April 7, 2024 • 26 mins
Join Dr. Regan for this first episode of a new self-care series. Rather than becoming the victim of an intense world, constantly in survival mode, learn strategies to become powerful at self-care. The first step is self-awareness which can begin by noticing your fight, flight, freeze, and physical reactions to events and experiences.
Explore Dr. Regan's new Learning and Equipping page and the specific course page for "Empowered Parenting."
Dr. Regan's Resources:
Zur Institute courses for clinicians
Understanding Autism in Adults and Aging Adults, 2nd ed
Book: Understanding Autistic Behaviors
Autism in the Adult website homepage
Website Resources for Clinicians
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:06):
Teresa Regan. I'm a neuropsychologist. I'm the founder and director of an adult
diagnostic autism clinic in
central Illinois, and I'm your host for the Autism in the Adult podcast.
We are starting a new series on self-care, and I have to tell you I'm super
(00:28):
excited about this theme.
It's so easy for us to feel like we're victims of whatever happens to us in
our everyday life, things that drain us.
You know, this may include noises, crowds, obstacles to plans,
things that interfere with routines.
(00:48):
It could be criticism, rejection, hard work, work, conflict,
lack of sleep, and so much more.
And it can be instinctual for us to regroup by escaping the things that drain us.
Now, the problem with this is that this reaction of escape makes us much smaller.
(01:09):
It makes our world smaller. It takes away our strength and our internal power. hour.
So I want you to know that you can take care of yourself in active and impactful ways.
And before we start the topic for today, I want to invite you to head over to my website.
(01:31):
Adultandgeriatricautism.com, and I'm in the middle of creating educational content
for autistic individuals, families and households, and neurodiverse couples.
My first offering has launched. It's called Empowered Parenting,
and there's a focus on neurodiverse household living.
(01:52):
We want people to feel heard, to have strategies for centering themselves,
and mentoring opportunities for life skills.
As part of the course fee, family members receive three hours of video education,
entry into a newly created parent and family forum, and the option to purchase
(02:12):
tickets to scheduled group sessions online with me to further discuss the educational content.
All right, let's dive into this content on taking care of ourselves.
So imagine this, you are getting through your day and some parts of it have
(02:33):
been kind of rough And you're trying to hold it together until school is over
or work is over or your partner gets home.
And once that happens, you think, oh, I can finally escape this hard stuff.
And my safe space or my safe person will help me feel better.
(02:56):
And you know, there's nothing wrong with that approach. But there are some limitations
that don't have to be there.
You can have more powerful ways of really recentering yourself and helping you feel better.
If your safe space isn't the way you need it to be or your safe person isn't
(03:18):
available, I don't want you to feel just left to flounder at the mercy of whatever
is happening around you.
Let's pretend that someone asks you, what have you done to take care of yourself today?
You might think, what? Like, I don't even know what that means.
I've never thought about that before.
(03:40):
What have I done to take care of myself?
Instead of asking, how can I escape this intense world?
What if you had strategies to find your strength, your internal power,
and instead of escape or dissociating as a survival strategy,
you were able to activate yourself to care for your nervous system.
(04:04):
So you might say, well, yeah, that would be great. But what does that look like?
What does it mean? How do I do that?
Well, the first step is becoming aware of what you are experiencing and and why.
The second step is to reduce the drain in your nervous system,
so the things that wear you out or overwhelm you.
(04:28):
The third step is to increase things that soothe and calm and center your nervous system.
And the fourth step is to develop a way of living that incorporates these strategies
every day and also adjusts based on how your needs change from one day to the next.
(04:52):
Well, let's focus on step one for this episode, becoming aware of what you are experiencing and why.
So the autistic individual typically has some level of challenge identifying
what's happening in their internal space.
And this could include their physical body and also their psychology,
(05:16):
their emotions, thoughts, motivations.
Now, the individual may be extremely sensitive to the highs and lows of the
emotional atmosphere that they find themselves in.
So if someone in their space is upset
or grieving or aggravated that can
really send a lot of signals to
(05:39):
their system and they can realize that they've reached the point of overload
I have this very sensitive heart and spirit and system and when I'm in an atmosphere
fear with conflict or overwhelming emotions,
I can start to notice overload.
