Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Question from a friend: How do I help my son deal with anxiety?

I recently, last weekend, answered a question from someone I know through Facebook. Amy has a son named Josh and he is 12 years old and has AS like me. I tried to be thorough and relate as best I could using my past experiences in order to answer her questions.

Amy

Hi Kyle.. I hope all is well! I don't know if you remember but I have a son, Josh who has Aspergers, he's 12. I know in the past you have been very helpful with my questions so I was hoping you wouldn't mind me asking you a few more. Josh has been invited to a few Bar mitzvahs in the past few months ( he goes to a private school so everyone in his class gets invited). He went to one and only lasted a few hours before calling me and telling me to pick him up. It was too overwhelming for him. I have not made him go to anymore Bar M since I know he is uncomfortable at them. Is this something that would be typical bc these parties are loud and a lot is going on? I don't want to baby him by letting him miss these but I also don't know if it really is horrible for him being in this situation. I know these parties get very loud, crazy and can be so awkward for any child. Also...he has a class trip coming up in May. Its 6 hrs away and it's a 3 nite overnite. He has been away before on these school trips and he HATED them. He is a mess thinking about the upcoming one in may. He is a really brave kid and can handle a lot of things but these trips are making him miserable. Do you think being away from home and not knowing the schedule or having any structure on these trips could be really overwhelming to him? I again don't want to baby him, but he gets really upset when thinking about these overnites. He is fine going away on trips with us or even just his grandparents. He's going to Italy this summer with just his grandparents for 2 weeks and he is totally fine with that. If you can help me with these questions, I would be so grateful. Thanks so much

Here is how I answered her.

