Category: Blog Posts

Living in a constant state of emotional distress can cause a variety of health concerns, not the least of which is depression. Sadly this describes a chronic state for many of our Asperger Syndrome: Partners & Family of Adults with ASD members. I think they’re a good sampling of families with Autism. This means that there are too many people dealing with this problem alone. Let’s change that!

Medicine and psychotherapy can help some, but what do you do when the stressors from caregiving someone with Autism never goes away?One of the best methods of psychotherapy for depression in general is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which relies on helping you change your beliefs in order to alleviate the depression. It’s based on the idea that the depression is due to faulty thinking.

However, in the ASD setting we must factor in other experiences… ASD caregivers live in a depressing atmosphere, and they live with oppressive people.

I found that a more successful approach is a combination of education about ASD/NT relationships plus strategic intervention. This makes our Asperger Syndrome: Partners & Family of Adults with ASD Meetup part of the solution. Knowing that you’re not alone; knowing that others understand from personal experience; knowing that you do not have faulty beliefs; knowing that you need new strategies; this is what helps us cope with depression.

We’re kicking off the fall with a discussion about strategies that effectively keep us sane and connected to others who are loving and supportive. The next videoconference entitled “Down and Depressed?” will be held on two dates: Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 9:00 AM PT and Wednesday, September 27, 2017 at 3:00 PM PT. Maybe you’ll even discover that you aren’t really depressed at all; just down. And that can be fixed!

Note: We had to modestly increase the price for our low-cost videoconferences. For $18.00 per person you get a solid hour of healthful interaction with me and 11 other supportive attendees.

If you’d prefer one-on-one counseling and live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment. I also offer online therapy if that works best for your busy schedule.

Running a business with your spouse can be very rewarding. However, entrepreneurs deal with a unique set of challenges, and entrepreneurial couples experience these same challenges two-fold! Add to this the complications that come with marriage, owning a home, and raising a family and it’s no wonder entrepreneurial couples can feel at times that the arrangement isn’t working.

When something in your business and/or marital life isn’t working, what is your first inclination? The most common response to life’s struggles involves a mental process where we solely consider external or technical reasons for the problem. When you encounter an obstacle in your business or your marriage is your first reaction to find an outside source for the problem?Rather than being quick to look to external forces that are holding you back, could you look internally?

When working through obstacles in life, I encourage you to question every aspect of your approach to your business and relationship, including your methods, biases, and assumptions. This kind of rigorous self-examination requires that you honestly challenge your beliefs and goals, and work up the courage to act and make a change.

I’ve noticed that when people face a crisis or even just an ordinary problem, they are tempted to try a somewhat simplistic change. They change spouses, buy a new house, and so on. These simple changes are supposed to make them feel better. And sometimes they do for a little while. But in the long run, the new spouse presents problems remarkably similar to those of the previous spouse and the new house is still not big enough.

Rather than waste your time with pointless changes, put in the time and hard work to change yourself from the inside out.

Look deep and determine your personal definition of real success. What exactly are you looking for in life, business, and your marriage? Do your goals for your business truly align with your personal definition of success? Honestly evaluate your strengths and weaknesses. Everybody has both! Realizing who you really are will help you determine the best path to take and changes to make.

But what if you are dealing with a spouse who is dealing with a problem like addiction? Aren’t they the ones that need to change?

The love you have for them may move you try to fix them, change their attitude and behavior. Understand that their life is not for you to manage. You can’t change them. For real change to come, they have to decide for themselves to get help and move forward.

I worked with a woman who was married to and ran a business with an addict. She spent years trying to change him, to no avail. Eventually she realized that the only person she could change was herself. She courageously tackled the task of working on herself and cleaning up her own bad habits, misunderstandings and superstitions. She began to recognize many dormant strengths that had been overshadowed by her need to protect and control her husband. This led her to explore new directions in life and business that better fit her personality.

When you look inside yourself, you take back your power.

You restore your independence as a person and as a successful entrepreneur. By focusing on changing yourself first, you expand your consciousness and gain self-awareness. You become more skilled at resolving immediate problems, correcting past mistakes, and moving ahead with the new opportunities. This approach also enables you to encourage the development of your spouse, partner, employees, and children, which benefits you, too.

Changing from a problem-solving mode into self-awareness mode may be difficult, especially for busy entrepreneurial couples. I’m here to help. Please feel free to contact my office in Jantzen Beach to schedule an appointment. If you live elsewhere, consider remote education for entrepreneurial couples.

Like all people, children need to know they are loved and cared for. It is also important for them to believe that someone needs and relies on them. They want to know their existence and presence makes a difference to other people. Listen to your children and support them. As kids navigate new situations and inevitable disappointments, they need to know that they’re not alone. Cultivate a warm, strong relationship.

Talk to them openly about what is happening, and give them opportunities to tell you how they feel, without criticism. Regardless of how you feel about the changes and how you are ready to proceed, you need to know what your child is thinking and feeling.

Be in tune with how each child is dealing with the changes in their life. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to children. Each child is unique and has different strengths and weaknesses. Some can handle more than others. This means spending time with each of your children individually and allowing them to share their own feelings on the matter, separate from the rest of the family.

