You are listening to episode 91 of The Autism Mom Coach, Processing an Autism Diagnosis.

In today’s podcast I am bringing you a recent conversation with my former client and friend, Julia. Julia is going to talk about her experience coaching with me, how it changed nearly every aspect of her life. And how the skills she learned continue to support her as she officially stepped into the role as an Autism mom.

Before we get to Julia and her moving story, I want to take this time to remind you all that you don’t have to do this alone. If you are struggling, if you are in pain, if you want to do tomorrow better as an Autism mom, schedule a consultation for my one-on-one program. It is truly the best gift that you can give yourself, your child and your family. And as Julia will share with you, it is the gift that keeps on giving.

You get these tools, you get support implementing these tools with me as your coach and then you take them into your life forever. You don’t have to sit on a couch for years and years to get relief. You can get it now, you are worth it. Your life is worth it. Your mental and emotional health is worth it. So stop waiting. Stop putting yourself last and schedule a consultation with me using the link in the comments.

Now, if you are looking at my schedule and you don’t see any times that work for you. I want you to email me at lisa@theautismmomcoach.com. Tell me what days and times work for you and I will work with you to make one work. Alright, let’s get to today’s 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.

Lisa: For today’s podcast, I have my former client Julia with me. Julia and I coached together for six months and we have been planning to do this podcast for a couple of months now. I wanted her to come on and to share her experiences coaching with me as a single mom of twins. As it happens, Julia has gotten some news today that is very fresh for her.

So instead of really focusing on what we coached about in the past, I’m going to have Julia share where she is right now with her news because I think that this is something that all of us experience. And since Julia is here experiencing it now and she’s been kind enough to share her experience with us. I think this will be really helpful for everyone. So with that, Julia, can you please introduce yourself?

Julia: Yeah. Hi, Lisa. I’m so glad to see you. I’m glad to be here today. I am Julia. I’m a single mom like you said, of boy, girl twins. My twins were 27 week preemies. So we’ve had from day one, a journey, to say the least. But I obviously have benefited greatly from the coaching that we have had. And yeah, just really excited to chat with you about this new information that I have received recently so thanks for having me.

Lisa: So let’s just give some background. You and I coached about a year ago for six months. So what was it that you originally came to me looking for?

Julia: Oh, gosh, I don’t even know that I knew exactly. But I think for me I felt like there was a lot of things in life with having twins with multiple diagnoses and things like that, but I had tried coaching before. For me, I was really looking for someone that got it. And when I came across your website I noticed that you are a single mom too, that you’re professional, and that you’d been through it. And for me it was just really important to be able to talk to someone that has done this.

Because over the years I’ve had a lot of parenting advice come from people in a lot of contexts who aren’t even parents, which I don’t know, to me, I don’t really understand how that’s a thing. So it was more that I just knew that life was really, really difficult in a lot of areas and I was having a hard time managing it. And I was getting a lot of advice from a lot of people that I felt didn’t know really what this experience was all about. So maybe what I was really looking for was empathy.

But I was able to get really clear on a lot of the things that were my beliefs and the stories that I had about my life. I was really stuck as a victim of my life circumstances and we worked through a lot of that together. But what I appreciated the most was just the experience that you have.

Lisa: It’s so interesting because you don’t need to have cancer to be an oncologist, we all know that. You don’t have to have a certain experience in order to help someone. But when it comes to Autism, when it comes to special needs, when it comes to the tenderness of being a parent, you definitely are able to hear things differently when they’re coming from someone who’s walked in your shoes. Because I could give you the same advice maybe that you would have gotten out of a book but it might just come out differently.

You might feel it differently. You might be able to listen to it differently because you know that I’ve walked the walk.

Julia: Yeah, absolutely. And that meant so much to me, but also I think I have had bad advice.

Lisa: There’s that too.

Julia: I mean my kids were in play therapy with, I think a counselor who was a mom and she was like, “It’s all about time in, time in.” And I’m like, “Okay, but my kids are having violent tantrums, they’re trying to hurt me because they’re not okay. If I try to hold them and have time in with them it gets worse.” So I don’t know. I just maybe felt a lot of times along the way that there were people that just really didn’t understand maybe the severity of what I was talking about or I felt blamed or criticized for an approach and I was really struggling.

So knowing that you had lived through, maybe not exactly what I’ve lived through, but they’re similar and you know sort of the extremes that parenting goes to with our kids. I think you coach from that perspective, which was exactly what I needed at the time.

Lisa: So share with us at the time what were your children’s diagnoses?

Julia: Yeah. So when we started working together, so my kids, their very first diagnosis was something called DCD or developmental coordination disorder. I think, I’m in Canada, that’s what it’s called here. But I think in other countries it can also be referred to as dyspraxia, which I understand is basically diagnosed clumsiness, is how I like to describe it. But it’s a disconnect between cognition and the muscle coordination. So that was first when they were about four years old and that was diagnosed by their NICU follow-up.

And then at that time we were told to go pursue an ADHD diagnosis because there was a high incidence of ADHD with DCD. So we did and they were both, I think, in junior kindergarten around age four diagnosed with ADHD. And later on, a couple of years later when they were in second grade, diagnosed with learning disabilities in math, reading, writing, as well as generalized anxiety.

So when we started coaching together the official sort of diagnosis that my kids were being sort of treated for were anxiety disorder and ADHD. And at the time I really suspected that my son probably had Autism. I had people mention it along the way but tell me reasons why he didn’t have it and then it was never sort of pursued. But I was very much thinking that he probably did.

Lisa: So speaking of that, why don’t we get into today’s topic and why don’t you just lead us up with how fresh this is and just where you are right now.

Julia: Yeah. So, I mean, I guess just a little bit of context is I have really struggled to find the right doctor for my kids. We’re now on our very third pediatrician who is fortunately really wonderful. And I waited on a very long waiting list to get in to see her. And a couple of weeks ago we had our first appointment and she did a very thorough assessment where she read all of their past reports. And then had two hours of meetings with me, two hours of meetings with them, another couple hours meetings with me.

And yesterday she let me know that she is going to be diagnosing my son with Autism. And we’re looking at an Autism diagnosis for my daughter, but it’s a bit unclear still at this point. So it hasn’t been confirmed, but over time she’s going to sort of monitor some things and get to know her better and see what she thinks. So, yeah, I got the official diagnosis for my son just yesterday.

Lisa: And so you were saying before we got on that when you were filling out the paperwork, what was your experience. You said things like, “I knew and it was validating.” Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Julia: Yeah, for sure. I mean one of the things with this has been over the years I have brought it up to doctors that I suspect that my son might be Autistic. And it’s been brushed off. Our last pediatrician on our first visit into him when we were sort of just getting to know each other said, “I’d really like to explore some testing for my son for Autism because I think he might have it.” And he took one look at him and asked me, “Well, has the school says he has it?” And I said, “Well, no, I don’t think that that’s their role.”

And he said, “I really don’t think he has it and if he has it, the school will say something.” Which is definitely not how things work here, the school would never bring that up. So I felt really dismissed. And I think in that moment I felt like I definitely can’t work with this doctor either, just sort of like the one before who I think I had also mentioned it to. And even from the age, he was a baby, his early occupational therapist and people said, “Maybe Autism.” But then it was brought up that, “Well, he likes to cuddle so it’s probably not Autism.”

So it’s been discussed over the years and then I guess for the last couple of years I’ve really thought that’s what’s going on in addition to everything else. And so again, on my first meeting with this new pediatrician, I did say I have some suspicions about Autism. And she said, “Tell me more about that.” And I explained to her, for both my daughter and my son, some of the things I was seeing. And she said, “Alright, well, we’re going to get some checklists going. You can send some to the school.”

And so I filled out, there was two different ones. I’m not exactly sure what they’re called, but all sort of ranking scale or yes, no questions. For my son in particular it was alarming to me at just how obvious it was. That if these are the criteria he is overqualified, I guess, in terms of that.

Lisa: He’s passing this with flying colors.

Julia: Yeah, he’s definitely passing this test. And my daughter, in different ways. There was different ways that she was really passing the test and they present very differently. So filling out the form, it felt good actually, it felt validating. I felt thankful that this doctor was paying attention. I felt grateful to his teachers and her teachers that they’re willing to fill them out and share their observations. So overall, I think that was a good process because in my head, in my mind, I’m just so ready for him to have a final answer, of what’s really going on, the full picture.

And it doesn’t really change anything because I mean both my kids with all their diagnoses, they’re already in self-contained classrooms in their schools, they’re getting great support from the school system. It’s more just [inaudible] the answers.

Lisa: Yeah. It’s more context around why something’s happening and just that own validation for yourself. Tell me about how that’s felt, to have always known but now getting an official diagnosis.

Julia: So I was surprised. I’m surprised at how the official diagnosis, so at first it was [inaudible]. So it was very sort of a matter of fact. It was like, “Okay, the next steps, I’m going to send you a letter. We’re going to also try this new medication.” All the things that I would talk about with a doctor. And I felt very calm and confident and shared sort of the information with who I needed to share it with. I’m very administratively inclined. So she immediately sent the diagnosis letter, which I then sent to the school.

