Intolerance of Uncertainty and Managing Emotions

This sounds very important in the situation we are in now with the pandemic. No one knows what will happen from day to day and it's hard for everyone, especially ASD people.

Well done Plastic. The same here. I grew up in an atmosphere of never knowing what would happen next, never knowing whether I'd meet Nice Mum or Nasty Mum every day or even every hour. So when I became a parent I put a lot of effort into being consistent, providing stability and acceptance of needs and wants.

I hope it is paying off because my daughter is far, far, far ahead of me in emotions, thoughts and probably other things. We always talk about emotions in this house, how to deal with them and any problems with anything, rather than squashing them down, pretending they don't exist and getting angry if anyone dares to have emotions.

I feel very much like this. I have often had managers frustrated with me for needing to know every little detail before I can do something, including what to do if x, y or z happens. 

Week 3:

I finally got round to it after procrastinating all weekend. Not sure why it took me so long, think I just wanted to unplug from screen-time for a while. Lots of other things I didn't get done this weekend and I paradoxically got sucked into hours of gaming after a "I'll just have a quick blast on X" thought" so ended up blowing my screen-time quote anyway. Think I just wanted to switch off, but there's way better ways of doing that than shooting pixels, or watching numbers get bigger for a virtual reward.

This week was all about self-management and strategies. Two things impressed upon me. The first was how growing up these strategies weren't in my household. The things I did, I did because I had no guidance on what else to do.  One section read:

"Managing our emotions is not about suppressing them, controlling them, or conforming to someone else’s idea about what we should do or feel. It’s not just about calming down"

In my household it absolutely was these things. Now I understand what my psychologist meant when she said I'd had a "double-whammy". If I was having an unpleasant emotion, then I wasn't in distress, I was putting it on - because it was inconvenient (a word I heard a lot growing up). 

The information on the physiological response was a huge help to - a reminder as to how important it is for self-care and the detrimental effects to too much stress. It slotted in well with Gabor Mate's work - although he linked it into the pathology of disease. His thesis is that when someone is subjected to a stressor which they do not address the body manifests dis-ease. I'm not sure about this as it can give too much crecedene to "it's all in the mind" - that people can "think themselves sick". Reading Mate again, I'm sure this isn't his intent, but it could be read that way.

The second thing that impressed upon me was how much of this weeks material is familiar - sleep, exercise, reframing, breathing, eating well, doing things I enjoy. I realise I do need to build my emotional capacity and manage things better in the moment, rather than getting worked then "getting through" the day to renew at the end of it. Oddly working from home gives me plenty of opportunity to practice these strategies in a safe-environment and I'm still poor at doing them. I've noticed that I seem operate on one overarching thing at a time - so when I was off sick "getting better" was the focus, so I did all the right things. Now I'm at work "working hard" is the thing so everything is subservient to that. Which is absolutely ridiculous. 

Think I've got some work to do. Somehow my mindset has slipped. It is all about conscious mindful living and implementing the strategies I already know - and know that work. I've not been motivated at all this weekend, probably because I pushed myself too hard (unnecessarily) during the week. I still think that being really productive is evidence of how well I am taking care of things (not myself I've noticed) - so the first smart thing I can do is stay within my contracted hours and start taking care of myself again.

As I said to myself after my last episode when it boils down to it - it's my health that counts. I think that because of my history I'm always struggling with the tension between the short-term frustration with normal everyday things and the fear of it all boiling over into a long term mindset and my having a meltdown. What I have lacked all through my history is that inability to recognise and manage how I feel - and the space to allow me to explore that. Now I have all those things - so it is just a case of putting that knowledge to work along with the strategies to work with my autism. Every once in a while - it can feel a little overwhelming.

Something else I'm not very good at. Being kind to myself and giving myself time to grow.  

Week 2:

Well I completed the "action plan" which was all about listening to emotions and the body. This ties in with my reading by Gabor Mate, the prods from my therapist and my learning from last week - where after two very hefty experiences I was sat thinking "what is my body telling me". 

This week has been about the importance of emotional awareness in oneself and others and use of the "mood meter" (which I use already) - with some work on distinguishing between closely related emotions. What I find difficult is being aware of my feelings "on the fly", I need to sit and allow myself to feel - and I also need a prompt to name the feeling otherwise it's a vague ("down", "ok" and so on). 

Although some of the course seems obvious (different people have different reactions dependent on the situation) I wonder in practice how much I'm really aware of this and live it. My therapist pointed out once that I had a tendency to treat people like "widgits" - so I related to them in the roles assigned to them, and not as the body language or emotional state communicated.

