#63 | Gail is worried about her son's health. LIVE COACHING SESSION.
May 09, 2022Watch the webclass, "4-Part Roadmap to Encourage Adulting Actions."
Download, "The Quick Start Guide to STEAR Mapping"
Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate your time and your willingness to come in you know, talk about this.
Gail 0:40
Well, thank you for inviting me. It's important to talk about things like this.
Lynn Davison 0:45
Yes, it is. I know a lot of people that watch this video will identify with your struggle because we all LOVE our kids all the way down to their toenails, you know, and we just want them to be okay.
Gail 0:59
He's the most important thing in my life and keeping him healthy is extremely important to me. I don't know if he he may recognize the importance of what's going on, but I'm not sure he understands how to coordinate it. And the more I try to help him, the more he kind of pushes me out of it.
Lynn Davison 1:19
Yes, yes. As a young adult, he's trying to deal with things his way. And that's absolutely what we want them to do. So, yes,
Gail 1:32
He does not want to be seen as a child. He wants to be seen as a capable adult.
Lynn Davison 1:37
Yes. And, you know, he has all kinds of evidence that he is capable. I mean, you've done a lot of really amazing things. He's gotten, you know, he's gotten through all the coursework that he had to do in order to qualify for this internship. I mean, that is impressive.
Gail 1:54
Then over the weekend, he had a really nice social weekend with some of the other students going whitewater rafting and just having a lot of fun.
Lynn Davison 2:04
And this is an outdoor thing, because it seems our kids really thrive there. A lot of our kids do. Some don't. My daughter doesn't like it when it's too hot. So if the temperatures is mild she's good.
Gail 2:22
Same with my son. He gets overheated really easily.
Lynn Davison 2:25
I'll never forget the very first you know, soccer thing I signed her up for and she said I'm not going back I was too hot.
Gail 2:34
That's a shame. I wonder to say you know, a metabolic disorder going on with autism. There's so much they don't really know yet.
Lynn Davison 2:44
We are clueless in a lot of ways with anything that has to do with the brain. I think we've made really good progress with the heart.
But the brain I think we're just beginning to explore and start to understand where we've just developed some of the technology that makes it possible for us to understand better what's going on in there. So with better technology, as it more data it gives us, you know, more to work with so
Gail 3:14
I think it's so many longitudinal studies need to be done and also I was just reading an article about comorbid physical conditions with autism. And the cardiovascular system is one that they're really concerned about.
Lynn Davison 3:28
Well, and I think that my background when I was in high school, so we're talking about five decades ago, I did an experiment with another person in my biology class and his father was actually doing primary research on the impact of anxiety and stress on the heart. And so he was arguing that it's the anxiety and the stress that can cause more damage than the diet.
Gail 4:05
This is my primary concern with my son. His stress level is so high and he pushes himself so hard. He's very perfectionistic. He has no off switch when it comes to his anxiety. He can't relax even as a small baby. He squirmed, he couldn't settle. And this has been his MO throughout life.
Lynn Davison 4:28
Yep. I think it's a marker. They don't say it. They talk about the social, the sensory, and the cognitive. And I guess I would hook that on that cognitive piece. I would we put the anxiety on that cognitive piece, but they don't identify it anywhere in the DSM as a marker.
I have met parents who describe their children as not being anxious, and when they tend to be, they also tend to have the lower intelligence they tend to have the you know, that's the third that has the lower intelligence
Gail 5:11
It could also be that they're not being stressed.
Lynn Davison 5:18
There not pushing themselves. Yes. Yeah.
Gail 5:20
Yeah. That's when my son was little when he was perseverating. On a topic or something, you seemed perfectly relaxed, but when he was both to the outside world, and someone wanted him to do his homework, for instance, that was major stress. And that way and in college now too, because he has all these things. He's expected to do. Yeah.
And now he's taking speech and that's hard for him. He has to do a speech every couple of weeks and it's really hard.
Lynn Davison 5:53
He gets quite worried about it.
Gail 5:57
Oh, yeah.
