Reading the Research: Companion Cats

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article is one of various articles I've seen about companion animals and autistic people.  

The research is pretty simple here.  Owning a compatible pet can be a very positive experience for autistic people.  Many studies focused on dogs, since dogs display their affection more.  As a bonus, they need to be walked, which can mean built-in exercise for the family or individual.  

There's something to be said for cats, though, and that's that if you get the right one, they're comparatively low-maintenance while still being affectionate and supportive.  They're typically quieter than dogs, which is a bonus for humans with sensory sensitivities.  

In both cases (or other, less common pets, like rats, snakes, birds, gerbils, hamsters, etc), the fact that the animal doesn't judge by human criteria is incredibly valuable.  Their needs are simpler, and they're often more forgiving than human peers.  A good pet can be a support and a joy to any household, not merely ones with autistic people.  

I'd tend to say furred and affectionate animals might be a better match for most autistic people, given that petting the animal can be a pleasing sensory experience.  Particularly with a purring cat, indicating the petting is making both you and the cat happy.  

As with any support for autistic people, careful consideration of the specific person and their needs is required.  Immediately rushing out to buy the cutest cat or dog you can find is not kind to the autistic person or the animal.  Keeping noise considerations, specific human and animal temperaments, required responsibility, and other relevant factors in mind is important in these decisions.

It's also relevant to consider whether adopting a grown cat or dog might be worthwhile.  A pet bought while it's still a puppy or kitten may not have sufficient socialization to be a proper support animal.  Older pets, on the other hand, have settled personalities.  They also have a harder time being adopted, so you can be a good person and change a pet's life for the better, while also being a good person and change your loved one's life for the better.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Book Review: Divergent Mind

Divergent Mind: Thriving in a World That Wasn't Designed For You, by Jenara Nerenberg, is less of the practical guidebook I expected from the title, and more a work of history, philosophy, and suggestions and guidelines for changing the broadly disabling systems we live and work in.  Please also note that "neurodivergent" includes autism, but it also includes synesthesia, sensory processing disorder, ADHD, and more.  

The book begins with a section which read to me like a defense of the book's existence, which... kind of made me sad, because I've only seen such things rarely, and usually by autistic adults needing to prove their viewpoint matters. The author says that this book was written in response to and in addition to Elaine Aron's "The Highly Sensitive Person," published in 1996.  I suspect that book might also make for good reading.

Once the defense of the book's existence was done, it got into the deconstruction of the words and concepts we use to pathologize people, such as "mentally ill."  The author presents the historical context and evolution of cultural thinking about neurological differences in the recent few centuries.  "Female hysteria" is one of the earlier terms discussed, obviously having its roots in the male-dominated thought processes of the day.  

The book also briefly covers more recent developments, like the rise and overdiagnosis of ADHD.  Generally, the point was that what we consider normal or abnormal changes depending on what's going on in the world and who has power.  There's also discussion of various diagnoses and how they are part of a larger phenomenon that's mainly been sidelined up 'til now.  

Finally, the third section talks about changes that can be made in the self, in the home, and in the workplace.  Again, this book doesn't really specialize in concrete ideas.  I'm not at my best in terms of retaining information right now, but mainly what the author seemed to recommend was, "listen to what you feel you would do well with, try things and keep the ones that work."  That included things like paying attention to the paint colors.  

Something that specifically stuck out to me was the suggestion of figuring out what colors appeal to you and making a point to have them around.  Which just reminded me that I tend to buy everything in blue or neutral tones.  I am currently wrapped in a pale blue blanket while typing this at my computer.  Next to me is a bright medium blue cloth organizer box.  My hair is currently two-toned sapphire and Carribean ocean blue.  My computer background is a blue-hued galaxy.  My water pitcher with built in filter is a dusky dark blue.  My pill organizer is blue.  A lot of my clothes are blue. 

Apparently I've been subconsciously shaping my environment towards easing the burden on my senses for years.  Fortunately, my spouse doesn't mind my very strongly held preferences.  

I mostly liked this book, but I worry it doesn't have a lot to offer people without a lot of control over their lives.  Many autistic people live in poverty so they can get the support services they need.  That situation may not give the person (or their parents) the influence they need to change the paint color on the walls, let alone choose a career that doesn't strain their senses to the breaking point every day.  

