Exploring Feelings Anxiety Training Manual: A Guide For Group Leaders

Consider this your guide to group work success! Written to accompany Exploring Feelings―winner of the 2008 Teacher’s Choice Award―this manual is intended to pass on experience to those working with high-anxiety and ASD individuals in a group setting. Seasoned group leaders have recorded and shared what worked best, what can be tweaked to suit your group, and how to best utilize the tasks and activities in Exploring Feelings through tried-and-true methods, including:

Selecting group leaders and members Choosing where to hold group meetings and the benefits of different venues Program Flexibility and how to tailor activities to your group How to best involve parents and guardians

… and so much more!

Anxiety is so prevalent in young people with ASD, and is often at the core of behavioral issues perceived as anger or non-compliance. By addressing the main symptom, and doing so in a safe and informative group environment, both young people and their families and friends are sure to see vast improvement in anxiety levels. This manual is the key to enjoyable, successful, and rewarding group sessions, and to helping young people and their parents/ guardians build their “toolbox” of techniques for handling anxiety. The main message is, “do it!”

Helen McConachie is the co-author of Disabled Children and Developing Countries: Clinics in Developmental Medicine and author of Parents and Young Mentally Handicapped Children: A Review of Research Issues.

Tony Attwood is a practicing clinical psychologist who specialises in the field of Asperger's Syndrome. For the last 25 years he has met and worked with several hundred individuals with this syndrome, ranging widely in age, ability and background.