My Daughter nearly 17 had to leave college due to severe Anxiety

Ring the helpline and get good advice

Hi Jo,

I'm sorry to hear that your daughter is having a difficult time.

It may be worth contacting The Education Rights Helpline on 0808 800 4102, which provides general information about educational rights and entitlements, as well as advice on specific topics such as getting extra help in school (college, in this instance), assessments, education plans, reviews or transport.

When the helpline re-opens on May 17th, you may additionally like to contact our Parent to Parent service on 0808 800 4106, who offer emotional support to parents and carers of children or adults with autism. This service is confidential and run by trained parent volunteers who are all parents themselves of a child or adult with autism.  


Our general autism helpline is also open now and taking calls until May 19th - you can reach us on 0808 800 4104.

Wishing you both all the best,

Kevin Mod

Hi Jo

It can be an overwhelming thing, take each day as it comes. I feel because of the covid a lot of us might of had to put things on hold. I'm having to stay away from the hospital shop where I volunteer due to the covid. It can be a self-confidence thing as well. Hope she is able to get a night of better sleep. It must be difficult for her, the panic attacks. How was she getting on with the psychology sessions in the past? A lot of things are being put on hold because of the covid, hoping we can get back to things but it's difficult.

hey how are you I'm Matthew 

Hi Michael

Thank you for your suggestion, I will look into online learning it might be our way forward.

Hi

Most ASD people have their fight-or-flights system set to 100% - their brain is overloaded with stimulus looking for the danger - like a tiger jumping out - so their brain is also processing thousands of potential escape routes and risk assessing everything.      There's nothing left to be able to cope with additional stress.

She needs to develop a strong foundation of guaranteed safe outcomes for most predictable eventualities - you might have to put in considerable effort making sure nothing ever goes wrong for her or implementing safe escape plans to build the success.

These can be little things like guaranteeing to pick her up from a certain place when she goes out or if a bus doesn't arrive. 

Do you know the sequence of 'out of control' events that lead to a meltdown?         Write them out as a list to work on - and then spend time engineering them out with robust plans that she can be relaxed about.

Once she build a pattern of solving the easy stuff, it will allow her the excess brain capacity to cope with the next challenge.

She might feel comfortable to try things if she can feel comfortable with her immediate world.

Hi Jo,

Sorry to hear your family is experiencing this kind of trauma.

I speak from experience when I say that the typical college system (or school system for that matter) does not suit everyone.

There's nothing inherently natural about forcing young humans to all go to the same place, at the same time, to get them to sit together in the same room and digest the same information given to everyone else.

I know it's still the standard way of doing things, and we've all come to accept it as the primary way to educate ourselves and our children, but it's not the most efficient way.

Have you tried any alternative approaches, such as online learning for example? The key is to try different things and see what interests her and excites her. There are many other options in life besides going to college. And there's very little that's provided in traditional college settings that you can't get from alternative educational platforms. 

Hi Jo,

I totally understand the overwhelming social and emotional challenges of university and all the anxiety-inducing obstacles that your daughter might encounter daily.

 Does she enjoy the academic side of uni? I went to university when I was 19 to do art and loved the subject but I found the 'constantly being around other people' quite hard, especially when uni is associated with social gatherings a lot! I never really joined in with those, just picked a small group of people that I was comfortable with and we did our own thing. I also went on to do a full degree in natural science with The Open University (online). It was fantastic. I can't praise it more. I could study around my part time job (as my modules were part time) and it was a great balance. I didn't have to meet up with anyone, it was all done online, all the tutorials were live online and you could type to people (you don't have to speak) which was great. It gave me confidence in my ability without all the anxiety of social awkwardness. Would that be something she would be interested in? Computers and technology in general are a great way to reduce anxiety for people with autism as it's predictable. Often there is clearly defined tasks to complete that human communication doesn't always have. It also reduces un-necessary stimuli, like sensory, such as bright lights and lots of noise. It basically reduces the social demands on us.

Hope you find this useful