You are listening to episode 85 of The Autism Mom Coach, Fear. One of the biggest reasons the stages of grief don’t work for me is that they don’t feature fear. Which in my experience as a mom of a child with Autism and a coach, this is the predominant emotion that so many of us feel all of the time, more than sadness, more than anger, more than jealousy, we are afraid. Fear drives us. It follows us. It haunts us. So we’re going to talk about it this week. Stay tuned.

Welcome to The Autism Mom Coach podcast, I am your host, Lisa Candera. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with Autism and other comorbid diagnoses. I know what it is like to wonder if you are doing enough or the right things for your child and to live in fear of their future.

I also know that constantly fueling yourself with fear and anxiety is not sustainable for you or of any benefit to your child. That is why in this podcast I will share practical strategies and tools you can use to shift from a chronic state of fight, flight to some calm and ease. You are your child’s greatest resource, let’s take care of you.

Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am glad you are here and as always I hope that you are doing well. And if you caught the drift from last week’s episode, When Things Suck, things have not been great for me and really for so many of my clients, there’s been a lot of struggle. And I know it ebbs and it flows, but sometimes when it is here, it just feels like again and it’s never going away, which it does and we learn to adjust. We learn to recalibrate. But all of this is a lot of work and so that’s been my work really in the past couple of weeks.

It’s interesting being a host of a podcast and also a coach for other moms, because when I’m experiencing things in my life, I almost get meta about it right away where I think to myself, how would I teach this? How could I use this? And lately I have been trying to tell myself later, instead of trying to think about how I would use an experience as a teachable moment for you all to actually allow myself to be in the moment and process it without trying to make it a lesson in the moment.

And so I just want you to think about that, when you’re experiencing something. And this week we’re going to talk about fear. How sometimes we catch it, but then we get meta about it. Maybe we start telling ourselves things like, we shouldn’t be thinking fear. And whatever we say to ourselves that actually prevents us from processing the emotion and so it lingers.

So enough of that, let’s talk about fear. The four letter word, the real four letter word of Autism. Now, if I were to talk about the grief of parenting a child with Autism in stages and you know I don’t subscribe to the stages. But if I did, fear would be first, third, fifth and seventh. It comes and goes for all of us all of the time before we get the diagnosis, after we get it, after 5, 10 or 20 years, the fear remains. And I want to talk about why this makes perfect sense.

Let’s start talking about what fear is. Fear is an emotion that we feel in our bodies in response to real or perceived threats. So the real threat of a dog running after you or a car running a red light. Those are real threats and our bodies react. But we also react to perceived threats. We could be watching a movie and we could feel fear. We could be thinking something in our brains, catastrophizing, thinking about the future, thinking about the what ifs. And all of that creates the emotion of fear in our bodies although we are not physically in danger.

And this is really important to note that we feel fear based on perceived threats because in reality the real threats out there that we can name like disease or war or losing your job, those things, those real things that happen, those aren’t the things that are the scariest to us. The thing that is the scariest that causes the most fear in any human being is uncertainty, the not knowing, the not being able to control an outcome. And this is exactly what Autism serves up to us every day in some form or another.

So before we talk about fear and grief, I want to point out something I think is important. Fear is not a bad thing. From an evolutionary perspective in fact, fear is a natural and emotionally intelligent response to uncertainty. In fact, fear is hardwired into our biology as an evolutionary adaptation. This is because throughout human history, encountering the unknown often meant facing potential threats like predators or environmental hazards. Fear served as a warning signal alerting our ancestors to be cautious and prepared when they encountered unfamiliar situations.

And this ancient survival mechanism helped our species to thrive and survive by promoting vigilance in the face of uncertainty. And it continues to serve us, for example, fear enhances our situational awareness. When we are uncertain about a particular situation, fear heightens our awareness and encourages us to gather more information. Think about all of your Google searches about Autism. Your fear of the unknown drove you to gather more information, to be more attentive, to ask questions, to seek out help, to make better informed decisions.

Fear can also motivate us and drive us to prepare for the unknown. It prompts us to consider various scenarios, assess potential risk, and create contingency plans. This proactive response to uncertainty can lead to better outcomes and increased resilience. For example, perhaps you’re afraid of getting diabetes or dying of a heart attack like other folks in your family and so you take steps to exercise. You take steps to eat a healthy diet and to avoid things like smoking and fatty foods.

