mental health professionals, Asperger patients and educators
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"To whom it may concern,
As Medical Director of Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center and a practicing psychiatrist, I clearly see the benefits of the FEL!X application. FEL!X is a powerful customizable and immersive game-like application that utilizes the successful therapeutic technique “mentalization*.” Not only will FEL!X augment our daily practices and build patient/caregiver rapport, it will also help grow our patient base and assist us in attracting and retaining high-caliber staff. Other benefits include the collection of behavioral data through the software, and the extension of mental health tools into the community. FEL!X could even bridge the gap between mental health care and schools.
After multiple demonstrations and discussions, my staff is enthusiastic about helping shape and utilize FEL!X to enhance their practices. Among her credits, Gottfried developed a second-screen TV multi-platform experience for AMC/Sundance Channel Global’s most popular show, Breaking Bad. The Breaking Bad GraffitiWall encouraged tune in by capturing the tone of the show and allowing fans to role play their favorite Breaking Bad personas, during its airing. Membership to the Breaking Bad GraffitiWall was larger than the Twitter membership for AMC/Sundance Channel Global as well as more than their entire subscriber-base.
According to the staff, advantages of this software include the following:
• It uses fun, game-based and immersive first person role-playing activities to nurture empathy.
• It uses displacement, allowing patients to delve deeply into issues to explore relationships from multiple points of view.
• It creates an environment for patients to practice and master therapeutic techniques.
• It can be used as a fun, relaxing activity, and a distraction mechanism to avoid harming oneself and others.
• It takes advantage of computer and mobile strengths, such as making videos and selfies, communicating through various forms of multimedia, and social sharing.
• It allows for customization, enabling mental health professionals to add new activities that focus on different behavioral health objectives."
Dr. Kenneth Watanabe
Medical Director and Certified in Forensic Psychiatry
Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
University of Colorado Health System
4601 Corbett Dr, Fort Collins, CO 80528
####
“I
was impressed with how user friendly FEL!X
is. It has the capacity to capture a wide age range of audiences by targeting
specific topics that have a critical need to be addressed.”
“The
reward system that is included is a definite plus for youth, and I see great
potential for FEL!X to be a valuable
tool for teachers and counselors to help improve academic and social
functioning for youth of all ages.”
Usha Udupa
Psychiatrist and attending
physician
Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
University of Colorado
####
“The particular FEL!X I
saw dealt with bullying, but unlike other attempts I have witnessed, this
software cleverly used a historical vignette to address several teaching and
therapeutic principles: empathy, mirroring, validation, and freedom from black
and white thinking.”
“FEL!X could
be a powerful tool in teaching civics, but as a psychiatrist I would be
particularly interested in its implementation as a vehicle to discuss traumatic
events in the school setting, especially in light of the fact that the
literature shows that the critical incident debriefing technique is not as
effective as we would like. FEL!X could
fill that void.”
Hermann Moreno
Psychiatrist and
attending physician; associate professor
Mountain Crest Behavioral
Healthcare Center
University of Colorado
####
"Each day, every day we wake and put both feet
on the floor. The day is full of unexpected circumstances, and we respond
to them as a community and as an individual. The decisions that face us
have an unknown outcome, and we try to use these growing experiences to better
inform choices the next day.
All
too often, we teach and understand history while knowing the punchline to the
joke. Events seem inevitable; steps taken seem obvious in their value or
their mistake. One of the most important practices in history education
is to engage students in historical empathy - that is, to consider that
each day figures in the past responded to the circumstances with the knowledge
available to them just as we do today. They interact with each other;
they consider choices and pathways; they do the best they can to grapple
through complex problems and issues. FEL!X is an ideal tool to
practice and develop strong historical empathy by inviting students to assume
the roles of experts and leaders in the moment - without nostalgia, without
present-ism. I believe that this work is critically valuable to the way
we educate our students today."
Andy Mink
Vice President of Educational Programs
National Humanities Center
####
“As a practicing Child Psychiatrist for over 20 years, I wish to express my excitement over the potential good that can be gained with FEL!X. There is not a day that goes by in our clinic that we don’t encounter the damage and pain that results from bullying. Not only the victims of the bully, but the bully themselves exhibit symptoms of mental illness that endure for years if not for life. Unfortunately, the various programs implemented within the school system have proven ineffective in eliciting change in the power dynamic that perpetuates the bullying paradigm that not only infiltrates the relationships between kids, but adults as well.
