#49 | Transitioning to Independent Living

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:

• Parents of Adults with Autism 21+ Support and Connection on Facebook
•  SEEING AUTISM by Barb Avila: https://www.lynncdavison.com/pl/2147533610
• Quick Start Guide to STEAR Mapping by Lynn C Davison
• Reflective Listening Wallpaper
• LivesInTheBalance.org by Dr. Ross Greene

Hi, I'm Lynn, your adulting coach. I help autistic adults and their families. systemize adulting together. Thank you for watching this video.

Today's struggle comes from the Parents of Adults with Autism 21+ Support and Connection on Facebook. Our mom is transitioning her autistic young adult who's 23 to independent living. Her family has decided that that's the right move.

She explains that they have a 23 year old son on the spectrum, and they're transitioning him from a home to an independent living situation. I'm not sure what ISL stands for.

She shares that she feels so guilty. Can anyone relate to this? And I think all of us can. It's hard to move someone out of your home that we believe still needs us. And perhaps that might be the reason for the guilt.

Let's dive into this and see what we can figure out.

First we're going to we're going to use Barb Avila's process from her book SEEING AUTISM where we try to understand what's going on. What's different about having a child with an autistic brain? Then move to connect with ourselves and with them, and then finally figure out what practices might help in this situation.

So I don't know. But I think that maybe our mom has some thoughts like this. I don't want him to leave home. But she did share that his behaviors are aggressive, and he is strong. So it's probably important to to consider that thought.

Other's thoughts, when they replied to her concerns were: anyone who judges you has not walked in your shoes. These behaviors can be difficult to handle. And we understand that that aggressive behavior especially when it's physical, you know, is very scary and difficult to process because it's someone you love. And you know they're they are doing something that is is definitely not going to help them or the situation.

So let's connect with ourselves first and figure out, you know, what else could we think. How do we get from guilt to something that's a little bit more peaceful?

The tool that I recommend is the STEAR Map. It's where we take whatever's happening in our lives and separated them into these five categories.

• What's the situation and the situation is always outside of our control? That's the part where we have to accept what's happening and then figure out what we can do and then figure out where the differences are. And so I have a bit in the situation we really stick just to the facts because the facts aren't scary. They don't hurt anybody. They just are the facts.
• The thoughts are the meaning that we're making out of the situation. It's so helpful to separate the two what is the fact versus what is the story that I'm creating around the facts,
• Then those thoughts will inspire emotions in us. Those emotions can have a huge range from being very comfortable to very being very uncomfortable and identifying where we are on that emotional, you know, range. Some people use a circle Some people use a line, some people use quadrants, where are we in that emotional range? What does that that thought inspire in us emotionally?
• And then when we have that emotion, how do we act if someone were taking a movie of us? How do we act? And then what do those actions create?
• What are the results of that of those actions that are inspired by the emotion that is created by the thought about the situation?

So her situation is her son and so I recommend to her that she find that sentence that is creating the guilt. And then ask yourselves, ask yourself, how do you show up when you're guilty?

And I imagine when I'm feeling guilty, I feel powerless, more powerless than powerful, that's for sure. I'm less confident in the actions that I'm taking because I'm just not sure that I should be doing what I'm doing.

5:14
And it's kind of mixed. It's kind of like clothes on the spin cycle. There's a lot of thoughts going on in there and it's hard to identify each one.

So, you know, just, you know, and I act some ways some day and I act other ways other days because I have all these sentences. I haven't intentionally chosen the one that I think is going to work best for me and seeing how that one works. So what's created as kind of a mishmash of results some things are okay, some things aren't okay, but it's all overshadowed shadowed by the guilt that we're feeling. That makes sense. We've all been there.

We've all done this and so I'm really I hear her guilt and I think it's about having her young adult move away from her because she and her family because they just love him all the way down to his toes. And they they don't want him to think that they don't love him. And they don't want him to think that they don't accept him 100% So I understand that, you know, there's a lot going on here and it's pretty complex, and it just might take awhile to figure out. It probably will anyway because as was mentioned in the post, you know, getting our children into a situation where we feel comfortable or the staff is well trained and they're safe is not an easy thing to do.

So, my suggestion during this period of transition, is that maybe it might be helpful if she used the sentence, okay, our son. I wonder what he wants.  That might be able to help her move from guilt to curiosity.

Let me actually let me just start. Let me just start here with another way of doing this all right. Yeah, let's, let's start with why don't we move from that sentence. So I'm going to start again with Okay, we have our son, our 23 year old son and the thought might be, "I don't want him to go." And then I want to tag that sentence with, "and that's okay."

The reason why I want to start there is because he can put whatever sentence in there that makes that's working. In this case. If we can just get to the end, that's okay. And then look for you know, that's when we're saying, okay, I can accept. I can accept that I don't want to leave them to leave but I can also except, you know, everything that's going on.

Maybe he wouldn't be better off in another place. Maybe he does need a different environment in which to grow and learn some skills that you haven't been effective yet teaching him.

I mean, when he is being aggressive presidents of problem which also means that he has a lagging skill in emotion management, being aware of his thinking, having a strong mind that can handle things.

I mean, maybe he just needs to be in another place where he can learn, but we can also be his teacher and love him. You know, while, he's there as well. It's not like he's leaving our world. He's just leaving our home.

So I just wonder if we can get to that. I don't want him to leave and that's okay. So we can get to acceptance.

Maybe another thought that might be going on is maybe we add the word maybe at the beginning of our sentences. Maybe he'll be better off away from us. I don't know. So that maybe helps me feel an emotion of curiosity. Maybe it's possible?