Or with respect to Autism, so many of us have fear of what happens when we’re not around. And so what if this fear isn’t altogether a bad thing? I’m for sure afraid of that but I have taken plans. I have created a will. I have created a trustee. I have taken certain steps to protect my son when I’m not around. Is it comfortable? No, but the fear has motivated that in some respect.

Fear can also motivate us to step out of our comfort zones and push us to overcome obstacles and adapt to new circumstances. I hear this all of the time from my clients who don’t view themselves as advocates or would describe themselves as not wanting to rock the boat or stand up to authority, yet they sure are at the IEP meetings with their doctors and with other specialists. Their fear of their child not getting what he or she deserves is prompting them to step out of their own comfort zones.

This is all to say fear can be helpful. It is not a bad thing. And it is very interwoven with the grieving process experienced by Autism parents. Let me give you a couple of examples of how I see this showing up.

First, fear of the unknown. Like I said before, Autism is the definition of uncertainty. We just don’t know. Now, this is true of everything. We don’t actually know a thing. We can have plans and life can take a turn at any time because nothing is promised. But this is not how we live our lives. We make plans, we have expectations, and we live with the delusion of certainty. Then our child is diagnosed with a disorder that has no set trajectory. So of course we feel fear of the unknown. We feel the weight of their future outcomes on our shoulders every day.

How many times have you wondered, what will my child’s future look like? Or we fear that our children might face discrimination, bullying or struggle to find acceptance as they grow older. All of this fear that we feel of the unknown is interwoven into our loss of our expectations of how we expected it to be.

Second, fear of isolation. We fear this both for our children and ourselves, and for good reason. Having a child who does not speak, wears headphones or melts down whenever they lose a game can surely result in typical peers not understanding or wanting to engage with them. And this is heart wrenching for us. Put on top of that, maybe you are the only one in your family or friend group or zip code that you know with a child with Autism. Maybe you feel like no one gets you and maybe you’re right.

Between therapies and work and everything else, you don’t have time or maybe even the mental or emotional capacity to do the normal mom things. Or maybe when you are around other people, you spend so much time resenting them in your brain, so maybe you don’t even say anything. Or maybe you’re not saying anything, but your face won’t shut up and it is showing that you are disgusted or annoyed. Or maybe you finally do say something and then you fear not being invited or being ostracized from a friend group.

Another way that fear shows up in Autism parenting that I see is interwoven into the loss that we experience is our fear of judgment, judgment of our child, judgment of us and judgment of our parenting. This is actually one of my most frequently coached topics in my one-on-one program. Fear of telling other people about the diagnosis. Fear that you are branding your child and that they will be limited by other people knowing they have Autism.

Or moms who fear taking their kids to a playground or a birthday party or out in public at all because they fear their child will have a meltdown and other people will judge them. They fear that other people will say or think something negative about their child or about them or about their parenting. Even if they don’t say it out loud, the moms that I’m coaching are fearing what other people might think in their head about them. Although we have no way of knowing what other people think.

I have seen kids melt down a bunch and I’m never thinking, well, that parent really doesn’t have it together and that kid is running the show. My thoughts about a child melting down in public are very different now because of my experience with Autism. And so we never know what other people are thinking, but we have these thoughts and this is how they show up. Whatever you fear, the judgment is of you, it’s because you already have the fear and the judgment of yourself.

Next, fear of regret. Okay, this is probably the most frequently coached topic and the most frequent emotion experienced by me, fear of not doing enough. Fear of not doing the right things. Fear of pausing. Fear of not adding more to your plate. Fear that one day you will find out information that will lead you to believe a previous decision was wrong. This fear is like a terrorist, it can’t be negotiated with once you start engaging with it. And if you decide to engage with it, you will never win.

Because I’m going to tell you right now, there will be information in the future that says maybe this would have been better or maybe that would have been better. That’s inevitable in all areas of our lives. The only thing you can control is your decision about how you treat yourself about whatever new information comes out because regret is a decision. We are always making decisions in the moment based on the resources available to us and the information available to us.

And then to fear while we’re making that decision that we’re not making the right decision and we might regret it. That’s just adding so much pressure. You’re putting yourself in a lose/lose situation here but it’s also common. So many of us fear that no matter what we do, it might not be right or it might not be enough. And we fear our own regret about it.