FEL!X, on the other hand, is truly unique in its approach at digging at the root of the reason we believe bullying has reached epidemic proportions. In other words, FEL!X was designed to develop empathy. FEL!X, in my opinion, is tricky and manipulative in that the people who essentially feel like they’re merely playing a fun video game are actually being lulled into actually developing new social skills. FEL!X, I believe, would be particularly effective embedded in a curriculum such as in a school system or a long term treatment facility. I hope those concerned about the well being of developing children understand how important FEL!X can be.”
Joe Gottfried MD
Board Certified Child and
Adolescent Psychiatrist
Board Certified Adult Psychiatrist
Mountain Crest Behavioral
Healthcare Center
####
"FEL!X has
very innovative ideas with great potential for positively influencing the study
of American history while at the same time having students wrestle with the
tough but very important questions they will face as American citizens."
Tim Bailey
Director of Education
Gilder Lehrman Institute of
American History
####
“I really like the historical component. For me,
that’s engaging. I wouldn’t say it sneaks the empathy piece but I think it’s
cool how it’s worked-in seamlessly.”
“I really like the interactive component is
really cool. With the adolescent population, if there’s not engagement I get no
engagement.”
Role-playing other personas: “Metaphor is very
important in therapy. You allow people to step back and see things through a
different lens or a different setting and sometimes that’s what it takes to
have the tumblers fall into place.”
Using the FEL!X
App to perfect social skills: “For interpersonal effectiveness skills, the
module we do, I assign homework every night. People always have something
they’re working on outside of group, which could easily include assigning FEL!X activities as homework.”
Martin R Maxwell, Jr
LCSW; Cognitive & Behavioral Psychology
Mountain Crest Behavioral
Healthcare Center
####
“I do experiential group therapy, like FEL!X, we take a concept and have
people actually do things instead of having people just talk about it.”
Being part of the Advisory team of mental health
professionals and Asperger patients: “I LOVE IT! Even if I was in the corner
watching FEL!X develop, it’s been
inspirational to me to know that people are going to these lengths to listen to
the patients’ point of view.”
“I love that FEL!X
is interactive and that’s where the best learning takes place during that type
of atmosphere.”
“FEL!X is
cutting edge!”
“FEL!X
takes the theoretical and makes it practical allowing one to truly
make changes in their life.”
FEL!X is
all about getting all sorts of points of view and being able to look at other
people’s positions so as to honestly say “oh, I never considered that position
before.”
Benefits of Role-Playing: “One of the skills we
try to teach patients is interpersonal communications - effective
communications. And there’s so many obstacles that can get in the way if we
assume or take things out of context and how old tapes keep getting played over
and over. With FEL!X, you can
actually role-play different situations and to safely test out theories.”
“It’s all about perception. I have a wooden
bookend with a carved horse head on one end. I ask some of the kids to look at
the side and others to look directly at the head portion. I ask them to
describe what they see. One set of kids see a block of wood and the others see
the horse. Who’s right? They both are.”
Benefits of encouraging a community atmosphere: “In
group therapy we go for the feeling of connectedness. With the sharing of ideas
and sharing of experiences, group enables one to feel: ‘I’m not the only person
who struggles with this. I’m not alone.’”
“I believe stepping out of your comfort zone is
where change and learning takes place. And with FEL!X one can test new approaches in a safe place. (Take video
selfies of the activities and upload for feedback.) Better to test concepts
that way vs try them out in a room of people, which could be more intimidating.
And there’s the added distance using a computer program, which may give them a
buffer allowing them to dip my toes in the water before diving in head first.”
“When you practice skills there’s a learning
curve. The more you practice the better the skills become. I can imagine a
group that is all jittery initially for stepping out and taking risks. But they
can become each others greatest cheer leaders because they are going to know
what it took for that person to take that step, and they are going to know that
sense of accomplishment when you get that positive feedback. That feeling of
confidence!”
“Computer programs and videos often tend to close
people off, but FEL!X is one that
can bring people together. YAY!!!!! I can get behind that!”
Data: Video selfies as an ongoing report card: “FEL!X is getting patients to engage in a safe and
non-threatening way. Giving FEL!X as
homework I would like to see how much the patients engaged and see an
alleviation of symptoms, an increase in skills.”
