Lynn Davison
So, Sarah Bergenfield, I am so excited to meet you, and to talk about your book, Wired to Feel Autism is a condition of sensory surplus. I cannot tell you how many times I've said those words recently, because it makes so much sense. This is an explanation that I have been waiting for. Bet you a year ago on a podcast that you did, and it was.. I know I told you this one of the first times I really felt seen.
Lynn Davison
Cannot wait to introduce you to the folks in my, in my circle and understand even better what you, what you've learned over the years.
Sarah Bergenfield
It's lovely to meet you too. Nice to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you for reading
Sarah Bergenfield
the book.
Sarah Bergenfield
Glad you're excited about this.
Lynn Davison
Gotcha. Okay, so the way that we're going to go through the process is what I do with all of my podcast guests, is we use the peace process as the peace practice as a way to guide our way through the conversation, because when we pause and empathize and then align with what we really want, collaborate with each other, and you know, agree on an experiment. I believe that's how we can make peaceful progress together.
Sarah Bergenfield
I love that.
Lynn Davison
So, let's start first, though. Let me go back, and let's talk about the book. How did this book
Sarah Bergenfield
come about?
Sarah Bergenfield
So, it actually started as my master's thesis. I was doing a master's in embodiment studies, and I was looking at autism as a condition that really hasn't been written about too much. It's written about, okay, it's been written about a ton, but not from the perspective that I was interested in, which was autism as a condition that affects the mind, you know, the brain, the mind, and the body, right. And so I really wanted to explore what was going on in a bodily way, like why I experienced the world I experienced, and I couldn't find what I wanted to read. So I did a lovely sort of autistic deep dive into all kinds of like biology and neurobiology and neuroscience and psychology and this whole philosophy consciousness studies. It was really amazing, and I had a fantastic faculty shout out to my professors at Goddard College in Vermont, which, unfortunately, due to education cuts, has since closed, which is a devastating loss to the world, because it was really an incredible place, real sort of intellectual ferment going on in there. It was really wonderful. Anyway, so I wrote the thesis, I wrote the book as my master's thesis originally, and then I was approached by New Harbinger, the publisher, to see if I wanted to write something for them, so I said, well, you know, funny, you should ask. I've just, or I'm just finishing my thesis. Would you be interested in something to do with that? So I sent it to the editor there, who'd reached out to me, and he loved it, and he said, yeah, we just love this. This is just amazing, you know. We'd love you to do this for us, and then I am, as well as doing my autism work, I'm also a certified level three ifs practitioner, so that's kind of the how I got started in the, in this world, in this sort of self-exploration world, and so I thought it would be lovely because ifs has been so massively impactful for me and my life, I wanted to include it. It felt weird to write something that didn't include
Sarah Bergenfield
that.
Lynn Davison
So, a lot of my families don't know about ifs, so
Sarah Bergenfield
just
Sarah Bergenfield
let me finish this explanation, and then I'm going to give you a little explanation of ifs, because it's massive for people dealing with sort of some interpersonal challenges and conflicts is really wonderful. So I had this experience with ifs, but you know, the good thing about me is that I know what I know, and I typically, when, if I know it, I know it really well. I also know what I don't know, so I was able to say, well, if I'm going to write something about ifs, I really should have an expert, and I am not an expert. So I reached out to Martha Sweezy, who has written a gazillion books, and she's very, very well known in this field. She's a professor at an associate professor at Harvard, and I said to her, would you be interested in doing this with me? And she said, "Send me what you've got. So I sent it to her, and she read it, and she wrote back. Yeah, that's great. So you know, we went on this wonderful journey together, where we sort of took the foundation that was my thesis, but we, we changed it, because my thesis was obviously very academic, so we made it much more digestible for people, and then we brought in internal family systems, which is ifs, and Martha did a lot of that, and then we tied it all together to be entirely about
Sarah Bergenfield
autism,
Sarah Bergenfield
and that's how the book came to
Lynn Davison
life, and I love the marriage of the academic autism neuroscience with ifs, because it makes it
Sarah Bergenfield
practical,
Sarah Bergenfield
right?
Lynn Davison
It makes us now we got something we can
Sarah Bergenfield
try,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? And that's what that's what people need, you know? If you go to a bookstore and you're spending some of your very hard-earned money on a book, you want to get something
Sarah Bergenfield
out of
Sarah Bergenfield
it, right? And that's what I wanted, that was really important to us, to make sure that we wrote a book that would actually be helpful to people, that people would see themselves in and think, oh, well, this explains this about me, and it explains that about me, and what I found about with other books about autism, that they described me, but they didn't explain me, and I really wanted to be explained. I'd been sort of.. I had a thirst for being explained my whole life, since I was a child, and I was a, you know, I received a very late diagnosis at the age of 50, but I can remember as a child just being so conscious of how different I was, and not understanding, and so sort of taking on the beliefs that other people held, that I must be the odd one, you know, but at the same time sort of holding this belief of well, I kind of really like who I am, my quirky way of being in the world, but I can see the challenges that it has created for me, so that's I'm glad you said that about the book, and I, and that is the feedback that we have received, is that people are really seeing themselves in it, they're finding it super helpful, and that's everything that we ask for. And the ifs piece, which we can talk about a little bit, just to introduce people, is massive. I mean, it's, you know, it's a game changer in terms of giving you just an extra toolbox to use, right? So, if you're a parent or you're in a family with a neurodivergent family member, or you're neurodivergent, it's really helpful to have as many toolboxes as possible. So, internal family systems is a toolbox, a self-contained toolbox that you can sort of package and put up on the shelf and use it when you need to, you know, and that's what I do with it. So, a quick intro to it. Internal Family Systems came about, I think 30 to 40 years ago. I can't remember the exact period. It was in the 80s, Dr. Richard Schwartz, who was working with patients who had disordered eating and other, you know, bulimia and some suicidality, and and he realized that as he was working with his patients, they would say things like, there's a part of me that wants to do this, right, for example, there's a part of me that wants to binge, but then this other part of me really doesn't want me to, and then when I do, there's this other part that tells me how bad I am for
Lynn Davison
binging.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yes, right. So, what he really focused on was this idea of multiplicity, that at any one moment we have multiple competing thoughts and feelings and
Lynn Davison
behaviors.