We’ve actually agreed that I’d like her to be the one to tell my son about the diagnosis because I think that he’s going to have a lot of questions. And I think his context around Autism, I don’t think he understands that it could be a possibility for him. I think what he sees at school is just maybe the cases that are a bit on a different place in the spectrum, maybe non-verbal or things like that.

So I don’t think he has a full understanding of what it is and I don’t feel completely equipped to answer all his questions. So we kind of made a plan for that for how that was going to happen and I feel good about that. And I sent the paperwork to the school and got registered in the Autism program or whatever, so that he can start to be on all the waiting lists.

Lisa: Yes, hurry up. So you can wait.

Julia: Yeah. And then I went through my work day and had my meetings and it was busy. And then I got in the car at the end of the day at work and it sort of surprised me that all of a sudden this very heavy, sad feeling came over me and I just cried and cried. And I think off and on I have been crying since then. And I’m not sad about the diagnosis. I’ve known this for a long time, it’s not that.

I mean, I think it’s that I’ve been advocating for so long and had to go through so many hurdles just to get to this point and had to push so hard. I feel that I’m a person that has a lot of privilege to be able to do that. I speak the native language of our country. I’m able to send strongly worded emails and I’m able to do all the things but it still took a long time to get here.

And so I think this grief that I’m feeling is, I don’t know why but for some reason in my mind, that word Autism. It depicts a neurodiversity that the world seems to be starting to really understand in a way that ADHD and anxiety just sort of don’t. So my son has been Autistic since birth. It has shown up in his Autistic ways since birth. There are so many sort of moments throughout life that I’m being reminded of times when I knew something more was going on.

There was more to the story, where I also didn’t have that name for it. I wasn’t able to say, “He’s Autistic and Autistic people struggle with this.” The reason he’s having a meltdown, tantrum that I can’t control at the end of this really fun fair event is because he’s completely overstimulated. And the stares and all the things that happened that whether we had the diagnosis or not would have still happened. But for me it would have been so helpful to just have a name for it.

That information would have been so helpful. And not to mention, he’s 10 now but if I had known this, all the services that he’s accessed, all the things that we’ve done along the way to support him. I think this could have been really helpful information. So there’s a heaviness and there’s an anger. There’s an anger at the system of people that I feel didn’t listen to me even I told them what was going on. And while it’s validating to know now, there’s also this feeling of injustice that it shouldn’t have to be this hard, it really shouldn’t.

And as I’ve learned in our coaching, those are stories that I have around this topic that I believe I’ve developed the skills to kind of work through them. But I’ve also learned that it’s really important to feel my feelings. I have to be where I’m at with this so that I can be able to process it. And so that by the time it’s time to let my son know about his diagnosis, that it can be not about me, but it can be about supporting him.

So for me, the goal right now is to feel my feelings, find my support, process it all. And then get to a place where I can be fully present and show up for him with my nervous system regulated and being calm and collected and his rock because that’s what he needs from me, so yeah.

Lisa: There are just so many profound things that you said in there, I don’t know where to start. But obviously the most important thing is, you touched on some things that we did in our coaching with the stories. But then you also countered it with the feelings which is so important because we’re never saying, don’t feel your feelings. And the fact is it is bullshit. It isn’t fair. That’s 100% valid. And for feeling that anger and that grief and all of that and letting all of that be part of your process.

When we’re talking about the stories it’s like, but how much of it do you want to bring forward and live in day-to-day? And there is a difference, but yeah, that is bullshit and it’s not fair. And I’m just giving people a little bit of context, you touched on it briefly. But you’re kind of a big deal. You’ve written a book. You’ve done a TEDx talk. You have a big job. If there was somebody who could get people’s attention and had the resources, you certainly did and you were still being shut down.

And so I think one of the things that’s frustrating to know is that when we’re getting shut down and we are feeling very capable, what’s happening to people who are less inclined or less able and you think of that. And you can definitely get swept away in even more grief and all that. But this was not for lack of trying, this was not for lack of advocacy. It was just the opposite. And so being frustrated, being upset by that is 100%, let yourself feel all of those feelings.

Julia: Yeah. I think about that because I think it just made me, first of all, the thing that keeps coming to my mind too is I’m a lot more kind to myself now than I used to be. And so one of the things that you taught me was to have my own back and to support my decisions and not to second guess myself and question. And that was something that I did a lot through this process, these thoughts of, well, if I had done this then maybe blah blah blah. And I don’t feel any of that right now.

I do feel both my son and I and even my daughter with her sort of maybe, maybe not diagnosis is we’re all exactly where we’re supposed to be. I know that for sure. And sometimes exactly where I’m supposed to be is really uncomfortable, because there’s some kind of learning or there’s some kind of growth or the time is just right for some reason. I don’t know why now. But the one thing that I learned definitely in this process is not to give up because if I had given up, I don’t know what would have happened, but I’m just grateful that I didn’t.

And I almost did give up. I remember when we were coaching together, I had just gotten this new doctor. And I had a lot of, maybe shame around that things didn’t work out with the first doctor. I just felt like he didn’t have enough experience in complex mental health diagnoses for kids and he wasn’t as comfortable prescribing the medication. So I found this new doctor and he was and he was almost, he was pushing up the dose, up dose but really didn’t understand how, with anxiety and ADHD, the medications, there needs to be a real fine balance and I knew that.

I could see it because not only am I doing my own research and trying to educate myself, but I’m also living it day-to-day. And I was really spoiled when my kids were in the NICU because we were part of a lot of programs where the parents were really part of the care team. And really we were considered to be almost equal to the doctors because we were the ones with the kids, we were the experts. And I just thought erroneously that the whole healthcare system would be [inaudible].

Any doctor would say, “Well, you’re the expert on your kiddo, because you’re with them day in, day out.” But in my case, I guess, doctors were, I just felt like they wanted to pat me on the head and [inaudible] me out of their office kind of thing and say, “There you go. Let’s just increase the dose and everything will be fine.” But part of the challenge was I had to wait to get in to see that new doctor, so there was a lot of relief. I went, “Okay, now, I have a doctor that will be comfortable prescribing. Now I have a doctor that will listen.”

And it’s the same thing, but different. He’s not going to listen. And so, okay, now I’ve got to try again. And I felt shame going back to our family doctor and saying, “I’m really sorry. I don’t think it’s me, but it’s not working out with this doctor.” But you know what? She knows me and she listened to me and she said, “This is disappointing, but we can’t have you have a doctor for your kids that doesn’t listen because they’re going to go through puberty. There’s going to be hard times. So you need to be able to have a doctor you work with.”

So I talked to a lot of people. I found the exact doctor that I needed through not just online research, but asking people, finding people that had kids with complex mental health diagnoses through Facebook or through wherever. And finding out who is the best doctor. And the doctor we have is now, she’s further away but this is her area of expertise. And so it took, her waiting list was 18 months when we got on it. It might have been a bit quicker than that but there’s been a lot of like you said, hurry up and wait.

Lisa: Yeah. And I remember you getting on her wait list, and I remember how relieved you were. But then there was this whole sort of dance that you were doing with the other doctor. I also remember if you want to share, I mean, and this is all part of you being the expert on your child. I do remember your doctor making a medication recommendation that you didn’t take, that you actually, you had some back and forth about that, but you listened to your instincts there.

Julia: Yeah, I mean part of managing ADHD and anxiety at the same time is that, I’ll just share my kids are on an SSRI for their anxiety and then a stimulant for their ADHD. And they counteract each other and the increase to the stimulant will up the anxiety. So it’s a very fine balance. And this doctor really sort of discredited that and said, “No, just increase the dose. They’re not on the highest dose, they’re not on the highest dose.”

But our goal had always been to keep the lowest effective dose of the stimulant so that the anxiety could stay under control too. And so when he kept sort of pushing the dose, pushing the dose, I ended up really pushing back. And the other thing is, and this is now the story all comes together but for both my kids, their anxiety doesn’t show up like it’s fight, flight, freeze, FON, whatever it is. They are fighters.

Lisa: [Crosstalk].

Julia: And thank God because my daughter was one pound at birth, my son was two pounds. I’m glad they’re fighters. But their anxiety shows up as fight. And a lot of doctors don’t understand that there’s some kids that are just like, “My tummy hurts. I don’t want to go to school.” My kids are like, “I’m going to scratch your face off”, when they’re anxiety is high. And so my doctor had [inaudible] my son’s anxiety and all of a sudden he’s kicking people randomly or doing just behaviors that aren’t usual for him when his anxiety is well managed.

But he wouldn’t listen to me when I said that stuff. So this is shameful to admit, but I would go in and lie to him, I’d be like, “Well, he’s anxious.” And said, “Well, how does that appear?” And I’d be like, “Well, he’s really nervous and he doesn’t want to be in the…” I would give examples from the past that I’ve also seen, they weren’t complete false. But any time I said anything about anger, he would just say, “No, that’s ADHD, we have to up the ADHD medication pills.” So I was able to kind of, I guess, through manipulation tactics, get what I needed.

Lisa: We call it advocacy.

Julia: But yeah, I mean, it didn’t feel good though because there’s this fear that goes with it of I shouldn’t have to do this. You should listen to me. But in any event, I mean where we’re at today is that we have the right doctor. And I think one day I’ll look back on the journey that it took to get here and there’ll be learning in it for sure. And I’m going to choose to sort of move forward.