Okay, finally, fear of burnout. This is actually what led me to coaching. I think I’ve talked about this before on the podcast. But I was in the middle school orientation for my son and it was really overwhelming to me, imagining him in this scenario of a very big school with alternating schedules. And watching the other kids and the other parents interacting with the staff and just thinking to myself, how am I going to do this? How am I going to keep him intact, basically?

How am I going to continue to work my full-time job, help him with homework, help him with all of the anxiety that he has? And right there my fear of not being able to continue on or continue at the level I had been operating for so many years is what led me to seek life coaching. Because I didn’t want to talk about all of that. I wanted a way of doing something better. I wanted a way to interrupt the burnout because as we all know, this isn’t a sprint. It’s not a marathon.

Marathons have maps. They have starting points, and they have ending points. That’s not what is happening with Autism parenting. The trajectory is going to be what it is and we don’t really know. And so our fear of our own ability to keep up and to keep doing it is just another one of the ways that we experience the grief and the loss of this journey.

Alright, that is just a few ways that I see fear showing up in our lives. And I see this fear as being intertwined with the loss that we are already experiencing as Autism moms. So I want to offer this to you. What if we looked at our fear as normal, not pleasant, but normal? Not as in you need to be scared all the time, but when you are reminding yourself that this is a normal reaction to the loss of certainty you are experiencing. Instead of fighting the fear or trying to solve for it, what if you were just able to recognize it in your body where it shows up, how it feels and allow it?

If you are thinking right now, that sounds like a full-time job. I promise you it isn’t. This is because most of the time when we feel fear in our bodies our reaction is to do something, to Google, to spin in our brains, to write a nasty email to a teacher, to yell at our partner for not reading our minds, whatever it is. Most of us don’t actually feel the fear and then pause. This is not how we are biologically programmed. Remember the nervous system, when we are feeling fear, when we are in fight, fight, we want to fight or we want to flight, we want to act.

The way to counteract this normal biological response is to pause, get out of your brain and into your body. Slow your body down for yourself, self-soothe. And once you’re able to bring your nervous system back to some safety, once you are able to assess your rational thinking, you will be able to experience and process the emotion of fear without being run by it. Alright, that is it for this week’s episode. I hope you found this helpful.

And I just wanted to bring light to the role that fear plays in our lives every day. And I just want you to know, if you are feeling fear, that this is normal, but your experience of it might not be ‘normal’. It is very patterned into us when we feel fear to want to act on that fear. And some of the times that is very helpful, but other times our acting on the fear is actually just creating more of the anxiety for us. So that’s why I’m encouraging you to pause and to allow yourself to process the emotion without getting run by it. Alright, I will talk to you next week. Have a fabulous week.

Thanks for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program. To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismmomcoach.com, Work With Me and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with Autism.

You are listening to episode 84 of The Autism Mom Coach, When Things Suck. This is an MVP episode. This week I’m bringing back an MPV episode, When Things Suck because right now for me and many of my clients and the folks who are reaching out to me, things suck. I had planned to dive into the grief spectrum of emotions that we all experience and that is coming soon, I promise. But for this week, with everything that’s going on, I needed to relisten to this episode again.

And I want to bring it to you, whether you are having a moment like I am or things are going well, this is always something to keep in your back pocket. And I think that this episode will be even more helpful for you now if you’ve listened to my previous episodes 82 and 83 about nervous system regulation and how to self-regulate, because really all of the tips that I give in this episode are ways for you to regulate yourself when you are in a fight, flight state or when you’re even immobilized.

These are the simple things that you can do to bring more regulation, more safety into your nervous system. Will taking deep breaths or drinking water make your kids stop screaming or the school stop calling? No. But whatever we can do when things are bat shit, whatever we can do to regulate ourselves, to bring some calm into our bodies, whether it’s taking a walk, walking away, getting a hug, drinking the water, all of these things are really important and I know that they are the last thing on your mind because they’re the last thing on my mind too.

But here’s the thing, when things are crazy, they’re crazy. And so do we show up better if we are not taking care of ourselves or if we are taking the smallest of steps? Obviously the answer is the latter, whatever you can do matters. And so I encourage you, even if you’re not in one of those moments now, these are all things that you can start now because you build the muscle of just doing them. And when you do that, you can be more regulated overall.

And the thing is, is when you’re in a state of fight, flight and you’ve never tried a breathing technique before, it probably won’t work. I mean it doesn’t work for me when I’m out of practice. I almost hyperventilate some of the time. So I really encourage you for all of these things, incorporate them into your daily practice when things suck, before things suck, just every day because they’re so important. Because most of us live in households, most of us live in environments where things are very loud, where things are very intense.