Sarah Bergenfield
Absolutely,
Sarah Bergenfield
and we cycle through them all day long, day after day, right. So, parents may be having an experience with their child, and they're thinking, I really love my child, I really want to support my child, at the same time as they're thinking, my child is driving me absolutely bananas. All right, I have three children, I definitely went through that with mine. So, ifs introduces this idea of multiplicity as what we call parts, meaning that these beliefs, you know, the things that we want to do and the things that we don't want to do, came about from when we were children, and that they formed in childhood in response to something in our environment, a parent, a teacher, a friend, something we had too much of, or something we didn't have enough of, so these parts get formed and they continue operating in the same way, even when we're
Sarah Bergenfield
adults,
Sarah Bergenfield
so ifs gives us the tools to understand which part is active at any one time, and then rather than working to silence them or to get rid of them, the work that we do in an ifs session is actually to move closer to them and to open our hearts to them, and so it's a very beautiful, very compassion-based model that, for me, the most extraordinary gift that ifs offers is understanding of ourselves and love for ourselves and love for our parts and love for behaviors that we may have at different periods in our life in really ashamed of, or really disliked, or really wished we didn't have, and so this model gives us the tools to understand why we do those things, and how we can just be in relationship with those parts of us, because the ultimate goal is survival and
Sarah Bergenfield
well-being.
Lynn Davison
Well, in the title of his book, No Bad
Sarah Bergenfield
parts,
Lynn Davison
right? To accept that they are
Sarah Bergenfield
there.
Lynn Davison
Others out there that call them saboteurs,
Sarah Bergenfield
I don't buy
Sarah Bergenfield
that. Right, yeah, it's such a brilliant title. And if anyone hasn't read it, you should definitely get that. Get no bad parts. And his first book, I don't know if you know his first book, the title of that is, You Are the One You've Been
Sarah Bergenfield
Waiting for,
Sarah Bergenfield
which is so brilliant. It still gives me chills and goosebumps when I, when I even say that, because we're sort of, we're socialized to rely on
Sarah Bergenfield
other people
Sarah Bergenfield
to support us, to fix us, to shape us, to mold us, to guide us, and that's true. It's great that we have that, but we can't only rely on that. We have to be self-reliant
Sarah Bergenfield
first.
Lynn Davison
We have to have to be guided by what matters most
Sarah Bergenfield
of us, right? And we're the only ones who
Sarah Bergenfield
know that,
Sarah Bergenfield
and even the most well-meaning friend or teacher or boss or loved one, they don't know us better
Sarah Bergenfield
than we do,
Lynn Davison
it's not possible for them to notice
Sarah Bergenfield
as well,
Lynn Davison
exactly, because we've got all the thoughts and we share
Sarah Bergenfield
some of them,
Lynn Davison
right, right, and we, and we, and we express them in emotions, you know, which tell us what
Sarah Bergenfield
matters,
Lynn Davison
right, and sometimes we like that, and sometimes we don't.
Sarah Bergenfield
I mean, it's
Lynn Davison
hard. This whole relationship
Sarah Bergenfield
piece, it's really hard, and sometimes the last person that we're in relationship with is
Sarah Bergenfield
ourselves.
Lynn Davison
And yet, if we can master that, if we can get more comfortable with our own relationship with ourself, then we can relate better
Sarah Bergenfield
to others. Absolutely, that's it. That's the heart
Lynn Davison
of it. Is the heart of it. That is the heart of relationships. Okay, so if we go to the peace practice and we first pause,
Sarah Bergenfield
you have
Lynn Davison
them for
Sarah Bergenfield
pause.
Sarah Bergenfield
I do.
Lynn Davison
I love this framework for helping us understand what's going on inside of us,
Sarah Bergenfield
because
Lynn Davison
so much goes on, it's hard to sort
Sarah Bergenfield
it out.
Sarah Bergenfield
It's hard. Yes, it's really hard for us to filter through a bit. I mean, it's hard for anyone who's a person
Sarah Bergenfield
in the world, yes,
Sarah Bergenfield
it's really hard for autistics who sort of get so many bombarding and competing sort of messages coming in that our brains are trying to process that it's hard for us to understand if we're feeling dysregulated what we might be dysregulated about, right, and oftentimes for an autistic system that dysregulation is caused by something in the environment, right, and it's caused by an increase in uncertainty in the environment. Something unpredictable has happened. Now that unpredictable thing may not rise to our sort of conscious awareness, it may not. It could be something, as you know, a waistband feeling too tight, or a sound, or not having been able to have your favorite food for breakfast, or a change in expectation of some kind. But
Lynn Davison
it doesn't schedule. I find that one, yeah, the schedule is a huge one. Wow, yeah. I didn't expect that those people were going to be in the house right now. What am I supposed to do? I usually am in that room, and that's where they are, and I can't be where they are, and it just, you know, I can see
Sarah Bergenfield
that
Sarah Bergenfield
happening, right. So, the way I approach it, and I use the pause framework for this, is we look at what is the unpredictable thing that's happened because guiding our way through dysregulation, not every form of dysregulation has an emotional component. So people being in your space, yes, you can have an interpersonal interaction around that. Why are you in my space? I'm so furious that you're in my space. You shouldn't be in my space. It's my space, right? That's one aspect of it. That's, I would say, that that has a more emotion, emotional base to it. And autistic dysregulation, or a response to unpredictability, is the surprise of somebody being in your space, which is totally separate from who the person is, and what, and how you feel about the person, and what the person may or may not have done, right? It could be your favorite person in the world, but if it's surprising, it's not going to feel good, right. So I work with people to sort of, and we use this framework and ifs to understand what sort of what about the reaction, how can we trace the root cause of the reaction? Right, is it like what I call a neurological response, which is an autistic response to something, or using ifs has one of our parts got activated by something that someone said or something that they're expecting, and then they're off on their behavioral loop, and we really don't have control of our emotional center, and we have now become reactive, right? So that's what we're always looking to do, is kind of tease apart to find out what the cause is. Sometimes it's both, you know, oftentimes dysregulation can lead to parts getting very active because their job is to bring the system back into homeostasis. That's the job. How do we get the system back in balance? What do we have to do? Right, so in a, an environmental trigger, someone being in your space can then trigger parts to come
Sarah Bergenfield
in, and
Sarah Bergenfield
oh yeah, activate.
Lynn Davison
So, for sure, for sure, for sure. Okay, so then once what do we.. okay, so the process looks like when we pause. Just walk me through what are we supposed
Sarah Bergenfield
to do there
Sarah Bergenfield
through the pause framework, so it is like taking the pause and taking the time to run through, you know, what you have up there on the screen, so the P is for predictability, right? So we're always trying to establish clear expectations and routines, because a clear expectation helps to reduce uncertainty, because we have a lower tolerance for
Lynn Davison
uncertainty, the
Sarah Bergenfield
A stands for arousal, right? So I
Lynn Davison
talk about, I put attention there,
Sarah Bergenfield
it's arousal. Oh, it's arousal, yeah, it should be arousal, unless it's different in the book, but it should be
Sarah Bergenfield
arousal.
