Contact us:
The Toby Henderson Trust,
Toby House,
Earth Balance,
Bedlington,
Northumberland,
NE22 7AD
The Toby Henderson Trust,
The Autism Hub,
10 Gordon Street,
South Shields,
Tyne and Wear,
NE33 4JP
XR Therapeutics
GROUNDBREAKING NEW SERVICE
Fears, Phobias and Anxieties in Autism
Do you, or your autistic child / young person have any anxieties, phobias or fears which you want to address and ultimately overcome ?
At Toby House, Bedlington in Northumberland we now have a specially designed and equipped XR room from which we are both excited and proud to be offering an intervention which uses a carefully stepped, adaptive and person led form of CBT alongside using interactive scenes on the VR (an immersive Virtual Reality screen) in our XR room. This advanced technology coupled with our adaptive, person-led therapeutic approach offers the opportunity to alleviate, if not completely solve, these very challenging and often life limiting difficulties manifesting from anxieties, fears and phobias.
In this specially created environment, our trained TTHT staff merge cutting edge tailored immersive technology alongside a very much adapted form of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy techniques to be guided by the “patient” at their pace as to how slowly or quickly they wish to proceed with the intervention. They are ALWAYS in control of the pace and situation and can leave the XR scenes for relaxation at any time (and re-visit such as they wish). This approach accelerates traditional talking therapies in an integrative way, which in turn impacts upon effectiveness and efficiency. It helps people to face their feared situation in a sensitively stepped and controlled way, with a therapist alongside coaching them in managing anxiety.
Please be assured that, as with everything else we do, we adopt a sensitive, gentle and adaptable approach. This intervention provides the individual with tailored and neuro – affirming support like nothing before – often producing significant and timely results where other previous therapies have failed.
Our partners in this work are the award winning XR Therapeutics, founded by Dr Morag Maskey and Professor Jeremy Parr, after groundbreaking research was carried out at the University of Newcastle to create and roll out the technology. To date, this service is in its infancy, but we are already delighted to report success with a fear of going to the dentist, emetophobia (fear of vomit / sick) and are about to commence on work around a fear of alarms and sirens.
This year, The Toby Henderson Trust is hugely proud to be 1 of the only 4 such sites in the UK. For more information, please contact support@ttht.co.uk. PLEASE NOTE: This is a chargeable service but is heavily subsidised by charitable endeavours and donations.
Recent feedback from families:
After the intervention for emetophobia (fear of vomiting and sickness) –
“X managed to sit in the vets with us last week where the vet mentioned sick several times and X managed to stay in the room by distracting herself. I did prepare X beforehand and say the vet would say these things. X has never been able to go to the vets when the dog has been poorly before over the worry of this so that was a big step and that would never have happened before the XR Therapy”.
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Very interestingly, after the intervention for fear of going to the dentist –
“The first noticed change was conquering a separate fear of using escalators. Mum said “ X really enjoyed the intervention with you and has been telling anyone who will listen about it. Unfortunately I haven’t managed to find a suitable dentist yet so we haven’t been able to try it out in the real world…..as yet! However, your intervention has directly led to one particular success. Remember I told you that she was terrified of escalators, to the point that she would be shaking and crying at the thought of using one? Well, we’d been talking about the things she learned and saw during the sessions and she’d clearly been thinking about it. On holiday during the Summer, X saw a really small escalator (honestly, it was comically short, just 3 steps worth), and decided off her own bat to try it. It took all her courage but she finally did it, and then we were there for a good half hour, up and down, up and down. We took this opportunity to talk with her about how this is a bit like the stuff you’d done with her – start small and build up. So that’s what she did, all led by her! Now we are at the point where she can use the up escalators on her own (in fact she prefers it because “I don’t need your help, Mum”) and she can use down ones around about 50% of the time holding someone’s hand. I’d say that’s a definite win – not just for the escalator thing which was often a huge problem for us, but also for her confidence. She looks so proud of herself when she’s done it and if she tells me she can’t do something I’ll bring up the fact that she conquered that huge fear on her own which often really helps her. We can’t thank you enough!”