Lynn Davison 5:58
Let's see if I like to go through. I don't know if you're familiar with the books that I really like that I just gave away. So I don't have my copy of it. I have the digital copy of it. Called SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila.
She has worked with autistic people for over 30 years. And she wrote I think, just it's the brilliant book in that. She speaks to us as if we were her best friends. And she advocates and I just I highly recommend it. For even parents of older children, even though she does talk about the developmental process to and she talks about what you were just saying is that this anxiety that you're that our children experience at young people, and as infants even is affects their ability to learn some of the skills that are picked up along the way by others who don't have autistic brain or an anxious brain. And so that's what gives them this cascading effect of not having the skills that others that don't have autistic brains that are their age might have picked up along the way.
She argues that we should follow this process where we first understand what's going on what can be different and then connect with them, and then figure out what the practice is. So that's what we're going to do today.
I want to suggest to you that what the reason why are often anxious is because they're in the motivational triad. This is what our brain does on default. It goes in it tries to stay safe, it tries to avoid pain, it tries to seek pleasure, and it tries to conserve energy.
And as you were just saying, what happens though, is these get, you know, intensified whenever they're in a situation where their skills are not. They have a lagging skill that isn't meeting this unsolved problem.
Gail 8:12
Right. And I think I'd like to add something, too. Some article I read a long time ago mentioned that their fight or flight response Yes, very, very strong.
And that's that's my son. I mean, he, he's just, he's either running towards something or running away from it. He's never content to just be there, you know?
Lynn Davison 8:33
No, and for my Mother's Day present, my daughter gave me this book. Let's see if I can get it in. The screen, unmasked. UNMASKING AUTISM by Devin price, and he just wrote this book. So it was just published in 2022. I'm gonna see if I can talk, talk him into coming on to the art of adulting where I can interview him and tell you all share him in this book with all of our people. Because I just he was talking exactly about that. And I'm just in the first chapter, you know, that our kids
Gail 9:09
I have to read it.
Lynn Davison 9:14
UNMASKING AUTISM. And it's okay. There you go, though. And it's by Devin Price. Yeah. Who I learned about him at the executive functioning online conference last year, online Summit. So you'll see me promote that in August. Because I just think that it's the one thing I promote. I don't do anything. Because we are all already overloaded. We don't need more. And I just think that, you know, he's a psychologist who learned later in life that he was autistic.
Gail 9:55
As many people do. Yeah.
Lynn Davison 9:57
You will do. Yes. And my daughter was diagnosed in her early 30s. So yeah, and it's really Yeah, yeah. Oh,
Gail 10:07
My goodness, did you you must have suspected long before that.
Lynn Davison 10:12
Well, we couldn't we didn't know because as Devin explains, they often get other diagnoses.
She was given borderline personality disorder and but the good thing is that she did get the right treatment. just yet. She went to DBT skills training, exactly what she needed.
And this is a book also, by an autistic person who took it and just took the whole all the concepts in DBT and presented it in a way that she felt was so much more friendly for the autistic person.
Gail 11:00
Now you opened it to self soothing at first, that sounds like something that everybody needs. Yeah. I want to ask you a question. Is your is your daughter how accepting issue of the diagnosis it sounds like she's pretty accepting.
Lynn Davison 11:16
Oh, thankful. And her therapist that she both of my daughters go to is neuro divergent himself. And so he has a lot of practice with neuro divergent people in autism particular. And it was such a relief for her to have that diagnosis.
She and her husband, who I believe is also autistic. Just they're like, they're just perfect together. So they're both Discovering Together. I don't know how we got so lucky. You know, it's just wonderful.
Gail 11:56
That is wonderful because I have to tell you my son is completely he doesn't even want to hear the word autism. He hates that diagnosis.
Lynn Davison 12:06
I know and that's why I named my course coaching and community The Art of Adulting and I didn't put the word autism in there.
Gail 12:15
How do I how do I talk to him about it? Because every time I mentioned the word, he just shuts me down completely. He will admit to having ADHD but not autistic spectrum disorder.