Sarah Bergenfield
Okay, yeah, which is monitoring and modulating the physiological responses that you're feeling
Lynn Davison
in the body,
Sarah Bergenfield
okay?
Sarah Bergenfield
Right, so are you feeling stressed? Are you feeling tired? Are you shutting
Lynn Davison
down?
Sarah Bergenfield
Yes, right. So the arousal is the state of the nervous system, that's what the arousal stands for, and it's separate from emotion, because emotion is the story that we tell ourselves about the cause of the arousal, so the arousal is the physiological state change that happens first. Okay? Right. So then we look at uncertainty, right? How much uncertainty is present? Right, so we're always looking to do things like minimize ambiguity in any situation, whether it's in language or expectation in the environment, in the way we're being talked to, in the things that are expected of us. The S is for sensory, so we want to recognize any sensory processing differences, any sensory impacts anything around us, you know, our clothing, lighting, those kinds of things, and then the E is for environment, which is sort of on the larger scale, not not so much the environment of the room, but more like the people as our environment, you know, so the spaces that we're in, but the interpersonal spaces that we share as well, so we're always looking to shape our surroundings to foster those feelings of safety, which follow when we are in a predictable and trustworthy
Lynn Davison
environment. Okay, okay, so we're sort of walking through from the tip to the toe, what's going on?
Sarah Bergenfield
Yeah, or I like to think of it when we're walking from the inside
Sarah Bergenfield
out, that's good, that's a good
Sarah Bergenfield
visual, and we're scoring, we're scoring for uncertainty, and I teach people to do that, to actually give sort of any day or any interaction, and what I call an uncertainty score, right, so a high uncertainty score is going to have a higher level of dysregulation. A low uncertainty score, I got to wake up, I didn't have to go to school, I got to wear my favorite clothes, I had my favorite breakfast, I'm watching my favorite TV show, no one's talking to me, my dog is next to me. Right, that would be a very low uncertainty
Sarah Bergenfield
score.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yeah, so the lower the score, the better we're going
Lynn Davison
to feel,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? And it's a really nice tool to give, especially, excuse me, to young people or kids to give them some, some to allow them to just be more informed about what it is they're feeling and why they're feeling it, as opposed to just labeling them as you know, difficult or out of control or overly sensitive for all of the things that autistics typically, typically
Lynn Davison
get called, yes, yes, yes, because they don't, because they're nonconformists,
Sarah Bergenfield
yeah, exactly,
Lynn Davison
getting into the middle of the bell-shaped curve,
Sarah Bergenfield
so
Lynn Davison
right to pathologize the people that are on the
Sarah Bergenfield
rims,
Lynn Davison
right, or other
Sarah Bergenfield
them, for sure.
Lynn Davison
So now that we know that we're where our uncertainty score is, the e in the peace practice is to empathize. Love that. So this is a quote from your book about autistic overload, is typically a response to uncertainty in the face of sensory inputs and high levels of
Sarah Bergenfield
arousal.
Lynn Davison
So, what do we do now? How do we tell ourselves it's okay to feel
Sarah Bergenfield
this way?
Sarah Bergenfield
Well, that's the thing. I mean, that's the first step, is that we have to have conversations like
Sarah Bergenfield
this,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? So, it, we normalize it to ourselves and the people around us normalize it, so one of the things we're always trying to do is to reduce uncertainty or unpredictability, right, autistic overload is very unpredictable,
Sarah Bergenfield
mm
Sarah Bergenfield
so you have the the physiological and the emotional response to an autistic overload. Then you have the unpredictability that it's wrapped in, of I don't know when this is going to happen to me, right? So by understanding what's going on, by scoring the level of uncertainty, for example, you now introduce some certainty, some predictability. Oh, so now I know that if I can't wear my favorite sweatpants or sweatshirt because the laundry hasn't been done, I know I'm going to feel bad about that. You may still have the dysregulation, but you at least can pinpoint what it, what created it, and that in turn then reduces the unpredictability, and so the overloads we're sort of predicting the unpredictable, so to speak, right? That's what we start to do, knowing that we can't actually change it, because the world is a highly unpredictable
Lynn Davison
place. So, 25 years ago, when 911 happened, I was my youngest had a kindergarten kindergarten screening, and they said there's something different here, and I went back to my car, saying I don't know
Sarah Bergenfield
what to do.
Lynn Davison
Actually, the screening was before, and then 911 came along, and then I really didn't know what to do, and that phrase of I don't know what to do is what put me into a
Sarah Bergenfield
depression dip. It
Lynn Davison
was awful not
Sarah Bergenfield
knowing
Lynn Davison
to do to support my adorable darling children, because six were had been diagnosed
Sarah Bergenfield
neurodivergent.
Lynn Davison
Know what
Sarah Bergenfield
to do?
Lynn Davison
I didn't know what to do about that client, that just that horrendous
Sarah Bergenfield
strategy.
Lynn Davison
It was the first time, too, that I was watching it on TV
Sarah Bergenfield
over and over, right?
Lynn Davison
Right, stand the impact that
Sarah Bergenfield
would have on me,
Lynn Davison
and it just so you're helping us figure out the I don't know piece, I think
Sarah Bergenfield
is critical.
Sarah Bergenfield
It's vital, and also to be able to acknowledge that anytime you don't know anything, it's going to feel
Lynn Davison
terrible. It did. It felt right,
Sarah Bergenfield
and I keep..
Lynn Davison
so all the parents I talk to say they don't know what to do
Sarah Bergenfield
next, right? So now, if you give that situation an uncertainty
Sarah Bergenfield
score,
Sarah Bergenfield
what would it be? It'd be
Sarah Bergenfield
pretty high,
Lynn Davison
right. And then when I talked to the young adult, they say I knew what to do in high school. The rules were really clear.
Sarah Bergenfield
I had,
Lynn Davison
I had exactly the support I needed, so I could
Sarah Bergenfield
get through that.
Lynn Davison
Graduated either from high school or college. Now I don't know what to do, because there's too many, so many options, and I don't know, is I hear that, and that's what seems to be at the root
Sarah Bergenfield
cause of us. Yucky,
Sarah Bergenfield
it is. It's a terrible feeling. So, uncertainty does have a role in our lives. We don't learn without uncertainty.
Lynn Davison
We have to
Sarah Bergenfield
have some. We have to have some, but it has to be kept at a tolerable
Lynn Davison
level, and that's different
Sarah Bergenfield
for everyone. It's different for every single person, and you're going to have different systems of uncertainty. So, for me, for example, I like to
Sarah Bergenfield
hike.
