Once you can recognize a meltdown hangover, the next question is what to actually do about it—and this episode delivers practical tools to avoid, interrupt, or shorten one. Lisa shares specific strategies, including the surprisingly powerful practice of changing the voice in your own head, grounded in the self-compassion research of Dr. Kristin Neff.
In this episode, Lisa Candera explains why what happens after a meltdown matters just as much as the event itself. She breaks down how to use the recovery window to rebuild connection, restore regulation, and re-establish trust with yourself and your child.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:
- Why creating physical space after a meltdown—stepping into another room, the bathroom, or outside—helps both you and your child regulate faster.
- How to make that exit seamlessly, without dramatic door-slamming that escalates things again.
- Why replacing a harsh inner voice with a self-compassionate one, even if it feels corny, is backed by neuroscience and helps your nervous system register safety.
Listen
on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
RELATED EPISODES:
- Meltdown Hangovers: How Autism Parents Can Recover After a Meltdown (Ep #132)
- How to Recover After You’ve Lost Your Cool with Your Autistic Child (Ep #19)
Transcript
You are listening to episode 133 of The Autism Mom Coach: Meltdown Hangover Helpers. Welcome to the Autism Mom Coach podcast. I am your host, Lisa Candara. I am a lawyer, a life coach, and most importantly, I am the full-time single mother of a teenager with autism. In this podcast, I am going to share with you the tools and strategies you need so you can fight like hell for your child without burning out.
Let’s get to it
Hello everyone, and welcome to the podcast. I am so glad you’re here, and I hope you’re doing well. Before I get to today’s topic, I want to remind you that tomorrow evening I am hosting an open coaching call all about meltdowns and behaviors. This is your chance to ask me any questions that you have and to get coached.
So whether you’re having difficulty figuring out why your child is doing a certain behavior, becoming impatient and overreacting to them, or if you are spinning in guilt for days later, these are all things to bring to this call. I wanna answer your questions, and I wanna coach you so that you can walk away from the call with some practical tools and strategies that you can implement right away.
This call is open to everyone, but in order to attend, you must register, and you can do that going to the episode notes. Of you who do register, you will also receive a copy of the replay. All right, on to today’s topic. This is a continuation of last week’s topic about meltdown hangovers, and as promised, in this episode, I am going to provide you with tips about some specific practical things that you can do to either avoid, interrupt, or shorten the duration and intensity of your meltdown hangovers.
So let’s get into it. Wherever possible, if you can, get away from your child after a meltdown. Now, I know that this is not always practical or safe, but for the times that it is, do it. I know, the mom guilt is real, but hear me out. Whenever possible, create some space between you and your child because this is actually what’s going to help you regulate faster.
Remember, our children are highly attuned to our emotional states. They have radar for it. So if they are sensing our stress, they are going to react to it. So by stepping away, even for a few minutes, you can give both of yourselves a chance to regulate independently. There are some really simple things you can do.
You can go to the bathroom, you could take a quick shower, you could step outside for a moment, or even just go into another room. The key is to physically separate yourself from the situation so you can allow your nervous system to reset. Now, a couple of tips about this to make it as effective as possible.
First, no dramatic exits, right? The meltdown is going on or just about over, and you exit the room and slam the door, right? You want to do this as seamlessly as possible. That’s why for me, I always use the excuse of the bathroom, and this works for my son because he spends a lot of time in the bathroom with his OCD.
So me saying, “Hey, just wait a second. I need to go to the bathroom,” that’s been a great interruption for us. Second, if your child separates themselves from you, let’s say that they go into their room or they just go away from you, don’t follow them. Let them have their moment. Let them self-soothe. This is something I really never did.
Because of my own anxiety, I always wanted to finish things quickly, and so I would follow my son, make sure he was okay, you know, try to comfort him, whatever the situation was, and I would end up escalating both of us. So don’t do this. If your kid walks away, if they’re in their bedroom, if they are, for all intents and purposes, safe, let them work it out for themselves while you work it out for yourself.