I can't argue with the usefulness of at least teaching people to recognize the differences in their senses and experiences, and finding what ways they can to improve their lives.  Adding in a safe room, with colors to relax the person's senses, perhaps textures or smells that do the same, etc, would do pretty much any autistic person good.  

More concrete examples of changes people made in their lives, and how that helped them, would have helped make this book more accessible and useful to a broader audience, in my opinion.  As it stands, this is more of a philosophic piece about changing your mindset away from the disabling and limiting crap we've been fed systemically.  While that's valuable, it's not immediately... actionable, I guess.  

Changing someone's overall mentality is valuable and important, but they have to have the time and energy to devote to it, and my fear is that many autistic people and their parents don't have those resources to spare in these unusually and overly interesting times.  

Read This Book If

You're autistic, especially if you're female, and you want a new perspective on neurodiversity and sensitivity.  I expect parents of autistic people could also benefit from the ideas in this book.  They include history, philosophy, and broad suggestions for improving the experience of home, work, and existing in general.  The suggestions aren't concrete, firm, easy-to-follow ones, but nothing valuable in autism is cookie-cutter anyway.  This book is perhaps aimed at people with influence and means, rather than the average autistic person.  Still, the ideas within can be valuable to anyone.  

Reading the Research: Hiring Limitations

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article touches on a sore spot for many unemployed and underemployed autistic people (hi!).

The fact is, the hiring process in most companies is extremely discriminatory.  Not in some cartoonish way, with an evil HR person twirling his mustache and leeringly stating, "we don't hire black people/women/neurodiverse people here."  And yet, it might as well happen like that, because that's more or less the results, repeated over and over across thousands of companies worldwide.  

As far as I've seen and heard, there isn't really a standard set of practices for hiring.  As a result, hiring managers are pretty much given criteria for what skills the job requires, which lets them sort resumes...  but after that, and sometimes even during that, is when things go wrong.  

Hiring managers tend to hire people they personally like.  Their gut tells them this person or that would do a good job, and so they hire that person.  The problem is the criteria used.  Humans tend to shorthand "this person is like me" to "this person is competent and will fit well into the company."  Which puts neurodiverse people out in the cold unless the company is already mainly neurodiverse.  So effectively the hiring process is gatekeeping, and on a massive scale.  

It's during the interview process that many autistic people fall flat on our faces.  It's not that we lack the skills necessary.  It's that the interview process is an elaborate dance of lies and wordplay.  Is anyone really enthusiastic about a job in retail?  Especially after applying for 20 more positions elsewhere, managing multiple interviews, and being turned down repeatedly.  And yet "enthusiasm and positivity" are major hiring criteria for most retail chains, if not most workplaces.  

Autistic people often aren't great at lying.  So we're more likely to give honest answers, which get us disqualified.  Sometimes even before the interview, since there's an increasing movement to use online psychiatric measures with opaque criteria.

The typical path for autistic people to even be considered is for our work to speak for us.  Portfolios and work samples are key.  Or knowing someone in the company, someone who can vouch for your skill and usefulness, and someone who can help mediate issues as they arise, is another path. Not all jobs have a portfolio option, though, and connections to others even more limited in autistic people than they are in neurotypical people.

So it's kind of a mess, and a major reason why neurodiverse and autistic people aren't well represented in the workforce.  

This article offers a solution to the problem, in the form of changing the hiring criteria, and changing workplaces so they actively invite and support neurodiverse people.  I agree with the suggestion that doing so would lead to businesses being more successful and competitive.  

As the Hollywood movie industry has shown us in recent years, you can only get so many interesting stories out of older white male Americans. If you want new ideas, you need to look new places.  Women, people of color, neurodiverse humans of all stripes, our ideas will differ.  To continue improving and growing businesses, those different ideas are necessary.   

For all of our sakes, I hope people listen.

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Worth Your Read: Saying "I Love You" Autistically

http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2020/11/recognizing-how-autistic-children.html

It's strange, that in a world so full of different and diverse people, it can be so difficult to accept that others express simple sentiments like, "I love you" differently than you personally do.  