(05:59):
What may be harder for the individual is to recognize all the early signals
that their nervous system gives them about the upcoming struggle.
And they often struggle to know specifically what they are are experiencing.
So it may feel bad in a general sense, but it may not be clear to the person
(06:23):
what specific things have triggered that feeling and what could make it better.
So let's take a physical example, eating and drinking.
Many on the spectrum struggle to feel hunger and thirst in a real timely,
accurate, and efficient way.
(06:44):
So their body, their cells, the tissues in their body,
just the demand of their physical body may really be hungry and thirsty before
the person realizes this as a sensation.
So their body is going without what it needs to be at its very very best,
(07:06):
but it doesn't really make that need known or our conscious mind can't detect that in time.
Maybe it's around dinnertime that the autistic individual tries to remember,
did I eat or drink anything today?
And maybe decides that they didn't.
(07:26):
The same thing can happen with other their physical needs, like sleep, pain, temperature.
So the body may be going without what it needs well before there's any realization
in the conscious mind that, oh, I'm exhausted, I'm hungry, I'm uncomfortable.
(07:50):
Another example can be something we look at in the psychological space of the individual.
Maybe certain types of interactions or interactions with a particular person.
Maybe these are draining while interactions of a different type or with a different
(08:10):
person are stabilizing and comforting.
If we go through our days without noticing what kinds of situations and what
types of people are triggering different states in our internal space,
then we're just responding rather than strategizing.
We're kind of in defense mode. Rather than having a way to be activated and
(08:37):
powerful, having a plan and a strategy for helping our system get what it needs
to feel centered and calm.
Responding might look like leaving the situation to go home and take a nap.
But if there was awareness ahead of time that this type of situation is likely
to be draining, the individual could prepare.
(09:00):
We'll talk about what kinds of prep might feel good and work well in another episode.
They would also have the opportunity to make a strategy for recovery after the
event, and to use specific strategies during the event.
This is a much more empowered approach, but it does require that first step
(09:24):
of increased awareness of what am I experiencing, why, what's likely to happen
next, and what would help.
So how do we get to a place of increased increased awareness of the internal space.
I suggest that you start by noticing when you show a fight, flight,
(09:46):
freeze, or physical response in a situation.
And here I'm speaking to the autistic individual, but also people around you
that love you and want to support you the best.
If you're family, friends, or a helper for someone on the spectrum,
you should use this strategy too.
(10:06):
Consider these moments to be clues, to be revelation of what the individual's
nervous system finds to be difficult.
Now, this is the first step, the noticing of a change in our state.
And it will be a journey of figuring out what triggered these states,
(10:29):
because often it can be multiple things over some period of time.
But believe me, the journey of discovery has so many benefits that it's worth
the time and effort to really focus on figuring this out.
Now, all of us lean towards some reaction when we're overwhelmed.
(10:50):
The autistic individual is going to lean toward having a bit more difficulty
finding a state of centeredness.
And we call that state a regulated state.
And they're also going to struggle to avoid an overwhelmed feeling.
And that is called dysregulation.
(11:13):
There's a description of the autistic experience that's called the intense world
theory, and I think the name creates just a wonderful, powerful image.
The autistic person often, although not always, feels like they're living in
a world that's very intense.
(11:33):
So the reason to talk about this in our series is to
empower you to change from being a passive of recipient of this intensity and
then just being swept away by it to really being a powerful and activated agent
in responding toward that seeking of a more centered and comfortable state.
(11:57):
So if we're going to look for these reactions as clues to what the internal
state is, let's start by thinking of an example of what a fight reaction might look like.
So by this, I mean any reaction toward being overwhelmed that looks externally visible.
(12:19):
This could be a meltdown. It could be an agitated state.
Pacing or rocking could increase. A panic attack could be present.
An outburst. It could be loud.
So as you can see, not all of these involve fighting per se,
but I'm using the term as as a way to describe an externally visible reaction to being overwhelmed.
(12:45):
Let me review an example of a fight reaction.
Let's take the example of a three-year-old boy attending church programming
for youngsters for the first time, and mom is volunteering in the room.