Sarah Bergenfield
I love mountains. My husband and I flying to Denver on Sunday. My son would say we're going to go and see him, and we're going to do some hiking, so you can put me on a hiking trail in the mountains, right? Which has, if you think about the uncertainty score, it's pretty high, right? For me, it's actually much lower, because I'm outside, there are the trees, you know, you have cell phones now, there's a limit as to how lost you can get, you know, as long, and I'm a very, very sensible hiker, like to stay on the trail, but if you were to then take me and put me in a restaurant with a group of people, even if the restaurant was, you know, in my town where I live here, my uncertainty score would
Sarah Bergenfield
go through the
Lynn Davison
roof. Oh, yes.
Sarah Bergenfield
So it's different for everybody. So it's having this idea that one size fits all, that you know, especially if you have multiple children, right? And I, like I said, I have three, that you know, one child would like to go out to dinner to this restaurant, and the other child is going to absolutely lose their mind being
Sarah Bergenfield
in a
Lynn Davison
restaurant.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yes, right. And then the third one may just go along with it, because they've been taught that they have to go along with everything, because they're the youngest. Yeah, right. So it's, how do you juggle all of those competing needs, as opposed to bring in this idea of, well, we should, as a family, we should go to restaurants and have dinner, that should be
Sarah Bergenfield
what we do.
Sarah Bergenfield
So the uncertainty scoring helps us get rid of the
Sarah Bergenfield
shoulds,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? And it helps us to build this framework of, well, what works for me, what works for this child, what works for my husband, what has what, what works for my wife,
Sarah Bergenfield
etc.
Sarah Bergenfield
And then we can just keep it more individual and more
Lynn Davison
supportive. Your book, as I was rereading it at the beginning, talks about how predictability is harder for an autistic
Sarah Bergenfield
brain,
Sarah Bergenfield
so we have a higher need for it. So it's not so much that it's harder, it's that we get to
Lynn Davison
it differently.
Sarah Bergenfield
So the process is called precision weighting, and what that means is that the brain is constantly determining what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to, and that's the same for all brains, right? It's called it's called noise versus
Sarah Bergenfield
signal,
Sarah Bergenfield
so as you know, as you and I are sitting here talking, or as people are sitting or watching, there are multiple things happening in the environment, right? You're in a room, the room is full of different things, maybe you have animals in your room, as I do, maybe there are people nearby, perhaps someone's mowing the lawn, maybe they're not mowing the lawn, that there's so much data surrounding us at any one given moment. If the brain paid attention to
Sarah Bergenfield
everything,
Sarah Bergenfield
it can't, it can't. We would not have the metabolic resources, and we would not be able to function. Okay, so the brain has learned to predict the meaning of our experiences by gathering sensory data, and if it can predict what's happening, it doesn't have to process, because it's expecting it, right. So this is how the brain works, and there's a fantastic body of research into this called the Predictive Processing Framework, which we talk about a lot in the book, so in an autistic brain that precision weighting piece is different. So an autistic brain cannot easily determine what's noise and what's
Lynn Davison
signal. I remember many times my son would say, I don't know what to study, there's too much information,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? That's it, and that's just one piece of it, right? That's that's then you know you're sitting here in your space, right? And I'm conscious of my dogs, and my dogs, I just took them for a walk, and they went swimming, and they - they're a little smelly right now. I'm not gonna lie, even though they're cute, and so I keep smelling them, and then they're scratching, and then there's a truck outside, and the light on my printer is flashing, and all of that is happening as you and I are talking, so I can stay focused in this conversation, but I still am holding all of that as I'm talking to you. Someone without autism is going to be much more likely to be able to filter those things out, right? Someone with ADHD is not going to be able to filter them out, and then they are going to actually focus on
Sarah Bergenfield
those things.
Sarah Bergenfield
I don't have that piece, because I don't have ADHD, right? So I don't have the my attention being pulled away, and then my focus shifting. I can stay focused, but I'm still processing all of this other stuff around me at the same time, and for me the only time I don't do that is when I go on, you know, my lovely deep dives, where I'm reading something, or learning something, or talking to someone really interesting, like you, and then you get really focused, and then exactly, so then there is no noise. There's only the beautiful signal of, oh, okay, this thing that I'm reading or learning is so incredible. Or playing video games, for example, are really a good example of that. They really help to filter out all of the noise in the
Sarah Bergenfield
environment,
Lynn Davison
for sure,
Sarah Bergenfield
for sure. So, that's the difference. So, it's not so much that we, that we struggle with predictability, it's that we, we get to it differently, and because of the way our brains work, we innately and automatically create it for ourselves with our need for routine, our need for sameness, you know, our restricted and repetitive interests, the ways that we stim, right, the physical actions that we use to create predictability. So, an autistic brain is actually, I think, extraordinarily wise, and from birth, autistic children, when they're born, they know what they need. The problem is the rest of the world
Sarah Bergenfield
isn't
Lynn Davison
listening, is having a hard time figuring it out
Sarah Bergenfield
sometimes, right? You may have a kid who is avoidant of my daughter hated having her
Sarah Bergenfield
hair brushed,
Sarah Bergenfield
hated it, would scream and scream and scream and scream if I had to brush her hair, because I
Sarah Bergenfield
think
Sarah Bergenfield
it hurt her.
Sarah Bergenfield
Those kinds of things, when you're parenting, become, you know, parental challenges. You should let me brush your hair. You should do as you're told. If I tell you you need your hair brushed, you need your hair brushed, right? And I can remember going through this as a child, and my going through the exact same thing, and my mother's response was to cut all my hair off, which was brutal for me, because I didn't
Sarah Bergenfield
want my hair cut,
Sarah Bergenfield
but her response to having a child who didn't want her hair brushed was okay, but if you don't want it brushed, then this is what's going to happen, sure, and it was really short. It was, you know, like a number three
Sarah Bergenfield
buzz card,
Sarah Bergenfield
and I can remember I hated it, you know, but I can also see from her perspective the battle with me day after day or night after night to try and
Sarah Bergenfield
brush my hair.
Sarah Bergenfield
It's, it's so
Lynn Davison
hard. Yes, it's hard to collaborate and come up with a solution that this is where I, we move into the align step. This is where predictability soothes a dysregulated nervous system, and I like to use the align step to agree on what we
Sarah Bergenfield
all want.
Lynn Davison
So, okay, we are. Let's just agree on what we're trying for here. It, we all want a great
Sarah Bergenfield
life.