No human, myself included, seems immune to this fallacious assumption.  This author, Ann, has written a very short list of nonstandard ways autistic people might express love, which I'd urge you to look over.  See if you can find one or two you personally display, or your loved one does.  

Having read the list myself, I would honestly say that I feel each of the four examples given actually falls within the "Five Love Languages" categories... it's just that they're so non-standard that they're not even recognized as such.  

The second situation, for example, with the autistic person downloading and presenting information they value to the loved one.  That's a form of the fourth love language, quality time together.  It's initiating that quality time, and ideally, the loved one shares in that enthusiasm and interest. Maybe not to the same extent the autistic person does,  but enough that the "togetherness" aspect is fulfilled.  

This behavior actually isn't specific to autism.  Requests for attention and a shared experience can be as simple as "oh honey, look at that bird outside" or "did you see what happened in the news today?"  Or they can be as large as "let's go see a movie together" or "want to start a new TV show on Netflix?"  It's the method of the request, not the actual category, that people don't seem to understand.  

The first and third situations are simply iterations of the golden rule: "treat others the way you want to be treated."  Alas, the golden rule is far too simple when it comes to neurodiversity and the broadness of human experience.  A better version (that is harder to teach to small children) incorporates doing your best to treat the person well by their own standards.  

Most neurotypical people, naturally, have no particular issue with regular eye contact or small talk, and may even cherish these things as emotional "togetherness" signs.  So avoiding them is not received as the love it's meant to be, but as the opposite.  

Something the article didn't mention is that it's not unusual for an autistic person to say "I love you" once, and then never again, contentedly assuming their loved one knows this still applies because it's been said and not recanted.  Unfortunately, neurotypical people tend to require repetition to believe it.  Especially after an argument or upsetting event.  So this is another example of a miscommunication between autistic and neurotypical people.  

I can't remember, offhand, how affectionate I was as a child.  I would guess "not very" especially after I became a teenager.  I don't feel I was a very warm person, despite my strong sense of justice, fairness, and fiery temper.  That's changed somewhat since I've been doing LENS and more traditional therapy, at least I think it has.  I feel more able to empathize and express concern for others in ways they receive.  

It's still difficult, mind.  The way people receive love and the way I tend to express it don't often match up.  I do okay with listening to people, since pretty much everyone likes to really be listened to with 100% of the listener's attention.  My brain doesn't typically give me a choice about the 100% attention thing, which comes in handy sometimes.  After that, though, it gets sticky.  

It's of some comfort to me that the Five Love Languages book and associated theory exists because neurotypical people don't get this right on a regular basis, too.  It feels to me like it's still somewhat well known in therapeutic circles, but less so in common knowledge now that it's not the latest hot trend.  

The last thing to say here is that yes, your child loves you.  Maybe they aren't expressing it in a way you receive, like the examples in this article.  Maybe they're suffering so much from medical issues like chronic pain or epilepsy that they can barely express their love.  But please, please don't convince yourself your child doesn't love you.  Listen to us.  Become curious about how we think and why we do the things we do.  I guarantee we'll make more sense if you do.  

Reading the Research: Brain Differences

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article is one in a lot of very long overdue research on autistic women.  The scientific term is "sex differences" which might weird out a more general audience.  In biology, "sex" can refer to the physical organs and characteristics.  In psychology and sociology, this differs from "gender" which is the person's experience of their masculinity, femininity, both-ness, or neither-ness.  

In this research, the focus is just specifically on the physical, which makes me wonder if they've accidentally thrown monkey wrenches into their work.  The transgender and autistic communities overlap quite a bit (hi, that includes me!).  Since transgender people also tend to have different brain scan readouts than cisgender folks, I'd kind of assume this would complicate any potential findings...

At any rate, potential flaws in the researchers' methods aside, they did find differences between male and female autistic brains. This is maybe not surprising if you've met a decent number of male and female autistics.  The latter tend to learn more camouflaging behaviors and to be quieter due to societal expectations, while the former aren't expected to manage such nuances and can thusly be far more visible.

If I'm reading this summary I linked, and the main research paper correctly, the data shows autistic brains are more similar to each other, regardless of maleness or femaleness, than they are to neurotypical brains.  There were differences based in maleness or femaleness, such as how well the visual parts of the brain communicated (wonder what that corresponds to in actual life? Poorer imagination skills?).  