Now, typically, this youngster is compliant and kind and thoughtful to others,
(13:06):
but mom sees him pushing peers away and she takes him to timeout.
After doing a timeout multiple times for pushing other kids,
she sees him inside a playhouse all alone and a girl opens the window and screams into the window.
She sees his hand push out the window and smack her in the face and,
(13:29):
It is at this point that she connects that this is a fight reaction.
This is an overwhelmed sense of being dysregulated and it's externalized.
It's something that he's responding to in a really clear kind of pushing away method.
(13:51):
So, aha, she thinks this isn't misbehavior. It's revelation. volation.
He's pushing people out of his space. He's overwhelmed.
He's hiding in this little playhouse. And then somebody invades his space with more noise.
And so he's defending his space.
He is overstimulated by the environment. And the conclusion is that this crowded
(14:18):
and loud peer environment is overwhelming to him, and it really may not match
his nervous system very well.
Let's look at what a flight reaction would look like.
So if somebody is overwhelmed, they might lean toward a flight reaction,
which is a quieter reaction, and it can go unnoticed a little bit more than
(14:43):
an externalized reaction.
This is a reaction where someone tries to escape a situation.
So in our last example, going into the little playhouse was a flight reaction.
It's any time the person is saying, I need to leave this conversation.
I need to go to my room. I need to come home from school. I need to call into work.
(15:09):
I need to cancel my date.
This withdrawal response, an escape response.
Now, we can see that and recognize it and then say to ourselves, okay, that's a clue.
This person is feeling dysregulated.
So let's take an example of a flight reaction.
(15:30):
Here we have a couple in their 50s, and they're having a small dinner party.
Now, they are empty nesters, and the woman in the couple loves having guests
over. And she feels like she can finally get back to this activity because the
kids are out of the house.
She's not spending all of her time chauffeuring them around and taking care
(15:51):
of their needs. So she is very excited about this.
Now, her husband, although undiagnosed, is autistic.
And a lot of his social interaction takes place in the structure of work.
And this fits him really pretty well.
The loose structure of a social get-together does not fit his system well at all.
(16:14):
However, he isn't really consciously aware of this.
But during the dinner party, he realizes that they're out of ice,
and he volunteers to go get some.
He ends up really kind of missing in action, and his wife is wondering where
he is, gives him a call, no answer.
He's really taking some time not
(16:37):
only to get ice but he stopped to
get gas and he started scrolling
through his phone to look at the news while he was
sitting in the parking lot so he comes back
after an hour from what what really should have been a 10-minute errand his
wife was super upset and she said this was evidence that he really didn't care
(17:00):
enough about her friends and her her desire to throw this dinner party to make
even more than a slight appearance,
and he didn't really engage in the activity.
In actuality, however, this could have been a very useful clue if she realized
that this was a flight reaction, and his nervous system was overwhelmed in the environment.
(17:27):
He had an escape reaction. And rather than being just, you know,
something that she gets frustrated about, this is revelation.
And they could use this information as a clue to plan and structure some of
these events in a different way.
So with awareness, the use of some specific strategies could have made this
(17:52):
a much more enjoyable event.
And again, we'll talk about the strategies in another episode.
Now, of course, you know the next reaction is a freeze reaction.
So the freeze reaction captures the experiences where our brain shuts down and
maybe we're staring or we're not hearing people talk to us.
(18:15):
We're physically present, but maybe we're dissociated.
We might forget whole parts of the day. We might forget the content of a difficult
conversation. So it's the shutting down response.
So I'm physically present, but not psychologically present. I'm not psychologically online.
(18:37):
I'm offline psychologically. psychologically.
So let's consider an example in this situation of an autistic female who's at
work, and she gets called into her supervisor's office, and this was an unexpected interaction.
She's given feedback that a fellow co-worker has complained that she's too slow
(19:03):
at her work and not carrying her share of the loan.
When asked what she has to say about that, She just went completely blank.
After walking out of the office, she realizes that she can't remember much of what was said.
And she knows the supervisor talked to her, explained some things,
(19:23):
but she has no solid memory of what really happened.
She knows that her supervisor wanted her to engage in this conversation,
to offer some statements of plan, like I'll work on this or that.