But the one reason, people in my life said, “Well why are you pursuing the Autism diagnosis so hard? What difference is that really going to make? Is there a different treatment?” Because they’re already getting a lot of support at school, like I said before. And I said, “Because it needs a name. I need the validation of that name. And my kids need to know the whole picture of who they are. Because the more I learn about Autism and just this idea of being neuro atypical, it’s an identity. It’s part of who these kids are.

And to know that, they can find their people. To know that, they can find their brilliance and their spark and the things that make them tick. They need to know who they are and I don’t know. I have a lot of Autistic people in my life, and they’re some of my favorite people, the way their minds work is so different. They think about the world’s problems through a different lens. And even in the last five years, I think about my kids who also have dyslexia. And this idea of dyslexic thinking being an asset is something new in the business world. Things are changing.

Lisa: So when you say kids there, do you mean your students’ kids?

Julia: Yeah, older kids. So I mean I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I’m not grieving the diagnosis. I’m grieving that it took so long to be able to have a name for who my son is, or at least a part of his identity.

Lisa: Yeah, I think that’s such a beautiful perspective. And I know for my son when he found out he was 11, he was intrigued. He wanted to know more and he wanted to understand more. And I think it did help him in some ways, understand himself and appreciate things about himself more than he did before. Before I’d always told him, “Your brain is like a super computer and it organizes information differently. It can retrieve information differently than mine.”

Because he would always be annoyed with me when I couldn’t remember things. Where he’d be like, “Remember the time”, and he would be very specific. And I’d be like, “No.” He’s like, “But.” And he would give me more details. And I’m like, “No, my brain does not work that way.”

Julia: I have this moment that has been playing over in my mind a little bit for the last day since I’ve got this information which is sort of I think what I think of as the first moment in my son’s life where I really knew something’s different about this boy. And it’s not even a crazy story. But he was two years old and his language was just starting to develop. It actually developed quicker than my daughter’s. And he could kind of mimic words, if he heard them said he could mimic them but he wasn’t really talking and he definitely wasn’t obviously reading or anything like that.

So we went shopping at a mall that was near an Olive Garden and we went to the Olive Garden for dinner. And as we were going in, I did say, “We’re at the Olive Garden, look, Olive Garden.” And then we went in, ate dinner, everything was fine. And as we were leaving, my son looked up and he waved and he said, “Bye, Olive Garden.” It wasn’t even that clear but I could tell what he was saying. And I thought, what? It was just this really weird, how did you hold that information in your mind this whole time? He was two.

It was just weird and it gave me that feeling of there’s something different about this kid. I don’t know what it is, but I just don’t think that’s a thing that a two year old would do. And ever since then, I mean every now and again, one of the things about him is he’ll be like, “Remember that time.” And then he’ll describe something that happened six years ago. And it takes me a long time to figure out what. But then I’ll see that he’s describing, we were living in our other house. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh. I don’t actually, really remember, can you tell me more about that?” But yeah, I mean that memory thing is funny.

Lisa: It is, it’s wild. Well, listen, thank you so much for being willing, again, this podcast episode, we had a very different idea. And the fact that you were willing to still come on and to talk about this, I really appreciate it. And actually, I’ve had a couple of new clients come on and a couple of consults in the past week of clients or potential clients who are very new to the diagnosis and they’re going through something similar to you. And I think your willingness and your bravery and putting this out there will be very helpful for other people.

Julia: I know originally we were going to talk about the coaching. And would you be okay if I just said a few things that have changed for me since we did our coaching?

Lisa: Yeah, I would love that. And I would actually also too just to get your thoughts on what you learned from the coaching and how that’s helpful for you now getting this news. I mean what’s different for you?

Julia: Yeah. I mean, I think my whole perspective on it would be totally different if this happened before coaching. So again, when I say I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. I have the capacity to handle this now in a different way. But I just remember, I didn’t really talk about this a lot today, but a lot of what we talked about early coaching, was the nervous system and the stories that I created around my life. And I remember when we had our consult, you told me that I was creating stories and my thoughts were creating stories that were deciding my feelings essentially, and kind of that was affecting the outcomes.

And I was like, “I don’t know.” But then I really started to see how that was true as we worked through week by week, circumstances in my life that I was struggling with. And I’ll just share one of them was really feeling alone in the single parenting journey. And even though I was dating someone wonderful when we started our coaching together, we had sort of set up the situation where we were very much living separate lives and we each had our own places. And my life with my kids was very separate from my life with him.

And a lot changed through our coaching and the times where my partner was with the kids and I were very stressful for me because I was worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle it or it was just a different dynamic and that kind of thing. And potentially together without the kids was so calm and peaceful and lovely. And we worked through a lot of that in our coaching, the stories that I had around that and the assumptions that I was putting on him.

Lisa: Well, I mean, I remember it was very much a fear that it would be too much for him. And so wanting to keep those worlds separate because you didn’t think that you could have both.

Julia: Yeah, and meanwhile, every time I’m alone with my kids, I feel like I’m all alone, I’m doing this all alone. So those stories were sort of not helping each other. And the feeling alone, I mean, part of our work was I went from dreading time with my kids to now I really treasure it and we have so much fun together. And it just really works because I figured out the ways in which we can have fun together. And I had to accept a lot of things along the way that they weren’t going to go according to my plan, necessarily.

Lisa: Yes, I remember that.

Julia: But I learned to kind of roll with those things and that was just not something that transformed for me quickly, was slowly over time checking in with my stories and my thoughts and my feelings and how much control I actually did have over that and learning how to regulate my nervous system. But I’ll just quickly share that that partner of mine has since moved in with the kids and I at his suggestion, not mine, but it’s been about, I guess, going on six months now and it’s better than I could have ever imagined.

I really now have a real partner in this, he loves my kids and is so helpful and is building his own relationship with them, slowly but surely. And I don’t think without the coaching that could have been possible. So I’m really grateful to you for that.

Lisa: I remember, we almost fought about this a couple of times. I’m like, “What if?” And you’re like, “No, it can’t be because it will never work and it can’t be possible.”

Julia: Well, it’s just so funny because as I reflect on it now, you encouraged me to change the story about I’m all alone. And then you fought with me on my fixed mindset around things with my partner. And I’m a stubborn girl but I did eventually come along.

Lisa: You always implemented. And that’s one of the things, even if something was uncomfortable, I always admired your willingness to implement, to try.

Julia: Well, I don’t know, wise people in my life tell me that when I’m in enough pain, I’ll change. So that’s my motto. But I just wanted to say it’s amazing to me how that story of I’m all alone, by the work that we did in changing that story, literally I have a new reality in my life today and I’m not all alone anymore and I feel supported. And even in this diagnosis, my partner and I are really in it together and I’m just so grateful for that.

I learned that I can do it alone, and I’m good at doing it alone, but I don’t have to. And so today I have a partner. I don’t know. I don’t think it could have been possible without our work together, so thank you, Lisa.

Lisa: Well, it couldn’t have been possible without you putting in the work that you put in. And you put in a lot of work, a lot of work. So on that note I want you to speak to your thoughts about doing it alone. That also meant you could have DIY’d this. You could have gone through a lot of therapy. You could have read a lot of books and things like that. And I just want to get your thoughts for those in my audience who are coaching curious, why do it with me? Why do it with a coach, what’s the benefit of that?

Julia: Yeah. I mean for me I was ready, I think. I have done therapy and there’s definitely a place for that. I’m not going to knock therapy at all. But for me it was I needed action. I needed things to really change. I felt my therapy stuff, childhood [inaudible], all of that. It’s not about that. It’s that life today, I don’t know what to do. I’m really struggling and I don’t know why. And that’s why, like I said, it was really important for me that you had kind of gone before me and could share your own experience but also that this is something that you also work through.

You learn this and you’re passing it along to others, other women who are having struggles. Where it’s, I just knew it wasn’t working and I didn’t know how to fix it. And I didn’t have time to do a deep dive into anything. I needed immediate results. And I think that’s what coaching is. And I think there’s some places in coaching too, where I got to where I realized, hey, you know what? I need more therapy on this. This is a deeper issue. It’s bringing up big stuff. So I think there’s a place for both.

But for me in the day-to-day just being able to have strategies to deal with my own thinking around things and feeling my feelings and calming my nervous system and being able to co-regulate with my kids, regulate myself so that I can help them regulate which is, I think, the number one thing I’ve learned about kids like ours is they need to borrow our calm. And so for me I had to learn how to do that.

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. So what would you say to the mom who is coaching curious, who is on the fence about whether or not to make the jump?

Julia: I would say you’re worth it. I mean, it’s so cliché, people always say secure your own oxygen mask, but things didn’t start to get better with my kids until I was okay. And I couldn’t be okay until I learned how to be okay. And I mean, it’s just that simple. I overcomplicate the hell out of it but once I stopped doing that and just started taking action and doing something, asking for help. It was really about just getting out of my stubbornness and asking for help and saying, “I don’t know how to do this, and I need the help.”

And I don’t need the help in terms of, I’ve listened to all the books, I’ve heard the podcast, I’ve got the resources. I need someone to sit with me and call me out on my thinking and say, “You’re actually able to think about that differently if you want to, and here’s how. And you’re creating this story and is that the story you want to be a reality? And where else is this showing up in your life?” And all of those questions.

