My increasingly high-functioning autistic daughter is tantrumming here and I'm helping her/us resolve back to back to happy, loving, constructive feelings/behavior using the principles and mental tools of the Option Process®, from an unshakably comfortable and loving perspective (in me). The Son-Rise program is based on the Option Process philosophy and the more my autistic daughter recovers, the more her issues such as this tantrum are best dealt with through discussion of what's going on and possible alternative beliefs and reactions.
Video of Anna tantrumming and how I dealt with it. (Those of you getting feed burner notifications, you'll need to click on the link to see the video on youtube.)
The most advanced Son-Rise play therapy technique (based on my "Participant Progress Pyramid" system to train my Son-Rise program participants), is coaching the autistic person how to use Option Process thinking to be more effective in changing the world to the way you want it, or be happier and more adaptive in the face of what you can't change (in this case what other people like me might say, or the fact that everyone will eventually die even if you don't like that). This includes employing the Option Process® Dialogue, a general purpose mental tool, which I do intermittently here. I am an Option Process® Mentor-Counselor and thus am expert at adopting a loving, nonjudgmental attitude evidenced here, asking useful questions to my daughter, to give increased opportunities to her to shift perspective and potentially believe, feel and operate differently.
Just before I set up this video, my daughter asked me when she's allowed to use her iPhone/iPod to watch videos. Instead of my saying "when the volunteers leave and I'm still at the gym" (the thing I usually say), I first mentioned an additional possibility, which was when she was sick. She got really upset about my using the word "sick", She got really upset, believing my stating the word "sick" could make it happen, and was tantrumming to get me to stop using that word. Rather than acceding to her demands to never say "sick" again (breaking a core parenting pillar that no one will get what they want from me by tantrumming), or to lie that I would never die, I was offering her Option Process tools to understand and change her beliefs that were causing her distress, or to manage her feelings in response to feeling out of control of these two "not-wants".
I was using principles and tools of the Option Process philosophy I learned over the 6 months spent at Option Institute in training courses over a 6 year period. I offered her useful beliefs that are axiomatic to the philosophy, such as that "All beliefs have destinations," and that we can make up and empower the beliefs of what we want to happen in order to have the highest likelihood they will.
I recommend people who do Son-Rise additionally attend the "adult" programs to learn skills like these, since, being autistic myself (at least formerly), I'm aware that my unhappy emotions in response to strong "not-wants" often run out of control (thus the extreme and long-lasting tantrumming), and that autistic people really benefit from the tools that I learned at those programs to be function effectively even if they are fully recovered in all other ways. Looking for and modifying beliefs that are literally making me "lose my mind", as my daughter was here, help me recenter myself, and I want go give my daughter the gift of these tools in this real-world example of how to use them.
Anyone who wants help in understanding applying this method with their autistic child, or experiencing what it's like during an Option Process Dialogue, to explore and find out what beliefs "make you tick" - create your feelings and what you do, contact me (Barbara) at [email protected] to discuss further and set up a session to go into more depth.
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Now about my recovery from autism...
After using the Option Process Dialogue over and to figure out why I kept going off of it, I am back on my diet, and amazingly found out that I had maintained my 14 pound weight loss, since so many changes I had made around my eating had stayed intact and worked. I am now ready to take on another 10 pounds. I was at around 180 pounds when I started and weighed in the other day around 167.5 pounds, amazingly. More on this later. However the Gamora character from "Guardians of the Galaxy", pictured here in this poster, is my goal appearance, since she epitomizes sleek yet super fit physique.
Sure I'm not there yet, but I am enjoying my body and appearance more, usually wearing fitted and compression clothes and wonder why people wear so much figure-obliterating baggy clothing. Life is short and people's bodies only look worse when wearing sack like, loose clothing. Why not show whatever figure you have? Surely it's better looking that someone else's, and at least you'll see it and appreciate when you dress it well and make it more shapely.
Me just appreciating my increasingly normal appearance, Feb 2015.
If I can lose another 10-30 pounds it will have a big impact on my career, so I'm continuing to go for my goal weight of around 130 pounds, around 35 pounds less than I am now. My figure under all those layers is really nice, since I no longer have to hide among people, why wear all that fat to hide myself under? I guess shedding it is part of shedding my autism, since the new me has little use for hiding.
Awesome!!!! Thank you for the great teaching!!!!!
Posted by: Caitlin Milbauer | 02/24/2015 at 09:10 PM