And she does realize that as she left, her supervisor said that she'll be waiting
(19:47):
for some type of response from her.
Because she can't really recall what was said, she's not sure what to do about this.
The reaction may offer her new information about how centered she has been at
work and what it took to kind of throw her off center into a freeze reaction.
(20:10):
And it could help her make a plan for the future about how to address these
situations in a way that really feels better and more effective.
She's also tempted to leave work in that moment, which would be a flight reaction
to recover from the encounter, but she wishes she knew how to recover without leaving.
(20:33):
You know, so she wants that increased power to care for herself.
This will help me settle and regroup. So here we see this freeze reaction,
not knowing what to do, feeling blank.
And then it's followed by this impulse to leave, to escape.
(20:55):
There is a fourth response that we can have even when we don't consciously feel
an emotion or we're not processing thoughts and feelings that we've identified,
this fourth reaction is a physical response to being dysregulated.
So this physical response is processed
(21:16):
as a body experience rather than a psychological state, like an emotion.
So maybe we can't tell what we're feeling or what we're thinking,
but we know our stomach hurts. We have a headache.
Have maybe what looks like a seizure, but it's not actually electrical. It's a stress response.
(21:37):
We may feel very tired all of a sudden. Maybe we're dizzy.
And we might be able to notice this physical experience even when we can't really
detect our internal state, like an emotion, thought, motivation.
Let's take a physical example. An autistic teen goes bowling with his birth
(22:02):
mother who visits on a scheduled basis about twice a year, and they had a really good time bowling.
This is one of his favorite activities.
They went out for ice cream after bowling, and then they got tickets to a monster truck show.
Now, at the monster truck show, the teen had a seizure and fell to the ground shaking.
(22:25):
Now, he has a seizure history but hasn't had a seizure since he was seven.
So they went to the hospital and the EEG was set up to measure the electrical
activity of the brain to see if they could capture seizure activity so they knew what was going on.
Well, while the EEG was recording, there were six similar spells where his eyes
(22:51):
rolled up, he was shaking,
he wasn't responsive, but they could see via the EEG that there was not the
electrical pattern of a seizure.
It was really this very clear stress response response from such a big, intense day.
(23:12):
This was good information for them because when they asked him during the day,
how are you doing? Do you need a break?
Do you want to do this next activity?
Yes, he wanted to. He just wasn't quite in touch with what his system needed.
What was this experience-like for his whole system? Was it too intense?
(23:36):
Although he enjoyed all the activities, his nervous system was really overwhelmed,
and that was expressed through a physical system rather than through an emotion or a thought.
Even though he didn't want the day to end, this signal from his body was good revelation,
and it could be used in the future to plan an enjoyable but less intense day
(24:02):
so that his whole system was feeling more grounded and didn't then just feel
so overwhelmed that they had to kind of stop and recoup.
So the first part of being a detective about your internal state is to watch
your reactions and responses.
(24:22):
If you can't detect your hunger, your level of drain, and what makes you feel
uncentered in the moment, try to capture these reactions and then backtrack a little bit.
I know for myself, it was really helpful for me when I started to be able to
(24:42):
notice when when I kind of went blank in my head and I didn't know why,
but once I started to notice when that happened, I could pause and say,
all right, I'm feeling really blank.
What just happened before that blank feeling?
And then I could often say, oh, that's right.
(25:05):
Somebody said this and now that's triggered anxiety in me.
When you show these responses, think, okay, there's a clue.
There's a clue. It's not just an experience, it's a revelation.
It's not something to be hidden or shut down or to have consequences for.
This is a wonderful, powerful clue that I should pay attention to and that's
(25:30):
going to empower me to respond in a more active and efficient way.
To take care of my nervous system. This episode was about the first step in
a real activated and powerful self-care approach.
And I want to thank you for joining me. We talked about understanding and taking
(25:52):
care of our nervous systems.
And until next time, go out there and start taking notes about when you have a fight, flight,
freeze, or physical response and gather this information as as clues so you
can help yourself thrive in your environment.
For anyone living in a household who wants to focus on improving household culture,
(26:16):
again, check out my first family offering called Empowered Parenting.