Second, whenever possible, get yourself outside. Just 10 minutes in a natural setting can significantly reduce your stress hormones. It doesn’t have to be a vigorous hike in the wilderness. Just a quick walk around the block or sitting in your backyard can really help you The goal here is to change your setting and to engage with nature in a way that gives your brain a chance to shift gears and reset.
Number three, cold water. This is one of my favorites. I talked about this in a previous episode. You can actually use cold water to interrupt your stress response. You can do this by splashing your face with cold water. You can use an ice cube and run it along your wrist, on your temples, on your forehead.
You could put an ice pack behind your neck, or you can get a glass of ice water and just put it up to your face. When the cold water hits your face, it’s going to cause an immediate slowing of your heart rate and increase blood flow to both your brain and your vital organs. So this is a rapid way to shift your nervous system out of that fight-flight response that gets triggered during a meltdown.
Number four, movement. So physical movement of any time is a really powerful way to reduce your stress because it’s a way of actually shaking the stress out of your body. Exercise releases endorphins into your system, and these are natural mood elevators. Now, you don’t need to go to the gym for a full workout.
Even light activity can reduce your cortisol levels, which are your stress hormones, and increase the production of those feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. You can do things like a quick stretch, some yoga poses, some rapid-fire jumping jacks, a spontaneous dance party, skipping, whatever it is that just gets your body moving.
The key here is to find movement that feels good for you so that you can get your body moving in a way that feels releasing and energizing. Number five, hydration. This one is so simple, and all of us could benefit from this. Dehydration can seriously exacerbate stress and irritability. In fact, a study in the Journal of Nutrition found that even mild dehydration was associated with degraded mood and reduced concentration.
So the thing to remember here is that this is a vicious cycle. Dehydration can cause stress and irritability, and stress and irritability can cause dehydration. That’s why it’s really important to stay on top of your hydration, and this is especially challenging for autism moms because I know that many of us run on caffeine, which is dehydrating.
One of the simplest things that you can do after a meltdown is to drink a glass of water. It’s not just about quenching that thirst, it’s about giving your brain what it needs to function optimally. Number six, have a protein snack. Now, again, with the theme of giving your brain what it needs, it needs some protein.
Remember, when stressed, it’s really tempting to reach for those sugary comfort foods, and while you’ll get that dopamine hit in the moment, it’s only going to work to increase your stress and increase that feeling of fogginess and that crash that you have after. But a protein-rich snack can do wonders for your mood and energy levels.
That’s because protein-rich foods can stabilize your blood sugar levels, which is crucial for mood regulation. Plus, protein also provides amino acids necessary for neurotransmitter production. That’s the chemical messengers in your brain that regulate mood and emotions. So by having a protein snack, you’re not only avoiding that sugar and carb crash, you’re actually doing something very concrete to stabilize your mood.
Now, here are some simple go-to protein snacks that you can grab for after a meltdown. Greek yogurt or a handful of nuts. If you are unable to do dairy, there are yogurts that are made without animal milk, so think oat milk or coconut milk. Some of these tend to be a little bit soupier in my experience, so what I will do is actually put a scoop of vanilla protein into the yogurt and mix it around.
So even though, for instance, coconut yogurt doesn’t have a ton of protein, I can increase the protein with the powder. Some other suggestions are hummus, hard-boiled eggs, and there are also a lot of different protein snack bars that you could look for. You gotta be careful with them, ’cause some of them pack a lot of sugar, but there are also some that don’t.
So again, this doesn’t have to be a full course meal, but just a quick protein-rich snack that you can ingest mindfully, slowing yourself down, slowing down your nervous system. And by doing so, you are helping to elevate your mood quicker Number seven, sensory reduction. Now, after a meltdown, your nervous system, just like your child’s, needs a break.
So think of all the things that we provide to our children to help them regulate their nervous systems. I mean, really, at the core of almost every single thing we do for our kids is to help regulate a nervous system that’s a bit out of whack so that they can be present and available to participate in life.