Mostly, I'm just glad to see research prioritizing figuring out what differences there are between male and female autistics.  In the very recent past, the focus has pretty much exclusively been on male autistics, to the point that the autism criteria was written around them.  Thusly, to "qualify" as autistic medically, you were judged on "how male you are" to quote a fellow autistic from the show Love on the Spectrum.  

This isn't the first research to examine female autistics, but it might be important in establishing a more generally applicable autism diagnosis.  And it's definitely relevant to recognize that distinctive challenges and differences exist between the sexes.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Grocery Shopping on a Special Diet: The Checkout

Welcome back to the final installment of my autism-aware shopping trip through the grocery store.  Week by week, I've shown you what the store sells, pruned down the selection to what's safe for me (because autistic people can have very sensitive systems) and point out various gotchas the store tries to make you buy stuff you didn't come for. 

This is a bonus post, which is just for the checkout lanes.  There are actually three kinds of checkout options, including the traditional setup that was the standard for decades: a clerk, at a register, with a lane.

An overview shot.  You can see the sheer amount of snacks and junk food artfully arranged to tempt you at every possible opportunity.  You can also see the entrances to all three checkout options, if you know where to look.  

We'll start with the traditional option.  

Two versions of the same thing.  You have your impulse purchases on either side, followed by the conveyer you unload your bags/cart onto for the cashier, followed by the cashier's station, the register, and the bagging area.  The cashier (a real person) scans your items one at a time, bags them for you, gives you the total cost of your purchases, takes your payment in cash, check, or card, and returns you any change and your receipt.  

I chose closed lanes because I didn't want to worry the cashiers, so you can also see the adorable plastic chain that wouldn't stop an excited toddler from passing.  

Right side of one of the traditional checkout lanes.  Magazines, which run the gamut from "might be useful" to "what monster was okay with wasting paper on this garbage?"  And after that, an array of candy.  Remember how there was a candy aisle?  Yeah, so this is in addition to that whole aisle.  

This is all designed to make you do what's called impulse buying, which is just buying stuff because the urge grabs you to, perhaps before you can think about it very hard.  Now, a single candy bar might not be that much money on a single shopping trip, but over the course of a year, it adds up, and the toll is taken both on your bank account and on your body.  

The other side of a typical checkout lane.  I was actually surprised at how standardized the lanes are now.  In other stores I remember, the contents of the lanes would vary, sometimes rather widely.  Perhaps because of less available space?  But these seemed pretty cookie cutter.  Magazines across from chilled drinks.  Candy across from salty snacks, gift cards, and some small convenient items, like lighters, lip balm, flash lights, bleach pens, and travel sized hand sanitizer.  

That's option 1, the traditional checkout lane.  I typically avoid this because dealing with a live human involves making conversation, or at least interacting to some small extent, and that costs effort and comes with tons of social pitfalls.  And I just want to avoid those as much as possible.  

Let's look at the other two options, shall we?  

Here's option 2.  It's the most high-tech one, and it requires you to have a smart device and their special app.  You scan each item as you put it into your bag or cart, using your phone, and then take your phone and scan that at the checkout here.  You are thus an unpaid cashier your entire trip through the grocery store.  It gives you the total, you pay using the interface, bag your stuff if you want to, and go on your merry way.  

There seems to finally be an employee monitoring the area, but in times past, the whole place was deserted.  Even by the customers.  Seriously, nobody uses this despite the corporation really, really wanting people to.  

In my case, it's that I really don't want my grocery store having access to my phone, apps, and identity any more than it already does.  Can't speak for everyone else though.  

In one store I visited, I saw these converted to "5 items or less, and also our system we're begging you to use PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE."  It's maybe telling that even in a pandemic, people would rather use option 1 or option 3 over this one...  

And that brings us to option 3: the self-checkout.  

Once upon a time, these used to come in the single lane variety of the first option.  Unfortunately, some manipulative troglodyte in marketing realized that you could make people walk past a ton more impulse purchases if you just rearrange the checkout setup... and so we have this instead:

This is one long aisle that feeds into 10 mini-checkout stations.  It has everything a traditional lane has, and more.  There are candy bars. There are packs of jerky.  There are pastries and sweetbreads.  It's a smorgasbord of everything you shouldn't put in your body.  