And in addition to Empowered Parenting, I'm also working on my next course for
autistic individuals called Boost Your Bounce.
And it's going to be about improving resilience resilience in a complex world.
So thanks again for joining me and go out there and take care of yourself.
(26:40):
Remember, you are important and you're powerful.
Music.
Music.
(00:06):
Teresa Regan. I'm a neuropsychologist. I'm the founder and director of an adult
diagnostic autism clinic in
central Illinois, and I'm your host for the Autism in the Adult podcast.
We are starting a new series on self-care, and I have to tell you I'm super
(00:28):
excited about this theme.
It's so easy for us to feel like we're victims of whatever happens to us in
our everyday life, things that drain us.
You know, this may include noises, crowds, obstacles to plans,
things that interfere with routines.
(00:48):
It could be criticism, rejection, hard work, work, conflict,
lack of sleep, and so much more.
And it can be instinctual for us to regroup by escaping the things that drain us.
Now, the problem with this is that this reaction of escape makes us much smaller.
(01:09):
It makes our world smaller. It takes away our strength and our internal power. hour.
So I want you to know that you can take care of yourself in active and impactful ways.
And before we start the topic for today, I want to invite you to head over to my website.
(01:31):
Adultandgeriatricautism.com, and I'm in the middle of creating educational content
for autistic individuals, families and households, and neurodiverse couples.
My first offering has launched. It's called Empowered Parenting,
and there's a focus on neurodiverse household living.
(01:52):
We want people to feel heard, to have strategies for centering themselves,
and mentoring opportunities for life skills.
As part of the course fee, family members receive three hours of video education,
entry into a newly created parent and family forum, and the option to purchase
(02:12):
tickets to scheduled group sessions online with me to further discuss the educational content.
All right, let's dive into this content on taking care of ourselves.
So imagine this, you are getting through your day and some parts of it have
(02:33):
been kind of rough And you're trying to hold it together until school is over
or work is over or your partner gets home.
And once that happens, you think, oh, I can finally escape this hard stuff.
And my safe space or my safe person will help me feel better.
(02:56):
And you know, there's nothing wrong with that approach. But there are some limitations
that don't have to be there.
You can have more powerful ways of really recentering yourself and helping you feel better.
If your safe space isn't the way you need it to be or your safe person isn't
(03:18):
available, I don't want you to feel just left to flounder at the mercy of whatever
is happening around you.
Let's pretend that someone asks you, what have you done to take care of yourself today?
You might think, what? Like, I don't even know what that means.
I've never thought about that before.
(03:40):
What have I done to take care of myself?
Instead of asking, how can I escape this intense world?
What if you had strategies to find your strength, your internal power,
and instead of escape or dissociating as a survival strategy,
you were able to activate yourself to care for your nervous system.
(04:04):
So you might say, well, yeah, that would be great. But what does that look like?
What does it mean? How do I do that?
Well, the first step is becoming aware of what you are experiencing and and why.
The second step is to reduce the drain in your nervous system,
so the things that wear you out or overwhelm you.
(04:28):
The third step is to increase things that soothe and calm and center your nervous system.
And the fourth step is to develop a way of living that incorporates these strategies
every day and also adjusts based on how your needs change from one day to the next.
(04:52):
Well, let's focus on step one for this episode, becoming aware of what you are experiencing and why.
So the autistic individual typically has some level of challenge identifying
what's happening in their internal space.
And this could include their physical body and also their psychology,
(05:16):
their emotions, thoughts, motivations.
Now, the individual may be extremely sensitive to the highs and lows of the
emotional atmosphere that they find themselves in.
So if someone in their space is upset
or grieving or aggravated that can
really send a lot of signals to
(05:39):
their system and they can realize that they've reached the point of overload
I have this very sensitive heart and spirit and system and when I'm in an atmosphere
fear with conflict or overwhelming emotions,
I can start to notice overload.
(05:59):
What may be harder for the individual is to recognize all the early signals
that their nervous system gives them about the upcoming struggle.
And they often struggle to know specifically what they are are experiencing.
So it may feel bad in a general sense, but it may not be clear to the person
(06:23):
what specific things have triggered that feeling and what could make it better.