But I could really start to see how the answers that I needed were all within my own control. No matter what the circumstances were, I could decide how I wanted to think about them. And I could decide to create a calm state even in the midst of chaos. It’s a superpower.

Lisa: Right. It’s like having the keys to the operating system. Julia, thank you so much for taking the time, especially with everything that’s going on, and you sharing what you’ve shared. I just think that it’s going to be so helpful to other moms who are in this tender spot of knowing, but then knowing and finding out and all the feels that go with that. So I so appreciate everything and all of your time.

And just again wanted to shout you out for just being such a tremendous client and you showed up for yourself all of the time and you implemented and you did the hard work. And I’m just, I’m so impressed by everything you’ve been able to create for yourself and your kids are so lucky to have a mama like you.

Julia: Thanks, Lisa. So good to see you.

Lisa: So good to see you too.

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 90 of The Autism Mom Coach, Gratitude Masking.

It’s November, which in the United States, anyhow means lots of talk of gratitude. While gratitude is a good thing, I think it’s often something that Autism moms weaponize against ourselves as a way of dismissing our own grief. Keep listening to learn how we do this and how we can stop.

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 the podcast. This episode will come out the day before Thanksgiving. So for those of you who celebrate it, happy early Thanksgiving. And I thought with Thanksgiving coming up, it being November and all the talk of gratitude and having an attitude of gratitude, it would be a perfect time to talk about what I call gratitude masking.

But before we get to the lesson, I do want to share something that I am so incredibly grateful for right now. If you’ve been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you know that this year has been a rocky one for my son and I, I mean, really, really rocky. And after another very rocky start to a new placement, my son is adjusting. He is communicating and he is using coping strategies and nothing could make me happier.

This sounds like really not a big deal, he’s basically doing stuff he should be doing and not doing stuff he shouldn’t be doing. But I could not be happier because the fact is, he has a hard time adjusting to new places and the fact that he’s at a place that was able to outlast his attempts to basically get kicked out is a blessing beyond what I could imagine right now and I am so grateful.

And on that point, I want to share something that you may or may not find humorous. Because I think as Autism moms, we can all relate to the phone call from the school and how our heart jumps and our stomach sinks just a little. So during the first week of this placement, I was getting a lot of phone calls because I had checked the selection for them to notify me any time there was any sort of restraint. So every time there was, they called me and let me know what was happening.

And every time I saw their phone number oh, my God, I just, I lurched because the fear thoughts of oh, no, not again, he’s going to get kicked out again. What’s going to happen to us now? So anyhow, after a week, I am still getting these phone calls but now when they call, they’re calling to tell me good things. And it’s weird because guess what, that fear response is strong. So when I see that number pop up, I’m still bracing myself a bit and I will tell you it is a very pleasant surprise to be getting good news instead of news that is not the greatest.

So anyhow, not all phone calls from the school are bad, which is a great thing. And let me just say, I am so grateful to the head nurse there who called me on purpose to tell me how well my son was doing and what he said to me was, “I know you’ve gotten a lot of bad phone calls and so I wanted to balance that out for you.” And my thought was, oh, my goodness, how wonderfully considerate and compassionate. And so again, I am bursting with gratitude right now for where my son is and how he is doing.

Alright, onto today’s topic, the word gratitude and the phrase, have an attitude of gratitude are sprinkled everywhere, books, articles, quotes on Instagram, people’s t-shirts. And while gratitude and having a positive mindset are really powerful, I think that they also have a downside. And this downside happens when the preoccupation with staying positive and having an attitude of gratitude or positive vibes are actually being used to avoid, invalidate or minimize emotions and experiences.

And that is what I mean about gratitude masking, the act, the action of covering up, invalidating or minimizing genuine feelings and emotions, by forcing yourself to feel grateful or by at least thinking that you should be grateful. In my opinion, this is a form of toxic positivity, which is a belief that no matter how dire or difficult or how much you are suffering, that you should maintain a positive mindset.

Well, while having a positive attitude on life is good for your mental health, it can also have the opposite impact when you’re using it as a way of burying your painful emotions and telling yourself that you shouldn’t be feeling them anyway. Or, oh, look, at least you’re not dead, thank goodness for that. Gratitude masking often starts with the word, ‘at least’, followed by a factual statement like at least I’m not dead. At least I have a job. At least we got an early diagnosis. At least my child is verbal. At least they’re high functioning. At least they don’t have a deadly disease. Stuff like that.

Yeah, great, we are grateful that we aren’t dying and that we have a home and we have a job. We’re grateful for all of that. But to use that as a way of diminishing the emotions that we feel when our child is diagnosed with Autism, when they are struggling to talk, when we are struggling to communicate with them, when we are struggling to go out in public. By telling ourselves, well, you should be grateful, at least you have the money for groceries is not helpful at all.

And to be clear, I am not saying that you shouldn’t be grateful for what you have. I am saying make sure your gratitude is genuine. Pretending or forcing yourself to feel gratitude out of guilt or fear is unhealthy. Here are the three ways that I see gratitude masking. I’ve seen them show up in my own life and I see them showing up in my clients’ lives and I want to share these with you. I want you to ask yourself, am I doing this?

The first is emotional avoidance. Gratitude, masking or forced gratitude is like a shield that some of us use to avoid feeling painful emotions like fear, sadness or anger. This is certainly the case with me. I was in full out, at least I got an early diagnosis for my child and I threw myself into research, appointments, therapies, you name it. I was either working at my job as an attorney, working on researching Autism, or with my son. There was no time to stop or feel anything. I just kept going.

And when I told people about the diagnosis, I would always quickly follow it up with, “But the good news is we found it early. We live in a great school district and we’re going to get Ben all of the services that he needs.” It’s like in telling them this news I was also telling them how to feel about it, because here’s how I feel. It’s Autism but here’s all the great news and don’t worry, it’s all going to be okay.

This was all my way of really completely avoiding all of the pain that I was not even willing to look at, the fear, the anxiety and the grief. It was like just keep going, keep your head down. And we’re going to do enough things that all of this is going to go away and you’re not even going to have to feel this so just keep going.

Number two, invalidating. When we are focused on always having an attitude of gratitude, we inevitably end up stuffing down our own emotions and telling ourselves that we should not feel the way that we feel. But the fact is, no one feels happy or grateful all of the time. Humans experience a wide range of emotions in a day, a week, an hour. For example, my son is currently in a mental health hospital for treatment. Gratitude masking says that the only emotion I should feel is grateful. And like I shared earlier, I am grateful and I’m also sad. I’m also afraid.

I’m also envious of all of the people who just seem to, I don’t know, have kids who are not in mental health hospitals. But gratitude masking would tell me that I can only focus on the good, on why it’s a great thing that he is where he is and that he’s getting the help that he is. And that the fact that we’re not going to spend Thanksgiving with our families, that’s something, well, just don’t look at that. Just focus on the positive. But the fact is, I am sad.

I am torn by the fact that this is the decision that I have made on purpose, because I think it’s the best one. And it also comes with consequences that aren’t my favorite. And I’m allowed to feel that, I’m allowed to feel the sadness, I’m allowed to feel the fear of what’s next. I’m allowed to feel all of that. And that doesn’t invalidate the fact that I am so grateful that he’s getting the help that he needs.

The same with you, it is perfectly fine to be so grateful and so excited that your child is finally losing their AAC device and a little bit sad because maybe they’re not going to talk. Or maybe that’s a fear that you have and instead of invalidating that fear, instead of burying it under the rug, you’re allowed to feel both things. You’re allowed to feel grateful that they’re using this way to communicate, and a little bit sad that this is how they are communicating.

The same thing with other people, you can feel happy for other people. You can feel happy for your sister who is pregnant. You can feel excited for your nephew who gets straight A’s and is a star athlete with seemingly no effort whatsoever. You can feel proud, you can feel excited and you can feel jealous and envious at the same time. Because here’s the thing, if you are forcing yourself to always be grateful and you’re burying your pain, it’s not going away. It is still there, unprocessed and taking up space and energy in your body.

And what happens to unresolved and unprocessed emotions? They usually end up coming out sideways, exploding out of us seemingly out of nowhere, which makes perfect sense. What we resist, persist, and the same happens with emotions. They are cumulative. They build up, and if we’re not allowing them, if we’re not processing them, they’re just staying there, waiting to come out. And so that’s why you’re in the grocery store bursting into tears seemingly out of nowhere or flipping out at somebody for complaining about their sports schedule, because how dare they. That’s what happens when you are invalidating your own emotions.

And third, minimizing. When you are constantly telling yourself to be grateful, when you actually feel sad, scared, angry, or jealous. This leads to minimization of your own emotions and your own experience. Not only are you up against all of the people in your life, in the world who don’t get it. Now you are jumping on the bandwagon with them by reducing how you feel and trying to cover it up with a more Instagram-able emotion.

My son aggressed me in our home, but it’s no big deal. It’s not unusual for Autistic kids or Autistic parents, at least no one got hurt. I had to cancel a vacation because my son’s OCD was so out of control, but no big deal, at least I bought travel insurance. We’ll go somewhere else some other time. I skipped the neighborhood holiday party because I did not want to chance my son having a meltdown. No big deal, I see these people all of the time. Sure, maybe all of these things are true, but so are the feelings of anger, disappointment, sadness and jealousy.