Same goes for you. You have a nervous system. As a human, you have a nervous system, but as an autism mom, you have a nervous system that is under regular attack. I know that sounds dramatic, but many of us experience multiple incidents per day where our nervous system is escalated. And so it’s important for you to know this and to appreciate this, otherwise you are going to underestimate the amount of effort, purposeful effort that you need to take in order to stay calm and to stay regulated.
I hear so many of my clients saying things to me like, “I should just be able to stay calm,” and that is 100% false. This is work. Staying calm is work. Your neurobiological response, the animal response that we all have, is going to be to escalate your stress response and have you in that fight-flight zone.
So when that’s happening to you and you’re living at that level chronically, it is work to down-regulate yourself. So again, think about all the wonderful things that you do for your kid and do it for yourself. For me, I love noise-canceling headphones or just putting my headphones on and putting a podcast on.
I am a huge fan of true crime, so that’s like my go-to, and my weighted blanket. The weighted blanket, if you have ever experienced it, it brings you just this feeling of safety and calmness immediately, or at least that’s the impact it has on me. Sometimes if I can, I would go into bed and go underneath the blanket for a few minutes just to take some deep breaths and regulate myself.
Or if it’s during the workday and I can’t do that, I will put the weighted blanket on my lap, and it’s just calming and it’s soothing to me Other things that you can do, dim the lights, find a quiet space, put on comfortable clothings, wrap yourself in a blanket. Seek out anything that is pleasing to your senses.
So maybe it is being in a room that you like, playing music that you like, petting your cat or your dog or any animal. If you use essential oils, maybe you have one that you find calming. I know a lot of people really like lavender. I actually like woodsy smells better. I find them very grounding, so I love cedarwood.
Just putting a couple of dabs of cedarwood on my wrist and rubbing it together and smelling that is just really calming to me. Number eight, comfort measures. This goes hand in hand with sensory reduction, but really just anything that feels good and calming to you. Maybe it’s having a cup of tea, getting in a shower, absorbing your brain in something completely different, maybe a puzzle or a crossword, reading a book, doing a quick meditation.
For this tip, the goal here is to give your mind something new to think about and interrupt the stress response. So instead of letting your brain go to ruminating about what happened and how terrible it was and replaying it in your brain, you’re directing it on something else Number nine and ten. So first, before I get to nine and ten, I wanna say as much as possible, try to do one or two of the things suggested in tips one through eight.
One through eight are all ways of down-regulating your stress response, regulating your nervous system, so that you shift from that fight-flight response to a state of more calm and more safety. And once you do that, once you’re no longer in that fight-flight response… Because remember, when you’re in that fight-flight response, when emotions are high, intelligence is low.
So the first thing we want to do is get out of that chronic state of stress where you’re in reaction mode. When you do tips nine and ten purposefully and repeatedly, what you’re doing is preventing yourself from going back into that stress response, because that’s so easy. Even if we’re out of it, our brains can take us back, and they can keep us in it.
So tip number nine, thought redirection. Our thoughts can keep us stuck in stress mode long after the actual stressful event has passed. We all know this. We’ve all been in the situation where the meltdown is over, our kid is happy as a clam, and we are a mess for hours or for days. This is because our brains are keeping the stress response going, all of our thoughts about what happened.
So this is where cognitive techniques like cognitive diffusion come in, and one of those techniques is redirecting your thoughts. It’s not about positive thinking or denying the difficulty of a situation. It’s the difference between noticing the thoughts and letting them go versus noticing the thoughts and engaging with them, right?
One thought leads to another thought, leads to another thought, and then you’re in that spin. That happens so quickly and so easily, and so many of us have fooled ourselves into thinking that some of these thought patterns are helpful to us in some way. If we beat ourselves up enough, then we’ll do better next time, or that worrying about something will somehow prevent it or make it less shitty when it does happen.
