Brooke E. Harris Counseling and Consultation

12/23/2024

06/03/2024

Happy Pride Month. You are welcome, you are honored, you are loved.

05/12/2024

04/08/2024

Creative Counseling of Evergreen is proud of be a gender-affirming mental health care provider!

We see you Colorado! Thank you for providing a safe-haven for gender-affirming healthcare in the mountain region! New CO State Pride Flag Vinyl Sticker available in our Safe Educator Store - link in comments!

04/06/2024

Beautiful words…

04/02/2024

Happy Autism Acceptance month! Neurodivergence is something to be honored, not something we wish to extinguish or change.

Happy April!

You may or may not know this as Autism Awareness Month. There have been campaigns for decades, but growing to prominence with social media culture, about “light it up blue”, the puzzle piece symbol, etc, to make people, well, I guess aware of autism.

I have no doubt that on a person to person level, this is often well-meaning. (On an organizational level, the ethicality is a little sketchier, which I’ll delve more into later this month.)

It might be a frame shift for you to recognize that it’s very easy to find out what Autistic people think about these types of initiatives, because… we can just ask them.

There’s kind of an assumption that able-bodied and/or neurotypical people sometimes fall into without even realizing it, which is that they ought to “speak up for” or “be a voice for” people with disabilities or neurodivergent people…as if, you know, they don’t just have voices themselves.

And part of this, I think, can come from the fact that people often think of autism and instinctively think of kids — maybe a kid they know, maybe a kid they knew when they were a kid, maybe just some nebulous concept of how “lots of kids these days are being diagnosed with autism.”

There are lots of autistic kids. There are also Autistic adults! There is “autism spectrum disorder” as a DSM diagnosis (which is the diagnostic criteria used in the US, and some other countries) and there is also a larger Autistic community.

Within this community there is by and large a rejection of autism as a disorder or something “wrong”, and an embracing instead of neurodiversity (diversity in different people’s natural, neurological wiring), and also an embracing of a strengths-focused understanding of what autism is and can be. What Autistic brains are, rather than all of the things that they are not.

To someone on the outside, or someone newly wading in, this can feel like a very very complicated topic.
To someone who has been steeped in it for months or years from a deficits-based framework, it can feel like a very very threatening topic.
To someone who has lived with it their whole life or known about it for a long time, it can feel like an exhausting topic to be rehashing the basics for those who are newer along on their acceptance journey.

For these reasons and others, I plan to write a fair bit about it this month. I also plan to boost the things that Autistic adults are saying about themselves. Whether you are brand-new to these ideas or have been aware of them for awhile, there may be something you can learn.

I’ll close with this: rather than the “autism awareness” and its associated symbology that has been placed upon the Autistic community without their input, many prefer instead calling it Autism Acceptance Month.

This is why: you’re probably already aware of autism. Like…it exists.

But you might not, or might not have known to, accept it as a difference, as a form of diversity, instead of as a disorder, a disease, or a flaw.

In that same line of reasoning, rather than blue or puzzle pieces (which can be interpreted as “some piece is missing from you” or “you are a confusing puzzle to have to figure out”), most in the Autistic community have embraced using an infinity symbol to symbolize the broad spectrum of experiences that fall within the umbrella of autism, and the colors red (and the motto “red instead”) or gold (because of Au, the chemical symbol for gold and also the first two letters in Autistic).

You will not see blue or puzzle pieces on this page; they have been experienced as hate speech by many in the Autistic community (again, regardless of the possible well intentions of an individual sharing them).

Happy Autism Acceptance Month!

[Image description: a bold red background with gold lettering on it that reads, “Autism Awareness (with ‘awareness’ faded and scribbled out, and underwritten with,) Acceptance”. Underneath the words are a gold infinity symbol. End description.]

03/24/2024

💚💚💚

03/09/2024

Sometimes we want to avoid sitting with people in their devastation.

Because what would we say?

How could we possibly make them feel any better?

Remember, sometimes all someone needs is to know that their burdens
aren't too heavy for someone
to love them.

Sit with them and know it's not your job to heal them, just to be there.

It's a beautiful honour when a person wants your company in the midst of heartache.

Words by: Kelli Bachara

Artwork by: Lori Portka

03/09/2024

Questions to ponder…

03/03/2024

02/25/2024

Mona Delahooke, Ph.D. has inspired my work with parents and children over the years. Her resilience and determination is so heartwarming to see. You’ve got this, Mona!