
Five Core Skills to Help Your Autistic Clients to Unmask for Life with Dr. Devon Price
From Born to Be Free: Supporting Neurodivergent Clients to Learn, Play, & Thrive by Meg Ferrell
February 4, 2026 · 46 min · Episode 115
About this episode
Dr. Devon Price discusses five core practices for helping Autistic clients unmask, focusing on trauma-informed care.
Dr. Devon Price’s work sits at the intersection of trauma-informed care and Autistic unmasking. In this interview, he walks us through five core practices for unmasking, and shares how to approach them thoughtfully with Autistic clients who have experienced trauma - which is most of the Autistic community. We explore practices such as learning your preferences and disentangling them from social norms, building resilience, cultivating distress tolerance, and shaping your life - both in big, structural ways and in the small, everyday details. A lot has been said about unmasking, but very few approaches hold the work with this level of care. Dr. Devon Price is a social psychologist, clinical associate professor at Loyola University Chicago, and an Autistic person. His books include Laziness Does Not Exist, Unlearning Shame, Unmasking Autism, and his newest release, Unmasking for Life. Want MORE EPISODES of Two Sides of the Spectrum, recorded Q&As with our guests, and a listener chat forum? We just launched our Patreon and we need your support! Join our community at patreon.com/learnplaythrive
People in this episode
Host: Meg Ferrell
Guest: Dr. Devon Price
Topics covered
- Autistic unmasking
- trauma-informed care
- resilience
- distress tolerance
- social norms
- personal preferences
Keywords
- Autism
- unmasking
- trauma
- social psychology
- resilience
- distress tolerance
- preferences
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Loyola University Chicago
Books & works: Laziness Does Not Exist, Unlearning Shame, Unmasking Autism, Unmasking for Life
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