There is a different language to emotions than I've been aware of. Use of words like leverage, shift and create environment. This is a language I never used - emotions were just "there" and either "good" or "bad" (depending on how acceptable they were to the person I was with).

This course may not solve anything, but it may make things easier to manage. I'm starting to think how many small actions there are in each day based on emotional awareness and relationship with other people.

Putting the action plan aside until later. It encourages an emotional check-in - I've mood meters in my study and living space to encourage me to do this. Alarms rarely work - I just ignore them. 8 sections (weeks) to go. Feel better now about going on my streaming binge....

Still on week 1. I haven't got to the pdf file yet and I get the feeling this may have to be a weekend thing. The adjustment to the new role at work is pretty exhausting so I sleep most of the evening, then eat late (crashed at 7pm tonight, woke at 11:30 and scoffed a meal at midnight). Need to check into here to keep my sanity so I'm thinking about how to manage this. Realise I've worked a little longer than I need to (the mission creep that comes from working at home) and decide I need to make more effort to "park" things and pick them up the following day. This may not be the quick burn I hoped for.

So I've decided to keep a diary (of sorts) of my experience with the Yale Course @  https://www.coursera.org/learn/managing-emotions-uncertainty-stress , just to see how I get on with it.

Week 1: So weeks aren't "weeks", they're just sections. I like the format. The video's are short. There's a transcript of each video so I can skim read and skip ahead if I want to. I'm not bombarded with additional reading which is at a different level. Some of the content feels a bit "common sense" obvious and I'm thankful that I've attended enough work-based courses to learn to extract what I need from them and ignore the stuff that I already know or doesn't matter. There's a concept of "leveraging emotion" which I like. Also how emotions can steer decision-making and that being aware of them can help in the choices we make (suddenly my mood chart takes on a whole new purpose). There's a lot of self-reflection this week (not discussion with other learners) and I wonder if the whole course is like that. There's 100% mark given just for completing some of the questions.

It feels a bit odd with it focused for educators in the US school system. But the first half is about self-awareness and management and I figure at least that much is worth a look. The second part which focuses on students I might step back from. 

What did surprise me was writing about my emotions over the last year - usually I think I've had a "bad year" or "good year" directly connected to my work. Stuff outside of work I never really thought about . As I was signed off, diagnosed and returned to work and then figuring out the impact of my diagnosis my emotions ranged from the really unpleasant (when I was signed off) to everything associated with optimism (when I was diagnosed) and that sense of relief which comes when a puzzle has been solved (when I really started to understand how it impacted me - although there was some anger and disappointment mixed in there too). 

Just been asked how I felt about "X" has helped me capture the need for awareness of how I was feeling (something I picked up from my therapist reasonably quickly and then forget to apply too often, possibly because I like the distraction of "busyness"). 

How useful will it be? I'm not sure. ACT is my thing at the moment and I'm wondering if I'm building in another idea/set of techniques which seems good but I'll just forget about. I do set high expectations on what I expect things to do and then get disillusioned when it feels they're not having the impact I expected. 

I've looked at the PDF file for self-reflection and I'm really tempted to skip it - but then I realise I'd already be hindering myself in what I get out of the course. Decide to put it aside and look at it later, or maybe tomorrow.

The professionals got carried away with it because it's cost effective and relatively simple to teach.

The research seems to point its highest effectiveness is where anxiety/depression is the main problem. There is a meta-analysis out there (where researchers review a range of studies in one paper) which looks at how effective it is with ASD. When I get time I'll give it a look.

I've always found CBT is complete BS for auties - and the only reason it's still used is because we are bullied into telling them we feel better afterwards.    Our natural naive, people-pleaser nature makes us comply with these con-merchants.

That's just made my day. So true. Thanks for putting a smile on my face!!!!

Hi Ladybird,

Many thanks for this and I think I get where you're coming from. I'm also skeptical that the course will be a silver bullet but as emotional awareness and management is something I'm just cr*p at I'm hoping it'll give me a few additional pointers/skills to make things easier. The last blip (11 hours of mania and just sheer all round psychological and emotional unpleasantness) I had, I unpicked my reaction - and it wasn't just frustration at a work issue, it was a fight or flight response because I could't get the information I needed (thought I needed!) to manage the uncertainty and all the questions about the situation. 

Just out of interest I notice you've had a pretty rough time with CBT (I did too, if I did the whole analysing my thoughts thing I'd never have time for anything else). Have you come across "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris? It's based on Acceptance/Commitment Therapy - and I found it really useful to help me grow in self-management and set me on a course (as did my therapist) of learning to recognise, engage with and sit with how I was feeling. 