Lynn Davison
We all want a connected family. We all, you know, it doesn't have to be more than that. It can be just those, you know,
Sarah Bergenfield
we
Lynn Davison
all want and have a great life. So this is how we can, at least we can put that GPS pin drop there,
Sarah Bergenfield
that
Lynn Davison
here we are. Okay, can we, you know, let's talk about that. What does that look
Sarah Bergenfield
like for each of them?
Sarah Bergenfield
So I could say, oh, I will say that we could simplify
Lynn Davison
that,
Sarah Bergenfield
okay, by saying that what we all want is a regulated
Sarah Bergenfield
nervous system.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yeah,
Sarah Bergenfield
each of us is individual because we can't connect from a place of dysregulation,
Sarah Bergenfield
exactly. So,
Sarah Bergenfield
how do we get there?
Sarah Bergenfield
How you get there might be very different, like how I get there is to go climb a
Lynn Davison
mountain,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? Right. So, how do
Sarah Bergenfield
you get there?
Lynn Davison
Yeah, well, I get there at the end of the day when I have a heating pad on my back and I'm watching YouTube, but the other way I really get there is when I'm having, when the family's having dinner, have to be sitting around the table, just when we're all kind of
Sarah Bergenfield
together, and,
Lynn Davison
and loving each other in the best way we
Sarah Bergenfield
know possible,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? So, loving each other, so if you were all getting together and all of you were dysregulated, that's not so much
Sarah Bergenfield
fun, right?
Lynn Davison
No, in the, in the stories that go on in different people's heads,
Sarah Bergenfield
like they shouldn't,
Lynn Davison
or I should be doing this, so they don't do that.
Sarah Bergenfield
I mean,
Lynn Davison
there's a lot of expectations,
Sarah Bergenfield
tons and tons
Sarah Bergenfield
and tons.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yeah, and that's really where we start to get into
Sarah Bergenfield
the weeds of
Sarah Bergenfield
it, and who put those expectations
Lynn Davison
there? Oh God, they've been programmed in us from day one, right? We brought them
Sarah Bergenfield
to the
Lynn Davison
family before they even came. Our parents, you know, are our way of looking at things, the Protestant work ethic, in my case,
Sarah Bergenfield
with my
Lynn Davison
British heritage, and you know, everybody brought all that in, and that you will not, don't, don't enable them all of the warnings we were
Sarah Bergenfield
getting
Lynn Davison
from from various family members, yeah, all that stuff we bring to every dinner
Sarah Bergenfield
table come from
Sarah Bergenfield
right. So, one thing that's important to recognize is that, because, because of the way our brains work, not just autistics, but all brains, in terms of this being a prediction thinking engine, right, our brains are actually designed to prefer certainty over
Lynn Davison
uncertainty. Yeah. Oh,
Sarah Bergenfield
for sure.
Sarah Bergenfield
Hopefully,
Sarah Bergenfield
yeah. So, now what we have to remember is that certainty can sometimes mean something
Sarah Bergenfield
bad. Yes,
Sarah Bergenfield
right. We see this a lot with, if you're in a, you know, a violent or an unhealthy partnership, or domestic relationship, or marriage, it may be really bad for you, but it's more certain than the alternative, and it's more predictable than the alternative. It's not better, it's just more predictable, and so we're naturally going to gravitate towards that. So that's a really important piece to remember. So, when you were saying about your, you know, your work ethic, your Protestant work ethic from your family background, where we start to get into trouble and we start to see the rub is we have an expectation of what something should look like. We don't account for whether or not it's good, whether or not it's bad, whether it's the right thing or the wrong thing, it's what's predictable. I was raised with this work ethic. I was raised to believe that parenting looks like this. So now, if I start to try to parent like this, the new way is uncertain and unpredictable, and it's going to feel bad, because that's its function. It's supposed to
Sarah Bergenfield
feel bad.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yes, right. And then we resolve that uncertainty by learning how to do it, and then
Sarah Bergenfield
it gets
Lynn Davison
better. So, how do we bring ifs into this
Sarah Bergenfield
piece,
Sarah Bergenfield
so our parts carry their own predictions, so let's say you're a child and you have parents who argue a lot, and you learn that if you come home with a really good
Sarah Bergenfield
report card,
Sarah Bergenfield
instead of arguing and your parents not paying attention to you, they actually are so happy with your report card that not only does the arguing stop, but you get lots and lots and lots of positive attention, right. So that would be a simple example. So this is what that child learns: do well in school, you'll get positive attention, and your parents won't fight so much. So you just do well in school. So now fast forward
Sarah Bergenfield
30 years,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? So that child is now an adult, and they're a high performing individual at work, and they're absolutely burnt out, and they're exhausted, but they don't know how not to do that, because the part that was created in childhood is still running the show, or as we say in ifs is driving the bus. We always want to know who's driving the bus, right? So, for that person, that part is driving the bus. The part that learned that high performance had a positive response is in the driver's seat most of the time. So now trying to shift that right, and to say actually you don't have to work at that level now, because things are different, the stakes aren't as high, you're an adult, you have more autonomy, you have more resources, whatever the arguments are, but trying to shift apart from a long-held belief, so now you have a part that has a predictable model, not good or bad or healthy, right, but a predictable model. Now we're trying to teach it to do something else, which feels unpredictable and uncertain, and it feels terrible for the part, and the part's totally resistant. I'm not going to do that. What are you crazy? Who knows what would happen if I stopped performing well? I'd lose my house, maybe my wife would leave me, my kids wouldn't have any shoes. Like, you hear people talking about all of these
Sarah Bergenfield
things.
Lynn Davison
Well, it's that
Sarah Bergenfield
where they are
Sarah Bergenfield
right, it's that young part who learned the behavior, who in our language is running the predictive model. This behavior equals this
Lynn Davison
outcome, and I see sometimes that I'll want them to adopt that part, because then I know that they'll be prepared for life
Sarah Bergenfield
on their own,
Lynn Davison
so I say, let's you know this is this is the way, right? And then I catch myself
Sarah Bergenfield
right, because it may or may not be
Sarah Bergenfield
the way,
Lynn Davison
happy the way for them for sure,
Sarah Bergenfield
right?
Lynn Davison
Okay, we teach that part. How do we teach that part?