And the point of all of these practices is to lower the intensity, bring some safety into our nervous system so that we can show up as the rational, responsive parents that want to be versus always reacting. Alright, enjoy this episode.

Welcome to The Autism Mom Coach podcast, I am your host, Lisa Candera. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with Autism and other comorbid diagnoses. I know what it is like to wonder if you are doing enough or the right things for your child and to live in fear of their future.

I also know that constantly fueling yourself with fear and anxiety is not sustainable for you or of any benefit to your child. That is why in this podcast I will share practical strategies and tools you can use to shift from a chronic state of fight, flight to some calm and ease. You are your child’s greatest resource, let’s take care of you.

I thought it would be helpful to do a podcast episode on the times when things just suck. Here are my seven tips.

One, breathe. I think I shared this before but a few years ago when my son was really struggling and his therapist told him he needed to take deep breaths, my son was so annoyed and frankly so was I. Both of our reaction was something like, “Is that all you have?” The answer is no because breathing is the best and most effective thing you can do to regulate your nervous system when it is activated. Not just breathing though, breathing on purpose. Breathing in a way where you need to stop and bring attention to the breath coming in and to the breath going out.

There are several different techniques you can use but the main thing here is to take a deep breath in through your nose and to blow it out through your mouth. Think of smelling the flowers and blowing out birthday candles. I like the box breathing technique that I shared in an earlier episode of the podcast. I’ll also link it to the episode notes here. This is the breathing technique that is used by the Navy Seals and I just think that sounds badass so I like it.

Plus it’s really easy to do because wherever I am I can always see a box somewhere, whether it’s the shape of a window, or a picture on the wall or just even visualizing the box. And visualizing breathing in up the side of the box and down and out, out the other side of the box. If box breathing isn’t your thing there’s also a method called the 4-7-8 where you breathe in for four seconds, hold it for seven seconds and then blow out for eight. It really doesn’t matter which technique you use. The point is, is that you’re paying purposeful attention to a slow breath in and a long breath out.

You don’t need to get stuck on the technique, it really is beside the point. Again, bringing purposeful attention to the way that you are breathing. And another benefit of this in addition to calming your nervous system is that it forces us to pause whatever other action we want to take. So instead of immediately reacting to a trigger, we pause, we breathe, we reset and then we can respond,

Tip number two, sip water. Stress and dehydration go hand in hand and they are a vicious cycle. Stress can cause dehydration and dehydration can cause stress. Why is this? Well, our brains are about 85% water. So when the brain does not get enough water it gets just a bit grumpy and you feel it in the form of a headache. The more and more water your brain loses, the less energy you will have and the more tired you will become. In addition, the lack of water in the brain also changes how you respond to stress.

Even a little bit of dehydration can cause cortisol levels in the body to increase and lead to stress. And what’s more, when we are stressed, what do we usually grab for? Well, for me, it’s certainly coffee and like many other moms we run on coffee. We grab the big cup of coffee. We have a lot to do, our children aren’t sleeping and we have to keep on going. And then when we can’t go any more and we are desperate to unwind at the end of the night, what comes out? For some of us maybe it’s the wine, or a cocktail, or salty snacks all of which are very dehydrating.

So we’re not getting enough water, stress is causing more dehydration. And on top of that we are consuming dehydrating beverages and snacks. Luckily this one has a pretty simple fix, drink more water. You don’t have to down your body weight in ounces in one sitting. Sipping water throughout the day is a great way of staying on top of your hydration especially during stressful times. The easiest way to do this is to keep a water bottle with you at all times and maybe even in multiple rooms so it is always present.

You can set an alarm. You can add fresh fruits or veggies to flavor it. I’m a fan of limes and cucumbers but not really at this time of the year. I prefer my water to be a bit warmer. You can even get one of those huge water bottles that is divided by the time of the day so you can actually track your hydration throughout the day. Whatever method you choose, the important thing here is to stay hydrated. So keep on sipping your water throughout the day.

Number three, move your body. Moving your body is a great way of releasing stress from your body. So walk around the block, stretch, do some jumping jacks, or pushups, or quite literally, shake your arms and hands and tell yourself I am shaking this off. When you are doing this you are literally shaking the stress out of your body. And this will help you release some of that stress and reset yourself just a bit.

