Helping individuals build their social competencies

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What is Grey Area Thinkers?

Grey Area Thinkers provides neurodiversity-centred services for clients aged 4 to adult in the Edmonton area.

I am pleased to offer both in-person and virtual sessions through Zoom and Google Meet!

Grey Area Thinkers provides assessment and dynamic, individualized services to help individuals reach their social goals.

  • Social self-awareness
  • Perspective taking/theory of mind
  • Self-regulation
  • Emotional awareness
  • Executive functioning
  • Organizational skills
  • Reading comprehension
  • Written expression
  • and more

Nicole Hnatiuk (she/her) is a neurodiversity-affirming occupational therapist/social-cognitive therapist in Edmonton, Alberta.

Nicole received her Bachelor of Science (2010) and Master of Science-Occupational Therapy (2012) from the University of Alberta. She begins her work on her doctorate degree in Fall 2023. Nicole works as an occupational therapist in a local school district, working with children from ages 4-20, including social-emotional learning & regulation programming. Nicole’s interest in social-emotional learning & regulation began when she noticed that many educators ask for strategies for kids who struggled with social interactions. Nicole is passionate about building her skills in social-emotional learning, regulation and neurodiversity-affirming programming.

Beliefs

  • All brains are valuable and valued.
  • Successful therapy happens when a person trusts their therapist and finds joy during a session.
  • Collaboration between the therapist and the client/family is essential to therapy.
  • The focus should be on a client’s strengths instead of challenges.
  • Clients will not be taught “social skills” with the goal of making others more comfortable. Their social differences should be celebrated. Instead, clients should learn about their brains, their communication styles (and the styles of others) and self-advocate to live a joyful, authentic life.
  • If a therapist is working with a neurodivergent population, they need to listen and engage with that particular neurodivergent community.

Training

Client Reviews

I was so impressed by how quickly Nicole was able to pinpoint the areas that my child needed to work on most. Since starting therapy, my daughter has been able to apply learned skills to daily life with increased independence. We’ve also seen a huge shift in her mindset and the level of awareness of herself and others. She feels extremely empowered working with Nicole and looks forward to each of their sessions. I would definitely recommend Nicole as a therapist.

Mother of Client, Age 16

Nicole is funny, smart, caring and she is great with helping kids deal with their problems.

Client, Age 14

Our daughter has been meeting with Nicole weekly for about 6 months. They have a very good relationship and she looks forward to every session. Nicole has provided us with some excellent tools which work well with our daughter and we put into practice as much as we can. We have definitely noticed a difference in our daughter's awareness of herself and also how she interacts with our family and others in the community. We would highly recommend Nicole!

Parents of Client, Age 14

Blog

My Thoughts and Musings.

  • Hello, and welcome to my blog! I have been working extensively in social thinking for most of my career as an occupational therapist, mainly in schools.

    I’ve done work with whole classrooms, but my main focus for the last few years has been small groups & individual sessions, and how to make those sessions work in the schools. Now I decided to branch out into the community to provide services to people who may not have access to social thinking!

    After completing Social Thinking Clinical Training in January 2018, I realized that beyond the Social Thinking conferences (which I love btw), there was no other real formal training that I could get!

    So in July 2019, I decided to volunteer at the Social Thinking-Stevens Creek clinic to learn more about groups and different strategies that I could take back with me to Edmonton. It was truly a fantastic experience.

    I learned so much and I now have wonderful people in San Jose that I can consult with. I will be sharing various articles, strategies, and activities on this blog, so please be sure to check back here soon!

  • Here is a strategy that I was introduced to at Social Thinking-Stevens Creek!

    This is the levels of like rating scale. You can use this in a variety of ways-the example I provided was for playground games. You could give each student a colored post-it and ask them to rate different things (gym games to play, things to play a recess, basically anything that can be rated) and this will give you a visual way to see what others prefer in comparison to themselves.

    For example, I put soccer at hate, but the rest of my class put soccer at LOVE, then maybe I need to be flexible with my plan and play soccer. Or if you have a smaller group, and one kid puts soccer at love and one kid puts it at hate BUT they both put kickball at love-then kickball is the game to play!

    IMPORTANT: if the student has never tried the thing, it automatically will go to okay because you have no information to make a smart guess of how you will actually feel about it, so you have to try it a few times before you can properly rate it!



  • This popped up on my Instagram and I think it's a really important reminder that self-regulation is a complex and multi-layered skill that takes time, patience and teaching to help kids master. It's not as easy as saying "control yourself"!

Say Hello!

I would love to hear your questions or concerns - Please email me at any time and I will get back to you as soon as possible.