So let's take a physical example, eating and drinking.
Many on the spectrum struggle to feel hunger and thirst in a real timely,
accurate, and efficient way.
(06:44):
So their body, their cells, the tissues in their body,
just the demand of their physical body may really be hungry and thirsty before
the person realizes this as a sensation.
So their body is going without what it needs to be at its very very best,
(07:06):
but it doesn't really make that need known or our conscious mind can't detect that in time.
Maybe it's around dinnertime that the autistic individual tries to remember,
did I eat or drink anything today?
And maybe decides that they didn't.
(07:26):
The same thing can happen with other their physical needs, like sleep, pain, temperature.
So the body may be going without what it needs well before there's any realization
in the conscious mind that, oh, I'm exhausted, I'm hungry, I'm uncomfortable.
(07:50):
Another example can be something we look at in the psychological space of the individual.
Maybe certain types of interactions or interactions with a particular person.
Maybe these are draining while interactions of a different type or with a different
(08:10):
person are stabilizing and comforting.
If we go through our days without noticing what kinds of situations and what
types of people are triggering different states in our internal space,
then we're just responding rather than strategizing.
We're kind of in defense mode. Rather than having a way to be activated and
(08:37):
powerful, having a plan and a strategy for helping our system get what it needs
to feel centered and calm.
Responding might look like leaving the situation to go home and take a nap.
But if there was awareness ahead of time that this type of situation is likely
to be draining, the individual could prepare.
(09:00):
We'll talk about what kinds of prep might feel good and work well in another episode.
They would also have the opportunity to make a strategy for recovery after the
event, and to use specific strategies during the event.
This is a much more empowered approach, but it does require that first step
(09:24):
of increased awareness of what am I experiencing, why, what's likely to happen
next, and what would help.
So how do we get to a place of increased increased awareness of the internal space.
I suggest that you start by noticing when you show a fight, flight,
(09:46):
freeze, or physical response in a situation.
And here I'm speaking to the autistic individual, but also people around you
that love you and want to support you the best.
If you're family, friends, or a helper for someone on the spectrum,
you should use this strategy too.
(10:06):
Consider these moments to be clues, to be revelation of what the individual's
nervous system finds to be difficult.
Now, this is the first step, the noticing of a change in our state.
And it will be a journey of figuring out what triggered these states,
(10:29):
because often it can be multiple things over some period of time.
But believe me, the journey of discovery has so many benefits that it's worth
the time and effort to really focus on figuring this out.
Now, all of us lean towards some reaction when we're overwhelmed.
(10:50):
The autistic individual is going to lean toward having a bit more difficulty
finding a state of centeredness.
And we call that state a regulated state.
And they're also going to struggle to avoid an overwhelmed feeling.
And that is called dysregulation.
(11:13):
There's a description of the autistic experience that's called the intense world
theory, and I think the name creates just a wonderful, powerful image.
The autistic person often, although not always, feels like they're living in
a world that's very intense.
(11:33):
So the reason to talk about this in our series is to
empower you to change from being a passive of recipient of this intensity and
then just being swept away by it to really being a powerful and activated agent
in responding toward that seeking of a more centered and comfortable state.
(11:57):
So if we're going to look for these reactions as clues to what the internal
state is, let's start by thinking of an example of what a fight reaction might look like.
So by this, I mean any reaction toward being overwhelmed that looks externally visible.
(12:19):
This could be a meltdown. It could be an agitated state.
Pacing or rocking could increase. A panic attack could be present.
An outburst. It could be loud.
So as you can see, not all of these involve fighting per se,
but I'm using the term as as a way to describe an externally visible reaction to being overwhelmed.
(12:45):
Let me review an example of a fight reaction.
Let's take the example of a three-year-old boy attending church programming
for youngsters for the first time, and mom is volunteering in the room.
Now, typically, this youngster is compliant and kind and thoughtful to others,
(13:06):
but mom sees him pushing peers away and she takes him to timeout.
After doing a timeout multiple times for pushing other kids,
she sees him inside a playhouse all alone and a girl opens the window and screams into the window.