Tip number four, coregulate with other people or pets. When we are in periods of high stress, when we are in it, it is really easy to believe the story that no one gets it, and no one understands, and that we are all alone. I totally get that, I have been there. So if it is available, reach out to another person for some coregulation and connection. This might be a partner. It might be a friend. It might be a coworker.

If you can do this coregulation and connection in person, that’s the best because it’s literally two nervous systems responding to one another in real time, offering that connection and coregulation. And if you can’t, the phone is great too because you can hear someone’s voice and the connection that you get from how they respond to you, and the sound of them comforting you. And if worse comes to worst, grab your phone because you already have it in your hand already. So maybe it’s a text. Maybe it’s an email but do whatever you can to just create connection and coregulate with another person.

And if people aren’t available or aren’t your preference, coregulate with an animal. Animals are great for just sitting beside them, petting them and letting yourself sink into that feeling of comfort, relaxation and complete acceptance. This is something I love to do with my two cats because we are here all day together and sometimes I’ll just find them resting in a sunny spot and I’ll sit beside them. And it’s totally relaxing. And I have noticed too that when my son comes home from school the first thing he does is he runs upstairs to the usual spot where the cat is by that point hiding from him.

And he sits with them and just pets them, and he talks to them and I’ve noticed it. Initially I wanted to tell him, “Stop going upstairs into my bedroom because I just generally do not prefer him to be there. But when I realized that he was going upstairs to coregulate with the cat, well, I couldn’t say no to that.

Alright, tip number five, get outside. Being outside in nature is another way of regulating ourselves and releasing stress from our bodies. When you are outside make it an intentional sensory experience for yourself. What can you see? What can you smell? What can you hear? Take it all in one sensory experience at a time while you breathe deep breaths in and out.

Number six, take breaks. Whenever you can, walk away. Now, I know that this is not always an available option but when it is, do it, even if it is an extended stay in the bathroom, or a long shower, or tagging in a partner, or a friend, or even a sitter. Little breaks are an opportunity for brief recess so that you can sip the water, move your body and pet the dog, whatever it is that you can do to reset yourself and downregulate your own stress response,

Number seven, stay present with right now and you won’t always be statements. Alright, let me explain this one. First, it is natural whenever we are in a stressful situation to start to catastrophize. Our thoughts go to a lot of always and never. It is never easy. It will always be like this. I never get a break. And once we are on the always never train, it gets worse and worse. Our thoughts continue to spin, our stress response escalates and we are just getting more and more amped up.

So what I like to do in these moments to reduce stress is staying in the present moment. Even though the present moment is stressful, it’s just the present moment. It’s not the rest of your life. So this is how I do that. Whenever I’m in one of these situations I say to myself, “Right now it is like this. Right now we are struggling. Right now we are in it, right now.” By doing this I’m reminding myself that this is just happening in the present moment. This is right now, not always, not never.

And recently I have added the phrase that really stuck out to me when my son and I were watching the new Obi-Wan Series on Disney. Okay, so we are huge Star Wars fans. And we just loved watching the series. And so in it, it is after the prequels where Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader and before the New Hope. And so in this, Princess Leia is a 10 year old little girl. And Obi-Wan is rescuing her. So at some point in the series he gives her a holster from one of the fallen heroes that they were fighting alongside.

And she looks at the holster and she says, “It’s empty.” And he responds to her, “Well, I wasn’t going to give you a blaster, Leia, you are 10 years old.” And then he says, “But you won’t always be.” And I don’t know, for some reason that line really stuck with me and my son. And we started to use it as part of our own mantras, for when things are a little bit tough. It’s tough right now but it won’t always be. And he’s starting to say things like, “I’m 15 right now but I won’t always be.”

And that’s a statement that we have been using in support of acquiring life skills and moving forward into sort of upleveling skills and things like that. And so instead of a threat like, you’re going to be 18 years old one day. You need to learn how to do stuff. It’s like, no, I’m 15 right now but I won’t always be. It just feels different and plus it came from Obi-Wan Kenobi, so whatever works for you.

All right, everyone, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and that you found it helpful. Please start to incorporate at least one of these practices into your everyday life. It will make a difference.

And of course, if you’re going through some hard shit and you want to sit with someone who gets it and can provide you with skills and tools to help you make tomorrow better, that person is me. In my one on one coaching program, I coach parents who are going through some really difficult things, but who want to find a way of doing things better for themselves, who want to find joy in their parenting experience even though it’s a bit difficult. I am the coach for all of that.