Sarah Bergenfield
To we have to
Lynn Davison
show it. We have
Sarah Bergenfield
to, where we can use the, you know, the science of the neuro of neuroplasticity. Yeah, right. So neuroplasticity basically relates to how we learn, right? So how do we learn something? How do you learn to play tennis? How do you learn to speak French or Spanish? You
Sarah Bergenfield
practice,
Sarah Bergenfield
you have to learn, you have to practice, you have to practice, practice, practice, practice. You can't take one Spanish
Lynn Davison
lesson
Sarah Bergenfield
and expect to be fluent, right? In my case, you can't take 1000 and exactly, but you practice and practice, so the same, the same thing happens with parts. You go back to them. You don't need to do this today, remember. Oh yeah, okay. You don't need to do this today, remember. Oh yeah, okay. And sometimes we say you don't need to do this to remember. Now, what are you nuts? Of course I do. Have you been paying attention? Is anyone paying attention here? Of course, I have to do this right. And then we just make space for that, but the
Sarah Bergenfield
whole
Lynn Davison
point of there that makes space
Sarah Bergenfield
for that.
Lynn Davison
Children talk about that the
Sarah Bergenfield
other day,
Sarah Bergenfield
too.
Lynn Davison
Space for the discomfort of
Lynn Davison
it.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yeah. Oh,
Sarah Bergenfield
because that in that discomfort is information,
Lynn Davison
it's a trailhead,
Sarah Bergenfield
as you say, it's a trailhead, exactly. And so, what is that? What is that discomfort trying to show us or teach us? What can we
Lynn Davison
learn from it? That's what she said. She said, 'Thank it, and we are what,
Sarah Bergenfield
right, and that's what IFS teaches us, is to thank our parts, even our most extreme
Sarah Bergenfield
parts,
Sarah Bergenfield
you know, once we understand their motives, they are always working to protect us, even if they're, you know, the ways in which they're doing it are extremely self-sabotaging and not
Lynn Davison
helpful,
Sarah Bergenfield
they believe they're
Sarah Bergenfield
helping
Sarah Bergenfield
us. Yes,
Sarah Bergenfield
but if you don't make space for it, you won't get to the point where you
Sarah Bergenfield
understand that.
Lynn Davison
Well, that making space is really
Sarah Bergenfield
uncomfortable. It is because it, because it's
Lynn Davison
unpredictable, exhausting at the end of the night, I just want to crawl under
Sarah Bergenfield
the covers,
Lynn Davison
yeah, my earbuds in, and listen to my yoga nidra,
Sarah Bergenfield
so I can sleep,
Lynn Davison
but I keep going back to
Sarah Bergenfield
the mix space,
Sarah Bergenfield
yeah, and the making
Lynn Davison
space, how is it? It's so
Sarah Bergenfield
wise, it is,
Sarah Bergenfield
it's really wise, because it's a mindfulness
Sarah Bergenfield
practice,
Sarah Bergenfield
and a mindfulness practice. All the thing that they will have in common is that they teach us to be
Sarah Bergenfield
present,
Sarah Bergenfield
and if we're stuck in an emotional reaction, or you know, in either language apart, we're not
Sarah Bergenfield
present.
Lynn Davison
No,
Sarah Bergenfield
we're not. We're in the
Sarah Bergenfield
behavior,
Sarah Bergenfield
right, and there's no awareness of the behavior, there's only the
Sarah Bergenfield
behavior,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? So the making space allows us to notice the
Lynn Davison
behavior, the
Sarah Bergenfield
watcher, and that's the
Lynn Davison
key. Yes, that's the neutral watcher. Oh, notice this happening, right? Wow,
Sarah Bergenfield
I'm so furious with my husband right now because he did x, or I'm so disappointed that my friend didn't do this for me. You have to be able to notice what
Sarah Bergenfield
you're feeling
Sarah Bergenfield
right, because then you can say there's a part of me that's so disappointed that
Sarah Bergenfield
this happened.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yes, as opposed to I'm so disappointed, which sort of relates to the entirety of you, right? Because the truth is, you are not entirely disappointed. There's probably a part of you that might really understand, right? But you want to be able to be with the part that's disappointed without them taking over and running
Sarah Bergenfield
the show,
Lynn Davison
then no core yourself
Sarah Bergenfield
to run, yeah, our self energy, exactly. And in ifs, our self energy is what's available to us when our parts aren't running
Sarah Bergenfield
the show,
Lynn Davison
so is align is what we're trying to do when we align, is to align with our self
Sarah Bergenfield
energy,
Sarah Bergenfield
yeah, alignment - it's such a lovely word. It could be aligning with our self energy. It could also be aligning our self energy with our
Lynn Davison
parts.
Sarah Bergenfield
Okay, so that's where it becomes really helpful. When you can have a part that may have just got really angry and had an outburst, for example, you notice a
Sarah Bergenfield
behavior,
Sarah Bergenfield
but you can hold space for it, right? So now you're aligning with that part of you. I understand why you did that.
Lynn Davison
I get at my core, I want to be
Sarah Bergenfield
compassionate,
Lynn Davison
yeah, curious, and all those lovely C
Sarah Bergenfield
words
Lynn Davison
that in the ifs, I mean all eight of them
Sarah Bergenfield
that I don't have now,
Lynn Davison
right, right, right, oh. Oh, wow. I can't wait to practice this. Okay, I'm gonna see part in the piece. Practice is the collaborating, so ifs the parts to help them get into relationship with the self, orient to the present, resolve conflicts, and collaborate
Sarah Bergenfield
with each
Sarah Bergenfield
other, and so that's also your alignment, right? They're all aligned, and the system is like, oh, that's nice, that
Sarah Bergenfield
feels
Lynn Davison
good, feels better, that
Sarah Bergenfield
feels better
Lynn Davison
in this step. I love it when we take
Sarah Bergenfield
turns.
Lynn Davison
So here's my idea, la la la. What's yours, and you can do that with your
Sarah Bergenfield
parts. That's a brilliant thing to do with your parts, right? Here's my idea. Let's have a meeting. Let's bring in the committee. Let's seat them at the table, and I want everyone to tell me what they think.
Lynn Davison
Do you have names for your parts? Is that how you help yourself go through them all,
Sarah Bergenfield
or just define.. I don't, so much. No, I.. some people do. People have really wonderful, creative ways of exploring their parts. They're very visual. They use external things like toys or objects. Some people do name them. I don't. It's just not how I experience mine. I tend to use the what they trigger in me, like at my inner critic, you know, or my shamer, or my blamer, you know. So I use that kind of language
Sarah Bergenfield
more than
Lynn Davison
I got my hyper vigilant
Sarah Bergenfield
part. Oh yeah, my manager, my manager
Lynn Davison
part and my hyper logical part, but that doesn't make any sense to make sense, because if it makes sense, it's predictable,
Sarah Bergenfield
right?
Lynn Davison
That's why I lean toward the logic so much. I see
Sarah Bergenfield
that happen.