I just hope that we can kind of wiggle our thinking a little bit using the maybe word in front of our thoughts or at the end. That's okay. In fact, at the end of our thought, that gives us a little bit of room to get to get to an emotion that serves us better than the guilty emotion. Something that's a little bit more comfortable and a little bit more willing to expand out some of the possibilities that could be available in this situation.10:13

One of my favorite ones that I use often is when I have my young adult, "I wonder what he wants." This is helpful when something has happened. And it's maybe something aggressive. Maybe it's if we ask them. Yeah, not like in the middle of the of the showdown or the meltdown. Maybe we ask him later, what were you trying to do? What were you trying to accomplish?

Is there any way that we could try and figure out what was his thinking and emotional motivation behind the actions that he took? It would be so helpful to know that.

So if we can get to that spot of curiosity, our actions will enable us to find out what's going on with him. And then the result could be now we know what he wants, which is so helpful. As then we can brainstorm a bunch of ways for him to get it that are more productive, maybe in more useful than the ways that he's been thinking. That he was thinking about it in that particular situation.

So here's where we move on to the practice, and especially when our young adults are moving out. It's really helpful for us to know what they want in their whole life. I mean, the whole thing. Now how do we figure that out?

So I advocate that we split our life into three parts energy, work, and love. It's all about:

1. Getting our energy you know what food we eat, how we manage our our mind how we move our body, how the money we have to fuel our lives.
2. And then what do we do? How do we make the contribution? What's our work? What's the contribution that we're making? And where's our home and what does it look like and what kinds of things do we have what electronics do we have? We have a car? Those are the things that fall into that work category.
3. Then love. What does he love to learn about you know, I'm sure he plays games and watch his YouTube videos or maybe read some books. What is it that he loves to learn about? Who are the people that he loves to love? And I'm sure that you're included. And you know, what is he aspiring for in terms of people that are going to be surrounding him? And and then finally, what's most important to him at his core, what are his core values? And I just bet that there's some stuff in there that's really important to him, like maybe it's really important to him, to, to be honest, maybe it's really important to him, to have to have people around him that are loyal to him. So loyalty might be a value that it's important to him.

I just think if we can sort of flush all that out. That would be so helpful.

So here's what I suggest we do is that we interview him. We actually sit down and interview him. Now. It may need to be a series of interviews depending on you know what he's willing to do.

Just talk to him.

What is really what do you like to eat? What what is really important to you? And in terms of how you move Do you like to ride a bike do you like to exercise on the elliptical? Do you like to take walks in nature you know, what is it that brings energy in your life? What are some of the thoughts like how can we help you? You know, discover what we just want to discover what are the thoughts that are going on inside of him with a curious emotion.

To do all of that, we really have to reflectively listen, and here is where we take in what they're saying. Or in and out in our own mind and sum it up. So that we can say back to them simply in our own words, we're not parroting what they say because that can feel somewhat insincere or even mocking. What we want to do is we want to say x is simply in our own words the reflection.

I see I forgot to put that slide in here somewhere and that really fast is that slide about the reflective listening process so that so that it's right in here. There we go. Nope, that's on it. There it is my wallpaper.

"It sounds like you know you really enjoy having your special burrito every day where you're living.

15:13
You know, that's just as really important to you because we know what kind of foods make money and that's always a great place to start because food is such a, you know, is such a loving topic. I mean we we create our food and give it to our family in with all kinds of love attached to it. So it's always great to start with food.

And you know what, how do you what are in his movement like, we I've noticed, too, that I've noticed that you like to ride a bike. How does you know? How can we make sure that that's always a part of your life? You know, can you tell me about that? Why is important to you?

So then by doing that reflective listening with them and just really tuning in to what's important to them, I think we can actually scribe for them, what's important to them in their life.

And I did this with my children. Oh gosh, it's been maybe four or five years ago this how this whole process started.  I asked started interviewing each of autistic young adults and asking them what they wanted in their life and it was such a wonderful conversation. And I highly, highly recommended that we go that you go through that energy, work and love that triad, and see what you can learn about your autistic young adult.

There just isn't anything as wonderful as having somebody listen to us carefully and reflect back to us what our hearts desires are, what a wonderful way to connect with your with your with your 23 year old son. 

What you'll discover in that process of it. There's so many places where you can still be connected to him and you can still help him and all that you want to have. Like in his room. He's gonna want to have a special things that make him feel safe. You can special right again a special pillow you know how is all that kind of work? I mean, you can really make it possible for him to have your love in a separate situation, as long as you know what it is that he really wants.

So I just encourage you to try this process. And then of course, you want to go through that collaborative, proactive problem solving process that Ross Greene outlines at his website lives in the balance.org.

It's, you know what, here's your new home.

• Let's imagine what your new home is. What would you like in it?
• Here are some of the concerns that we have and we would like for you to have and let's talk about it.
• What's the very next step that we can take to get others to help you have that home away from home. That home away from our home. That will become your primary home over time. You know what can we do to support you? Because we love you and we just love doing this with you.

And we love helping you create a life that you love that works for all of us. So that's my suggestion. I hope it I hope some of the ideas in here make sense to you. And, you know, please stop by at the address below.

Let me type it right in here www dot Lynn davison.com Ford slash blog where you'll find the transcript  of this conversation and the links to the various resources that I mentioned.

And you know, I'd love to hear any feedback that you have. So please comment below if this video has been helpful to you. Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai