Anxiety

Anxiety is caused by uncertainty - whether someone is on the spectrum or not, the trigger is the same for all of us and our basic response mechanism is flight, fight or freeze.

As babies, toddlers and children we spend thousands of hours with our parents learning about the world - and much of this learning is about how to manage uncertainty.  Our parents help us to resolve challenges or make repairs within interactions or activities.  This leads to us forming what's called 'episodic memories' of our own competence - special memories that help to build resilience.

Resilience is what enables people without autism to overcome anxiety.  We've got lots and lots of special episodic memories of being competent at different things.  When we are presented with a new challenge, our brain goes 'oh, this is new and scary' and then a nanosecond later, our brain also goes '...but hang on, I've done something similar to this before and maybe I can use some of what I did then to help me now'

Children with autism go down a different developmental pathway because of the autism.  The result is that they are unable to take part in the special relationship with their parents that enables them to lay down the episodic memories of competence......so they dont develop resilience to the same extent as people without autism.

In my blog, I am writing about using an autism intervention that helps parents to support their children to lay down these special episodic memories of competence - this increases resilience and decreases anxiety.

http://notnigellanotjamie.blogspot.com

Its no quick fix......but it does work specifically on the impairments in episodic memory that are a key factor in autism, rather than working round the difficulties, which is what most other interventions and strategies seem to do.

Zoe

Anxiety is caused by uncertainty - whether someone is on the spectrum or not, the trigger is the same for all of us and our basic response mechanism is flight, fight or freeze.

As babies, toddlers and children we spend thousands of hours with our parents learning about the world - and much of this learning is about how to manage uncertainty.  Our parents help us to resolve challenges or make repairs within interactions or activities.  This leads to us forming what's called 'episodic memories' of our own competence - special memories that help to build resilience.

Resilience is what enables people without autism to overcome anxiety.  We've got lots and lots of special episodic memories of being competent at different things.  When we are presented with a new challenge, our brain goes 'oh, this is new and scary' and then a nanosecond later, our brain also goes '...but hang on, I've done something similar to this before and maybe I can use some of what I did then to help me now'

Children with autism go down a different developmental pathway because of the autism.  The result is that they are unable to take part in the special relationship with their parents that enables them to lay down the episodic memories of competence......so they dont develop resilience to the same extent as people without autism.

In my blog, I am writing about using an autism intervention that helps parents to support their children to lay down these special episodic memories of competence - this increases resilience and decreases anxiety.

http://notnigellanotjamie.blogspot.com

Its no quick fix......but it does work specifically on the impairments in episodic memory that are a key factor in autism, rather than working round the difficulties, which is what most other interventions and strategies seem to do.

Zoe