She sees his hand push out the window and smack her in the face and,
(13:29):
It is at this point that she connects that this is a fight reaction.
This is an overwhelmed sense of being dysregulated and it's externalized.
It's something that he's responding to in a really clear kind of pushing away method.
(13:51):
So, aha, she thinks this isn't misbehavior. It's revelation. volation.
He's pushing people out of his space. He's overwhelmed.
He's hiding in this little playhouse. And then somebody invades his space with more noise.
And so he's defending his space.
He is overstimulated by the environment. And the conclusion is that this crowded
(14:18):
and loud peer environment is overwhelming to him, and it really may not match
his nervous system very well.
Let's look at what a flight reaction would look like.
So if somebody is overwhelmed, they might lean toward a flight reaction,
which is a quieter reaction, and it can go unnoticed a little bit more than
(14:43):
an externalized reaction.
This is a reaction where someone tries to escape a situation.
So in our last example, going into the little playhouse was a flight reaction.
It's any time the person is saying, I need to leave this conversation.
I need to go to my room. I need to come home from school. I need to call into work.
(15:09):
I need to cancel my date.
This withdrawal response, an escape response.
Now, we can see that and recognize it and then say to ourselves, okay, that's a clue.
This person is feeling dysregulated.
So let's take an example of a flight reaction.
(15:30):
Here we have a couple in their 50s, and they're having a small dinner party.
Now, they are empty nesters, and the woman in the couple loves having guests
over. And she feels like she can finally get back to this activity because the
kids are out of the house.
She's not spending all of her time chauffeuring them around and taking care
(15:51):
of their needs. So she is very excited about this.
Now, her husband, although undiagnosed, is autistic.
And a lot of his social interaction takes place in the structure of work.
And this fits him really pretty well.
The loose structure of a social get-together does not fit his system well at all.
(16:14):
However, he isn't really consciously aware of this.
But during the dinner party, he realizes that they're out of ice,
and he volunteers to go get some.
He ends up really kind of missing in action, and his wife is wondering where
he is, gives him a call, no answer.
He's really taking some time not
(16:37):
only to get ice but he stopped to
get gas and he started scrolling
through his phone to look at the news while he was
sitting in the parking lot so he comes back
after an hour from what what really should have been a 10-minute errand his
wife was super upset and she said this was evidence that he really didn't care
(17:00):
enough about her friends and her her desire to throw this dinner party to make
even more than a slight appearance,
and he didn't really engage in the activity.
In actuality, however, this could have been a very useful clue if she realized
that this was a flight reaction, and his nervous system was overwhelmed in the environment.
(17:27):
He had an escape reaction. And rather than being just, you know,
something that she gets frustrated about, this is revelation.
And they could use this information as a clue to plan and structure some of
these events in a different way.
So with awareness, the use of some specific strategies could have made this
(17:52):
a much more enjoyable event.
And again, we'll talk about the strategies in another episode.
Now, of course, you know the next reaction is a freeze reaction.
So the freeze reaction captures the experiences where our brain shuts down and
maybe we're staring or we're not hearing people talk to us.
(18:15):
We're physically present, but maybe we're dissociated.
We might forget whole parts of the day. We might forget the content of a difficult
conversation. So it's the shutting down response.
So I'm physically present, but not psychologically present. I'm not psychologically online.
(18:37):
I'm offline psychologically. psychologically.
So let's consider an example in this situation of an autistic female who's at
work, and she gets called into her supervisor's office, and this was an unexpected interaction.
She's given feedback that a fellow co-worker has complained that she's too slow
(19:03):
at her work and not carrying her share of the loan.
When asked what she has to say about that, She just went completely blank.
After walking out of the office, she realizes that she can't remember much of what was said.
And she knows the supervisor talked to her, explained some things,
(19:23):
but she has no solid memory of what really happened.
She knows that her supervisor wanted her to engage in this conversation,
to offer some statements of plan, like I'll work on this or that.
And she does realize that as she left, her supervisor said that she'll be waiting
(19:47):
for some type of response from her.
Because she can't really recall what was said, she's not sure what to do about this.
The reaction may offer her new information about how centered she has been at
work and what it took to kind of throw her off center into a freeze reaction.
