P.P.S. Here's the transcript of Cultivate a State of Safety.
Hi, it's Lynn, your adulting coach.
I've wanted to understand the impact of trauma on our autistic graduates. So I've been attending the Trauma Super Conference and listening to videos from experts like Dr. Stephen Porges. His presentation was about cultivating a sense of safety.
I'm aware of Dr. Porges' work with autistic people. He believes that it's our reaction to our bodily sensations that actually inform the way that our nervous system responds. So let me go over what he talked about in this conference and do my best to make it so that I understand it and can use it, and hopefully you can, too.
He argues that the words anxiety and stress are disrespectful to our nervous system, that we're not honoring what our body's trying to tell us when we name it those things.
What's happening is that we're in a psychological state of threat and defense in our body. It is broadcast into our conscious brain, that there is a threat.
Now we try to control that body through language, through stories, through thinking.
But our body is saying, "Hey, I'm disrupted and destabilized. You need to pay attention. There's a good reason for my reaction."
Unfortunately, when we're in this protective reaction, we're not supporting health, growth and restoration. And if we're just born with an extra sensitive brain, it's gonna have an impact on our learning.
So anxious people tell us that something's going on in their heart or in their gut. I have had irritable bowel syndrome. I took proton pump inhibitors for more than 20 years because of GERD. So I totally get how my body was trying to tell me things that I just wanted to dismiss or talk my way out of.
We try to get rid of those uncomfortable vibrations through stories. "Oh, if I can just, you know, take care of this problem. Or if I just ignore that it'll go away."
And often that just leads to dismissing and not dealing. And that report approach frankly, hasn't worked very well for me. And I've noticed that it doesn't work for my autistic graduates either. And that medication alone isn't the answer.
We need understanding about what's going on.
The bottom line is that our sensitive nervous systems reorganize to have a lower defense threshold when we are in regular states of threat.
So you we can imagine our kids at school, they're not like the others, so they get othered a lot and that doesn't feel so good.
So they begin to distance from their peers. Because they're just defending themselves, they don't want to feel that way. They don't want to be harmed in any way.
And that adversity affects their mental and their physical health. Dr. Porges argues that their physical and their mental health are part of the same system. It manifests in trouble attending trouble engaging problems with a gut problems with auto immune systems and migraines and headaches.
These happen as a result of the biological responses that are coming from that state of threat from pathogens like things from the outside like COVID and other threats and psychological threats, Statements like, "You're not part of the group," activate our nervous system.
The actual detection of that threat is called neuroception. It is really outside of our thinking brain, it actually happens in a bodily way. We can't change it, we can't prevent it. We can't distance from it. It's gonna happen.
So what we want to do is cue our nervous system in a way that is both safe and respects what our body knows. As long as we're moving, apparently we can't shut down.
So when we're in one of those states of threat, it really does help us to move. Movement is what our body wants us to do. The fight, flight, freeze, fawn response wants us to get out of that get out of the way.
So if we start moving our bodies, then we can start all our other systems. Our thinking systems can come back online and we can problem solve. When we're moving to a place of safety, then we can access all of our skills, all of our knowledge, our past experience to figure out how to solve the problem.
Here's the challenge, our culture really emphasizes acquiring. We just think we'll be happy if we have more resources, more money and more prestige, and that those are going to make us feel better.
But unfortunately, we can't get enough of something that doesn't really work to make us feel safe. Acquisition is just really fight or flight driven motivation.
If we just could get the job if we could get the grades if we could get the girlfriend if we could get whatever it is you know, We think that it's kind of help us but it's still fight or flight driven motivation.
Porges argues that being safe in the arms of another mammal is one of our best ways to get back to get out of that threat state and into that connection state: to get out of protection and into connection. So being safe in the arms of another mammal, and he specifically says mammal not person, because he finds that sometimes people don't feel safe, especially our autistic graduates, in the arms of another person. It's easier for them to feel safe with a dog or a cat or a horse or some other kind of animal in their arms.
We don't want to get rid of stress. Well, it would be helpful if we could get rid of cues of threat because, you know, they're not any fun, but it's not realistic, nor is it sufficient.
What we really want to do is notice that when we're in that level of when we're in protection mode, we're spooked by a lot more things that normally wouldn't spook us.
We confuse neutral facial expressions and vocal tone tones with threats. We have learned that on a body basis. It's not something that's conscious, it's just that we're registering whatever the other signals the other person is sending us as threats. And you know, we misunderstand intentions, and that is part of that social confusion that happens with an autistic brain.
Someone with trauma history will not decide to become vulnerable and connect because they have found in the past that they have been hurt when that happens. They've been battered in that state before when they were willing and open: in a classroom situation or an at home situation or in a medical situation or many places where people just don't understand what's going on with their brain.
And unfortunately, the more we look for threat, the more we find it even when it's not really there.
On top of it all we broadcast cues of threat to others. What we actually do is push away through our broadcasting threat to others. We push away the soothing that we could get by being together with other people.
