#46 | It hurts. I don't understand why I can't have this with her.

Watch the webclass, "4-Part Roadmap to Encourage Adulting Actions."

Get the Preview of the workbook, When Autism Grows Up by Lynn C Davison, Adulting Coach, Available in Fall 2022.

Download, "The Quick Start Guide to STEAR Mapping"

RESOURCES

• SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila: https://www.lynncdavison.com/pl/2147533610
• Autism Discussion Page by Bill Nason on Facebook
• STEAR Mapping Quick Start Guide by Lynn C Davison
• THE FIVE THINGS WE CANNOT CHANGE by David Richo

Hi there, it's Lynn Davison. I'm an adulting coach. I help autistic young adults and their families systemize adulting together.

Today's struggle comes from the Parents of Autistic Adults. Our mom is hurting. She doesn't understand why her daughter is different when she's in a group home, as opposed to when she's with her mom in her home.

She explains that her autistic daughter 24 years old, was aggressive and tried to burn the house down. She now lives in a group home. It's beautiful. They take her on picnics. And walks.

"I don't understand she's so calm there and does what they want and say, but with me, she refused to go anywhere. The other day I hid watching her at the at the park having a picnic and happy with her new family. She looks so happy. She didn't know I was there. I cried, but tears of happiness. I don't understand why I can't have this with her. She makes me feel like a fool."

Yeah, that's tough. That's a hard feeling. That's an uncomfortable feeling.

So let me see what I can offer our mom. I'm going to start with Barb Avila's process outlined in her book SEEING AUTISM as always, where we first understand what could be going on as a result of our child having an autistic brain. Then we're going to move into connecting with both our young adult and ourselves. Finally, we're going to talk about I'm going to talk about what practice just might help. It's my suggestion, and I think it might help so we'll see.

All right. So when we're trying to figure out what's going on, I'm going to turn to Barb Avila again. She is our first I'm going to turn to Bill Nason because he has a fantastic page on Facebook called the Autism Discussion Page. I highly recommend it to anyone going dealing with someone you know loving someone who's autistic.

He's a psychologist that practice with autistic people for more than 30 years. And he said in all his years in the helping profession,

"I have never seen emotions as intense as those I experience when helping children and families on the spectrum."

So I just wanted to offer that to our mom in that she's not alone. We all have intense emotions when it comes to being our best and trying to figure this out, figure out this adulting thing with our autistic children.

Then I also I do want to turn back to Barb Avila and say that she helped me understand that developmental cascade effect. She said that when our children are born with an autistic brain, it's hard for them to jointly attend to something with loved ones. Because of just their, their brain that's always scanning the environment for what's wrong. What's wrong with them. What's wrong outside and trying to protect themselves.

So being able to jointly attend becomes less manageable, enjoyable and useful for them. That disruption in the joint attention leads to the cascade effect that affects regulation. The way that we can manage ourselves in our in our responses affects understanding one's own personal agency, like what choices do I have in this matter, and then one's impact on the world.

So I just wanted to I want to offer that to her mom, because I want her to understand that this is something that's happened as a result of the different brain that her autistic young adult has. And it's really helpful to understand what's going on so that we can be curious about you know what is it that we can do that might help.

Lynn Davison 6:57
So the next thing I want to do is connect. Let's see if we can't connect if we can help her connect with herself and with her autistic adult.

The main tool here is the STEAR Map. That's because anything that happens in the world can fit into these five categories.

• What's the situation? That's the part that's outside of our control?
• What are we thinking about it? Our thoughts? What's the story we're making as a result of this situation?
• How does that inspire our emotions?
• And our actions
• which create our results?

So if we can take anything that's happening in the world and put it into these five categories, we can begin to understand what's going on.

So let's look at mom and her artistic young adult and this is the way she described it.