Sarah Bergenfield
Oh yeah, I mean, an autistic brain is totally wired for that. I mean, we're systems thinkers, we're problem solvers, we're the people who come into, you know, an organization and say, well, that's stupid, that doesn't work, like, why are you doing that, and no, right? And then, then we sort of get into all these interpersonal conflicts with people, because people like, what are you talking about, we're doing this for 30 years and it works great, and we like to come in, and, and we don't mean to do it that way. We just, we're really good at spotting those things, and if we spot them, we cannot
Lynn Davison
unsee them, like you've got it's got
Sarah Bergenfield
to be
Sarah Bergenfield
said, right? Because it's a problem to be solved. Life is full of problems
Lynn Davison
to be solved. Yes, yes, but that doesn't work very well in corporate environments,
Sarah Bergenfield
isn't that? That's why I was fired from every job I
Lynn Davison
ever had, and now you're working for yourself,
Sarah Bergenfield
and isn't that? Yeah.
Sarah Bergenfield
Oh my gosh, I started working for myself in my late 30s, mid 30s, and it was a total game
Lynn Davison
changer for me. Me too. Yeah, first I was a full-time mom, and then in my 50s is when I started my first business, and I just thought, why didn't I do this from the
Sarah Bergenfield
beginning,
Lynn Davison
right? Oh, actually, I had the first job I had was a sales rep, and it was very independent.
Sarah Bergenfield
I was
Lynn Davison
Northern California coast, gorgeous place, and I decided what I did and when I did it and who I interacted with, and I was very successful, and then I went to the corporate environment, and it all was so
Sarah Bergenfield
much
Sarah Bergenfield
harder,
Lynn Davison
so now it makes a lot of sense to me now. Okay, then if we all can, we consulted with all of our parts, and then we decide what we're going to experiment with, so autistic parts update when we listen to their experiences and understand their motives. Tell
Sarah Bergenfield
me more about that.
Sarah Bergenfield
So, what we mean is that in order for the emotional prediction that you predict, or the expectation, right, we call it model updating in order, and that's what learning is. In order for the part to learn that something new is possible, we first have to understand how
Sarah Bergenfield
they got there.
Sarah Bergenfield
What are they afraid of? How long have they been doing it? What is it they do for you? How do they help you? What do they worry would happen if they didn't do that for you, right? So, in using my example, that part of you that that pushes you to perform at such a high level, what does it worry would happen if you didn't, right? And you have to listen to all of that first, so you listen to their experiences and you understand their motives,
Lynn Davison
yeah, I'd get bored, I'd feel less valuable, I would be feel stagnant, I would.. it would be so unfamiliar to me, it would be very uncomfortable
Sarah Bergenfield
if I didn't, right? So then you acknowledge that, and you validate that, that makes so much
Sarah Bergenfield
sense to me,
Sarah Bergenfield
really understand, and then you might ask
Sarah Bergenfield
something like,
Sarah Bergenfield
is there any part of you that wants it to be different, are you tired, do you like performing at this level, so now you start to bring in, once you have the understanding built, now you start to bring in an alternative possibility, that's the updating
Lynn Davison
piece that you can see yourself
Sarah Bergenfield
doing,
Lynn Davison
picture yourself
Sarah Bergenfield
doing that.
Lynn Davison
Yeah, that's what I had to do in this position, I had to say nine
Sarah Bergenfield
to five,
Lynn Davison
sneak in sometimes on the weekends, all right. We
Lynn Davison
won't tell anyone, or I read,
Sarah Bergenfield
you know,
Lynn Davison
but I'm at my desk. I leave my desk at five because I would work and work and work and work and work, and then I got sick multiple times, right? Seriously, sick the last time, and I said, 'Hey, you
Lynn Davison
got to break this, so'
Lynn Davison
now I know when that part starts talking, it's like, okay, well, look at your whole
Sarah Bergenfield
life,
Lynn Davison
look at, and that's where the life GPS that we use to determine what it is that we have already done. Good news,
Sarah Bergenfield
you've done
Lynn Davison
what you want next, because human beings are never
Sarah Bergenfield
done
Lynn Davison
right, right. Okay, so of all the things you want next, what's next? And that's how we figure out what the experiment needs
Sarah Bergenfield
to be. No, that's great,
Lynn Davison
and it has to
Sarah Bergenfield
matter,
Sarah Bergenfield
and it has to be, it has to be honest, you know, it's like we can't say to parts, okay, listen, if you stop doing that, I can guarantee everything's going to be okay, that we can't say that to them, because we can't guarantee anything, but we have to be realistic, so what we can say is, if you stop doing that, I am certain that between all of us will
Sarah Bergenfield
figure it out. You're going to be all right,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? And we will be okay. It may not be okay, but we will be okay, because we will figure it out. We can resource now, and we couldn't resource when
Sarah Bergenfield
we were children.
Lynn Davison
I see. So you're saying to each of the parts they can join together in the service of the
Lynn Davison
self we really
Sarah Bergenfield
want, right? So we integrate, we integrate each of the
Lynn Davison
parts, so I hear concern. This is how we're going to take care of that. I hear your concern, that's how we're going to take care of that. I hear your
Sarah Bergenfield
concern,
Lynn Davison
and we're going to give do as an experiment. This isn't something we have to do for the rest of our lives. Let's do it times
Sarah Bergenfield
and
Sarah Bergenfield
see what learn. Right, right, right. Will you guys, you know, talking to your parts, will you guys give me enough space for us to try it? Will you trust me to at least try it? And then, if it doesn't work, then you can hop back in, and we'll go to the
Sarah Bergenfield
old way.
Sarah Bergenfield
How, what would it be like to try it? What would it be like for you to not work so hard? And you can ask the part directly, you know, your high performing part, chances are when you connect with them, they're probably exhausted. Nobody's ever told them that they have the choice, right? So, if you start to offer this as a new alternative possibility, that's when the update happens, and that's when the behavior shifts. The behavior won't shift if the part has not
Sarah Bergenfield
been updated,
Sarah Bergenfield
because it's not
Sarah Bergenfield
safety,
Sarah Bergenfield
it's too unpredictable.
Lynn Davison
You talked about in our earlier conversation about safety, and how we need to frame that up in a good way. Tell me a little bit that feels like that needs to be
Sarah Bergenfield
addressed now.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yeah, because I feel like safety is one of those words that gets tossed around all the time, and people say it's not safe for me to speak my
Sarah Bergenfield
mind,
Sarah Bergenfield
or I don't feel safe
Sarah Bergenfield
to do this,
Sarah Bergenfield
and I would really love to see us start thinking a little more critically about what that actually means. Is safety the right word? Right, so if you're married to, I mean, and there are times where it isn't safe, and safe is absolutely the right word to use. So I'm not disregarding the word at all, I'm just saying that we should use it more appropriately. So if you have, let's say you're at work and your boss says something that you don't agree with, but you don't know how to speak up for it, and then you're telling, you know, your partner at home. Well, I just don't feel safe to say anything. You know, safety might not quite be the right word. You may be uncomfortable. There may be a high level of uncertainty and unpredictability there. You may get an arousal
Sarah Bergenfield
spike,
Sarah Bergenfield
right, and a big spike of dysregulation at the thought of saying it. That does not mean you're not
Lynn Davison
safe, okay?