I actually helped a woman I know, recently, with how to proceed in a situation like this. Although she is not on the spectrum like Josh and I, she does have fear of dealing with people and experiences a lot of anxiety as a direct result of continued social exposure. I think the way I have learned to deal with it is by making myself do more, slowly. Although Josh doesn't have as much time until the party/trip to try and implement the technique, with what I am going to advise the sooner he starts the better. If I had figured out what to do and how to manage it at a younger age I might be better off.
Back when I was younger, probably ten or so, my mother would constantly say to me, 'Be social, be social". It didn't really do much for me in terms of advice. She would ask me if I wanted to be in play groups and I always declined, preferring to play alone instead. I was never really bored and always found stuff to do. Besides school and sports I pretty much stayed around the house. Before this time I was part of a group of kids in the neighborhood but they moved away. I also had a close nit group at school and we would all be at each others parties and houses for sleepovers. Things changed when I went to fifth grade. Our new house wasn't done yet and I was forced to go to a different school. Mind you that I went K-4 at one school and was forced to finish grammar school in an entirely new place. That year wasn't easy for me although I did meet a lot of new people, but I didn't do anything outside of school. The next year I met back up with my old friends at middle school but nothing was the same. It was sort of like the first summer after college when everyone is back but things have clearly changed, and not for the better. I didn't hang out with them and in fact the option seemed to not even be available for some reason. I could have asked them to do something, but I didn't, and I just let it go. Even in high school everyone knew me. I was on varsity baseball as a sophomore and the ace of the staff on the team my last two years. This should have made me on of the most popular kids in school, and it may have, but I didn't reap the benefits in a traditional way. I didn't pursue any love interests or even go to prom, the latter of which was not even discussed as an option for me. I don't blame my parents on that front as it just wasn't something for me. The next year at Worcester Academy in fact, where I did a post graduate year before college, I didn't go to prom either and I think I may have just stayed in my dorm room while it was going on. Then college came along.
College for me was a good experience. I played college baseball at a competitive school that just went D1 this year. We were surely one of the better D2 schools in the area. The team dynamic allowed me to be a part of something where people cared about me. We basically did everything together from workouts to meals to classes. I felt like I was back in grade school with my pack of friends, ruling the roost. I was exposed to parties galore and bars (I turned 21 sophomore year because I PG'd) so I went with some of the older guys or hung out with them in their apartments. There were a fair amount of women at these gatherings but nothing ever happened. I'm pretty sure they were all aware of my lack of 'experience'. Being short and a little chubby probably hurt as well. My junior year I had shoulder surgery and had to step away from the team. I could have been in the dugout with them, if I'd asked, but I stayed watched every home game from the stands. I did continue to party with the team but other than that I felt disconnected. I was 23 years old and felt like I had to move on. There was an AS support group at school but it wasn't really what I was after. The guys and one eventual girl were extremely sheltered. It was around this time that I was finding out more and more about how AS impacted me. At the time I was living with two women I knew in an apartment in Lowell right near school ( I have plenty of stories about that year) and we would occasionally go out to the bars together. It was towards the end of the academic year, maybe April, where I began to separate myself from those I knew and experience things on my own. I would go to the bars alone or out to eat by myself. Attend parties at school with people I didn't know but then wander back to my apartment alone. I realized that college was ending and these people wouldn't be around to help me through any longer. I the end it comes down to what you want to do and what you think is important, but at the same time you need to go out and do things sooner or later because the people you have around aren't going to be available forever. I know this seems like a long drawn out and possibly unnecessary story but then again I'm telling you what happened afterward. So there I was, on my own. I had graduated college and was yet to work a couple odd jobs that I'd rather discuss at another time. I'd do whatever work and then just go home. The work was mainly a mental strain on me and most of it still is, so my activities after work are somewhat limited, but I have been doing more things than I was. At some point in college I realized that I only needed a short break, maximum an hour, before I was ready to be social once again. Alone time is very important to people who have anxiety that is brought about by social interaction, but rather than doing what they need to and retreating they should be exposing themselves to the stimuli, then taking a break and then going right back at it. Exposure to something is the best way to deal with it. In time you start to figure out when you have had enough and must take a break. I have heard people say time and again that their symptoms of AS have faded as they got older. Since I believe the brain doesn't really change as much as people think it does what in fact must be happening is that they learn how to deal with their particular set of stressors in a way they can better handle. Through time they have figured out how certain things make them feel and what they can do to combat what they are feeling. If nothing is done at all then things are never going to change. You can either get stuck in a rut or you can get yourself out of it and that is a choice that many people fail to even see. All they know is that fear and anxiety arise when they put themselves in a particular situation, they don't see how it could be improved upon. If you do expose yourself to the stressful situation, then feel anxiety, you should back off just enough to get your bearings and then get back at it. You don't have to be in the middle of the action all the time. I learned this at the many parties I went to in college.
Once I figured out what my possible limits could be I'd have a couple hours of fun and then just go AWOL for twenty minutes or so. I'd walk outside, maybe get a slice of pizza and then come back, refreshed to a certain degree. This is how you learn your limits and the sooner you do so the better. If my mom had forced me to do play group or other things I'm sure I would have hated it initially, but you have to explain that, in the long run, it is for the better. You can't just say to Josh “You'll thank me later”. You need to explain why. The more details he knows the better he will be able to understand. If you keep him in the dark as to why, you will regret it forever. As far as him not knowing what is going to happen on the trip that is another thing he is going to have to learn to deal with. It would be great if you could ask the teachers for a heads up of what is going to occur, but out in the real world, later on in life, this isn't going to happen. Life throws a lot of curve balls at your and you have to learn to adjust accordingly. I don't know when this happened to me, learning to cope with it, but it did. That being said I have learned to go with the flow out of necessity and not to be paralyzed when something unexpected comes out of the blue. Things are going to get screwed up, that is simply life and the sooner you can accept that the better it is going to be. The reason Josh is fine with going to Italy is that he knows who he's going to be with the whole time. Assuming he's never been there it will surely be an entire new place to him with many strange things he has never been exposed to. If I were him at that age I'd be more concerned about that trip then one six hours away. I did go on many road trips and flights to Florida with my family when I was younger and never batted and eye at it. But if you take the comfort of family away then things seem a lot more unsure, which I'm sure Josh knows on some level.
In terms of my own coping with stress as it relates to people I have realized this: You can either sit at home and watch the parade, or you can have your own float in it; or, if you're feeling really brave, you can tackle the guy holding the baton and lead the way for everyone else and have some fun while you're doing it.
I hope I answered your questions and if I did not I really need to know. I'd like to use this as a blog post because I know you're not the only parent who is going through this and I need to help others trying to get their kids through something similar.

So did I answer her questions? She said I did, but I will leave that up to you to decide on your own.