• The situation: Mom asked me to do something.
• Her thought is probably something like I don't want to. It's probably a habitual thought, something that has been going on with her for many, many years. It's triggered by not only the mom but that presence in the home and just the habitual way that our brain likes to offer thoughts to us. It's just the way that it helped us survive in caveman times. Something happens we have a thought about it and we you know, immediately rush away we fight flight freeze. Those are the things that kept our species alive so that we could be at the top of the food chain today. But in our case now, in our reality now we don't have as much physical danger as we do mental thoughts. That create emotions that simulate danger. So let's look at this one. Okay, so she says I don't want to that's her habitual response. We all have them. Some are useful. Some are not most are useful. A few of them we want to look at.
• So she resists she's just resisting anything.
• And she even fights and she even gets, you know, destructive.
• The result is she doesn't do it. I don't do it.

And that seems to work has worked for her in the past this resistance pattern, this fighting pattern seems to get her a result that works for her. Even though it doesn't really work for us or it doesn't really work for the for the autistic adult in the long run. But it's it's in the short run where we're things are working out the way they always have and the more predictable they are, the more they like them because things that are predictable are less scary.

So let's just try and look at it from her perspective about well, okay, I've developed this  habitual pattern as to the way that I respond to mom. And I guess it's kind of working. I mean, it's not comfortable. It's not at all what what she probably really wants, but it's just what's always been happening.

And let's look at what's different now.

• When they asked me to do something in this group home she's in she probably has a different thought. The situation is different but the environment is different. The people are different. She's different herself. She's in a you know, in a different in a growing experience. So she's different herself.
• So she has a different thought. That's what's different, is that the thinking of the autistic young adult is different.
• So somehow it makes her curious about where what they're going to do,
• She goes and she enjoys herself. And then that whatever thought she had of that sounds like fun. Let's just maybe that's one of the options of thinking that she might be having.
• And then her thought now ties to her result. I had fun.

So what's changed, what's different is the way that your daughter is thinking.

So let's apply the same idea to your thinking.

• The situation you're seeing that she is more comfortable where in the in the home, she appears her you know, I think we took a movie of her of that. Pretty much everyone in the country in the world would look at it and say she's not as happy at home as she is at the group home. I mean, that's just the behavior that we're observing.
• So that makes our mom think, "I don't understand."
• And when we don't understand things, we feel confused. We get kind of like we have this puzzle, puzzling feeling in our chest and that is kind of uncomfortable and high energy. It's like, Ah, what's going on here? I'm there. I don't like this. And so we cry, you know, it just doesn't feel fair. It just doesn't feel like it shouldn't happen this way.
• And that's when we're judging what's happening. It's not how it should happen. The judge, that's what' we all have in common is that whatever is going on, we judge it as to whether or not it's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just the way our brains are put together. And in this case, we're judging it and we're saying, you know, this isn't fair and it's not right.
• And the result is we just don't develop any understanding of what's going on.

Interesting. So just interesting to observe. Okay, that makes sense. Maybe I'm hoping it makes sense for our mom as to what's going on.

So what can we do to change? Alright, we're going to leave the situation the same she's different at home than she is at the group. Home. The thought is I don't understand. And if we can get to I don't understand if we can just get too curious.

Lynn Davison 13:04
I don't understand and that's okay. We just add the words and that's okay.

We're taking a tiny step toward acceptance of the situation. And that opens up a whole world of possibilities of actions when we move from I don't understand, and that's okay.

So let me just say, let me just see if I can't. That's No, it doesn't give me enough room. That's okay. All right. Let me just put, okay, let me just take away and then, and that's okay.

So now when we're in a curious emotion, we take steps to learn what's going on. We posted the Facebook page and there were so many wonderful responses at the parents of autistic adults that I just think it's a great resource to look at alternative thinking and, and figure out you know, which one of those thoughts that people were offering us could be more useful to us, and we begin to understand, cool.

So that's why I'm suggesting that this STEAR Map can really open up some possibilities for our mom.

So then, okay, if we're in the in the headspace of curiosity, what are some practices that we could in place put in place?

Well, again, I just want us to take that tiny step toward acceptance because look at the emotions inside of this, the Serenity Prayer, which we've all heard, but until recently, I didn't know it was written by Reinhold Niebuhr, who's an American Protestant theologian who wrote, "God grant me the serenity."