“It would be a wonderful bridge for that one-on-one
individual therapy and then stuff that could be ongoing. FELIX can provide a training tool. So when a therapist says, this
is what I’d like you to work on, the patient can go home and use FEL!X and the therapist can track
progress.“
“FEL!X is a conduit - it’s a
great conversation piece. It’s a tool a patient can practice on their own as
well as come together with their therapist and talk about their experiences.”
Meredith
Psychologist
Mountain Crest Behavioral
Healthcare Center
####
The FEL!X App: “I’m a huge nerd. I love games and gamers, and I love that this is going to help people. Like so people can have an easier time than I did....The reason I like this so much…it’s like you’re there.... It makes you feel included.”
“What made me so good at talking to people, is a
lot of practice and watching people—the way their expressions change, or the
gestures they use with their hands—like their body language.”
“Bullying is really hard, and it affects your life.
I really know, because I’ve been there. I was bullied all throughout middle
school. And as I perfected my social skills, it started to go away, and I
started to feel better about myself.”
“Social skills affect your relationships and what
people think about you. And I feel that would be the most important thing to
work on.”
The FEL!X App video selfies: “It really gives you some insight on how you’re doing, and what you’re doing wrong. It’s encouraging. If they can do it, I can do it, too.”
“Having a palpable reward system… makes you want to
work harder. Like I’m going to get that trophy.”
The FEL!X App is multiplayer role-playing: “I like the interacting with
other players aspect, because they can understand. It’s that feeling of camaraderie
that connects you. It’s a comfort.”
Ashley
Teen: a future mega star actress who's diagnosed with Aspergers
Patient at Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
####
Benefits of the FEL!X App Team of Mental Health Professionals and autism
Patients: “You get different mind sets going. Different people have different
mind sets. The different people I’ve met who have autism and Aspergers,
definitely think a lot alike where logical things seem to click more - more for
us than others. Being logical makes working on software a lot easier.”
Building a community of people with autism
spectrum via FEL!X: “It
would provide a wider power that we couldn’t have on our own. Because,
while we may think alike, we may not be thinking of the same idea. So, while I
may have the first half of the equation, someone else may have the last half.
This adds up so it becomes hundreds and hundreds of pieces.”
Role-Playing: “I participate in Dungeons and Dragons and live action role-playing. I tend to find it a little difficult in ways others find it easy and easy in ways others find it difficult. For example, certain relationships and social skills that many take for granted - where they’re born with it - they don’t train themselves for those skills. It just flows for them. Those aren’t my best skills. So I’ve worked on face recognition, emotion recognition, tone recognition,…and train myself to recognize deeper meanings to people’s expressions....In training myself to recognize emotions, a facial expression that others might read as “sad” I may consider it “thoughtful"….deep in thought almost, just from very tiny cues I pick up on.”
The benefits of FEL!X role-playing: “I used to spend too much time looking at other
people and how they do things. It wasn’t until I looked more upon myself and
how I was already doing things that all I needed to do was to adapt for other
people, then things started to go great for me. When I’m happy, how do I
express that, what do I sound like, what do I look like, is that what most
people do. With FEL!X, having that
role-playing puts you into someone else shoes, so you can stand outside
yourself and see from a different perspective. See from an outside perspective.”
Practicing social skills via the FEL!X app: “This will help me step
outside myself to get a different perspectives on emotion, social interaction,
tones - tones are tough - what sort of tones express different meanings….People
don’t walk up to you and tell you ‘This is what I look like when I’m
happy’ so you have to pick that up on your own. No one is going to hand hold
you everyday to show you social skills. This app could be a reference so you
can refer to FEL!X and see an
archive of expressions and let you improve those skills from an outside
perspective.”
“I like that FEL!X teaches you the skills without lecturing. It does it through experience. This is good because I learn visually and through experience myself. It would help me definitely...Showing through experience, prior experiences, through historical events, things that we already know about but you see from a different perspective is a better way to go about learning.”
“In the past, I made a list of people that I based my decisions off of. I looked at the similarities and the differences. In my head, I made a compare and contrast chart of the decisions they made, the results, the differences and similarities of the events. With the FEL!X app’s historical role-playing it allows one to step outside myself and base different skills on the prior experiences/results of others and then comparing how they compare with my own. This gives one a perspective you can’t normally get. Use other people’s experiences as a template to refer to...Learning social skills. It’s not just for people with Aspergers but it applies to everyone.”