If you're wondering why I sound so resentful of this development, it's because resisting the urge to buy impulse purchases costs mental effort, and I am painfully short on energy at most times, but especially now.  

These stations used to be "express."  The definition of "express" varied, but it was typically 15-20 items or less.  Now, I guess the idea was successful enough that they've pulled the numerical requirement off and opened it to any shopper that cares to traverse the gauntlet.  

Let's have a closer look.  

So, from top to bottom, you have your screen, your scanner and credit card reader, your scanning surface that includes a scale, a surface to put your stuff on before you scan it, and a surface to put stuff on after you scan it.  The latter comes with a plastic bag dispenser, for all your incredibly unfriendly-to-the-environment bagging needs.  Below all of that is the cash and change dispensers, the receipt printout, and the coupon receptacle.  

In this version, you scan everything at the checkout, using the interface here.  There's a way to look up fresh produce using the PLU (or Price Look Up) code, like 4162.  That's large Pippin variety apples, for anyone who was suddenly curious.  Normally in option 1, the cashier would do this for you.  

You are also responsible for bagging all your own things, which at least lets me use my cloth bags without awkwardness.  

This is the option I almost invariably take when I buy things at this store, because although it makes me an unpaid cashier, it does let me circumvent most social contact, which... I really appreciate most of the time.  

And that's that!  Let me know what you thought of this series, and if you're interested in similar walkthroughs of other stores, such as Target, Trader Joe's, or Aldi.  

Reading the Research: Microbial Transfer Therapy and Mental Health

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article touches on a much lesser-known treatment for autism, or at least autistic suffering.  

It's becoming known more widely, in recent years, that our guts (which is to say, mainly our intestinal tracts) have a huge impact on how our brains function.  There are neurons around our guts that pass information to our brain via our spinal cord.  So if you put junk food into your gut, you get bad signals sent back to your brain.  Your mood, ability to plan, and ability to remember information can all be affected.  

I've actually been experiencing this firsthand for the last week or so.  It's been a hard week, and I'm prone to emotional snacking, so I've consumed a greater amount of junk food than normal.  By the end of the work day, I find myself depressed, easily-frustrated, and far less productive than I would've been if I'd fed myself properly.  Which, naturally, leads to more emotional snacking, thus creating a negative spiral.  

It's not even just a question of what you put in your body, though, when it comes to autistic people.  It's a question of what's already there, too.  It hasn't been studied in as much depth as it should be, but what research we have tells us that autistic peoples' guts tend to be much simpler and more prone to overgrowth of candida (a class of harmful gut bacteria).  Where most people have thousands of species of gut bacteria, many autistic people only have hundreds.  

Without the checks and balances from all that diversity in the gut, autistic peoples' guts simply don't perform as well as they should... which means we don't absorb nutrients from our food as well, digest foods as much as we should, or break down toxins as quickly and effectively as someone with a healthy gut.  

Which is why I'm on the wait list to be a subject for a fecal transplant experiment.  It's also why I routinely take two hospital grade probiotics.  Trying to keep my gut in balance is extremely important to managing my mental health and ability to function in neurotypical society.  When my gut is properly functioning, I'm able to communicate more clearly, express myself better, and understand others better.  When it's out of balance, I do worse in every aspect of my life.  It's honestly that simple.

I'm glad to see this research, and I hope people are paying attention.  This is one of many options parents and fellow autistics can look into when trying to improve our lives.  In a world where most doctors throw pharmaceuticals at a problem and then say "there's nothing more we can do" if they don't work, we need more of this research to show people there's always something more to try.  

On a personal note, Arizona State University and Richard Harth (the article's writer) in particular: Autism is not a disease.  Calling it (and autistic people) that is insulting at best, along with being dehumanizing.  It hasn't been okay to refer to autism in that manner for over a decade, so I'm not really sure how this happened... but it did.  If I remember, I'll @ y'all on Twitter about it.  Politely, as best I can.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)

Worth Your Read: An Autistic Experience with the COVID vaccine

http://www.thinkingautismguide.com/2021/03/getting-covid-19-vaccine-while-autistic.html

The COVID-19 pandemic has gone on for almost a year now.  While the vaccine rollout continues in the US, it's suffered from poor organization, and there is no centralized method to get an appointment.  Distribution varies by the state.  

