What Autistic People Need
Oct 04, 2022Oh
Hi there. It's Lynn, your adulting coach. Today I want to help you create Unshakable Confidence in a nutshell. So our first topic today is why is confidence so important?
Confidence helps us in our motivation. It's actually the first part of the motivation equation that I learned from pure steel in his the procrastination equation book. Confidence is how we how much we expect that we're going to achieve the goal. So we assign a score of one to 10. How confident are you that we're going to achieve that goal that we've set out? That's why confidence is the most important it well is one of the most important parts of the equation, and that's why we're focusing on here. The second part is how important is it to us. So if we're confident we're gonna get it and we're really, it's, we know it's what we want. We would say, Okay, it's a 10 times 10 So the top part of our equation is a 100. Underneath then, our motivation can be undercut by how easy we think it's going to be to get what we want, times how far away the goal is from now to then and we can also manage both of those by breaking it down into small, incremental steps. That's the easy part, so that we're not overwhelmed by all that there is to do and that delay part which says, I'm going to reward myself every step that I take, I'm going to celebrate what's working. I noticed what isn't working yet, but I celebrate what's working on a regular basis to keep myself motivated. Keep my motivation score as high as possible. So underneath there, if it's really easy, we'd give it a one and if it's really immediate, we would give it a one. So one times one is one 100 divided by one is 100. That's the maximum amount of motivation that we can have.
This is really very useful because notice that how we that all of these are emotions, and they're created by thoughts. So we want when we notice what thoughts give us confidence. We want to make sure that we keep those thoughts and we practice them. And when we notice when something's really important to us, we keep those thoughts we remind ourselves of why important how important this is to us. And then we figure out how do we have thoughts that oh, this is going to be easy that produce that ease, and that minimize the delay that you know the urge for the reward is nearby is propelling us because that reward is just you know, a few steps away. So notice that all of our motivation is the result of thoughts.
So when we go to Okay, so how does this apply? To an autistic person? And what is this discussion about what they need? So this is the first three practices. This is where we accept, believe and connect. And that's how we understand what's going on with not only our autistic graduate, but also with ourselves. And here's what what my daughter's therapist has suggested or the she gave us the first five and my experience with clients and we have added five more. So let me his name is Floyd Hutchison. That's why his name is down there. So let me just make this see if I can make this bigger for you. It doesn't really get any bigger. Oh, well, okay, sorry. It's so small. Take a screenshot. The first thing is that autistic people need to feel productive. They want to feel like they're making and this is not a want. This is a need. So whenever someone has suggested that someone in one of my loved ones is lazy, I don't agree with that because I think this is one of the needs that autistic people have they need to feel like they're making progress. I can remember conversations with my youngest are with a see number.
Child number six out of seven because we lost one so we have six that are alive. So child number six, we would walk to his elementary school together every morning and he would be talking about how he wanted and live in a house and where he wanted to be. I mean, this little guy was eight. So I know that being productive, being efficient, that's the net I want to feel efficient. I feel like I'm I want to feel like the energy that I'm expending. Is getting me somewhere.
And then the third one is the predictability. And here's why that is so important. At least with most of the autistic people that I know, it seems like their midbrain, their amygdala.
is on fire. It seems like it's easily triggered. And so there's a lot of fear around unknown events because, you know, the brain that they got, isn't accommodated in our, in our world. The brain that they got is not part of the bell shaped curve where everybody you know, works operates Tor because you know, that makes sense that we would operate toward accommodate needs in the bell shaped curve, especially our education system, but our kids tend to have rings that fit on the tails and various what that means is that if we took if we imagined an umbrella, with an infinite number of spokes going around it and they were all bell shaped curves, where would we be on each of those characteristics of being a human? Where would each of us fall? I mean, there's seven point almost 9 billion of us. So the ones that are autistic tend to cluster on edges of those bell shaped curves in certain parts of that entire spectrum. It's just kind of amazing. There is just a natural variation on the brain. But because our you know our world is set up to only accommodate those in the middle of that bell shaped curve that goes all the way around. That's why their needs don't always get met. And that's why we need to accommodate for that, because it's like being deaf or blind. There is a definite difference. It's a biological difference. And not only do we legally need to meet that accommodate, accommodate whatever needs their brains have, I feel that we have a moral obligation to meet those needs as well because of course we want this world to work for everyone. So that predictability and certainty is so important because that amygdala is just on fire. So the more we can make the routines the same, the more we can keep notifying ahead of time when things are going to change, the more informed our kids are about what's going on our loved ones are about what's going on around them. This is not just our kids, sometimes we have other family members who are artistic who are who are parents or relatives. You know, it's really helpful if we accommodate the need for that certainty and predictability, specificity of language is an interesting one. And it's I see it happened in my house all the time. But you didn't say that. They'll tell me. It's like we need to be very specific about what our expectations are of each other. And usually, often when the expectations aren't being met. It's something we haven't agreed on. Which you know, how can we expect it it may not even have been something that we said and if we set it it may not be clear. So we just want to make sure that we accommodate with a specific language as possible.
What I have seen often is that we need that our our autistic loved ones for sure I need time to process what's going on. They need their own roadmap, meaning they know how, where they're going, and that's what we do inside the art of adulting coaching we look at the anchor in our essence and in the 10 domains. We figure out what we want and what we're going to do next to achieve that. So having that roadmap for them provides some of that predictability and certainty Oh, I know where I'm headed. So the time to prepare, transition and decompress. I noticed often when a kids go to work, it's really important that they have enough time to gather everything that needs to be gathered to get the clothes to take the bath to do whatever that needs to be done to go to work. And then when they come home it seems like that transition after work is a requirement as well and to decompress. That's not just for work though any appointment because especially like a doc like a dentist cleaning. They don't come up very often. So it really helps if we prepare them for that event. With enough room at the beginning in the at the end of the appointment so that they can prepare and decompress. And, you know, transition through that well. And the last one I put down is energy spoons. I might figure out a way to better express that but from what I can tell, and this is a concept that a lot of autistic people have embraced as helpful to them is that each of our kids at each of our loved ones have certain number of spoons of energy for like social activities or for other kinds of energy thinking like studying that there's a certain number of spoons in there of a certain size. And once those spoons are, have been used up, there's no more and it helps us to recognize that there's those energy spoons our needs. They're not want our kids don't want to be distracted easily. They don't want to not be able to study as long as you know it's required. They don't want to have to take classes over a longer period of time than their peers. But it it's a need it's something that they need. They need to recognize that their energy spoons have have certain sizes and when they're out, they're out and they need to go replenish them. So I hope that that list of what autistic people need is helpful. I have found that has really helped me better understand and accommodate the needs of the autistic people that I really love.
So please join us at The Art of adulting i I've done everything I can to help make that coaching program the best it can be for parents like us. And of course watch those seven practices videos because they're going to give you a great outline of the actions that we need to take as people who love our autistic young ones and we want our autistic young ones to also adopt those seven practices. So we've got to get thinking about how we're going to make that happen. Bye for now.