Lynn Davison 12:27
I had same challenge for a very long time with my now 29 year old son itself is ADHD. And he says No, Mom, it's not the autism that affects me. It's ADHD.
Gail 12:44
That's what my says: My attention is terrible and my memory is lousy.
Lynn Davison 12:55
That's fine, we don't need them to have embrace The label. We need to embrace. We need to embrace how they think. And we just talked about how human it is.
This is what this is what I was. The next concept I just wanted to introduce was the idea that what he's gonna have to do and what my kids have to do is they have to then deny false pleasures right? I'll put this make this a little bit bigger, where I click there to deny false pleasures, expend energy and invite discomfort which puts them right on the edge, doesn't it?
Gail 13:42
Yeah, that's funny, my my son just said last night, "I'm no good at delayed gratification."
Lynn Davison 13:50
Yes. We talked about these concepts and leave the labels or whatever they're reading. They might they might not.
This approach really works best for our kids and I frankly, it works well for anybody that's facing, you know, a mental challenge.
I mean, the bottom line is, they are mentally healthy. All we are trying to do is help them move. If a neutral point is here. They're not sick. Maybe the songs better they're not sick, none of them rock, they're fine.
What we're just trying to do when we talk about these various strategies and techniques is move more toward flourishing.
I don't want them to, you know, if they don't want to, that's fine, whatever their thoughts are aligned as long as they're aware that it's never thinking that's creating it.
Gail 14:47
My only concern for my son is trying to find some method that enables him to relax and stop stressing because it has affected his cardiovascular system by now. And that's very, it's a very big concern. His calcium artery score was higher than mine and I'm 69 years old, so,
Lynn Davison 15:08
okay, okay. And that's a pre that's an indicator of things that could cause blockages which could cause injury to the heart.
Gail 15:21
His Dad's family has peripheral artery disease throughout the family. I mean, it's it's just all over the place and his father had a heart attack and bypass surgery and five strokes. And he's 65. one major one for you know, TIAs
Lynn Davison 15:43
TIAs. Yeah, yeah. Yep. Yep. So
Gail 15:50
what happened to my son?
Lynn Davison 15:52
Here's what I think is the most important thing for us to teach them and that is that what I call the STEAR Map, and I know you downloaded the copy of it.
So what it does is it just gives us the opportunity to take what's happening in our lives and separate it into these five categories.
- What's the situation and that's the part that's outside of our control the situation
- Then what are our thoughts,
- which flavor our emotions
- which cause our actions, which generate our actions and
- cause our result? This is all within our control.
And it's fascinating to both use it as a tool for them and for ourselves. Very, this is the tool that finally got me it's just how I finally figured out how to manage what was going on and to manage my own mind so that my kids didn't pick up on as they do what's going on in my heart all the time.
I needed to be the calm in the middle of the tornado. I hate to be a safe place for them. I need to be, you know, on their side and they never have to worry about it. Right?
So I have to manage myself first. I just listened to my one of my coaches. Jody Moore interview, Dr. Jenkins, who wrote this, and I want you to just this is so cool. All right.
So this situation is out of our control how we interpret what's going on is not.
What it is, is neutral, if you will, and our thoughts can interpret it as better or worse.
Our brain is continuously evaluating what's happening. We can't stop it from doing that. It's always comparing what is to something, what we would like it to be or what we're glad it's not or it's always doing that. It's made that way. Right.
So what we can what we do is when we compare it to something worse, we get depressed, like I look at my peers, they don't seem to have these problems. Or you know, I really don't like this I take longer than my peers do to finish tasks, especially ones that involve the prefrontal cortex, the thinking, the planning, the solving problems, the studying all that. I don't like that right.
So it's, I'm worse off and the minute we think we're worse off that creates depression and anxiety, right?
Instead, if we thought that it was better, like well, you know, I'm better than I was when I ten. When I was 10. I was not as good at this as I am now. That makes you feel grateful.
Gail 19:15
Yeah.
Lynn Davison 19:17
So isn't it fascinating just by switching our thinking. We can feel better or worse.
Gail 19:23
Yeah, um, I hope I can get my son to listen to some of that. Because he catastrophizes.
Everything's awful. Everything's kind of being compared against what it should be. And that's what gets him in, you know, into depression and anxiety.
All of us. We all do this.
He's the champion at it, but it's a huge amount of stress. Yes, I don't I mean, I feel like many times since I tried to say yes, but look at how well you're doing and how successful you are. It's just never enough.Lynn Davison 20:03
That's why we have to switch our role from being the parent to being the coach. As a coach,
Gail 20:14
What do you to tell him practically speaking?
Lynn Davison 20:17
You stopped telling him Yeah, I know. It's hard. It's like I have to get my look twice. I've learned this when I my son was doing some suicide ideation and he was saying that the therapist wasn't helping him. And I figured out and we had to do something.
So we started walking every three, four or five days a week at the end of the day, and I would watch his reaction.
- When I would make a suggestion and it would just shut him down.
- When I gave him advice he didn't want to hear it would just shut him down.
- When I criticized what he did it just shut him down.
So I stopped SACing him, suggesting advising and criticizing. And I started just listening. Oh, my God, what a difference huh?
He could talk for the entire 30 minute walk. Because I think also we were side by side. Right? And he was in movement. Something about side. I think those three things really helped him open up and they helped teach me where I needed to do to help coach him.
We really don't want to hear other people's advice. unless we've given them permission to give it to us. Yeah, it's not like he didn't get my advice, but I would always preference it preference that practicing preface it by saying, Are you interested in hearing what my thoughts are? You know, Would you be open to that?
Our relationship not only went from not only got better, but it also went deeper. It was like he was more willing to share what was really going on. And so I got to know him better. And as I as we did this, I also shared with him my struggles, so he got to know me better. And so he see that many of the struggles that he has are just human struggles.
Back to that, "Is it autistic? Is it ADHD?"
I stopped that argument. I just didn't care more. I just said matter let's just work on it. Right? I gave him a framework and that's what I teach in my course. It 10 different categories. And so we would do his energy domains on Monday, and then we would do his work on Wednesday, and we would do his love domain on Friday. Right.
So we've been kind of separated out so trying to design his life. You know what he wanted out of his life wasn't so overwhelming, because there's a lot of parts.
Gail 23:20
My son unfortunately lives about 125 miles away, so I don't see that often. Plus is going away for the entire summer. So I don't know what's going to happen then.
Lynn Davison 23:34
So what I tell my parents is that it's really helpful if you go into the course first and then you learn all the tools and techniques yourself over a period of 12 weeks.
And then after that, you'll see there will be windows of opportunity. You will know what to do with those windows better than you did before. That's That's why I encourage them to come into my course and then I coach you weekly in the course too.
So when any questions you have any concerns you have, any any roadblocks you've met, we talk for half an hour, as often as you want. Um, so you just have to set it up. And there's some limitations with my calendar. But there's a lot of openings there that I'm available.
So because what we want to do is we want them to move into this creation mode, right where they predict things are going to be better, not worse, right?
I mean, we can always make life worse. That's easy, right? We have a lot of ways to imagine that it's gonna get worse and we can even imagine ourselves making it worse for ourselves.
But if we can predict that it will be better that gives them hope and it gives them energy that they don't have, usually.
Gail 24:57
Well I think this is what his his college studies are leading him toward. He has a very strong picture of what he's going to be doing in the next four years and you know, the kind of area he wants to work in and it's his goals. He's good with goals, and he's good at pursuing them. It's just stress. That is the major thing that's hi undoing.
Lynn Davison 25:19
Strengthen it's it's literally we need to strengthen our mental health in order to go from neutral to thriving. It's it's additions on using some of these tools and techniques.
I can tell you, I'm better at it than I was five years ago. I know I am because I've done the repetitions. And that's the only way I've gotten better at it and I've gotten enough you know I've run into enough roadblocks now myself and where I can be a better coach for him.
What we want to do is we want to imagine his, his STEAR map is you know, my life right and his is it's gonna get worse. Yeah. So his emotion is anxious, whatever stressed whatever we want to say. And then he imagines catastrophes. Yes. In the future, right.
