Tuesday: Connect

Sep 13, 2022
 

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Hi, everyone, it's Lynn. Your adulting coach.

Today, I want to talk to you about Tuesday's practice.

But overall I really want you to to understand that our purpose here is to create Unshakable Confidence by outsmarting the struggles together with our autistic young adults.

Confidence is about our relationship with ourselves. And so we want to create a wonderful nurturing loving, encouraging relationship with ourselves and help our autistic young adults feel the same way about themselves. So that as they walk through life, they are confident that they can advocate what for themselves that they know what they need, and they can ask for it, and they can provide it to themselves as well.

So that's the purpose of what we do it the art of adulting and to make it easier for me and for all of our clients, I said, I thought it would be really good for us to take the time to practice each one of these seven practices each day. So I thought, okay, how can I make this easier for me and for everybody else in the answer was to say, Okay, on Sunday, I'm going to do this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, there's just kind of get in a rhythm that kind of an easy rhythm in my life. So Sunday, it's acceptance, Monday. It's belief, believing, and then Tuesday, it's connection, That's what we're going to go over today is connection. Some of my best thoughts on connection, I'm really excited to share it with you.

So, what I'd like to do now is talk about how, you know, why do we want to connect with our autistic young adults? Why is that so important? And the bottom line is, you know, we're most influenced by the people that we know like and trust.

And this is a way to foster that trust with our autistic young adults that they can trust us to know what's in their best interest that we really have got them. We've got their back.

In fact, one of the posts that I made recently that really seemed to resonate with a lot of people was that we want to be in front of them cheering them on, behind them, getting their back and side by side, figuring out what works for them. And that requires the connection.

So what we're trying to help them discern is what is real good advice, what is good practices for them to follow and what's fake. What are some of the things that they need to avoid doing?

So how do we figure out what's real for us? What's really going to work for us? And it's amazing actually, how we take the information from people that we trust and we take our own experiences. And we decide how we want to think and we use logic to confirm our own thoughts.

And here's the trouble with that is that those two inputs come long before logic. We use our own logic to confirm our thoughts and of course, that comes with a lot of risks that will distort we're going to believe distortions, bullying, biases, you know, act on our impulses. Just not really take the time to notice what those thoughts are creating in our lives.

This is what I really believe that we need to do for our kids is to be that person that they can consult. That's our role as parents of autistic and adults is to encourage them, to warn them, and to be there. welcome their consultations, welcome their questions, welcoming them, asking us how should I figure out what works best for me?

I believe that the best way to do this, the best way to our our help our kids is to stop trying to use logic and reasoning. Just stop trying to argue our way into them believing us. That instead of presenting all the reasons why you know and how smart it is, and what worked for us was, is that we really pause to ponder and listen to them, that we create that space where they think in our presence, and those thoughtful pauses are really going to help us connect better with our autistic young adults. They'll realize that you know, we're there.

We're going to slow things down with them. We're going to keep our own arousal level, at a nice level, where we're connecting with ourselves. And are centered, and we're going to be very loving with them.

And so how do we do this with our kids, especially after they've done something that we just can't understand why.  "Why would you think that that was a good idea?"

And I know it's hard but we have to get to a place where we're actually listening to ourselves and reflecting on what our thoughts are creating using our STEAR Map and with them. Really, they need a partner who's gonna listen to them.

And so the listening, the listening process, it's a short practice, and it's one I really want to encourage us all to use on a regular basis. Today. I promise I'm going to reflect in my family at least three times today. So that's my goal.

That first, "It seems like..." is the way we start out with our reflection, our spoken reflection. "It seems like..." and that's because we can't be certain that we know what the other person is thinking. There's just no way that we know what's going on inside of them. So we're gonna suggest that we have an idea.

"It seems like..." and then we start with the emotion because we connect, you can just watch their eyes connect right with us when we're doing our best to describe the emotion that we think we see happening in their body.

And then we give them a short recap of whatever the situation, whatever they're thinking. And we tried to do this in less than 15 words.

So what's going on inside of us is...

  • We're taking in what they're saying or we're taking in what happened.
  • We're sorting it out.
  • We're summing it back up.

That's what's happening inside of our heads. So it requires a real focus on the other person and requires that we look at them carefully and notice you know, their body language, their intonation, their hand gestures that everything to take in the message that they're sending to us, and then say it back to them succinctly in our own words.

It's not a parrot of what they're saying, because that can come off sometimes as mocking. And that's the last thing we want to do because we're trying to establish a connection.

But we want to say it back in our own words. So an example might be, "It seems like you're upset, you're uncomfortable, because you're not getting what you need."

Pretty generic, but it gives you the idea. 

Sometimes trying to figure out what their emotion is. is pretty hard. And so I just like to start out with you know, it's either uncomfortable or comfortable. I mean, one of the you're really comfortable. My daughter came home from work yesterday and she was able to hold kittens so, "You really are comfortable when you can sit with a little baby kitten and pet it." That's a reflection.

"You love that. I mean, I couldn't sit you know, you really want to pet that warm fuzzy kitty," would be another way.

"It seems like you really enjoy being around animals," and that that is true for her.

So we're trying to really get to tell them that you know, we see what's happening.

And we get not only you know their heart but also what's probably going on in their head because that reflective listening helps us feel seen by the other person safe suit and and it all those together make us feel more secure in our relationship and the more secure that they feel with us. The more they'll consult with us the more secure that they feel with themselves. The more confident they will be when they go out into the world and try to create a life that they love as an adult.

10:01
So please, my suggestion is to absolutely take the time to reflectively listen to to all of your loved ones, especially on Tuesday.

I think that these seven practices, Tuesday's practice especially, will help us connect best with our families and ourselves.

So please join us at The Art of adulting where we practice where we understand the theory behind these practices, and we practice them together. And then we keep practicing until we master them. 

That's when we can really create a life that we all love with our families that works.

Our kids are going to have that unshakable confidence that they can solve any struggle that comes their way. They can outsmart those struggles, so that they can also create a life that they love. Even after we're gone. Bye for now.