Josh
A brilliant programmer who's diagnosed with Aspergers
Patient at Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
####
“Any role-playing when you are young, gives you a structured environment in which to operate. Structure is important for people on the autism spectrum. Creating a safe environment: If you’re playing a role, there are certain things you know are going to happen. For example, with FEL!X, if you’re doing the bullying component that takes place in the Colorado mining incident and you pick one of the roles, you know what the character is or is not going to do. So one is not going to do anything totally unexpected. And with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) people, no surprises is always good.”
“Role-playing as an adult: It’s always useful to
be in a structured environment. I still like going to the dog park because
I know there’ll be people, who are going to talk about dogs. When I play poker,
all I’m going to talk about is poker. No surprises and it’s a reasonably
structured environment.”
“Benefits of role-playing: You can step outside
yourself a bit. For example, if you’re feeling suicidal, you can envision
yourself playing Hamlet or play the role of Hamlet.
So you’re portraying this emotion and I’m actually feeling it but it
isn’t me. Once again, there’s that difference between you yourself and the
character you’re trying to role-play. You can distance yourself.”
Misunderstanding facial expressions: “One of the
problems when I was a child gets back to the good engine / bad transmission.
When I was a child I had my IQ tested every other year from k-12. The results
were: he does so well on the IQ test but does so poorly in school. One day my
parents were fighting. They were wondering how to motivate me and what they could
do to help. I saw my mom in profile, I thought she was smiling when she
actually was sneering or snarling at my father. Since I thought she
was smiling, I started smiling. Then suddenly, they both looked at me and
said ‘He’s laughing at us.’ Then things got really bad.”
FEL!X’s
reward system: “Having a reward system gives one immediate feedback. The
problem for me at work when they do the annual rating: ‘This is for the
wonderful stuff you did 7 or 8 months ago. Oh that was wonderful!’ Hmmmm….Oh I
guess it was.”
“When I was 6 or 7, I realized I was not like
other kids. I spent a lot of time being introspective. What is it about me?
There wasn’t much out there - there was one Asperger article in 1948.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was good at and not
good at. The advantage of joining the Navy, as opposed to the other armed
services, is you’re out at sea and there’s not a whole lot much you can do but
read and think when you’re off duty. That’s when I discovered I’m very good
at thinking in structural or systems type of things.”
“I think in structures and systems. When someone
says think of a ‘steeple’, I don’t think of steeple-ness - I don’t see a
steeple. I think of the system underlying the steeple. I consider its
properties or the system that makes a steeple.”
“Wish I had FEL!X
as a child. It could have helped with facial expressions. In the GAO (U.S.
Government Accountability Office) we do a lot of interviewing. I wasn’t much of
an interviewer because with effective interviewing, you have to have
a degree of empathy and understanding of the person you’re talking to. And
you have to be able to make small talk. I knew some guys who spent half of the
time in the interview discussing baseball. Then they’d get to the stuff they
needed, after establishing a bond with the person they were talking to, who
then basically poured their heart out. I tended to be very formal and just
handed out a list of questions, let’s go through them - ask them to answer them
and that’s it. I had to figure out what I was doing wrong. I realized I
didn’t look them in the eye. I was monotone. Way too formal.“
“Every now and then someone would tell me the
truth about my lack of social skills. One advantage we have over other people
is we don’t take it personally. But I’m more sensitive to injustices and
lack of fairness.”
“FEL!X
nurtures empathy. The notion of role-playing characters via FEL!X, you consider what the character
is thinking or feeling and why do you think they are feeling that way. What is
their perspective.”
“I like playing poker so much because I can work
on theories of mine. I analyze, why did they make that bet? What possible
cards could they be holding? A mixture of analytical and empathy. In
poker there’s a fair amount of emotional and people reading skills.”
“Being ASD (autism spectrum disorder) and highly
functioning takes a lot of effort. In the back of my mind I’m always self
monitoring - am I talking too much or not enough, make sure my clothes are
right. A lot of it is cross cultural competency stuff that I’ve learned over
the years and over different situations.”
“I constantly intellectualize how I need to respond to different situations.”
“It's easier for me to work by myself
in isolation in the cubicle so I can be what I am.”
“Everything is done for a reason.”
“I like structured situations. If I go to the dog
park, all we’re going to talk about is dogs.”
“FEL!X
is considerably more constrained then what you’re going to find in real life.
You can practice. It’s like crawl, walk, run. If I can function in a
structured environment I can then function in a less structured and then in a
completely unstructured.”
Tim
Brilliant and super analytical researcher who's diagnosed with Aspergers
Patient at Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
- Widgetize
- My Profile
- My Network
- Network Invites
- Profile Search
- Members Currently on this Wall
- Public
- Private
"To whom it may concern,
As Medical Director of Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center and a practicing psychiatrist, I clearly see the benefits of the FEL!X application. FEL!X is a powerful customizable and immersive game-like application that utilizes the successful therapeutic technique “mentalization*.” Not only will FEL!X augment our daily practices and build patient/caregiver rapport, it will also help grow our patient base and assist us in attracting and retaining high-caliber staff. Other benefits include the collection of behavioral data through the software, and the extension of mental health tools into the community. FEL!X could even bridge the gap between mental health care and schools.
After multiple demonstrations and discussions, my staff is enthusiastic about helping shape and utilize FEL!X to enhance their practices. Among her credits, Gottfried developed a second-screen TV multi-platform experience for AMC/Sundance Channel Global’s most popular show, Breaking Bad. The Breaking Bad GraffitiWall encouraged tune in by capturing the tone of the show and allowing fans to role play their favorite Breaking Bad personas, during its airing. Membership to the Breaking Bad GraffitiWall was larger than the Twitter membership for AMC/Sundance Channel Global as well as more than their entire subscriber-base.
According to the staff, advantages of this software include the following:
• It uses fun, game-based and immersive first person role-playing activities to nurture empathy.
• It uses displacement, allowing patients to delve deeply into issues to explore relationships from multiple points of view.
• It creates an environment for patients to practice and master therapeutic techniques.
• It can be used as a fun, relaxing activity, and a distraction mechanism to avoid harming oneself and others.
• It takes advantage of computer and mobile strengths, such as making videos and selfies, communicating through various forms of multimedia, and social sharing.
• It allows for customization, enabling mental health professionals to add new activities that focus on different behavioral health objectives."
Dr. Kenneth Watanabe
Medical Director and Certified in Forensic Psychiatry
Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
University of Colorado Health System
4601 Corbett Dr, Fort Collins, CO 80528
####
“I was impressed with how user friendly FEL!X is. It has the capacity to capture a wide age range of audiences by targeting specific topics that have a critical need to be addressed.”
“The reward system that is included is a definite plus for youth, and I see great potential for FEL!X to be a valuable tool for teachers and counselors to help improve academic and social functioning for youth of all ages.”
Usha Udupa
Psychiatrist and attending physician
Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
University of Colorado
####
“The particular FEL!X I saw dealt with bullying, but unlike other attempts I have witnessed, this software cleverly used a historical vignette to address several teaching and therapeutic principles: empathy, mirroring, validation, and freedom from black and white thinking.”
“FEL!X could be a powerful tool in teaching civics, but as a psychiatrist I would be particularly interested in its implementation as a vehicle to discuss traumatic events in the school setting, especially in light of the fact that the literature shows that the critical incident debriefing technique is not as effective as we would like. FEL!X could fill that void.”
Hermann Moreno
Psychiatrist and attending physician; associate professor
Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
University of Colorado
####
"Each day, every day we wake and put both feet on the floor. The day is full of unexpected circumstances, and we respond to them as a community and as an individual. The decisions that face us have an unknown outcome, and we try to use these growing experiences to better inform choices the next day.
All too often, we teach and understand history while knowing the punchline to the joke. Events seem inevitable; steps taken seem obvious in their value or their mistake. One of the most important practices in history education is to engage students in historical empathy - that is, to consider that each day figures in the past responded to the circumstances with the knowledge available to them just as we do today. They interact with each other; they consider choices and pathways; they do the best they can to grapple through complex problems and issues. FEL!X is an ideal tool to practice and develop strong historical empathy by inviting students to assume the roles of experts and leaders in the moment - without nostalgia, without present-ism. I believe that this work is critically valuable to the way we educate our students today."
Andy Mink
Vice President of Educational Programs
National Humanities Center
####
“As a practicing Child Psychiatrist for over 20 years, I wish to express my excitement over the potential good that can be gained with FEL!X. There is not a day that goes by in our clinic that we don’t encounter the damage and pain that results from bullying. Not only the victims of the bully, but the bully themselves exhibit symptoms of mental illness that endure for years if not for life. Unfortunately, the various programs implemented within the school system have proven ineffective in eliciting change in the power dynamic that perpetuates the bullying paradigm that not only infiltrates the relationships between kids, but adults as well.
FEL!X, on the other hand, is truly unique in its approach at digging at the root of the reason we believe bullying has reached epidemic proportions. In other words, FEL!X was designed to develop empathy. FEL!X, in my opinion, is tricky and manipulative in that the people who essentially feel like they’re merely playing a fun video game are actually being lulled into actually developing new social skills. FEL!X, I believe, would be particularly effective embedded in a curriculum such as in a school system or a long term treatment facility. I hope those concerned about the well being of developing children understand how important FEL!X can be.”
Joe Gottfried MD
Board Certified Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
Board Certified Adult Psychiatrist
Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
####
"FEL!X has very innovative ideas with great potential for positively influencing the study of American history while at the same time having students wrestle with the tough but very important questions they will face as American citizens."
Tim Bailey
Director of Education
Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
####
“I really like the historical component. For me, that’s engaging. I wouldn’t say it sneaks the empathy piece but I think it’s cool how it’s worked-in seamlessly.”
“I really like the interactive component is really cool. With the adolescent population, if there’s not engagement I get no engagement.”
Role-playing other personas: “Metaphor is very important in therapy. You allow people to step back and see things through a different lens or a different setting and sometimes that’s what it takes to have the tumblers fall into place.”
Using the FEL!X App to perfect social skills: “For interpersonal effectiveness skills, the module we do, I assign homework every night. People always have something they’re working on outside of group, which could easily include assigning FEL!X activities as homework.”
Martin R Maxwell, Jr
LCSW; Cognitive & Behavioral Psychology
Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
####
“I do experiential group therapy, like FEL!X, we take a concept and have people actually do things instead of having people just talk about it.”
Being part of the Advisory team of mental health professionals and Asperger patients: “I LOVE IT! Even if I was in the corner watching FEL!X develop, it’s been inspirational to me to know that people are going to these lengths to listen to the patients’ point of view.”
“I love that FEL!X is interactive and that’s where the best learning takes place during that type of atmosphere.”
“FEL!X is cutting edge!”
“FEL!X takes the theoretical and makes it practical allowing one to truly make changes in their life.”
FEL!X is all about getting all sorts of points of view and being able to look at other people’s positions so as to honestly say “oh, I never considered that position before.”
Benefits of Role-Playing: “One of the skills we try to teach patients is interpersonal communications - effective communications. And there’s so many obstacles that can get in the way if we assume or take things out of context and how old tapes keep getting played over and over. With FEL!X, you can actually role-play different situations and to safely test out theories.”
“It’s all about perception. I have a wooden bookend with a carved horse head on one end. I ask some of the kids to look at the side and others to look directly at the head portion. I ask them to describe what they see. One set of kids see a block of wood and the others see the horse. Who’s right? They both are.”
Benefits of encouraging a community atmosphere: “In group therapy we go for the feeling of connectedness. With the sharing of ideas and sharing of experiences, group enables one to feel: ‘I’m not the only person who struggles with this. I’m not alone.’”
“I believe stepping out of your comfort zone is where change and learning takes place. And with FEL!X one can test new approaches in a safe place. (Take video selfies of the activities and upload for feedback.) Better to test concepts that way vs try them out in a room of people, which could be more intimidating. And there’s the added distance using a computer program, which may give them a buffer allowing them to dip my toes in the water before diving in head first.”
“When you practice skills there’s a learning curve. The more you practice the better the skills become. I can imagine a group that is all jittery initially for stepping out and taking risks. But they can become each others greatest cheer leaders because they are going to know what it took for that person to take that step, and they are going to know that sense of accomplishment when you get that positive feedback. That feeling of confidence!”
“Computer programs and videos often tend to close people off, but FEL!X is one that can bring people together. YAY!!!!! I can get behind that!”
Data: Video selfies as an ongoing report card: “FEL!X is getting patients to engage in a safe and non-threatening way. Giving FEL!X as homework I would like to see how much the patients engaged and see an alleviation of symptoms, an increase in skills.”