Gail 26:27
Yep. always afraid that his grades are going to you know, he's going to fail a course and in reality carries a 3.83 cumulative average, but he's always afraid he's gonna fail something.
Lynn Davison 26:39
He's just sounds like he's such a hard worker, and he's determined and we just need to give him one more tool in his tool chest. I mean, we can get more at this point we'd be really helpful to him.
And then his result Okay, when he's imagining all that stuff is that actually you know, sometimes it does get worse. Right? Yeah. And then he has that as evidence that it's always going to get worse. And right now it's predicting it will get worse and it's like, what if I ever hear that from my son but if I plan it may not get so much worse, right? And a lot of the time planning future scenarios that they don't have enough information yet to really solve for.
Gail 27:31
Any negative result is reinforcement of his catastrophizing.
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Lynn Davison 27:35
Absolutely. And so it doesn't take us that long to do that either. You know, my life. My thought is, I won't let that happen again. Right and so, then we become vigilant, an emotion so very busy. Right? And so our actions is we know this everything that could go wrong. How different are we write everything and he only gets me so many times. So the result is and we're anxious.
Gail 28:23
Yeah, yeah. I'm very sensitive to his moods. I picked him up right away. Oh,
Lynn Davison 28:31
I was also listening this weekend. If you go into the art of adult Facebook page, I had the delightful experience of listening to Krista Tippett from the on Bing podcast. It's picked up quite often by NPR, and it was by Silvia Borstein is a psychologist. And you probably can't see it because I can't share my screen but it was so good where she said two words away from it. What are the two words? And she said, Hi, mom.
Gail 29:12
I know. I know that really well.
Lynn Davison 29:20
When you listen to Sylvia, it's like, she's so right on. She's Jewish Buddhist, who has been studying, though, where they overlap for a number of years and a psychologist. Well, I just found her to be so helpful to my soul this weekend. Good Mother's Day.
Gail 29:42
Hi, Mom would be a calming thing because he's communicating. So
Lynn Davison 29:48
like she said, if it's in that tone of voice like Hi mom. Like Yeah.
Gail 29:57
Something happened, right.
Lynn Davison 30:01
So what do we do about this? The next question, so how what do we do, you know, progress. We've all heard that. To me, the first thing we have to do is we have to be willing to feel our feelings. Because if we don't, they intensify. So this happened to me last night. I was asleep. I woke up and I could not get myself back to sleep. And this does happen. You get so excited about what I'm going to do during the week. I was excited about talking to you. And I was like, I couldn't look back. My brain was like, you know, it was it was right. And I had read a book before I went to sleep with a with a scene describing these people who had gotten imprisoned, and they couldn't there was no way out. And last, so I've finally went to sleep and did not dream about that. I dreamed but my scenario was totally different. But it was this fearful dream. Yeah, so that's what happens is that if we don't feel it, our brain will process it later. Right. And
Gail 31:15
I can tell you I feel my feelings all the time. They're, they're on my sleeve. Yeah, yes.
Lynn Davison 31:21
So if we take the time to name them, and it can just be uncomfortable, uncomfortable because many of our autistic young adults have are uncomfortable defining their feelings. They just like to put a label on them. Find it in our body. If we can relax into it, and that's tricky. So the way I relate to it, is by pretending I'm describing it what's happening in life. And that gives me just a little bit of wiggle room. I picture it in there. Like fear is like this hyper ball of fire just like running around in my chest and and it goes up my neck as well. And then you can actually remind yourself that it's caused by my evaluation of the situation is caused by the thought that I had. And then if we just feel it till it's gone, it usually only takes 60 to 90 seconds.
Gail 32:18
Oh boy, that's tough. Because I feel like I'm consumed by here because my only child is, you know, facing a serious health issue and, and we lost his brother a couple of years ago from COVID. So he was diabetic. So I'm, I'm dealing with a significant amount of fear and emotion about that.
Lynn Davison 32:40
Yes. And when we take the time to notice thoughts that are creating that fear then we get some leverage on them.