If you are interested in learning how you can improve your day to day experience with your child, how you can learn to regulate yourself, how you can learn to enjoy your parenting experience, schedule a complimentary consultation and let’s talk.

All right. I will see you next week and hopefully things will suck less then. Take care.

Thanks for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program. To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismmomcoach.com, Work With Me and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with Autism.

You are listening to episode 83 of The Autism Mom Coach, Self-Regulation and Resourcing.

Welcome to The Autism Mom Coach podcast, I am your host, Lisa Candera. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with Autism and other comorbid diagnoses. I know what it is like to wonder if you are doing enough or the right things for your child and to live in fear of their future.

I also know that constantly fueling yourself with fear and anxiety is not sustainable for you or of any benefit to your child. That is why in this podcast I will share practical strategies and tools you can use to shift from a chronic state of fight, flight to some calm and ease. You are your child’s greatest resource, let’s take care of you.

Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of the podcast. I am so glad you are here and I hope you are doing well. This week’s episode is a continuation from last week’s discussion about the nervous system and creating internal safety. And one of the ways that we can create internal safety for ourselves is through resourcing. That’s why in this week’s episode, I’m going to teach you how to resource yourself when you are in fight, flight or shutdown so that you can create safety and regulate yourself.

This is because from a nervous system perspective, you are dysregulated when you are in fight, flight or shutdown. We always talk about our kids and their dysregulation. Well, the same thing happens to us. We get really angry or really upset. Our emotions are high and our rational thinking is low. We are reacting and not responding. If we want to shift from reacting to responding, we need to know how to regulate and resource ourselves.

Self-regulation is quite simply our ability to regulate ourselves, the ability to recognize when we are dysregulated, when we are being taken over by our emotions or we’re headed there and to move ourselves back into regulation. One way to do this is by resourcing. Resourcing is a key component of somatic therapy and trauma work. It involves identifying and nurturing internal and external resources that can help you feel safe and supported while you are exploring challenging emotions or even traumatic memories.

Resourcing can help you create that internal safety, that sense of security, so that you can feel and process and integrate your emotions in a healthy and balanced way. And when you are resourced you are better able to self-regulate by managing and modulating your emotional responses. Now again, when we’re talking about resourcing, we’re talking about bringing conscious the unconscious. We are talking about understanding and being able to identify when we are dysregulated, when we are in a state of fight, flight activation or if we’re in dorsal shutdown.

Once we recognize that, we can bring in our resources, whether they are physical, emotional, or relational to serve as anchors that provide stability and comfort for us and able to bring us back into more regulation. Let me give you examples of resources. And I want to start with the ones that you can access anytime, anywhere, no matter what’s happening.

Number one, breath awareness. Your breath is a powerful internal resource, and I have talked about this a bunch on the podcast and I’m never going to stop because it really is so freaking powerful. Your breath alone can signal to your brain, to your nervous system that you are safe. Paying attention to your breath and using breathing techniques can help you regulate your emotions. So deep diaphragmatic breathing can help calm your nervous system and it can reduce stress.

And again, your actual ability to even take those long, deep, slow breaths, signals to your nervous system, you’re not in danger, you’re not running from a lion, that it can slow down, that you can calm down. So again, I have talked about this in previous episodes. You can do this in any way you like. There are different techniques. I’ve talked about the 4-7-8 before, that’s inhaling for four counts, holding for seven, then exhaling.

You can do the box method that the Navy Seals use where you can picture yourself breathing in, holding and breathing out as you go along the edges of a box. You could pretend you are breathing in the smell of something you like and blowing out birthday candles. Whatever it is, it’s the attention that you give to breathing in and breathing out in a rhythmic fashion that enables your nervous system to know that you are safe and to reduce stress.

Now, this breathing is a two for one because in addition to regulating your nervous system, it gives you the opportunity to pause. And the pause is so important. That is because when you are in fight, flight and again, I think that’s where most of us are living, speed is fuel. So whatever you can do to slow it down is a plus.

Another resource is touch. Now, this could be your hand on your own heart or rubbing your hands together, it could be by touching a comforting object. So maybe there’s a bracelet, it could be a ring, it could be your hair, anything that you touch that gives you some comfort in your body.