Recommended to me by my GP. He suggested the illustrated pocket book which at the time I found a lot easier to digest. 

Some free stuff to get an idea of Harris' thought https://thehappinesstrap.com/free-resources/

Ladybird said:

Actually no, I’m not. I keep worrying that something might change along the way and that’s why I need plan B and C as well. 

I've found that it stems from self-doubt about your own skills or power to find instant solutions on the fly..    

I've been building a big extension on the house and I've had to modify the plans as I go when I come up against bodges done by the previous owners - the overall plan stays the same but little details change along the way.    It's just life.

Ethan said:

Having said that, with the people I work with, I get annoyed very quickly because they never seem to seek any information - or only decide to do so after a long and protracted conversation where they decide they don't know anything.

That used to really frustrate me - A problem arises - so within almost no time, I present a fully thought out and costed solution with all of the risks mitigated - permanent solution..

Everyone else - we'll have to get together next week for a meeting to come up with some ways to work around this regular problem......

Grrrrr.

"....a pathological need for certainty and predictability". Plastic - I think I'm with you on this one, and it might explain my almost obsessive desire for information about anything that I'm doing because I keep thinking if I have all the information then I can eliminate uncertainty -or at least the anxiety that comes from it.

I'm learning information is a two edged sword because as well as answering the questions I have, it makes things more tricky because it introduces new questions, or, even worse - I'll get to the point where there's a "don't know" or "we're still figuring it out". Having said that, with the people I work with, I get annoyed very quickly because they never seem to seek any information - or only decide to do so after a long and protracted conversation where they decide they don't know anything. Plus sometimes there just isn't time to get that info - sometimes the ask is to work with what we know and have.

I'm trying to move to how to manage uncertainty - or self-manage myself in uncertainty. Think I'll post some updates on the course as I do it (which will motivate me to finish it).

Thank you for sharing about your daughter and I'm really starting to understand how important parents are in teaching emotional regulation to their children (sorry, for the terminology). I was pretty much left to figure stuff  out on my own, and I can be a bit hard on myself when I know I'm not managing things well, so this has really helped for me to get some perspective. 

I’ve been thinking about it some time ago when I realised that a lot of my problems stem from intolerance of uncertainty. I worry a lot about what’s going to happen and what should I do, how and when. As soon as I’ve got detailed step by step plan I’m fine.

Actually no, I’m not. I keep worrying that something might change along the way and that’s why I need plan B and C as well. 

But then I’ve got problems with coming up with all those plans and possible solutions and ways things might go wrong. 

So I’ve developed severe anxiety that something unplanned is going to happen and I won’t be prepared for that, because I’m unable to predict every possible way the situation might develop. Too many variables. 

I’ve tried to accept uncertainty but all I’ve managed was to make myself withdrawn and numb. I’ve distanced myself but it felt wrong because I started to care less, talk less, move less and more slowly and engage less in life. Because what’s the point if I don’t know what’s going to happen? Why invest myself in something that might not be here tomorrow?

As soon as I try to get out of this torpor my anxiety is back.

I know I need to find some balance, some middle ground but haven’t found it yet. But then I doubt some course can teach me that. But then maybe it’s worth trying, no harm in trying.

T

I totally agree with this.

Ever since I was diagnosed, the engineer in me has been measuring and analysing what I do and why I do it - and then assessing those around me in comparison.

I've boiled it down to two issues - sensory overload - everything is too sensitive to live comfortably - and the big one is a pathological need for certainty and predictability.    In the same way as the sensory overload, I am easily overloaded with uncertainty.     Luckily, as an engineer, I was able to design-out most of the problems in front of me.

I've noticed NTs don't seem to notice this stress - they blunder about with short memories so their task-anxiety dissipates quickly.

I've been watching young ASD children at a mixed ASD group I attended and almost all of their problems seem come from the chaotic lives of their parents - there's no grounding or basic stability - no schedules or patterns to latch on to for comfort.   There's no safe space or safe retreat area.    There's no logic in the random and arbitrary rules applied to them.   The kids seem to be locked into a permanent fight-or-fight mode.

Me, as a parent, thought it only logical to provide my daughter with every option to make her feel safe, (how I would have liked to feel) whatever the situation - little things like still holding her hand in busy places or arranging pick-up spots where she was under cover and me never being late.    it's meant that every life-challenge has been manageable for her because it is the only one in front of her - all the other risks have an escape plan and safety net in place to reduce any possible anxiety caused by external factors.

She's grown up to be a very well-balanced and mature young lady.