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.