(20:10):
And it could help her make a plan for the future about how to address these
situations in a way that really feels better and more effective.
She's also tempted to leave work in that moment, which would be a flight reaction
to recover from the encounter, but she wishes she knew how to recover without leaving.
(20:33):
You know, so she wants that increased power to care for herself.
This will help me settle and regroup. So here we see this freeze reaction,
not knowing what to do, feeling blank.
And then it's followed by this impulse to leave, to escape.
(20:55):
There is a fourth response that we can have even when we don't consciously feel
an emotion or we're not processing thoughts and feelings that we've identified,
this fourth reaction is a physical response to being dysregulated.
So this physical response is processed
(21:16):
as a body experience rather than a psychological state, like an emotion.
So maybe we can't tell what we're feeling or what we're thinking,
but we know our stomach hurts. We have a headache.
Have maybe what looks like a seizure, but it's not actually electrical. It's a stress response.
(21:37):
We may feel very tired all of a sudden. Maybe we're dizzy.
And we might be able to notice this physical experience even when we can't really
detect our internal state, like an emotion, thought, motivation.
Let's take a physical example. An autistic teen goes bowling with his birth
(22:02):
mother who visits on a scheduled basis about twice a year, and they had a really good time bowling.
This is one of his favorite activities.
They went out for ice cream after bowling, and then they got tickets to a monster truck show.
Now, at the monster truck show, the teen had a seizure and fell to the ground shaking.
(22:25):
Now, he has a seizure history but hasn't had a seizure since he was seven.
So they went to the hospital and the EEG was set up to measure the electrical
activity of the brain to see if they could capture seizure activity so they knew what was going on.
Well, while the EEG was recording, there were six similar spells where his eyes
(22:51):
rolled up, he was shaking,
he wasn't responsive, but they could see via the EEG that there was not the
electrical pattern of a seizure.
It was really this very clear stress response response from such a big, intense day.
(23:12):
This was good information for them because when they asked him during the day,
how are you doing? Do you need a break?
Do you want to do this next activity?
Yes, he wanted to. He just wasn't quite in touch with what his system needed.
What was this experience-like for his whole system? Was it too intense?
(23:36):
Although he enjoyed all the activities, his nervous system was really overwhelmed,
and that was expressed through a physical system rather than through an emotion or a thought.
Even though he didn't want the day to end, this signal from his body was good revelation,
and it could be used in the future to plan an enjoyable but less intense day
(24:02):
so that his whole system was feeling more grounded and didn't then just feel
so overwhelmed that they had to kind of stop and recoup.
So the first part of being a detective about your internal state is to watch
your reactions and responses.
(24:22):
If you can't detect your hunger, your level of drain, and what makes you feel
uncentered in the moment, try to capture these reactions and then backtrack a little bit.
I know for myself, it was really helpful for me when I started to be able to
(24:42):
notice when when I kind of went blank in my head and I didn't know why,
but once I started to notice when that happened, I could pause and say,
all right, I'm feeling really blank.
What just happened before that blank feeling?
And then I could often say, oh, that's right.
(25:05):
Somebody said this and now that's triggered anxiety in me.
When you show these responses, think, okay, there's a clue.
There's a clue. It's not just an experience, it's a revelation.
It's not something to be hidden or shut down or to have consequences for.
This is a wonderful, powerful clue that I should pay attention to and that's
(25:30):
going to empower me to respond in a more active and efficient way.
To take care of my nervous system. This episode was about the first step in
a real activated and powerful self-care approach.
And I want to thank you for joining me. We talked about understanding and taking
(25:52):
care of our nervous systems.
And until next time, go out there and start taking notes about when you have a fight, flight,
freeze, or physical response and gather this information as as clues so you
can help yourself thrive in your environment.
For anyone living in a household who wants to focus on improving household culture,
(26:16):
again, check out my first family offering called Empowered Parenting.
And in addition to Empowered Parenting, I'm also working on my next course for
autistic individuals called Boost Your Bounce.
And it's going to be about improving resilience resilience in a complex world.
So thanks again for joining me and go out there and take care of yourself.
(26:40):
Remember, you are important and you're powerful.
Music.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.