Maybe you think you are minimizing or invalidating your emotions for the benefit of other people or maybe you just don’t always want to be that person. I totally get it. I’ve done this a lot. But the truth is, the more you do this, the more disconnection you create with yourself and the more disconnection you create with other people because you’re basically lying to both you and them. So they don’t continue to not get it and maybe continue to think it’s not that big of a deal because you keep telling them that. It’s a lose/lose.

All of these practices have the potential to lead to trauma, to isolation, and to continued unhealthy coping mechanisms for you, so what to do. I think a great cardinal rule of life is stop pretending to feel a way that you don’t feel. Sure, you don’t need to explode on other people with everything that you feel all at once. But at the very least, you can stop pretending to yourself to you, start with you.

Stop pretending that you feel a way that you don’t. And then you can practice doing this with other people little by little. But to do this, you first need to recognize all of the ways that you are covering up, that you are masking your emotions in the first place. Look at all of the ways that you are at least-ing yourself, telling yourself it could be worse, telling yourself you have no right to complain and that you should be grateful.

And then ask yourself, what is the emotion that you are avoiding, is it the sadness? Is it the loneliness? Is it the fear? Whatever it is, begin to allow that emotion and validate it for yourself with tons of self-compassion. Of course I feel sad that my son’s not spending Thanksgiving at home, any mother would feel that way. This is perfectly normal. I’m allowed to have this emotion and same with you. Figure it out for you. What are the emotions that you’re avoiding and validate that experience for yourself.

Alright, everyone, that is it for this week’s episode. I’m going to tell you from firsthand experience doing this work by yourself, it is possible, but seriously, why? Because I will tell you as someone who tried to DIY it, it does not work the same as when you are working with someone who you are looking in the eye, who you are sharing these painful thoughts with. Who you are getting validation in the moment and who is pushing you ever so gently to move forward, to question your thoughts, to process your emotions and to learn new ways of responding to your life as it is.

If you are ready to stop DIYing it and to fast forward your own results, to have joy and happiness in your parenting experience exactly the way it is. I invite you to schedule a one-on-one consultation with me. My coaching program is tailored to you, to your goals and to your struggles. And we work on getting you the results to make your life happier for you so that you can show up as the mother that you want to be.

Especially in this season when you are looking around for all of the ways to please other people, what the gifts are that you’re getting them for the holidays, I want you to do the work of thinking about yourself. Coaching is the most beautiful gift that you can give yourself. And I say this as someone who has purchased and continues to purchase quite a bit of coaching for myself. It is your way of investing in yourself, investing in your happiness.

And guess what happens when you invest in yourself? You have so much more capacity for the other people in your life. You have so much more capacity to manage the challenges that you face. So if you are ready to change your life, you can start right now by scheduling a consultation with me. You can go to the show notes, you can go to my website and schedule on my calendar.

But if you don’t find a time on my calendar that works for you, I want you to email me at lisa@theautismmomcoach.com with two days and two times that work for you and I will make one of them work. Alright, have a wonderful holiday and I will talk to you next 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 89 of The Autism Mom Coach, Resentment.

In this week’s episode we are going to talk about resentment but not the kind of resentment we feel justified in feeling. Like the resentment towards the medical field or scarcity of resources or the IEP team or the lack of understanding in the world about Autism. Instead, we’re going to talk about the resentment that we all feel but rarely admit or acknowledge because we feel a lot of shame about it. And that is the resentment we sometimes feel towards our own children. 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 the podcast. I hope you are all doing well. Onto today’s topic, resentment and particularly resentment towards our children. Now, this is an issue that comes up a lot in my coaching sessions through a lot of tears. Moms telling me that they feel resentful towards their kids and how much shame they feel by even thinking this or saying it. And of course I am there to normalize whatever you’re feeling. And in many times, in most times, I can relate.

And so in these sessions with my clients, seeing how much pain they were in, seeing how they felt like they were on an island, that they were the only ones experiencing this. I have shared some of my own experiences of this with them. And I wanted to extend that to the podcast audience because not everyone will be a client at some point or another. And I think that knowing that other people are going through something similar can be helpful.

But I also, in addition to telling you that you’re not alone I also want to tell you you’re not wrong either. So let’s get started. Just assuming this is the first time you’ve ever listened to the podcast, I just want to catch you up on what’s been going on for the last year. And that is essentially that my son has been in and out of residential placements and/or hospitals.

He is 16 years old and last March he was accepted to a residential program for children and teens with Autism in Utah. And this took a long time, three months of hardcore negotiations with the school district, interviews, applications, packing, figuring out what his life would look like across the country. It was a big to do to get all of this in motion and for it to actually happen. And so we flew out to Utah and got him to the school.

And within a week he had basically been expelled from the school. He had engaged in some behaviors that weren’t safe. They had sent him to a local medical center for stabilization, which basically never happened. And not too long after that I was flying across the country and picking up his bags and all of his belongings and it was gut wrenching. It felt like such a failure, all of the time, all of the energy, all of the hope, all of the resources. And I was resentful towards my son. My thoughts were, you ruined it, you ruined this. You ruined all of my work. I did this for you and you didn’t even care.

And I felt all of that anger and resentment towards him. It felt very personal to me and I just had the overall feeling that he was ruining my life and he was making my life so much harder. Now, then fast forward six months and we are in a similar position. After spending most of his summer in the hospital, he was admitted to another residential program that was supposed to be able to handle kids of his profile. But after four days, he was bounced out of that.

And so there goes another three months of applications, of negotiations, of all of the things that you have to do in order to get your child placed anywhere. All of that out the window and immediately having to pivot with one phone call and I was crushed and pissed, pissed at them. I wasn’t thrilled at the school, for sure. But at him, this feeling of here you go again. I did all of this work. I pulled out all the stops. I gave it everything I possibly could and you ruined it.

Maybe for you, it’s not a residential placement. Maybe it’s the birthday parties that you don’t go to or you have to leave early. Maybe it’s the friends that don’t come over anymore. Maybe it’s the vacations you don’t take. Maybe it’s the iPad that you are replacing again and again and again. Whatever it is, if you are ever feeling resentful towards your child, I am here to say, of course you do. I am here to say, of course, you are being forced to accept something that you do not like and this is exactly what resentment is.

Resentment is defined as a feeling of anger because you have been forced to accept something you do not like. Resentment is not logical, it’s emotional. It doesn’t mean you don’t love your child. It means you are a human being, pushed, stretched and on the edge. You are suffering and in your suffering you are assigning blame. And again, this isn’t rational, it’s logical. And so you’re going to assign the blame to the person who slammed the iPad against the ground, to the person who hit you, to the person who hit someone else and got kicked out of school.

That is our knee jerk reaction. It’s not rational, it’s emotional. Now, I do teach and I believe in my rational mind that our kids’ behaviors are not personal. And I am still human and so are you. You will take things personally from time to time and your brain will offer you thoughts like they are ruining my life. They are doing this on purpose. I hate my life.

I just want to tell you it’s not a problem to feel resentful, the problem comes in when you stay resentful. And I think this happens as a result of not acknowledging and validating your feelings of resentment in the first place and instead shaming and judging yourself for having them at all. This is a classic example of the second arrow that we talked about in episode 88. 

You’re reacting to a circumstance, you’re blaming or resenting your child in some way so then instead of just having the emotion and letting it go, you get frozen in this place of scolding yourself for having an emotion you don’t believe you should be having in the first place. This is resisting reality, resisting your emotions and creating more suffering for yourself.

So let’s talk about the antidote, recognize, validate and be compassionate. And I think you can accomplish all three of these things with three simple phrases. First, right now, I feel resentful. That’s recognizing it, validating it. Of course I do, of course you feel resentful that your kid smashed the iPad against the ground. Of course you feel resentful that you can’t stay at a party for more than five minutes because your kid’s having a meltdown.

And then third, this is where the compassion comes in, it’s okay. It’s okay that I feel this way. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad mom. It doesn’t mean I’m a bad person. It just means I’m having an emotion and that’s okay. With this practice, you want to recognize and validate your experience and treat this as a passing emotion, not a state of being. And you can do this by just simply recognizing that it’s there, letting it be there and not scolding yourself for it.

Alright, that is it for today’s podcast episode. I hope that this was helpful. And I will talk to you next 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 88 of The Autism Mom Coach, The Second Arrow.

Today we are going to talk about our own brand of self-injurious behavior, the kind of injury that occurs when we double down on our own pain and create suffering for ourselves. 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 the podcast. I hope you are all doing well. On to today’s topic, which is a regular topic in my coaching calls with clients and that is self-inflicted emotional pain. We do this a lot not because we are sadist, but because we are human and it seems to be a thing that we do. Something happens, we feel a painful emotion like anger or resentment or jealousy. And then we double down on ourselves by telling ourselves that we should not feel the way that we feel. We guilt ourselves, we shame ourselves, we scold ourselves. That’s what’s called self-inflicted emotional pain.

I want to further demonstrate this to you by talking about the second arrow. The parable of the second arrow is a well-known Buddhist story about dealing with suffering more skillfully. It is said that the Buddha once asked a student, “If a person is struck by an arrow, is it painful? If a person is struck by a second arrow is it even more painful?” He went on to explain, “In life, we can’t always control the first arrow. However, the second arrow is our reaction to the first. The second arrow is always optional.”

