#33 | Social Anxiety, OCD, Meltdowns

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RESOURCES

SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila: https://www.lynncdavison.com/pl/2147533610

Stuart Shanker - Self Regulation Institute

Hi, I'm Lynn, your adulting coach. I help autistic young adults and their families, systemise adulting together. Today's struggle is from Lynn Winograd in our Art of Adulting Facebook group. He is watching her 25 year old son experience social anxiety, OCD and meltdowns, and she thinks they've gotten more difficult in the last few years. In fact they looked into him getting his own apartment because it was difficult for them to live with him. Seems like his social life is a number one priority. And his OCD affects everything. He wants to work. He's not sure. Like, how do I do that? And he's been on some meds that he's really questioning their value; doesn't like the side effects. In addition to that, he doesn't like the fact that he will watch us in such a situation and the property damage has occurred at his own apartment as well.

In in the last year in 2021, he had a couple of hospitalizations that really did not help the situation. So what can I offer Lynn? I'm going to do my best to help with a framework that I think will help Lynn, borrowed from Barb Avilla's Seeing Autism book. The process is we try to understand the best we can what's going on with our autistic young adults. Then connect with not only them but also with ourselves, and then figure out what to do next. What's the practice? So how can we understand what's going on in this situation?

I really like to learn from professionals who have been working with autistic people for a very long time. The next one I want to introduce you to next is Stuart Shanker. He is a Canadian who has just knocked it out of the park in the area of self regulation. He's got a wonderful website, Self Regulation Institute, which I'll link to in the transcript of this you know, very generous with his, with his materials that he offers there. And I highly recommend getting a copy of at least this book, he's also written a second book, afraid or just society, and I think this one, I'm going to bring some quotes into this presentation today. That I think I'm really gonna show you how powerful he is, in the way that he writes about self reg. And he has just, in fact, most of his book I underlined so that tells you how valuable I have found the work that he's done in this area. There's this first quote, we want to do is we want to figure out what the stresses are. And to do that, we start by first not becoming a stressor ourselves, and then to looking for the patterns in our autistic adult's behavior. And mind you a lot of the book is written targeting early intervention in school aged intervention, but we know that anyone with an autistic brain and benefit from the approaches that are outlined by these, these professionals like Stuart, so I really have found a lot of the work that he's done is applicable to my autistic adults. With one caveat, and that is that now that our kids are older, we need them to find the trigger patterns. We need them to do the work we need to move from keeping that monkey right on our shoulders and giving it to them. And this is not as easy as it sounds and it may take us quite a few years to get this going. But it's worth it because then we can sleep better at night knowing that they have a process they can follow for the rest of their lives. That's my wish for you. Another quote from Stewart's book is, is frankly, "why would any child give in to rage when it's clear that it's not going to lead to anything good?" It making him a social pariah. Why would they ever choose to remain emotionally distraught instead of calm and steady? Why see the difficulty in every opportunity when it's Churchill once said, it's so beneficial to see the opportunity in every difficulty. Why would a teen young adult stay in bed all day with the curtains drawn? why can't an anxious child young adult just let it go? For a grown child? Just cheer up in there is the conundrum for us. We've been watching this happen for now a couple of decades. And still we don't have a magic wand that's going to come and cure this problem. We're good at and that's because we know there's not a magic wand. There is a magic formula, and we can figure it out with our autistic young adult together. So he also suggests that the answer as we've seen throughout the chapter as he talks about self regulation and the problems it causes, because if they're not choosing to be negative or contrary you're just playing the vegetable, believe it or not, the child who you're exhorting on now actually does want to calm down. It's just that he doesn't know how much of that work flux makes sense. You know, our kids have gotten to the point in their life where they would really like things to change, at least. I'm really hoping that's the case. They want to change and we can help them and change. Now we've got motivation in addition to you know, the knowledge that we can bring to the table to help. So finally, you know, here's what we need to do. He argues that we need to broaden our outlook, to look at the whole thing what's all going on? Not just one side of our child's physical, emotional seesaw, because when one side is out of whack, it's always the other and we can't help our children learn how to regulate their emotional arousal without learning how to regulate their physical arousal. And this has become so helpful to me. We have to approach both physical and emotional to come up with a solution for our kids. He's definitely gone on this. It makes a huge difference to me. If I work out every morning, and then I home or throughout the day and I sleep better at night only makes sense to my my autistic adults. They've now gotten into the routine of physical movement, every single work day, Monday through Friday in sometimes on the weekends as well, and they recognize right away that it makes them feel better. So we need to get the physical and the mental working together side by side. Okay, so now we understand what part of the problem is and I just want to emphasize again that it won't be the best investment to take a look at Stuart Shanker self read book. We want to connect with ourselves and with them, because we need to be the calming presence in their life. And then we need to understand what their thoughts are about the situation. Again, using the seer map really helped me sort out my thoughts over and over again so that now I know a little bit better, how to figure out what my thinking is causing me to feel and inspiring my actions and just knowing being aware of what's going on. is the first step in the most valuable step. Just having that awareness. So the next thing is, you know, we need to teach our kids how to do their own thought downloads and their own stair mats and this process takes time especially, you have someone who's resistant to the idea, which most of them are and they're going to, we just kind of need to expect that they're going to push back against using a new tool, but once they do, wow, what a difference it makes in their lives or lease agreement. I tell you this and then of course, we practice the proactive partnering with them that we know needs to be done. And that includes listening, listening and listening. We need to become the parent who has the stamina and the desire to become a listening partner so that they can think more clearly. Why we did this in my household was we take walks together, five o'clock every day, frankly, it helps me shut down at the end of the day at a reasonable hour. And we I just listen, I listen and reflect during the whole entire conversation. Sometimes I offered him options, but most of the time, I'm going to tell you 99% of the time I'm listening and reflecting just so he can get some of his thoughts out. Look at them himself. It's the best way that's worked. For my son for my daughter. We just worked out together every morning. And then we kind of talk about whatever's going on. And that processes worked really well. They have scheduled predictable time with both my daughter and my son, daughter in the morning, on an evening and every day every five days a week. I really feel like we've gotten in better touch with each other. They understand more what my concerns are, and I definitely understand what they're thinking is better. With a son who's having trouble with his emotions. It's really important that we slow everything down. And break it down. Most of our kids have alexithymia means that it's hard to get there that word literally means without words or emotions. So it's hard for them to do say you know exactly, well, I'm frustrated, I'm tired and whatever. So what we want to do is look at this mood meter that is put up on a Yale

