by Claire Greenwood, AMFT

ON BEING ALONE TOGETHER

My brother is five years older than me and has severe ADHD. Growing up, I didn’t know what “ADHD” meant, except that it occupied an inordinate amount of my parent’s attention. For adults, my brother was a problem child, but I adored him and followed him around the house. I was content to spend my days sitting beside him while he played video games. I rarely played. Just being near him was enough.

After graduate school, when I worked providing behavioral therapy to autistic children, I learned the term to describe this is “parallel play.” Parallel play is when children play alongside each other but do not interact. During behavioral therapy, we would try to train kids to be more interactive in their play and rely less on parallel play by rewarding interaction with other kids. I see now that my brother did not always have the capacity for interactive play.

Today, I (and many members of the autism community) consider behavioral therapy to be a dehumanizing and traumatic experience for children. Through behavioral therapy, autistic children come to learn that their natural way of interacting and living is somehow wrong and needs changing. These days, as an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist, I attract many neurodivergent clients because of my professional and personal experience with this population, but the therapy I provide is thankfully a far cry from Applied Behavioral Analysis.

Phoenix is a 14-year-old, non-binary client of mine. Like many of the young, gender-nonconforming clients I work with, they identify as being on the “neurodivergent” spectrum. What neurodivergence means to Phoenix, and to our work, is still largely unclear. They have not had a formal assessment, and I am in no position to do this for them since I am not a psychologist.

Phoenix is a challenging client for me. I’m irritated with them often. They self-identify as having selective mutism, and silence fills much of our sessions. Sometimes I’ll ask them a question and it will take them a full 60 seconds to answer. Other times they’ll laugh at me (or at whom? At what? I don’t understand what the laughter is). To say I feel “shut out” and “angry” in these moments is an understatement. In the absence of the allistic communication norms I know so well, I’m profoundly confused, lost, adrift, and bewildered. 

But today they are swiveling back and forth in an office chair and giggling. “Sorry,” they say. “If I stop moving I’ll die.” “You’ll die?” I ask. “Well, not literally. But my brain will explode, maybe.” They continue to laugh and swivel back and forth in their chair. Not wanting to feel shut out, today I try swiveling in my chair too. There’s a soothing quality in the back and forth movement. In that moment I realize we are engaging in parallel play (and also stimming), us both rocking in our chairs, being soothed by repetitive movement. I feel briefly connected to them, and the moment passes.

In the next session I sit beside them on the couch and watch them play video games on their phone. Intuitively, this seems like the correct approach to therapy: parallel play is the most they can tolerate with me or maybe with anyone. I am aware that I want them to be more interactive, and there’s loneliness in this for me. I’m not sure what the older brother countertransference means in this case, but of course I can’t help but remember the feeling of being five and watching my brother play video games. However, I know that for many neurodivergent folks, parallel play is a kind of love language. And it’s a love language I want to learn—to enjoy being alone together.