“It would be a wonderful bridge for that one-on-one individual therapy and then stuff that could be ongoing. FELIX can provide a training tool. So when a therapist says, this is what I’d like you to work on, the patient can go home and use FEL!X and the therapist can track progress.“
“FEL!X is a conduit - it’s a great conversation piece. It’s a tool a patient can practice on their own as well as come together with their therapist and talk about their experiences.”
Meredith
Psychologist
Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
####
The FEL!X App: “I’m a huge nerd. I love games and gamers, and I love that this is going to help people. Like so people can have an easier time than I did....The reason I like this so much…it’s like you’re there.... It makes you feel included.”
“What made me so good at talking to people, is a lot of practice and watching people—the way their expressions change, or the gestures they use with their hands—like their body language.”
“Bullying is really hard, and it affects your life. I really know, because I’ve been there. I was bullied all throughout middle school. And as I perfected my social skills, it started to go away, and I started to feel better about myself.”
“Social skills affect your relationships and what people think about you. And I feel that would be the most important thing to work on.”
The FEL!X App video selfies: “It really gives you some insight on how you’re doing, and what you’re doing wrong. It’s encouraging. If they can do it, I can do it, too.”
“Having a palpable reward system… makes you want to work harder. Like I’m going to get that trophy.”
The FEL!X App is multiplayer role-playing: “I like the interacting with other players aspect, because they can understand. It’s that feeling of camaraderie that connects you. It’s a comfort.”
Ashley
Teen: a future mega star actress who's diagnosed with Aspergers
Patient at Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
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Benefits of the FEL!X App Team of Mental Health Professionals and autism Patients: “You get different mind sets going. Different people have different mind sets. The different people I’ve met who have autism and Aspergers, definitely think a lot alike where logical things seem to click more - more for us than others. Being logical makes working on software a lot easier.”
Building a community of people with autism spectrum via FEL!X: “It would provide a wider power that we couldn’t have on our own. Because, while we may think alike, we may not be thinking of the same idea. So, while I may have the first half of the equation, someone else may have the last half. This adds up so it becomes hundreds and hundreds of pieces.”
Role-Playing: “I participate in Dungeons and Dragons and live action role-playing. I tend to find it a little difficult in ways others find it easy and easy in ways others find it difficult. For example, certain relationships and social skills that many take for granted - where they’re born with it - they don’t train themselves for those skills. It just flows for them. Those aren’t my best skills. So I’ve worked on face recognition, emotion recognition, tone recognition,…and train myself to recognize deeper meanings to people’s expressions....In training myself to recognize emotions, a facial expression that others might read as “sad” I may consider it “thoughtful"….deep in thought almost, just from very tiny cues I pick up on.”
The benefits of FEL!X role-playing: “I used to spend too much time looking at other people and how they do things. It wasn’t until I looked more upon myself and how I was already doing things that all I needed to do was to adapt for other people, then things started to go great for me. When I’m happy, how do I express that, what do I sound like, what do I look like, is that what most people do. With FEL!X, having that role-playing puts you into someone else shoes, so you can stand outside yourself and see from a different perspective. See from an outside perspective.”
Practicing social skills via the FEL!X app: “This will help me step outside myself to get a different perspectives on emotion, social interaction, tones - tones are tough - what sort of tones express different meanings….People don’t walk up to you and tell you ‘This is what I look like when I’m happy’ so you have to pick that up on your own. No one is going to hand hold you everyday to show you social skills. This app could be a reference so you can refer to FEL!X and see an archive of expressions and let you improve those skills from an outside perspective.”
“I like that FEL!X teaches you the skills without lecturing. It does it through experience. This is good because I learn visually and through experience myself. It would help me definitely...Showing through experience, prior experiences, through historical events, things that we already know about but you see from a different perspective is a better way to go about learning.”
“In the past, I made a list of people that I based my decisions off of. I looked at the similarities and the differences. In my head, I made a compare and contrast chart of the decisions they made, the results, the differences and similarities of the events. With the FEL!X app’s historical role-playing it allows one to step outside myself and base different skills on the prior experiences/results of others and then comparing how they compare with my own. This gives one a perspective you can’t normally get. Use other people’s experiences as a template to refer to...Learning social skills. It’s not just for people with Aspergers but it applies to everyone.”