So what does this mean for you as an Autism mom? Well, think about all of the thoughts and the feelings that you have on any given day about Autism, about your child, about other people, maybe you feel anger about your child’s diagnosis. Maybe you are frustrated by how far behind they are from their typical peers. Maybe you are jealous of your best friend for her neurotypical children and seemingly normal life.

Maybe you are disappointed over the loss of your own expectations about what you thought parenting would be like. Or maybe you’re disappointed over the experiences that you thought your child would have, you thought that they would enjoy and that you thought you would enjoy with them. All of these emotions are painful. They are the first arrow, the unavoidable pain we experience in life.

And this simply happens when we’re having thoughts about our circumstances and these thoughts create emotions like fear, disappointment, jealousy, and sadness. This is all normal. This is part of the human experience. But what happens is we take it a step further by judging ourselves for our emotions in the first place, by telling ourselves that we shouldn’t feel that way and by guilting ourselves. We shouldn’t feel jealous of other people. We should be happy with the child that we have. To feel this way is somehow a betrayal of our child. We are not a good parent, and on and on.

So what happens when we do this, when we go from the initial arrow of feeling the pain of the fear, the anger, the judgment. We amplify the original pain and instead of processing it and letting it go, we become wrapped up in it. The focus then goes from the normal pain of being a human to how bad of a human we are for having the thoughts and emotions in the first place. All of this creates suffering and all of this is avoidable. But maybe you think that shaming and judging yourself is useful. Maybe you think it’s a way of cleansing yourself of an unsavory thought or an emotion.

Maybe you think a proper browbeating is a way of atoning for your thoughts and emotions. I know I used to unconsciously subscribe to this. I would guilt myself, I would shame myself and I believed that if I did this enough that I would be better and that I wouldn’t have these thoughts and that I should be punished for even thinking these things. But unfortunately, that’s not how guilt and shame work. They don’t make us better. They make us feel smaller. They create more suffering.

The good news is that this is all totally optional. You can stop it right now, but to do so you need to first recognize you’re doing it in the first place. And then make the conscious decision to pause and redirect your brain from indulging in the playlist of thoughts that has you shaming, blaming, and guilting yourself.

To do that I am going to share with you three simple steps and I’m going to use the acronym SAD. S stands for see the first arrow. When you are feeling pain over something that’s happened, a feeling of fear, anger, jealousy, whatever it is comes up, notice it.

And then A, allow yourself to feel and process the pain of the first arrow without judgment. You can simply do this by acknowledging this is a painful thought. This is a painful emotion and don’t judge yourself. Hold yourself with self-compassion.

And then D, decline additional arrows. Your pattern is to double down on yourself and so you’re going to have to get really good at pausing and redirecting and declining these additional arrows. This is not part of the process that you have to do. This is part of the pattern that you’ve been doing that’s been creating suffering and misery for you. So in this moment, you have the decision to say no to the additional arrows.

Alright, that is it for today’s episode, short and sweet, but an important concept to keep in mind because this is something that we do and we do it automatically. And the more you can let up on inflicting additional pain and additional suffering on yourself, the more capacity you will have to manage and to process the emotions that you’re experiencing without getting wrapped into them. This is the difference between having an emotion and staying stuck in it. Alright, thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you next 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 87 of The Autism Mom Coach, Talking Back to Fear.

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 the podcast. Before we get to today’s episode, I wanted to announce that I will be hosting open coaching calls in November. The theme of these calls are going to be the podcast. We’re going to talk about fear. We’re going to talk about processing fear. We’re going to talk about resentment and the holidays. And you are going to get a chance to be coached by me on these topics or to watch other moms like you being coached.

In order to join these calls, you need to be on my mailing list. So if you are not already, go to the show notes and subscribe now. If you are following me on Instagram or Facebook, you can go to my link, [inaudible] link and hit subscribe to mailing list. Once you’re on the mailing list, you will be the first to receive updates about when these calls are going to be, the theme, and you’re going to have your own chance to be coached.

Alright on to today’s topic. We are going to conclude our three-part series on fear with talking back to fear. I chose this order on purpose because I think it’s important to recognize first the significant physical manifestation of fear in our bodies and learn how to create safety for ourselves, to process the fear without judgment before we begin the process of talking back to fear. Because the fact is, if we are still in a fight, flight state, we’re listening to the fear. We’re not yet ready to talk back to it.

So what exactly does it mean to talk back to fear? I want you to recall from episode five, the think, feel, act cycle. Thoughts in our brains generate feelings in our bodies, which in turn motivate our actions and our inactions. In this cycle fear is the feeling resulting from our thoughts. So to talk back to fear, we must become aware of the thoughts, both subconscious and conscious, that are fueling and creating this emotion for us.

Remember from our discussion about the nervous system, when you’re in fight, flight, emotions are high and your brain only has access to the playlist of thoughts that fear is feeding you. It doesn’t have access to rational thinking. So when you’re in that fight, flight state, you’re not distinguishing your thoughts from reality, you’re just believing your thoughts. And these thoughts, they’re real, but these are just thoughts. Yes, they are real in that you are having them, that you are believing them and that they are spiking your cortisol but that does not make them true or helpful. Just the opposite.

When you are in a fear state your brain is offering you tons of thoughts that are far from true or logical. These thoughts are also known as thought errors or cognitive distortions, which are exaggerated or irrational thought patterns. And these irrational and exaggerated thought patterns run rampant when your body is in a state of fight, flight. Let me give you six examples of cognitive distortions that I’m betting you have engaged in or are engaging in on a regular basis.

First, black and white thinking or all or nothing thinking. This sounds like he will never talk. She will never have friends. This will never get better. Jumping to conclusions or mind reading, no one cares about our struggles. No one understands. People are ignoring us. They don’t care. Personalization, listen up, we all do this one. This is my fault. Something I did or I didn’t do caused this.

Number four, shoulding using language that is self-critical, that puts a lot of pressure on you. I should be doing more. I should be doing something right now for my child. I should understand how to fix this. I should be the one to fix this.

Number five, future tripping. This is when you’re going into the future. It will never get better. If it’s like this, what’s it going to be like when my kid is 10, 15, 20? What’s it going to be like when I’m not around? You get the idea.

And number six, catastrophizing, which is a combination of fortune telling and all or nothing thinking, where you’re just blowing things way out of proportion. Another call from the school today, they’re going to kick him out. I’m going to have to leave work early. I’ll probably get fired. If I get fired, how am I going to pay for all of his therapy? He’s never going to get better. Or he hit his sister. He is a bully. He’s not going to have friends.

If any of this sounds familiar to you and I’m guessing that it does, the good news is these are cognitive distortions. These are blown out of proportion thoughts. But the problem here, when you’re thinking thoughts over and over again, well, we have the tendency to sometimes make them true. So, for instance, if you’re thinking that no one understands and people are leaving you out, then you’re likely also to hide. You’re likely also to judge other people. You’re likely also to not engage with other people.

And so sometimes when we are letting these cognitive distortions run the show, when we are letting our fear thoughts run the show and we are believing them. We get into these rhythms where they feel true because we’re making them true or they feel true because that’s all we are living. We are never stepping outside of the thought and examining it. That’s what it means to talk back to your fear. So I am going to give you three simple steps and we’re going to call it the three C’s, for you to start talking back to your fear.

And the first is catch the thought. You can’t talk back to your fear thoughts unless you notice them in the first place. Now remember, just because you’re thinking it, doesn’t make it true. So you have to start to do the work of recognizing when you’re having a fear driven thought. This is what it means to catch the thought. This is the difference between you having the thought and you observing the thought.

And one way to do this is to create a little bit of distance between yourself and the thought. You can do this with language like my brain is telling me that, insert the thought. I’m having the thought that, insert the thought. And just by using that phraseology you’re creating some distance between yourself and the thought.

Number two, challenge it, ask yourself, is this a cognitive distortion? Is this thought even true? What evidence is there to suggest otherwise? Even if this thought is true and this is for all of you who like to catastrophize, then what? Remember, the thing that you’re afraid of might happen, does that mean you just shrivel up and die? No. You have choices to make.

So if you are in the habit of catastrophizing, make your brain go to the worst case scenario and then ask yourself and then what? Because in that way you actually are talking back to your fear. Instead of being afraid of the what if or the worst case scenario, you’re actually confronting it and you’re problem solving. And my favorite way to challenge any thought, because guess what? When we’re in a fight, flight state, we could convince ourselves that our scariest thoughts are true.

So the question I like to ask myself always, is this thought helpful? And what that means is when you’re thinking this thought, how are you showing up? Is it freaking you out? Are you stressing out? Are you frozen? Is it helpful for you to think this thought? And I’ll give you a perfect example.

I’ve shared in the podcast the situation with my son, where he has been removed from multiple residential schools. Now, if I have the thought, or if I let the thought, we’re never going to find a place for him, if I let that thought run me, I’m going to be under the covers and not getting out of bed until I don’t know when. This is not a useful thought for me. It scares the crap out of me. It makes me think of all of the things that can go wrong, all of the things that have gone wrong, all of the ways it might be my fault. This is not a useful thought.

