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Mindfulness from the perspective of an autist

Iain

I'm pretty sure most of you know I regularly talk about mindfulness as a great tool to help in dealing with anxiety stemming from autism so I thought I would take a bit of time to explain it in enough depth to give you a realistic idea of what it is and how to do it.

Apologies if I'm mansplaining it to you but I'm going do it anyway.

What Is Mindfulness?

In essence it is the practice of being fully present and aware of your current experience without overreacting or getting lost in thoughts.

For me it is letting my higher level rational thinking become dominant over the lower level impulses (mostly fear based) that come from the more primitive / primal part of the brain.

Some examples of it in action

Still don't get it? Think about it as you find yourself sitting there starting to worry and spiral about an upcoming event, a PIP assessment for example, and you start to find your mind is flooding you with anxious thoughts of "what will the ask", "what if I don't get it", "will they look at me and think I'm lying" etc.

What can happen with mindfulness is you can begin to exercise control over these thoughts and find ways to shut them down one by one using different techniques.

Writing out the thoughts and considering probable outcomes is one way that I use. Ensuring I am prepared by thinking through the likely questions (found by some research) and preparing answers and supporting evidence is another.

Once this prep is done I will probably still be highly strung as the anrenaline from the anxiety will still be coursing through my body so I will do a bit of meditation and breath control to relax my neck and shoulders and remind myself that it is all taken care of, I have done all I can and the best solution now it to be relaxed so I can perform well in the meeting.

So that's all well and good for things you know to expect, but what about when life pops up and slaps you in the face with the kipper of an unexpected situation.

The sudden appearance of an unknow can be very unbalancing and I use a different approach but with similar elements.

The sudden anxiety may be overwhelming but I would stop, say nothing for a few seconds while I take a deep breath and think "what is the most important aspect here".

If I'm being shouted at requiring an immediate decision then I will ask them to give me some time to make a decision.
If there is an immediate risk to life then I'm going to let instinct do my decision making.
If I have the make a decision that can impact someone then I stop to think through what the impact will be.

Whatever the situation I try to let logic be the guiding factor where it does not put someone at risk immediately.

It takes a lot of practice to override the instinct to shut down, run away or just get angry when the anxiety spikes like this but it is a valuable skill.

All this is only one facet of mindfulness.

Other aspects of mindfulness

Other aspects include being aware of your own emotions which lets you make decisions by taking into consideration bias that these emotions may be causing.

Say for example you are on a diabetic and you know having something sugary for you right now is a really bad idea, but someone offers you a really delicious looking cupcake and you can just smell the freshly baked aroma and gooey choc chips just begging to be tasted.

Mindfulness lets you stop, say "it may please me for a minute to eat this but what will the consequences be?" You can use this logic to control the desires better as realising the risks are way worse than the pleasure helps you rationalise and control the primal urge to smash it into your mouth.

Similarly with things that may be causing emotions you are not really aware of. You may find yourself getting really techy because something keeps getting on your nerves - it is your friend drumming their fingers to a tune on their headphones and it is breaking your concentration.

Mindfulness will help you identify the anger, realise it is being caused unintentionally by your friend and can help you calm down to ask them nicely to stop as it is breaking your concentration.

It works with more complex stuff too, like relationships where you can learn to look at a situation and identify the different emotions you are feeling (sometimes using he emotions wheel diagram helps) and sometimes helps you articulate them where appropriate.

In summary

In essence mindfulness, for me, takes away the reactive response and lets me have a rationalised response instead. You can choose when to use it too.

It works with your body too - you can pause to "listen" to the different senses in your body and feel where is hurting much more specifically, feel it you are hungry or thirsty, feel if your body is telling you it is cold etc.

Meditation is a skill that very much helps with all aspects of this but I don't think it is essential. 

I'm not sure this covers all aspects by any means but I have tried to use examples of autistic-relevant situations to give it context.

It is pretty easy to look up online so I won't give any links, especially since most companies try to sell courses and I don't want to be seen as promoting these.

If you have made it this far then hopefully you now know what I'm talking about when I recommend mindfulness in other posts.

  • in reply to Phased

    Hi  

    That’s such an imaginative way to look at it.