Lynn Davison 11:20
what's his name again, using the ruler method, wake it up in the notes or had it yesterday anyway. Where we help them identify along this axis where their energy levels are and then along this x axis if they're comfortable or uncomfortable, and I'm going to tell you I use this to point clients out to something adults that I coach, and it's magic because it gets them right to where they're feeling and they can point out these words and they really feel like they're being seen for the first time. Or just they're feeling really beings and they can see themselves see this. What we're trying to do is not only teach them the tools, you know with us, but also the tools that they can use themselves and that's what you have inside the art of adulting. These what I call what are called Phone wallpapers, these short things that they can images that they can store on your phone and they can pull up anytime they are feeling the need to regulate. They've got a tool right on their phone. One of the key aspects of VR developing was to make it so easy for our kids. Because, you know, we know that organization can sometimes be a challenge for all of us, but if it's on their phone in a photo album, named the art of adulting, they can find these tools that they need and that's why I put so many key points on into FOMO Coopersburg. Because we also need to understand that if you watch Julian's interview, a couple of Black Friday, no notice no. She explained beautifully that to change model where we really need to understand that that something's going to happen to push them into this chaos. And Lynn may have been when you all moved into move him into his apartment, he fell into that period of time. You know, he didn't want to do it, but he fell into this chaos where he's just dealing with trying to figure out what works for him and at some point, he's gonna realize that he needs to figure this out for himself. No pills gonna take your form because pills don't teach skills. He's going to have to learn how to regulate his own emotions. And hopefully, you'll be there listening to his desire and pointing him in the right direction with the tools and the strategies that you've learned within the art of adulting that will really make a difference for him over his entire lifetime. We just tackle one problem at a time because we know that they're going to get that problem solved. And then here comes the next problem. So we have to give them a formula, a process a system to follow when these things happen so that they can be the flexible problem solvers that they're going to need to be when we're gone. So I wish I had a magic one for you and I would love to have wiped it for you. But all I can tell you is that there is a magic formula. And if I figured it out because I had to personally practice it on myself. Then I introduced it to my autistic young adults, and I saw what a difference it made for them. So then I said to myself you've got to offer this to more people because I don't want anyone to feel alone with their autistic young adult thinking that things are not going to get better because they definitely can get better. Please watch my please go to my website and this address at my website and sign up to watch my one hour masterclass which describes exactly the formula it's I really did the best I could to consolidate what I have learned over the last few decades into one hour that you've got a framework that you can start from the minute you're done watching that class of promises, not just marketing fluff, as a marketing thing for years so I know what that looks like. I really did my best to put as much information in that one hour as possible. And then these come join me at the art of adulting where I can coach you on each one of these problems with each aspect of being the best parent you can possibly be for your autistic young adult so that they have the tools and the strategies that they'll need for the rest of their lives. You can sleep better at night please visit me here. Bye for now