These are all tricks that our mind plays on us to keep us in that fight-flight response. Because again, your brain’s job is to keep you safe, not happy, so it wants to throw at you all of the things that could go wrong, right? It thinks it’s doing you a favor. It’s absolutely not. It’s keeping you in that chronic stress response, and again, when that is your general state of being, that diminishes your capacity to be available to your child and to be able to model constructive coping strategies for them, and it also leads to you losing your temper a lot faster and escalating the situation.
So when it comes to thought redirection, there are a couple of techniques you can use. One technique is viewing thoughts like clouds in the sky just passing by. So you notice the thought and you let it pass. You’re not engaging with it Another technique that I really like to separate you from the thought is to say in your mind, “I’m having the thought that,” and then whatever you’re thinking.
Okay? So it’s like, “I’m having the thought that I should have stayed calm. I’m having the thought that this should not be happening.” Those are ways to just create a bit of separation between you and your thoughts because remember, what you are thinking in your brain creates your emotions. So if you’re already in a stress state, you’re already anxious, frustrated, angry, whatever it is, and you keep thinking thoughts that are fueling those negative emotions, that’s going to come out in your energy and your actions.
And your child’s not only gonna pick up on it, they’re going to react to it. All right, and finally, constructive self-talk. So this is all about the voice in your head, how you talk to yourself. The voice in your head can either be your best friend and your biggest cheerleader or your worst enemy. And for many, many of us, the voice in our head is the worst enemy.
It’s the mean girl. It’s the voice of the person or the collection of people in our past, in our lives that have been the most critical of us, okay? We don’t need them there to criticize us because we carry them in our own heads. You really need to catch this and interrupt it because otherwise your pattern will continue.
The only way that it stops is if you interrupt it. It doesn’t mean you’re never going to have these self-critical thoughts. You probably will because you’ve been having them for a long time. The difference, again, is how much you engage with these thoughts. And so when you hear the voice of the person or collection of people who are critical of you, who are always telling you what you did wrong or what you could have done better, you need to notice it, and your inner cheerleader needs to speak up.
You need to grow that voice. That voice needs to be strong, confident, and calm and soothing because remember, the tone of your voice, not just what you say, but how you talk to yourself signals to your nervous system safety. And when your nervous system knows that it’s safe, it’s not going to be commanding you to react.
It’s going to relax. You’re going to be able to respond more thoughtfully. So if you want to grow your ability to do this quickly, you need to change the voice in your head, and you can do this. It might feel really weird. It might feel really corny. That’s okay. Weird and corny to help you calm down is a lot better than bitchy and mean to keep you in a stress state.
And for what it’s worth, this is all backed by research and science. In fact, the leading researcher on this topic of self-compassion, the way you talk to yourself, is Dr. Kristin Neff, who is an autism mom, so she knows of what she- Speaks. And again, if this feels weird and corny for you, put my voice in your head.
And by the way, this is something I hear from my clients all the time. They tell me that they’ll either ask themselves, “What would I say in this situation?” Or they will actually hear me saying it. Whatever you need to do, do what works for you, but the point is, is this voice needs to be your biggest cheerleader.
These aren’t just feel-good tactics. They are based on solid neuroscience and psychology research. It works. So here are some tips and suggestions about the things that you can say. And remember, it’s not only about what you say, it’s about how you say it. Things like, “I can handle this. I can do hard things.
We got through this. I did really well. I’m really proud of myself. I did better today than I did yesterday. I’m doing better every day. I’m learning more every day.” Whatever it is, just make sure that the way that you’re saying it communicates comfort and being on your own side. So no being sarcastic to yourself, no self-deprecating humor, none of that.
Remember, you are trying to create a new voice in your head that probably doesn’t exist right now, and it’s going to be challenging. It’s supposed to be, ’cause you’ve never done it before. It might feel weird. That’s okay. Your choices here are feel weird and help yourself calm down, or feel terrible and keep doing the same thing over and over again.
All right. That is it for my 10 meltdown hangover tips. For this episode, I created a one-page PDF of all 10 tips with a very short description. In order to get that PDF, go to the show notes, and you can find it there. All right, everyone, I hope to see you tomorrow evening at the open coaching call. Talk to you soon 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.