Same for you, if you’re having the thought, my child is never going to talk. How is that helping you? Maybe you think it’s going to motivate you, but that’s actually not really what fear does, not long term. You’re going to just create more stress for yourself. It’s not a useful thought.

And then finally, the third C, choose. You get to decide how you want to think and you get to decide how you want to relate to a thought. Because here’s the thing, when I say you get to decide what you want to think. That does not mean you are not going to have crappy thoughts, you will, but you get to decide how you want to relate to these thoughts. Do you want to invite them in? Do you want to indulge them? Do you want to find more evidence for them?

Or do you want to hold them lightly like a cactus and just observe them, just notice them or like a cloud going by, just let it go by without attaching to it. Because when we attach to our thoughts, we find more evidence for them. When we find more evidence for them, we put ourselves deeper and deeper into that fight, flight state or even a state of shutdown. So when I say you get to choose how you think, you get to choose what you want to think on purpose, so what you want to think instead of the thought that’s scaring you.

But you also get to choose how you want to relate to the crappy thoughts when they come knocking on your door because they will. Your brain is a pattern making a machine. You’ve thought these thoughts before. There are certain things that trigger these thoughts for you and then you run with them. That’s the part we want to pause, instead of running with them, instead of indulging them, noticing them and letting them go.

Alright, that is it for today’s episode on talking back to fear, the three C’s catch it, challenge it, choose it. If you want more practice with this skill, again, get on my mailing list, because this is one of the issues we are going to coach about in my upcoming coaching calls this November. Alright, thank you so much for listening, thank you so much for being here and I will see you next 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 86 of The Autism Mom Coach, Processing Fear. In this week’s episode I am joined by my former client, Anna, and we are going to walk you through what it is like to process fear. Keep listening.

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 the podcast. I hope you are doing well. We are continuing on in our discussion of fear. And this week we are going to talk about how to process fear. Now, of course I can and I will give you a list of things that you can do to process fear. And I’m even going to share with you a tool that I use all of the time. But sharing a tool, telling you what I do it’s really not the same as experiencing it. And so that’s what I want to do by bringing Anna on so she can come with a real life issue for her.

We can talk through it and focus on how she can process this fear without letting it run her. Before we get to that, I’m going to share with you my favorite tool for processing fear, and it is called RAIN, R-A-I-N. It’s an acronym. RAIN was developed by Tara Brach, who, if you’re not listening to her, she’s amazing and you should, RAIN stands for recognize, allow, investigate, and nurture. So when I feel fear crushing down on my chest or bracing my heart, I go to RAIN. And the first step of RAIN is to recognize, to recognize that I am feeling fear. This is what fear feels like in my body.

It feels like a rock on my chest. It feels like I can’t breathe. And then I allow it to be there without going to my brain and thinking of all the reasons I shouldn’t feel this way or all the ways that I could fix it or all the ways that this isn’t fair. Remember, when you’re in a fight, fight state and you start thinking all those fight flight emotions, you’re just creating more fear.

So instead of going to all of those thoughts, I allow the emotion to be there in my body. I breathe through it. And I try my best to relax myself, to get myself to actually breathe because when I’m in the state of fear I’m usually holding my breath. And then I investigate, what is it that I am telling myself? What is it that I am believing right now that is causing me so much pain?

And this just allows me to separate the experience that I’m having from the thoughts that I’m having about it. Instead of getting lost in all of these thoughts that I think are true, just recognizing that right now I am having an emotional biological response to something that I’m believing that’s causing me pain. And finally the N of RAIN is to nurture. And this is what we do for ourselves. The deep breathing, I like to put a hand on my heart and to feel the hand on my heart and the heart with a hand on it. That’s a way for me to relax and to get into my body.

Saying things that are comforting to me, that are self-soothing, like, of course, you feel this way. This is really hard. Anybody would feel this way. When you are in a fight, flight state you can down-regulate that state by processing the fear, not avoiding it, not resisting it, but actually allowing it to be there, breathing through it and being kind to yourself.

When you do this, when you slow down, when you go from feeling that bracing fear or tension in your body. And instead of doing something, instead of getting on Google or telling somebody off or writing a strongly worded text or whatever it is, if you’re able to pause, you are slowing things down. Because speed is an accelerant to the fight, flight. So when you’re in fight, flight, you want to slow down and RAIN is a way that you can do that. It’s a way that you can slow down. It’s a way that you can process the emotion so that you come out on the other side of it.

And the other side is more safety, more rational thinking, more of an ability to respond the way you want versus react from fear. Alright with that, I am going to turn it over to Anna.

Lisa: So now I want to take a live example of processing fear. And for that, I have invited my former client, Anna, on to the show. She’s going to explain to us a situation that she’s having, and then we’re just going to go from there. So over to you. Tell us what is creating fear in your life right now.

Anna: Well, thanks for having me and helping me process this. So the fear that I’m having right now is kind of a, I guess you could say it’s a recurring fear that has recently kind of bubbled back up to the surface after I had already tried to process it once in the past. And it really revolves around school safety. Unfortunately, we all know that we continue to have these tragic situations with school shootings. We hear about it all the time in the news. And I have five year old twin boys who are in kindergarten this year.

And so the interesting thing is I’m actually a former teacher. That’s kind of pretty far in the past now. But as a teacher, I went through active shooter training myself. But I guess I have a totally different perspective on it now even, that I’m a parent and I have kids that are school age. And so back when the Uvalde shooting happened, that produced a lot of severe anxiety for me. And you had actually helped me process that at the time and I was able to get past that.

But then what’s kind of bringing it back to the surface now is my husband just got back from a conference. It was a conference for educators and school professionals. And there was a heavy focus on school safety from a facility standpoint. And they specifically talked about active shooter situations and things that they can do with the school facilities or buildings themselves to try to make schools safer in those scenarios. And so my husband came back and shared a lot of this information with me.

And I actually had to tell him at one point, “I understand that you’re really fired up and passionate about this, but you’re actually giving me a ton of anxiety right now.” And it took a lot for me to process this fear before. And I literally told him, “You’re going to give me nightmares if you keep talking about this.” And one thing that has changed is, as I mentioned, our boys are in kindergarten now. They’re at a different school building this year.

Back when the Uvalde shooting happened, one of the ways that I tried to process my fear was I contacted the preschool principal where they were at the time. And just kind of shared my fear and asked if there was anything she could share with me about how they handle school safety at the preschool, and that helped at the time. But now I’m like, “This is different because they’re in a different building. It’s different administration.”

And one thing that concerned me about the physical building when we walked through for open house is pretty much every classroom from what I could see has a huge glass garage door facing into the hallway that can be raised and lowered. And it’s supposed to be a cool aesthetic thing. And so they can do neat classroom activities utilizing this garage door feature. But I can’t help but think that that could be a safety concern. Hopefully it’s bulletproof glass, but besides that, anyone can be in the hallway and look in and see everyone in that classroom and where they are and what they’re doing.

So that’s kind of where I’m at now is just some of this anxiety creeping back up again after the information that my husband shared from this conference and just kind of worrying about a potential scenario. And I think as special needs parents in the back of our mind, we always fear, if something like that, God forbid, was to happen, how can our kids in particular be kept safe because of the challenges that they have? Would they know how to follow the safety protocols? Would they be able to stay quiet? Those are just all the thoughts that kind of run through my head.

Lisa: Okay, just going to go back a second and ask you, after the Uvalde shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that was the circumstance. You said that you were having some concerns about school safety and so you contacted the school. And they did what, they told you what they do in terms of?

Anna: So what she told me and reflecting back on it now I also realize I’ve been wondering, why aren’t schools more transparent with the community about these school safety issues? And why aren’t they more proactive in letting parents know these are our safety protocols, this is what we’re doing to keep your kids safe? But I also realize that’s tricky because you really don’t want to leak too much of that information out, because then you’re potentially…

Lisa: Giving a blueprint.

Anna: Yes, exactly, to people that could potentially be active shooters. So I can appreciate how it’s a fine line for them. But basically her response was, it was a very compassionate response. And she reassured me that I think it was on an annual basis the school district has to collaborate with law enforcement and other entities. And the school has to update their overall safety plan and that has to be approved by the law enforcement and those other entities that have expertise in those areas.

And then she also told me specifically regarding the concern about special needs students, she said that the school staff did what they called tabletop drills. So my child’s classroom team would sit down at a table together and they would talk about my child in particular. And if we had an active shooter scenario, what would we do to keep this particular student safe in that situation? And so that definitely helped put me at ease somewhat. But then I just kind of wonder, that was the preschool’s response and how does that translate throughout?

It’s a very large school district with a lot of buildings and thousands and thousands of students. So how does that kind of carry over throughout the school district as they move from building to building? And on one hand I don’t want to be that mom that every year when they go to a new building or they have a new classroom team that I’m asking, “What are you going to do to keep my kids safe?” But at the same time it’s a valid concern.

Lisa: So just first let’s just assume you contact all of those people right now and you know all the schools your kids are going to go to from now till whenever and they all are very compassionate. They are very reassuring and they give you this top down protocol and all the same things that you got a couple of years ago, then what?

Anna: That’s a good question.

Lisa: You still have the fear, don’t you?

Anna: Yeah.

Lisa: Yeah. Alright. So let’s talk about the fear and what’s really causing the fear because it’s not whether or not they have protocol.

Anna: And they know that they have to. I mean, they have to.