That's a nice feeling serenity, the courage. I like that emotion and the wisdom when I'm feeling wise. I like all of those things. So that's what getting to acceptance.

When we separate what we can change from the things that we cannot change and decide what action we're going to take and that's what the STEAR Map helps us do.

Another input I want to suggest here is that David Richo wrote a book called THE FIVE THINGS WE CANNOT CHANGE, and he nails the five things we truly cannot change. Everything changes and ends and several people at the Facebook posts suggested that she's growing. The daughter is growing, and I think so is the mom.

And I'm hoping that the STEAR Map is a tool that she might use to help her grow even more in this situation.

1. Everything changes and ends.
2. Things do not always go according to plan because we certainly didn't plan for your daughter to be have such difficulties with you at home.
3. Life is not always fair. Yes. It's definitely not always fair. It's not fair that you put all this energy and effort and love into your daughter, and she's in a different situation and she's finally the person that you had hoped you could see at home. So that's not fair.
4. But pain is part of life, especially the parenting pain that we all experience. Whether we're parenting a young adults with autism or without autism, we can look around and see plenty of parenting pain, and recognize that that pain can also be progress pain, which is what I think our mom is experiencing now she's really experiencing the pain. But without that challenge, that painful challenge. We're not going to see any growth in ourselves and I think we're seeing both mom and artistic and adult growing.
5. And people are not loving and loyal all the time. I mean, Aren't these just truths that we can all expect in our lives?

So let's go back to that STEAR Map again. Why is such this such a useful tool?

17:05
There's a lot of truth in such a simple, simple tool, but wow, the insights we can get from it.Lynn Davison 17:10

The first thing we want to learn is how to separate the facts versus the story. Because the facts again are up here there nothing we can change. That's the circumstances what's going on. That is a fact that everyone in the world would agree with.

But we certainly can work on our thoughts, our emotions, our actions and our results. And I just want to encourage us all to do that.

I've been on this working with this STEAR Map for about five years now. Maybe six, and I just am amazed by how much I've learned and how much more effective I am at creating a life that I love that works.

One suggestion I do have for our mom is that she practice reflective listening whenever she's with her daughter.

And here's why. Well, first, here's how it sounds like:

1. It seems like
2. You feel whatever the feeling is, and if we can't pinpoint it, we can just say uncomfortable or comfortable. That just tells them that we're recognizing the vibration that's happening inside of their body.
3. Because in a really short succinct summary, we want to say why what's happening.

So the internal process that's happening here, is we want to take in what they're saying, sorted out in our brain and summon up. That's the inner process of reflecting.

And the reason we want to paraphrase and not simply restate their own words is so we don't want to parrot. Parroting can sometimes feel like mocking. So we want to say it back to simply in our own words.

And this we really want to practice with our autistic young adults because it helps them feel seen. safe, secure. Really important in in the case of our autistic young adults. If if we reflect back to them, that lets them know that they are seeing it helps them feel soothed. It helps them feel secure and safe. And it helps them with their self regulation. Really helpful. i There are several sources for this approach.

Not only Dan Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson who wrote this wonderful book about THE POWER OF SHOWING UP, but also my own daughter's therapist. who, when he was in training to become a therapist actually worked at at hospital where people were admitted, and he said that just reflecting the emotion could take a person from a chair over their head just you know, Enraged.

He said, "You feel really angry," and the chair came down.

There's something about our brain, having the opportunity to be seen, that really is soothing for us.

So it's that emotion. It's You really seem angry because of you know, you didn't get the privilege you expected.

I don't know what the situation was but you say it as short and succinct away as we possibly can. Because when we do and we also want to do this for ourselves. We want to give, give ourselves that safety nets feeling seen that soothing, that security of knowing what our car maps are, because that helps us regulate ourselves. It's an amazing tool.

I'm just pleased. I'm encouraging you to try it. So that we have that self knowing that self compassion and that self preservation I mean, we know that we need to take care of ourselves to keep ourselves healthy, so that we can enjoy great relationships and wonderful lives. That we love this work for us.

So please consider joining me at LynnCDavison.com/blog for the transcript and the resources that I've mentioned in this video.

Bye for now.