Josh
A brilliant programmer who's diagnosed with Aspergers
Patient at Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center
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“Any role-playing when you are young, gives you a structured environment in which to operate. Structure is important for people on the autism spectrum. Creating a safe environment: If you’re playing a role, there are certain things you know are going to happen. For example, with FEL!X, if you’re doing the bullying component that takes place in the Colorado mining incident and you pick one of the roles, you know what the character is or is not going to do. So one is not going to do anything totally unexpected. And with ASD (autism spectrum disorder) people, no surprises is always good.”
“Role-playing as an adult: It’s always useful to be in a structured environment. I still like going to the dog park because I know there’ll be people, who are going to talk about dogs. When I play poker, all I’m going to talk about is poker. No surprises and it’s a reasonably structured environment.”
“Benefits of role-playing: You can step outside yourself a bit. For example, if you’re feeling suicidal, you can envision yourself playing Hamlet or play the role of Hamlet. So you’re portraying this emotion and I’m actually feeling it but it isn’t me. Once again, there’s that difference between you yourself and the character you’re trying to role-play. You can distance yourself.”
Misunderstanding facial expressions: “One of the problems when I was a child gets back to the good engine / bad transmission. When I was a child I had my IQ tested every other year from k-12. The results were: he does so well on the IQ test but does so poorly in school. One day my parents were fighting. They were wondering how to motivate me and what they could do to help. I saw my mom in profile, I thought she was smiling when she actually was sneering or snarling at my father. Since I thought she was smiling, I started smiling. Then suddenly, they both looked at me and said ‘He’s laughing at us.’ Then things got really bad.”
FEL!X’s reward system: “Having a reward system gives one immediate feedback. The problem for me at work when they do the annual rating: ‘This is for the wonderful stuff you did 7 or 8 months ago. Oh that was wonderful!’ Hmmmm….Oh I guess it was.”
“When I was 6 or 7, I realized I was not like other kids. I spent a lot of time being introspective. What is it about me? There wasn’t much out there - there was one Asperger article in 1948. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was good at and not good at. The advantage of joining the Navy, as opposed to the other armed services, is you’re out at sea and there’s not a whole lot much you can do but read and think when you’re off duty. That’s when I discovered I’m very good at thinking in structural or systems type of things.”
“I think in structures and systems. When someone says think of a ‘steeple’, I don’t think of steeple-ness - I don’t see a steeple. I think of the system underlying the steeple. I consider its properties or the system that makes a steeple.”
“Wish I had FEL!X as a child. It could have helped with facial expressions. In the GAO (U.S. Government Accountability Office) we do a lot of interviewing. I wasn’t much of an interviewer because with effective interviewing, you have to have a degree of empathy and understanding of the person you’re talking to. And you have to be able to make small talk. I knew some guys who spent half of the time in the interview discussing baseball. Then they’d get to the stuff they needed, after establishing a bond with the person they were talking to, who then basically poured their heart out. I tended to be very formal and just handed out a list of questions, let’s go through them - ask them to answer them and that’s it. I had to figure out what I was doing wrong. I realized I didn’t look them in the eye. I was monotone. Way too formal.“
“Every now and then someone would tell me the truth about my lack of social skills. One advantage we have over other people is we don’t take it personally. But I’m more sensitive to injustices and lack of fairness.”
“FEL!X nurtures empathy. The notion of role-playing characters via FEL!X, you consider what the character is thinking or feeling and why do you think they are feeling that way. What is their perspective.”
“I like playing poker so much because I can work on theories of mine. I analyze, why did they make that bet? What possible cards could they be holding? A mixture of analytical and empathy. In poker there’s a fair amount of emotional and people reading skills.”
“Being ASD (autism spectrum disorder) and highly functioning takes a lot of effort. In the back of my mind I’m always self monitoring - am I talking too much or not enough, make sure my clothes are right. A lot of it is cross cultural competency stuff that I’ve learned over the years and over different situations.”
“I constantly intellectualize how I need to respond to different situations.”
“It's easier for me to work by myself in isolation in the cubicle so I can be what I am.”
“Everything is done for a reason.”
“I like structured situations. If I go to the dog park, all we’re going to talk about is dogs.”
“FEL!X is considerably more constrained then what you’re going to find in real life. You can practice. It’s like crawl, walk, run. If I can function in a structured environment I can then function in a less structured and then in a completely unstructured.”
Tim
Brilliant and super analytical researcher who's diagnosed with Aspergers
Patient at Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center