I was always taught that to be gullible was a bad thing. Gullibility tends to suggest naivety, a lack of discernment, or an inability to recognise when someone is being dishonest or manipulative. We often value the ability to question, to notice inconsistencies, and to look beneath the surface of what someone is saying. Scepticism might be seen as a sign of maturity, and academic life often values critical and evaluative thinking, whereas being trusting is thought to leave us vulnerable.

So I grew up understanding that my own tendency to believe what people say was something that I needed to change. As a late-diagnosed autistic person, I am acutely aware that my natural way of relating to others has sometimes felt out of step with the social expectations around me. I’ve always tended to take people at face value. If someone tells me something, my instinct is usually to believe them. I do not naturally assume there is another meaning hidden beneath their words or that I need to work out what they “really” mean. I am straightforward in my communication, and I assume that other people are too.

As I grew up, at some point I realised that social communication often involved reading between the lines, noticing subtle changes in tone, interpreting hidden intentions and understanding meanings that had not been explicitly communicated. Gradually, I began to introject the idea that my trusting nature was something I needed to overcome. I came to see gullibility as a weakness rather than as a characteristic that might also contain something valuable. Tow messages I strongly received as a kid was that on the one hand I was ‘babyish’ and on the other hand, ‘oh isn’t she so mature for her age’. Complete opposites but somehow both true. And it wasn’t hard to realise that ‘babyish’, naïve, trusting, gullible was a bad thing; while maturity was a good thing that I was being praised for.

Don’t get me wrong, being unthinkingly gullible and believing everything anyone says can leave you vulnerable to harm. Within research, autistic gullibility has traditionally been explored through the lens of vulnerability, and there are good reasons for that. Research has highlighted that autistic people can be at increased risk of manipulation, exploitation and coercion, particularly when high levels of interpersonal trust combine with difficulties identifying deception. This is an important area of understanding, and autistic people deserve support in recognising and navigating situations where their trust may not be respected.

However, I have found myself wondering whether this tells the whole story. Much of the conversation around autistic gullibility focuses on the potential harms of trusting others, but there has been less consideration of whether this same natural way of being might also be a relational strength. Could a tendency to take people seriously, to assume sincerity and to approach others without immediate suspicion also offer something valuable?

This question became particularly meaningful for me as a person-centred psychotherapist. The person-centred approach is built around trusting the client’s capacity for growth and valuing their subjective experience. I attempt to understand the world from within the client’s frame of reference rather than imposing my own explanations upon them. I am always working hard to meet the client with empathy, unconditional positive regard and congruence, while recognising that their experience is uniquely theirs.

During my MSc dissertation research, I came across a quote from Carl Rogers that stayed with me. Rogers described the kind of caring that the client-centred therapist aims to achieve as “a gullible caring” (Rogers & Sanford, 1984). This was a landmark moment for me, something an old therapist of mine calls “a flash of the blindingly obvious”. Immediately my assumptions about what gullibility was were challenged. I had spent years viewing gullibility as something problematic, something associated with being easily misled, and yet Rogers was using the word to describe a therapeutic quality.

As I explored this topic during my research I realised that for me, there is a distinction between unthinking gullibility and something more intentional. Perhaps there is a difference between believing someone because we have not considered another possibility, and choosing to trust someone because we recognise the importance of staying close to their lived experience. I decided to call this ‘principled gullibility’. By principled gullibility, I mean a deliberate therapeutic stance of trusting the client’s subjective experience without feeling compelled to expose, challenge or verify it. It is the choice to meet the client’s account with openness and acceptance, without any desire to be a detective, determining what is objectively true from an external perspective.

Principled gullibility doesn’t mean that therapists abandon curiosity, ethical responsibility or awareness of risk. It certainly doesn’t mean ignoring situations where safeguarding concerns are present, or shirking our ethical responsibilities. It means making a values-based decision to stay alongside a client, allowing them to be the expert on their own world, and working hard to track alongside.

I believe there is no therapeutic value in  attempting to determine the ‘facts’ of a situation, whether there was another explanation for the behaviour the client tells us about, or the behaviour of other people in their lives, or whether an outside observer would interpret the situation differently. What matters is understanding what it was like for the client to experience things in that way.

This distinction feels particularly important when working with clients who have experienced chronic invalidation. Many people arrive in therapy having spent years doubting themselves. They may have been told that they are too sensitive, that they are overreacting, or that their perception of events cannot be trusted. Over time, they may learn to question their own emotional responses before they have even had the opportunity to understand them.

With a stance of principled gullibility, the therapeutic relationship can offer something different. Instead of immediately moving towards clarification, interpretation or reassurance, the therapist can communicate a willingness to stay alongside the client’s experience. The message doesn’t have to be purely validating, it needs to be empathic. We don’t have to say to clients “your interpretation is definitely 100% correct”, but rather “your experience makes sense, and I am interested in understanding it”.

Therapists often worry about whether validating a client’s perspective risks collusion; reinforcing inaccurate or unhelpful thoughts, beliefs, or patterns. This is an important ethical consideration, but it relies on what your perspective is on expertise within the therapy relationship. If we believe that the therapist’s role is as an expert, to identify a more accurate version of reality and guide the client towards it, then validation may understandably feel risky. However, within a person-centred approach, the client is the expert on their own internal world, and the therapist’s role is not to become the authority on the client’s experience. Instead, the therapist offers the conditions that allow the client to explore, understand and make meaning of their own experience.

Principled gullibility therefore represents a form of epistemological modesty. It acknowledges that we cannot fully know another person’s inner world, and that our interpretations are always shaped by our own perspectives and assumptions. Rather than rushing to occupy the position of the one who knows, we remain open to being alongside someone who knows themselves in a way that we cannot.

As an autistic therapist, I have found this perspective personally meaningful. I have gradually begun to reconsider some of the qualities that I previously viewed with shame. My straightforwardness and my tendency to believe the same of others are qualities that can support authenticity and trust with my clients. Of course, these qualities are not exclusive to autistic therapists. People of any neurotype can choose to work from a relational stance that values openness, trust and acceptance.

Principled gullibility is not an attempt to add anything to the theory of the person-centred approach, which is beautiful in its completeness. Instead it’s an attempt to articulate a natural autistic tendency I identified and made friends with, that enhances the person-centred way of relating I find so powerful both as a therapist and in my time as a client. Perhaps that was what Rogers was pointing towards when he described a “gullible caring”. Not a lack of awareness, but a deliberate willingness to meet another person without suspicion. A recognition that understanding another person begins with taking their experience seriously, and that the willingness to believe someone’s experience may be one of the most powerful ways we communicate acceptance.