COVER -- Finding You Finding Me: Using Intensive Interaction to get in touch with people whose severe learning disabilities are combined with autistic spectrum disorder -- Contents -- 1. Introduction -- What is this book about? -- Introducing Christopher, Pranve and Gabriel -- Intensive Interaction -- Digression into the world of 'feeling' -- Whose reality? -- ASD and learning disabilities? -- Developing interaction -- 2. What is Autism? -- What does autism feel like? -- Overload -- Fragmentation -- Coping strategies -- Fight/flight response -- Inducing stress -- Descriptions of fragmentation -- Looking for meaning -- Fixations -- 3. Causes of Stress -- Hypersensitivities -- Vision -- Sound -- Balance -- Touch -- Smell and taste -- Synaesthesia -- Emotional overload -- Not knowing what is happening -- Speech, understanding and communication -- Functional language and emotional access -- Hollow words -- Getting to know each other -- Clarity, gesture, sign and speech -- Restricted speech -- Swearing - a passive acceptance approach -- Delayed echolalia -- Time -- Choices and change -- Hormones -- 4. Behaviour - Challenging or Distressed? -- Can we have a miracle please? -- 'Trading on their autism' -- Reducing the sensory overload -- Looking for triggers -- Aggression -- Self-harm -- Moving attention away from the inner turmoil -- Diversion -- Maintenance of successful strategies -- Epilepsy -- 5. Intensive Interaction -- The dynamic of conversations -- Seeing things differently -- Significance -- Imitation -- Repetitive behaviour and the brain-body language -- Where we are focused - feedback -- Surprise -- Observation and the individual repertoire -- Neglecting the inner-world language -- Christopher -- Intensive Interaction and attention to the hypersensitivities -- Video -- Pranve -- Gabriel -- Working from the present -- Using the personal code.

Moving attention from 'self ' to 'other' -- The discontinuity in expectation -- 'Ringing a bell' -- Intensive Interaction and stress reduction -- Habituation -- Long-term effectiveness of Intensive Interaction -- 6. The Development of Self -- What do we mean by 'self '? -- The dual message -- Failing to find a sense of self -- Raising self-esteem -- Significant responses -- Gabriel and the dyad -- The glass bubble -- Separation -- Coda -- Appendix A: The Causes of ASD -- Appendix B: The Way In - Using Intensive Interaction -- References -- Resources -- Subject Index -- Author Index.