In Michigan, I'm told the best option is to wait until your group is eligible, and then sign up in as many places as possible.  Multiple pharmacy chains have supplies of the vaccine, as does the medical system (in my area, Mercy Health or Spectrum Health).  Sign up with every entity you can.  Just be sure to cancel your place on the waiting list with the others once you've gotten your dose.  

At the moment, I'm not eligible for a vaccine.  Last I checked, I'm on the younger side of things and insufficiently medically vulnerable.  To my relief, though, my parents and my one remaining grandparent have all had their first and second shots.  

There will likely be boosters and such for the variants, but even having that baseline immunity in the ones I love is a great weight off my shoulders.  Like the author of this article, I miss giving and receiving hugs from my parents (and others).  

Regardless, this article describes one autistic person's experience receiving the vaccine.  It can be very helpful to know what to expect when going into an unfamiliar situation, and Kate, the author, does her best to describe it.  

Unlike the author, I'm not rushing to get my vaccine.  I strongly believe in the importance of herd immunity and don't even slightly discount the importance of getting the vaccine ASAP.  I just happen to also be aware that sometimes testing doesn't turn up all possible side effects.  

Since my job does not involve routine contact with the public, and can be done from home, I have the privilege to wait a little longer to see if any interesting additional side effects turn up so I can be more prepared.  My hope is that the new style of vaccine, the mRNA variety, might truly be safer than the older style.  

Either way, my spouse and I hope to get the vaccine in the next half year or so, state and supplies allowing.  Until then, and probably after then, we'll continue to wear masks, wash our hands, disinfect surfaces, and self-isolate.  I can't wait for spring and the warmer seasons, though.  Staying inside all winter hasn't been good for me, and once it warms up I'll be able to forage for wild food and enjoy nature again.  

Reading the Research: Positive Personality Changes

Welcome back to Reading the Research, where I trawl the Internet to find noteworthy research on autism and related subjects, then discuss it in brief with bits from my own life, research, and observations.

Today's article describes how treating anxiety can change a person's personality positively, making them able to be more warm, friendly, and open to new experiences.  Kind of exactly what many autistic people struggle with, at least stereotypically.  

In some ways, this is a "no, duh" research study.  Kind of like how people say "oh, my child's autism was cured when we started treating their chronic pain!"  Did the child actually stop being autistic?  Doubtful.  Did their ability to empathize, communicate, and express themselves emotionally increase?  Absolutely, because now all the energy they were spending on suffering through the chronic pain can be put toward doing those things.  

In broadest brush strokes, this is more or less what's happened to me over the course of the last six years.  I had to look it up, and yeah, it's been six years.  Prior to therapy (LENS, a form of neurofeedback, as well as talk therapy), I would describe my past self as "focused, pragmatic, non-emotive, and a little cold."  Also definitely more depressed.  I was always interested in others to some extent, but it wasn't well-expressed.  Typically I'd simply observe, rather than interact directly.  

Over the six years, I've been able to begin working on my body language more.  I have more brainpower and energy to devote to reading others' body language.  I've learned (mostly) how to smile on command, which is an important social skill in the US (especially if you appear to be female).  And I've been able to use some of my energy to invest in being emotionally supportive and kind to others.  Outwardly and inwardly.  

I've also been able to be kinder to myself, which is just as important in some ways.  If the inside of your skull is a horrible, toxic, judgmental, negative place, it's going to be harder for you to be kind to others.  

The study suggests a pair of methods to treat anxiety.  One is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, which is pretty standard at this point.  It gives you tools to identify negative and unhelpful thought processes, change them, and embrace relaxation.  The other is new to me, metacognitive therapy, which seems to aim to change your thinking about worry rather than the actual worries.  

These may be promising therapies to look into for any sufferer of anxiety.  I'm glad to see work continues to be done to improve the lives of people with mental illness, such as myself and many other autistic people.  

(Pst! If you like seeing the latest autism-relevant research, visit my Twitter, which has links and brief comments on studies that were interesting, but didn't get a whole Reading the Research article about them.)