A key part of developing resilience and dealing with change is emotional management. Teach your kids that emotions are okay! It’s okay to feel. And it’s okay to feel differently than their parents about a situation. They need to know that what they share will be respected and safe.

Answer your child’s questions. Some of them may be painful. You may think your child isn’t old enough to understand. But honesty is vital when helping your children adapt to big changes in their lives. If they can’t get a straight answer from you, who can they turn to?

Be honest about your mistakes. Some big changes come because of mistakes made. Making mistakes is a part of life. Life is about learning something new every day. Sometimes those lessons cause pain, or even permanent scars. It is natural to not want your children to see those mistakes or experience any of the pain associated with them. But know this: whatever stress you are feeling as a parent, your children are feeling it as well.

Use the situation as a teaching tool. Demonstrate to your children that failure is not the end of the world. Show them that it is absolutely possible to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and move on. Be honest with them about what is happening and why. If you are honest, it not only teaches your children a lesson, but it also helps them forgive and start to heal.

• Be aware of the way you describe certain situations and make a conscious effort to turn those comments into something more optimistic.

• Focus less on the problem, and more on the solution. If no solution is obvious, focus on the fact there must be a solution somewhere and that you and your team are capable of discovering it.

• Discuss the smaller, more manageable steps, you can take to solve a problem. What can you do right now, in this moment? It helps you and those you work with focus on what they can accomplish without getting overwhelmed.

• Cultivate a more positive, meaningful start to conversations. If someone asks how you are, don’t lead with the negative (i.e. “I’m tired/hungry/anxious”). Tell them something good that has happened.

• Show gratitude. Discuss things you are thankful for, big and small.

1. 
   Care for your basic needs. As an entrepreneur, you work long hours. That’s a given. But prioritize sleep, healthy eating, exercise, and time with friends and family. Adequate sleep is absolutely vital to function at optimum levels. Eating good food gives your mind the nutrients it needs to make brilliant business decisions. Exercise relieves stress. Time spent with those you love keeps you balanced
2. Simplify your life. The life of an entrepreneur is full of activity and decisions. Don’t make things harder than they need to be. Where you can simplify, do it. For you that may mean using a grocery delivery service or having limited wardrobe options to sort through each morning. Simplify as many things in your life as you can so that you can focus on the areas that will benefit most from your attention and creativity.
3. Get help with the details. To make your vision succeed, there are a lot of teeny-tiny details to work out. Hire someone to help you. You have skills, but you are not skilled at everything. So outsource the things you need to. Let other people care for the details while you continue focusing on what you are best at.
4. Hire a psychologist. People who regularly attend to their psychological health are not only stronger emotionally, but they are less prone to illness and experience a better sense of personal well-being. Engaging in psychotherapy enhances your analytical and intuitive abilities by utilizing the full range of your conscious and unconscious talents. It helps you take charge of your life.

Historically it’s been thought that autism is four times more common in boys than in girls. However, studies are now suggesting that the true ratio is one in two. Why the shift?The current methods for diagnosing autism are skewed toward how autism affects boys. To be diagnosed with autism or Asperger’s, girls need to display more behavioral problems or a significantly higher intellectual disability. Girls with less severe symptoms are more likely to be misdiagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anorexia.

Behavioral and preliminary neuro-imaging suggests that autism manifests differently in girls. Scientific American has a must-read article outlining some of these differences. Here are some highlights:

1. Females can more easily mask, camouflage or compensate for ASD symptoms than males.
2. Girls obsessively focus on reading, looking for rules for social life so they can connect and fit in.
3. The difference between typical and autistic development in girls is in their intensity. They may refuse to talk about anything other than their topic of interest.
4. Autistic girls exhibit less repetitive behavior than the boys do.
5. The pastimes and preferences of autistic girls are more similar to those of typical girls rather than stereotypically male interests.
6. Girls with autism are more likely than autistic boys to pretend play; they just don’t put themselves into the story.
7. A study published in 2014 by Baron-Cohen and his colleagues found that “66 percent of adults with Asperger’s reported suicidal thoughts, a rate nearly 10 times higher than the general population. 71 percent of them were women, who made up about one third of the sample”.

Kevin Pelphrey, a leading autism researcher at Yale University’s Child Study Center says, “Everything we thought was true of autism seems to only be true for boys.” For example, his (unpublished as of yet) studies show that the brain of an autistic boy uses different regions to processes social information such as eye movements and gestures than a typical boy’s brain does.

Yet that’s not true of girls. Each girl’s brain “looks like that of a typical boy of the same age, with reduced activity in regions normally associated with socializing.” So according to the tests, these girls appear to be normal. But they’re remarkable different from typical girls of their age.

I experienced first hand many of these things when I was raising my autistic daughter. Until she was diagnosed, I was frantic. I know all too well that hopeless feeling of watching a child struggle in life and not knowing what to do.

Do you suspect that one of your female family members has undiagnosed autism? With a proper diagnosis, you can begin the process of helping her live a better life. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

You can read my story and that of others’ in my book, Out of Mind – Out of Sight: Parenting with a Partner with Asperger Syndrome (ASD). Click on the image below to download a free chapter.