Hello all, my daughter is eight years old. She is high functioning autistic. One trouble she has is she will either misunderstand social situation’s or become easily triggered. When these things happen her mind becomes disorganized and she will have meltdowns. She will not be able to gather her thoughts and ends up yelling at the other person (usually her older brother) but not in a way that is not productive to solving the problem…
I have talked to her about calm down techniques, but she is asking if there is ways that people with autism specifically handle these things. I know how I handle them, but I am coming from neurotypical perspective and even though I have done a lot of reading on this topic I feel it would be a good idea to reach out to the community to see if you all have any advice for her.
So what do you all do in a high stress situation where your brain just wants to yell? What helps sooth and calm, sooth, and organize thoughts?
I struggle with the same thing and what helps me is having tools that I can use to be “alone-ish” Sunglasses, noise cancelling headphones, or physically going to sit somewhere alone like on the floor. Helps me calm down faster. I wish I had some secret to calm myself and just keep going but I’ve tried a lot of things and it always takes time. Another method to reduce my meltdown duration is EARLY WARNING. Once I realize it’s coming I can use havening techniques or take a break. My service dog alerts me to this too and he can use deep pressure therapy to calm me down