    I hadn’t thought about it in that way before, but it really fits with the mindfulness idea.

    And Cheers.(⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)

  • People can define mindfulness in different ways, depending on their experience and understanding of the concept. I have noticed that some of the more recent mindfulness courses are incorporating elements of CBT and DBT. I have found some elements of CBT helpful, some of which are similar to the things you mention, but I have adapted them to suit me.

    Iain said:
    In essence it is the practice of being fully present and aware of your current experience without overreacting or getting lost in thoughts.

    My immediate thought was “I must not overreact”. If someone tells me not to think or do something, I immediately think of it and it might take great effort not to do it.

    For me, mindfulness is more about allowing myself to observe being in the present without making a judgement on the situation. So I see whatever is around me, or whatever I have allowed myself to focus on, I notice it, then let it pass. 

    Examples:

    When eating an apple—notice the size, colour and texture of the apple. Notice how it sits on the plate at a tilt/squarely/bottom pointing upwards …. How it feels in the hand—hot/cool/heavy/rough/smooth. Notice the sound, taste and feel in my mouth—sweet/tart/crunchy/juicy & so on with each bite until the apple has been eatten. 

    When out walking—smell the air/notice the air temperature/humidity/wind/noise/the feeling of the ground beneath my feet/sound of my feet on the ground/leaves crunching /sky/patterns of clouds/textures of walls of buildings/trees/leaf patterns. 

    If I am overwhelmed it can be difficult to be mindful, so even looking out the window at a cloud in the sky for a few seconds can help me regulate.

    Meditation has been helpful. All I need is a quiet space to sit undisturbed for any time between 5 mins and 30 mins. Unwanted thoughts may come to me when meditating— I observe them and let them go.  

  • in reply to Lonehare12

    Your comment makes me happy  

    It reminded me of the genius of the author Douglas Adams and I've used Google to help explain why:

    "In Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a cup of hot tea is the catalyst for the Infinite Improbability Drive. It is used as a "strong Brownian motion producer" in a finite improbability generator, which is then used to create the infinite improbability needed to power the drive by linking it with a sub-meson brain and an atomic vector plotter. Essentially, the tea's chaotic molecular motion is a key part of the fictional science used to bend probability. "

    If mindfullness, or whatever we call it, alters perception of reality and therefore how we behave in it, probably, is some sort way of bending the probability of how one might experience one's future.

    Flow states are fab, as is s good cup of tea :-)

    Cheers :-)

  • in reply to Iain
    Iain said:
    If you did not have this tool at your disposal, what do you think the outcome would have been?

    I would have shut down, then after I got off the bus I'd have cried and felt pretty bad for a couple of hours.

  • Hi 

    I read a book by Beth Kempson about wabi-sabi, and it really helped mindfulness make sense to me.

    When I’m making tea, for example and totally absorbed, it feels like a tiny flow state. 

    This may not actually be what mindfulness is, but whatever you may call it helps me.

  • in reply to Iain

    I'm not disputing you aren't suggesting good strategies for anxiety - it's just not what mindfulness actually is.

    It may well be useful to others but for me it's important that people aren't misled with the wrong name.

  • in reply to Expecto_Patronum
    Expecto_Patronum said:
    But the key to all of this was quite the opposite of what you've just said. It was very much about bringing your brain to the present moment. It did not involve any kind of problem solving. T

    I would respectfully disagree here. Reacting to a situation where you find yourself in an unexpected high anxiety situation is a problem in itself and resolving it means both addressing the anxiey and the cause of the anxiety.

    The preparation I mention helps you by having some of the thinking already done in advance so you can focus more on choices, This advance prep is not mindfulness in itself but a tool to make it easier to apply the mindfulness.

    If you look at what is the "pure" mindfulness component in these situations, it is being aware of your situation, your reactions and feelings but being aware of the situation that has to be dealt with.

    As with almost everything in life it has limited use in isolatoin but when used in conjunction with other techniques becomes altogether more effective.

    Expecto_Patronum said:
    I cannot find anything that links with your definition of it.

    I tried to explain which elements of mindfulness I find helpful that other autists can uss.