We don't co regulate. This is a biological function. That is built in. That's the reason why humans are humans. That's why we are social beings. Our voice intonation, our facial expression or muscle tone, our posture our movements are all cues of threat or safety. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
We lower that threshold of threat by seeing nearly everything as threatening. That's why we find our kids, our graduates retreating to their room and on screens where they feel more comfortable. They're more safe. When we feel threatened, we just push away others.
So I hear from parents that they just don't connect. They don't talk they don't tell me anything anymore.
And that's because their threshold of threat is so low that unfortunately, nearly everything we do adds to that threat state.
We want to notice the power of the muscles in our faces during human interactions and see what we can do to to project safety and and love. It's really love. Our voice our facial expressions, even the muscles in the middle ear reflect what we're feeling.
We want to figure out what's happening, it's all happening through our vagus nerve. It not only goes to our heart and our muscles, but also to our face and voice and that's where the polyvagal theory that Dr. Porges proposes comes into play.
The studies show that if a mother's voice carries more intonation more prosody more, up and down. "Oh sweetie, it's okay. I'm here for you. I love you." More prosocial interesting vocalizations that their babies calm down faster.
That kind of reciprocity is what we want to do. We want to send that signal and hope we can get them to come back with it so that we start to feel safe with one another. When we tell our kids we love them, when we encourage, when we when we do our best to collaborate and create solutions that really work for them, that's how we can start feeling safe with them.
Then we draw from those memories to calm ourselves. Those are the memories we want to build with our kids.
Here's the thing. They're often the kinds of people that have learned that they will be injured when they're vulnerable.
Because it's a biological learning, not a thought-based learning, we need to approach it strategically. What can we do to help? We need to find islands of feelings of safety and co-regulation. When is it that we are in tune with each other? When we're one with the music when we're in flow. When we're engaged.
Is it cooking? Is it walking? Is it driving in the car? Is it listening to music? Is it watching a movie?
This is what our autistic graduates crave with us. It will help them move from that protection to connection mode.
We just need to remind ourselves that if their nervous system is extremely cautious. It's their nervous system's detection of safety and risk. It's not their intentional thinking. They are not rejecting us, they are responding to their nervous system, to their body signal of safety and threat.
We want to create those wonderful narratives that they are okay with us. And to slowly but surely help them step into the Working World into the Adult World outside of our home little bits at a time. So that they can start to notice when they are safe and re-tune their nervous system.
We gotta notice that if those cues of safety aren't true and present they are going to want to flee. So when they tell us about scary things that happened, even if it's something we just don't get, We need to reflect their emotion and what they're telling us so that they feel heard.
Remember that their nervous system's purpose is to Keep Us Alive. I t's job is to keep us safe. A very low part of our brain has that decision-making system. It's got a mind of its own. It decides, "This is dangerous. I'm going to get you out of here."
This reaction is autonomic. it just happens. It evolved from shutting down. That was the first thing. If something threatened us, we just went in the cave and hid. To mobilization to running away from it to social engagement.
So that's the order in which we our autistic graduates and we process whatever's happening in our world. It knows though now that shutting down is death, so it's going to want to flee.
So here's that's why he argues and I agree that the portal to co-regulate our minds and our body is movement.
Movement can be anything in the form of yoga, walking, dancing, swimming, weight lifting. Anything in which we are using our muscles. Making things happen with them. Those are the practices that really help our kids regulate and co-regulate with us so that we all can understand what our body is telling us.
Here's the thing. We're often disconnected from the emotions in our body. We avoid those feelings, those vibrations, because of our mind clutter. The way that we've been taught to think is to dismiss them.
We are taught to ignore our feelings, to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps and keep going. To have a stiff upper lip. To ignore what our body is telling us.
We've been re-tuned since the pandemic to even be worried about being in the in in the presence of a lot of other people. We have to notice that this has happened and re-enter slowly and re -tune our brains to go back to being willing to engage in social situations.
This is we want to rehabilitate through our social interactions and learn about how our nervous system reacts. Really notice. Drop down into our bodies and scan it from toe to head and from head back to toe to see what our body is telling us.
If we can learn about it then we can understand just exactly where our zone of tolerance and intolerance is and sort of push it a little bit past our comfort zone. We monitor ourselves and learn about them so that when we are challenging ourselves, like going to get a job or interviewing,
We just notice in the very next smallest step how our body is reacting and we honor that it's trying to keep us safe and yet, okay, we're going to do this thing anyway. Recalibrate that threshold of threat.
If we try to get social nourishment from thoughts and our body isn't ready. it will say, "Hey, you injured me. Don't do that again!"
it's not going to listen. That's why we need to do this work gently. That's why pushing someone is not the best strategy.
We need to figure out the pathways that work for us. Let's not be so rational about decisions and beat ourselves up to fix ourselves up.
Let's be more self-compassionate. That's how we and our autistic graduates are going to make progress so that we flourish together. Our bodies are screaming to be heard. Let's listen and learn.
Those Tiny Steps are so helpful so that our body feels reassured that the world is a safe place and believe that flourishing in our adult life is possible.