Sarah Bergenfield
It just means that you're experiencing
Sarah Bergenfield
right,
Lynn Davison
right,
Sarah Bergenfield
okay? Because
Lynn Davison
arousals
Sarah Bergenfield
are unsafe,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? And in fact, high arousal doesn't mean you're not safe, it just means that there's a high level
Sarah Bergenfield
of arousal,
Sarah Bergenfield
you know, like I experience a high level of arousal when my dogs start barking, and being to the, to the extent that I will become a lunatic in about eight seconds when my dogs start barking, if they don't stop when I ask them to stop, I'm experiencing an intense level of arousal, which, if they could somehow, you know, monitor my, my biomarkers, you know, I'm sure they'd sort of shoot up through the roof,
Sarah Bergenfield
right?
Sarah Bergenfield
Yes, physiologically I could describe that as
Sarah Bergenfield
danger,
Sarah Bergenfield
but it
Sarah Bergenfield
isn't.
Sarah Bergenfield
I'm not at
Lynn Davison
risk,
Sarah Bergenfield
right? Nothing bad is going to happen to me, but what I'm experiencing
Sarah Bergenfield
feels bad,
Sarah Bergenfield
and so this is where I like to be very careful with the language that we use in terms of ascribing emotion words to state
Sarah Bergenfield
changes.
Lynn Davison
Tell
Sarah Bergenfield
me more about that,
Sarah Bergenfield
because so anxiety is a good one. So, so many autistics are diagnosed with things like generalized anxiety disorder. Okay, so I like to be really careful about that, because you may not be anxious, you may be in a state of high
Sarah Bergenfield
arousal,
Sarah Bergenfield
so high arousal, my dog's barking, right, is different to the anxiety that I might feel, or that I felt on 911 for example, that was anxiety, right, my dog's barking is arousal, they feel exactly
Sarah Bergenfield
the same,
Sarah Bergenfield
they do, but it's they do this, this, this, the symptoms, like, what's the difference
Lynn Davison
between patient in the body
Sarah Bergenfield
feels the same, it's the same, so what's what's the difference between the excitement that you feel when you're a child the night before your birthday and the anxiety, and I'm using air quotes, the anxiety that you feel when you have to present in front of people physiologically, it's very similar, but we give them a different name, and so then we start to tell ourselves a different story, so if we can recognize them as state changes and not give them a name, we can slow things down a little bit, and for the ifs people, that then means that your parts don't have to jump into problem
Sarah Bergenfield
solve, if
Sarah Bergenfield
you experience a state change and you call it anxiety. Now you're going to have a system of parts coming in. Okay. Well, how do we reduce the anxiety? What do we have to do? Should I take a medication? Should I not go outside? Should I stay in my
Sarah Bergenfield
house?
Sarah Bergenfield
Right, when in fact it's okay to just acknowledge I'm definitely having an arousal spike right now, because I'm about to go to the grocery store, that's totally okay. Well, so we want to again, it's normalizing,
Lynn Davison
that's what Dr. Russell Kennedy suggests. The anxiety, the author of Anxiety RX and his program suggests sensation without explanation, that not every sensation needs an explanation,
Sarah Bergenfield
and many of them don't
Sarah Bergenfield
have
Lynn Davison
one.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yeah, and we need to be okay with that. Yeah, but we like to name
Lynn Davison
everything.
Sarah Bergenfield
Yes, we
Sarah Bergenfield
do, because by naming it, we're reducing the uncertainty of the thing itself,
Sarah Bergenfield
right?
Lynn Davison
Such a rich body of work
Sarah Bergenfield
you've been doing.
Sarah Bergenfield
Thanks. I mean, I'm standing on the shoulders of other people, like Lisa Feldman Barrett. Her book, How Emotions Are Made, is phenomenal. I highly recommend that, Dick Schwartz's book, you know, No Bad Parts. There are so many other incredible people that I have learned from, and I'm just sort of taking their work and synthesizing it and using it, you know, with my particular population, but it's just so fascinating, all of the things that we can learn, and how we can just take some of the pressure off
Lynn Davison
ourselves. Well, thank you so much, because I find the people that truly understand autistic adulting are few and far between. For me to find resources about childhood, but experts who have really thought about how to live as an adult with an autistic brain are few, the fewer and further between, and I, you know, I'm watching that change,
Sarah Bergenfield
but slowly. All right, right,
Lynn Davison
yeah. And then transition between school and adulthood, it hits both, you know, you got feet, your feet in both places, but right,
Sarah Bergenfield
there's
Lynn Davison
around adulthood, and that's why your work is so
Sarah Bergenfield
important,
Lynn Davison
helping people through that transition, through that difficult, tricky
Sarah Bergenfield
pivot
Lynn Davison
from being externally defined to being internally
Sarah Bergenfield
defined. Right.
Lynn Davison
Well,
Sarah Bergenfield
thank you.
Sarah Bergenfield
You're welcome. It was lovely chatting with you.
Lynn Davison
So good. Love it. And now you know, I just really want anyone who has an opportunity to go get your book and read it, and then read it again to do it. Did I see something else that I didn't pick up the first time? So by the time I'm done, the poor thing, the poor book is going to be highlighted everywhere.
Sarah Bergenfield
That's a sign of
Lynn Davison
a good book
Sarah Bergenfield
pages and post-it
Lynn Davison
notes. Yes. Well, my case is all electronic because I hate dusting.
Sarah Bergenfield
Well,
Lynn Davison
that's good as it is. So,
Sarah Bergenfield
and there is an audio book coming out
Sarah Bergenfield
soon, so
Sarah Bergenfield
that will be good for people who prefer
Lynn Davison
to listen. Are you going to be the narrator, or
Sarah Bergenfield
even I did narrate
Lynn Davison
it. Yes, I do have such a lovely voice. I'll be fine to listen. All right. Well, thank you again.
Sarah Bergenfield
And
Lynn Davison
chatting with you, so appreciate it. And I know my people
Sarah Bergenfield
are gonna love
Sarah Bergenfield
it. Okay.
Lynn Davison
Thank you.
Sarah Bergenfield
Bye for now.
Sarah Bergenfield
Bye bye.