Another resource is sight or visualization. So sight could be focusing on the present, taking in your surroundings, what are five things I can see? How many things in this room are red? How many things in this room are yellow? Anything that brings your focus into the present moment, and has you slowing down. That can be a resource. Or visualizing, visualizing people, places or experiences that bring you comfort, that bring you a sense of safety. These are all resources that you can use.

So for me, I like to visualize petting my cat and speaking of touch, petting animals, touching any animals. Now, animals aren’t always available to us, but when they are they are a great resource. Visualizing people in our lives, that brings us a sense of peace, real, fictional, past, present, doesn’t matter.

Or experiences, maybe there’s a vacation spot that you love. Maybe there’s a spot in your home that you love and then whenever you are there, you feel relaxed. Whatever it is for you, visualizing that experience, bringing it to life in your nervous system can serve as a resource for you when you’re feeling dysregulated.

Number four, mantras or affirmations. Depending on the situation, words might be helpful for you and depending on the situation, the words you use might be different. One go to for me that I love for almost everything is the serenity prayer. And that goes, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. I love this prayer. I find it so comforting. I find it so reassuring. I find it so wise.

Other mantras or affirmations that I use. It is okay, I am safe. This is not personal. This too shall pass. I’m going to figure this out. I always figure it out. Those are just examples, use what works for you. But with all these resources, what I really encourage is don’t make the first time you try to grab for one when you are in a really difficult situation, I mean, of course do that, but it’s not as effective.

Start incorporating these resources into your life now and making them a part of your day because when you really need them and you have practice in grabbing for them, it’ll just become something that is a lot more effective for you. I have really practiced what I preach in this area of really going to the breath and slowing my breath down. And I’ve done it so much, I’ve noticed that things that used to be hard for me are less hard.

For example, going to yoga, I go to yoga in 105 degree heat and I would find myself sometimes during postures almost hyperventilating because I didn’t know how to control my breath. And now I’ve gotten so good at controlling my breath that I’m able to calm myself down even when my body is like, oh, my God, it’s so hot in here, just run.

So point is, practice them every day, practice them now. And so when you are in those states of dysregulation, you are so practiced at grabbing for these different resources that you begin to integrate them faster, to slow down these experiences and to shift your experience.

Okay, last and not least and really most important is self-compassion. You can do this anytime, while you’re driving with a kid, losing their shit in the back seat, in a contentious IEP meeting, listening to your friends talk about their ‘normal problems’. You can be kind to yourself. You can notice your own suffering, your own discomfort, and you can remind yourself that your pain matters. You can remind yourself that you matter. You can be kind to yourself, and this can help you soothe and regulate intense emotions.

Judgment will put you in fight, flight or maybe even shutdown, self-compassion brings you back to ventral. It brings you back to safe and connected because if you can’t be safe and connected with yourself, then it’s really hard to do it with the outside world. So being kind to yourself, giving yourself grace, making this an actual practice for yourself will help you with creating internal safety for yourself. It will help you create internal safety for yourself by self-regulating your own emotions and what’s more powerful than that?

We all have so many things that we deal with in our day-to-day lives that are challenging and they create big emotions for our children and big emotions for us. What better thing to be able to do than to understand your own emotional experience and understand how to shift it? That’s the power that you have with these tools.

Alright, that is it for this week’s episode. I want you to listen to these last two episodes more than once because next week I’m talking about the F word and that is fear. I’m going to start talking about the really difficult emotions that we experience as part of the grief and the loss of special needs parenting. But before I did that, I really wanted you to have some resources for yourself to understand your emotional experience a little bit more and to have the ability to create internal safety for yourself while we talk about these more challenging emotions.

Alright, that is it. As always, if you want to dive deeper into this work, if you want to start implementing what I teach in your day-to-day life, applying it to the specific situations that you are facing, schedule a consultation call for my one-on-one program. This is your chance to talk to me about your pain points as an Autism parent and for us to figure out whether it makes sense for us to work together. You can schedule your consultation call by going to the episode notes or to my website under Work With Me. Alright, that’s it for this week, I will talk to you next. Have a great week.

Thanks for listening to The Autism Mom Coach. If you are ready to apply the principles you are learning in these episodes to your life, it is time to schedule a consultation call with me. Podcasts are great but the ahas are fleeting. Real change comes from application and implementation and this is exactly what we do in my one-on-one coaching program. To schedule your consultation, go to my website, theautismmomcoach.com, Work With Me and take the first step to taking better care of yourself so that you can show up as the parent you want to be for your child with Autism.