we use the "language of play." Inspired by systemic boundary approaches, we have developed our own child-friendly form of constellation work.
From Concept to Play
We have brought the abstract idea of "inner space" and "boundaries" into the world of Angry Birds and Star Wars. When complex systemic entanglements become "Darth Vader" or "green pigs," a child immediately understands what is at stake.
Active Deconstruction
While classic methods often remain conversational, we take action. Physically knocking over the block towers (representing barriers or intrusive structures) is a neurobiological act of liberation.
The Goal: Transforming powerlessness into self-efficacy.
The Effect: The nervous system experiences in reality: "I can defend myself. I can change this structure."
Individual Hero’s Journey
Each figure was created by hand using polymer clay (Fimo). Thus, the play becomes a personal hero's journey. It is not a "one-size-fits-all" training, but an individual adaptation that starts exactly where the child is – in their creativity and their anger.
References
Arno Gruen, The Betrayal of the Self: The Fear of Autonomy in Men and Women.
Ronald Grossarth-Maticek, Autonomy Training: Health and Problem Solving through Stimulation of Self-Regulation, Berlin 2000.
Dr. Ernst R. Langlotz, "Malignant Symbiosis and Autonomy Disorder as Decisive Causes of Stress, Illness, and Destructive Behavior" in: Systemic Constellation Practice, 2006.
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