Lisa: Right, but it’s not the protocol. It’s not the training. What’s, when you distill it down, what are you afraid of?

Anna: That this could possibly happen and my kids might not be safe. And something tragic could happen, yeah.

Lisa: My kids could be harmed, of course.

Anna: Yeah, exactly. And you always, you want to believe that wouldn’t happen to my kids. That wouldn’t happen in our community. That wouldn’t happen in our school district. But I’m sure that’s exactly what parents in all of those other school districts thought, too.

Lisa: So I want to sit with you a little bit with the fear because you, a person, when they get into that fight, flight, you go into action mode. You want a spreadsheet, that gives you this brief sense of I’ve done something and I’ve gotten answers and now I can let myself feel better. So I want to try a new way. So I want you to, if you’re comfortable with it right now, is to take a couple of deep breaths just as you’re sitting in your chair, feeling your feet on the ground, your tush in your seat. Just feeling into your body.

And now I want you thinking about your husband coming in and showing you that information or seeing the latest school statistics or whatever it is. Where does that hit you in your body?

Anna: Tension. Before you prompted me to rearrange in my seat and start the deep breaths, I was hunched forward and my shoulders were up on my ears. That’s kind of my default anxiety mode.

Lisa: Yeah. So where you hold your tension in your body is what, shoulders up against your ears, what else? Where else do you feel it in your body?

Anna: My overall posture is just not relaxed. It’s very tense.

Lisa: Yeah. Which makes sense if you remember, you and I talked about this a bunch when we mapped your nervous system is that when you’re in that fight, flight state of your nervous system, your adrenaline is pumping and your body wants to go. It wants to do something. So you tensing forward, that’s part of that biological response. Tell me where else you feel it in your body if anywhere else, is it in your chest? Is it in your stomach? Is it in your throat?

Anna: Most of the time it’s just kind of that overall tension and mostly up by my shoulders. I’ve had it manifest in other ways before, that weird throat, clogged throat issue that I had a couple of years [crosstalk] that. And then here lately I’ve been Googling everything and I’m hoping it’s just seasonal vertigo or something. But I’ve been having vertigo issues. And I don’t know if that has anything to do with sleep deprivation or stress, it possibly could.

Lisa: It doesn’t help. They’ve never been said to be helpful towards anything. Okay, so you feel that tension in your shoulders, around your ears, in your throat area. So tell me about it, is it tight? Is it gripping? Tell me how it feels?

Anna: Tight, tense, just kind of like I’m white knuckling it.

Lisa: What does that mean to you?

Anna: The other thing I just thought of too is sometimes at night, if I’m under a lot of stress, sometimes I clench my jaw at night when I’m sleeping, I will grind my teeth.

Lisa: Those are all classic ways that we hold stress and tension in our body. 

Anna: And it just feels like I’m just bracing for something.

Lisa: Yeah, you are, by fighting or flighting. So I want you to right now just be there with that feeling. You’ve had the thought. We’ve talked about what you’re afraid of. Just being there with that feeling and just breathing into it so letting your shoulders relax a bit, opening your mouth, wiggling your jaw and just breathing. It looks like we’re doing face yoga right now.

Anna: Loosening up.

Lisa: Yeah, just loosening up and just breathe into that just for three breaths. And so when we do that, we want to let the fear know that we’re here, that we see it.

Anna: Aware of it.

Lisa: Yeah, we’re not ignoring you. And sometimes for me, I like to put my hand on my body. I feel it in my chest a lot. I feel my heart is bracing. And so it’s just that pause. I think about it as what your body is primed to do. You have told your body through your thoughts that there is danger out there and your body’s like, okay, let’s go. And right now you’re going to be like, “Okay, listen, we’re actually not in an active shooter situation right now.” Bringing your body down a little bit. When you do that, is there any shift, is there any change for you?

Anna: I feel like my mind stops racing. It’s just a slow down, okay, let’s just slow down. Let’s relax. Let’s be rational.

Lisa: Yeah, and that’s exactly what it is. And this is for everybody who’s listening to this, is that when we are gripped by that fear, emotion, we feel it in our body. The state creates the story. So here comes a playlist of all those thoughts. It’s like a marching band that’s coming in, it’s playing louder and louder and louder. So the thoughts come in and then we’re thinking the thoughts and then we’re thinking more thoughts about them.

Then we’re finding evidence and then we’re probably going to Google. And so we are keeping it going. And so when you’re in a fight, flight state, speed is an accelerant. So whatever you can do to slow yourself down is going to be able to bring you back to some of that ventral vagal safety energy. And when you’re in that you can access more of your rational thinking. And so right now for you, when your mind stops racing and you’re slowing down a little bit, what are the thoughts that are coming up about the circumstance that school shootings happen?

Anna: I mean it’s still scary knowing that it could be a potential. But just trying to tap into more of those rational thoughts, this is a phenomenal school district that we live in. It’s a large district. They have their ducks in a row. They have protocols. They review this every year. They train their staff. They’re prepared if something like this happens.

And I just need to trust the system because really the radical alternative is I pull my kids out of school and I homeschool them. And sure, that would probably guarantee their safety more. I mean, we could still experience an active shooting situation somewhere else in the community.

Lisa: My kid would not have been safer homeschooling with me, that’s for sure.

Anna: But then it’s at what expense though. I can’t be everything for them. I can’t replace their speech therapist. I can’t replicate the interactions that they have with peers.

Lisa: And so just in that, you’re making a conscious decision. We’re all making a conscious decision to live in this world where there are dangers. I mean, quite frankly, the most dangerous thing we do every day is drive our kids to school probably, especially with everybody on their iPhones while driving. But it’s bringing it back down, this could happen at any time and we’re just all sitting ducks. It has a really different feel from that.

I just also want you to think about is we’re not trying to get rid of fear. Fear is not a bad thing. It’s a signal to us but it’s whether or not we want to be run by our own fear. And so for you, of course, this isn’t just your fear. This is all of our fear. This is held by all of us. If that’s a way that you can calm yourself down is every mother fears this. I’m not alone. I don’t know if that is helpful to you, but you get into these situations.

It’s almost like they feel like we’re going to ground. Okay, kids, we’ve got the beans, we’ve got the water. You’re coming in. We’re putting you in the bubble because that’s our instincts as moms, we just want to put them in the bubble. So what’s coming up for you now?

Anna: Well, it just makes me think that, and I think for kids like ours especially, we do have to help them learn how to navigate this world and be safe. I mean, whether it’s fire drills, tornado drills, crossing the street safely. I mean that used to be a huge issue for us. just teaching them how to cross the street safely and hold our hands. Staying close to us when we’re out in public in crowded places. I think those are things that we just we constantly have to do, that’s part of our job.

As they grow up and get older and they have new experiences, teaching them how to navigate this world and stay safe and we can’t shelter them from that. That would be a disservice.

Lisa: And it’s so interesting too, because I have a lot of friends of kids who are teenagers and the thing that they want to protect their children from, their iPhone, the Snapchat. Whatever is going on in that world of just kids interacting. And the things that can happen from there. And so the landscape is always changing. But you’re resourceful, we know this. And you can always adapt, you can always course correct. You can always make the decision. Hey, you know what? This is an intolerable fear or risk for me and therefore I’m going to take them in.

But the fact that you’re not and you like your reasons for that, that’s the difference between having fear, feeling it, processing it, letting it be there versus letting it run you and run your life. So does that feel complete for today’s coaching or do you want to go a little bit more?

Anna: Well, I think that’s really helpful. And I think it’s given me a lot of things to reflect on and think about. And to just remind myself, I think it all starts with when that anxiety starts creeping in, no matter what the fear is. And that I can feel those physical manifestations that I’m starting to tense up. Then just remembering to let that be a signal to me to push pause, relax for a second, slow my mind down and try to tap into those rational thoughts and start processing it instead of just spiraling.

Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. Because it’s a pattern and so it’s going to happen so quickly because you practice it. You’ve done it before. And so if you know your tells, because [inaudible], where it’s like when I’m thinking this thought or when I can feel my shoulders up against my ears. This is my cue to slow it down.

For me, I always know whenever I’m having a thought, something like nobody else gets it or with my son, he’s doing this on purpose. Okay, chill out, it’s time to back it up a little bit. You’re a little too far over the line and nothing good could happen from here. With our kids, we know when they’ve hit the point of no return. It’s like that, it’s like, yeah, we’ve got to wrap this one up.

Anna: Yeah, exactly.

Lisa: Alright, well, Anna, thank you so much for your bravery in sharing this experience and also being willing to process out loud. I hope that this is a great example to anyone listening. Talking about processing emotions sounds very clinical, but when you’re actually doing it, it’s so deeply personal. So if this is something that you are interested in, if this is work that you want to do, I highly encourage you to schedule a consultation for me and for my one-on-one program.

I work with my clients on these issues every day and we don’t just come at it from one angle. It’s not just cognitive. It’s not just somatic. It’s the whole picture because we are human beings with brains and nervous systems. And we face very difficult challenges with our children with Autism and those circumstances. So our ability to be able to regulate ourselves in any given moment is so helpful in our ability to respond to whatever our children are doing, or whatever the world brings us. So with that, again, thank you, Anna and I will talk to you next week.

Anna: Thanks, Lisa.

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.