At the Center, we spend every day with autistics. My daily observation, and research support, that autistics find themselves frequently in a state of fight, flight, or freeze.  The nervous systems in autistics can be more sensitive, requiring additional support to achieve a calm state. Self-regulating to achieve calm requires self-awareness of one’s body and mind.  You want your child or teen to develop problem-solving skills to self-manage needs. 

To maintain that level of control, the child must keep track of changes in the situation and environment.  They need to assess how they are feeling and reacting compared to the expectations (set point).

• self-awareness of body and mind

• interpretation of the situation

• adjust response- shifting mind and body

1. The first step is self-awareness of the brain and body functions that impact daily life 

2. The second step is self-monitoring. How can they track the environment and situations in order to address to manage stress?

 I want to share a simple strategy to help you and your child explore self-awareness of identifying stressors and how it affects their mind and body. This is a common strategy, and typically it is more involved with more colors to identify different emotions and moods. This one client is young and loves numbers so I thought numbers would be easiest to identify anxiety/stress levels. Then once stressors are identified, how can they manage how they impact them by using strategies that help them achieve balance and calmness being a one/two? 

When helping a child manage heightened anxiety and stress, the first step is helping them identify the stressors/triggers and how they make their body and mind feel.  This requires linking the words that express how this anxiety feels and looks like for them.  Some children experience difficulty in finding the words to express how it feels for them.  There may also be difficulty with interception. 

Interoception is a sense that allows us to notice internal body signals like a growling stomach, racing heart, tense muscles, or full bladder.  When we notice these body signals, our brain uses them as clues to our emotions.  Interoception helps us to feel many important emotions, including: 

• Hunger 

• Pain 

• Sleepiness 

• Anxiety 

• Calm 

• Fullness 

• Illness 

• Need for Bathroom 

• Distraction 

• Boredom 

• Thirst

• Body Temperature 

• Anger 

• Focus
  Mahler, K. (2014-2020). What is interoception?  www.kelly-mahler.com

When you review the list above, these are all body signals that, if unnoticed, can result in heightened anxiety/stress.  So building awareness of these body signals is important. Learning that we must intentionally address our body and mind needs so they don’t result in heightened stress. For a child who is often distracted and may forget to snack, they may find themselves hangry. Setting a snack or break timer/routine prevents excessive hunger or tiredness, which can trigger a high-stress level. The chart above builds self-awareness of one’s needs and promotes self-monitoring required to achieve stress self-management. 

Use the above chart to help identify when the anxiety/stressors are high, being a three, and when they are calm, being one.  When working on this exercise, we help pinpoint the situations that lead to stress, and then I identify how their mind and body feel from the stress.   For this client, the end of the school day when they go to specials and the classrooms/curriculum is more unstructured, and the noise level is higher, this is very stressful for them. Since it is the end of the day, they are also more mentally tired.  This client says it feels like a big headache (his head may explode), and he cannot be in the classroom (looks like).  The plan here would be to take a break outside the classroom, maybe to the library where it is quiet. 

One client identified level three as feeling like a train that cannot stop and look like a speed train. This client’s self-regulation is impacted by impulsivity. This would match his interpretation of feeling like a speed train that cannot stop. The plan would be to take a movement break to release some energy. Then he identified level one as floppy fish.  These mental pictures are important because they give us insight into what feelings may look like.  Expect to explore words and share what emotions may feel and look like on the body.  Sharing how stress impacts your anxiety may be helpful. 

Feels Like: 
During a math test, I am anxious, I feel it in my stomach first, then my heartbeat races.  

• Learning about how their body and mind work may be very helpful in expanding their language. 

Looks Like:

I am uncomfortable and/or unable to sit still

Plan:

Movement and change of location help reduce anxiety. In building body awareness, it’s easiest to start with building awareness on the outside of the body, such as self-care (hygiene) and how anxiety impacts the outside of the body.  Are they fidgety and unfocused?  When discussing the inside of the body, pinpoint common body organs such as the stomach that are commonly impacted. A concrete introduction to the topic is discussing healthy eating as caring for the inside of your body.  Healthy eating helps to manage sensitive stomachs. Discuss how the heart works since we can feel an increased heart rate; for many, there is an increase in heart rate when anxiety increases.  Managing anxiety and stress requires building healthy habits. Healthy habits help manage your anxiety needs so that you are operating on a level one or two of stress-avoiding threes.  Autistics having a manageable pace and planned schedule already sets a calm tone.