Behavior and Fear

 Hello again,

You must be thinking...another post within a week after so much time without one at all????  Well, I want to write every week during Autism Awareness Month and then get back to writing at least once a month.

This post is related to one thing I mentioned in my last post - behaviors!  Writing about this is really hard -  really, really hard!  Just trying to think about how I want to write on this subject is grueling.  It's not always something I share about openly because I guess sometimes it's unbelievable, I don't want to bother anyone, and I also have this feeling of others not really understanding.  

My son has grown since I started writing this blog....a lot!  He's bigger, he is stronger, and his vocabulary can be quite spicy!  At the same time, he is gentle, loving, humorous, playful, cuddly! He's just my sweet love bug!  So when a behavior occurs, it is kind of traumatizing I guess....and that's where the fear part comes in.

So, behaviors are often triggered (something that sets off the behavior) by something.  It can be something as simple as a noise, hunger, losing a game, another peer, over heating...I mean it really can be anything.  Sometimes you see it coming, sometimes you do not.  For my son, I often don't know what his triggers are because what triggered him one day is not what triggered him the next.  Identifying triggers are really an important part in the autism realm because identifying them helps you cut them off at the pass.  Being able to do so can help you use different strategies to calm your child.  When triggers are unknown, well, that's when you go into trauma mode, holy crap mode!

Here is what a behavior may look like for my son:

Growling, spicy words (like how does he even know the words he says???) and gestures, screaming!  That leads to increasing behaviors that include death threats, spitting, hitting, throwing objects.  In the going away part comes a lot of sobbing and apologizing and questioning.  Ya know, I never really made this connection before but it's like a tornado.  It comes down from the clouds, then it touches the ground causing destruction, then goes away.  That's kinda like the behaviors....only they last longer (sometimes hours).

Why is it traumatizing?  Well, it's not easy listening to your son call you a b*tch or hearing him say he is going to kill you or himself.  It's not easy getting hit or bitten.  Luckily he has very low muscle tone so the hits don't hurt but the biting does.  It's not easy having to restrain your child so he won't hurt himself or anyone else.  That's traumatizing for a person and you might ask why can't we control that??? Well...what I have learned over the years is that once a trigger has happened, the synapses or snaps in the brain go wild.  My son's ability to control himself has gone away because his reasoning is all over the place....when we are trying to deescalate a situation my husband and I use very few words and soft voices because there is NO reasoning when the brain is spiraled like that!  Then, the other part of the trauma is when my son calms down because he sobs uncontrollably and asks why he acts that way.  He apologizes over and over and asks why he is such a monster.  I think that often hurts me the most because I can't explain it to him.  Instead, we talk about the things he can do to help himself....like breathing techniques or getting wrapped like a burrito or getting tight squeezes from dad (dad can do it tighter than mom apparently).

And the fear???  In my last blog, I mentioned how my husband and I do nothing and that it takes a toll on our relationship.  Well, you never know when a behavior will occur...I would feel awful if a family member or dear friend had to go through that.  So, out of that fear we forego time together and time to ourselves or outings.  That fear has taken a toll which is unfair to us all.  I am working on this...I have slowly finally let people in....and it's been fine.  I have also started taking my son places with me...it's not always easy because he is all over the place but he needs these experiences.  And I need to do things! For my mental health..I need to do things!  

So dear readers, you might ask why I say Autism is a gift.  Well, it's part of what makes my family what it is.  Autism is hard but there are so many wonderful aspects to who my son is and to what he brings to our family.  I love seeing his interactions with his sister, I love watching him hug dad goodbye when dad goes to work, I love when my son refers to me as "my pretty".  All those things are things that keep me going...there is positive and negative to everything.  I won't lie, sometimes the hard consumes me but that's when I take my breaths and focus on the positive things I do see and the positive things that I like to do.   I choose that! 

Until next time...TTFN

Martha