    Since meditation (a core tool to use "pure" mindfulness) is so hard for most autists to control I tried to show ways that elements can still be used to manage what are common problem situations for us.

  • hehe, no, I zoned out mid way thrp' reading it  :-)

    Joking aside, yep getting a different take on things can help with beneficial change.

    I support you in advocating the practice in whatever way people can access the sort of processes and experiences involved :-)

    For what it's worth I would agree that "mindfulness" is great for rational thinking and "bodyfullness" and these are grand things to do.  

    I'd also suggest that it's also worthwhile having a go at using it for sort of realsing how to get to non-conceptual thinking - sometimes it's nice to step out of the stream of analysis and just be.

    Om  ;-)

    Best Wishes

  • in reply to Iain

    Meditation is far more in line with anything I've ever read, been told, done in therapy about Mindfulness. I've also been taught about the grounding techniques and more active mindfulness.

    But the key to all of this was quite the opposite of what you've just said. It was very much about bringing your brain to the present moment. It did not involve any kind of problem solving. The idea was to bring your attention to sensation or what is around you to break the cycle of the anxious thoughts.

    Your description of mindfulness is what I did in CBT (not as mindfulness) which was to do with trying to rationalise the problem to make an educated decision rather than get bogged down in the anxiety of it.

    I didn't find either technique useful I'll be honest but having just googled mindfulness a bit more, I cannot find anything that links with your definition of it.

  • in reply to Expecto_Patronum
    Expecto_Patronum said:
    Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment and not making judgements. So none of the prep stuff would fall into that category.

    It covers having ways to be present in the moment and already have some of your possible responses thought through so that you can have the choices at your fingertips without needing to think them all through in depth.

    You always need to make judgements of some kind, even if it is what course of action to take, and the ability to use it out in the real world rather than in a meditation scenario is what I am mostly covering in this article.

    Iain said:
    Meditation is a skill that very much helps with all aspects of this but I don't think it is essential. 

    I see a great many people here stuggle with meditation and this was the reason for my choice of this angle. It is a survival tool more than anything else when used this way.

    When used in conjunction with meditation in a controlled environment then it is an altogether different beast and has a lot of different benefits.

  • A lot of this sounds like CBT techniques than mindfulness. Mindfulness is all about being present in the moment and not making judgements. So none of the prep stuff would fall into that category. I'm not taking away how helpful that is to you or others but it seems odd to title it mindfulness.

  • in reply to Lotus
    Lotus said:
    I'm not sure if mindfulness also includes preparing oneself for difficult situations?

    I think of it as pre-processing the situation so I don't have to go through all the "what if" situations on the spot if a forseeable problem arises. 

    With routine situations like going out then we all tend to be good at knowing what we wil possibly need but it is the situations that are less common - going to look at a second hand car with the thought of buying, having a dentist appointment for some major work, the taxman wanting to audit you, finding water coming through the ceiling or travelling unexpectedly to a new country on your own where they don't speak much English for example.

    Some of these can cause major anxiety if they happen quickly and invoke a shutdown if you don't control the anxiety.

    With mindfulness I find it limits the ability of anxiety to impair my abiities and thus leads to a better outcome.

    Lotus said:
    I have also used my higher level rational thinking to take myself temporarily out of the situation

    This is an excellent way of using it when you analise the risk of a situation (in your case of the environment causing your anxiety to spiral) and deciding that an effective course of action is to get out of it, safe in the knowledge that you can catch another bus and still get home.

    If you did not have this tool at your disposal, what do you think the outcome would have been?

  • Some good ideas there. 

    One thing I have done is focus on something positive to get through a difficult situation. For example, if I was on a crowded noisy bus feeling overwhelmed, I would think about what it would be like when I arrived home and the feelings of comfort and safety I would have. 

    I have also used my higher level rational thinking to take myself temporarily out of the situation - for example one day when I could not cope on a crowded bus, I got off at the next stop, and waited for the next one which was not so crowded.

    I'm not sure if mindfulness also includes preparing oneself for difficult situations? If so, making sure that you have everything you need when you go out might be part of that - for example checking that you have your phone, a drink, a snack, tisssues, and payment cards and/or or cash for bus fares, taxis, parking, etc.