Category: Blog Posts

Have you ever tried to learn a foreign language? It takes a lot of hard work. To be able to think in another language oftentimes takes years of practice. The same is true with learning “Aspergian.”Speaking “Aspergian” is a powerful tool in your relationship with someone who has Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s not so much speaking the language of your loved one on the spectrum as it is understanding theirs. With this understanding, you can neutralize everyone’s distress. When you’re detached from the emotional meaning of the communication, it’s much easier to guide the conversation to a mutually agreeable place.

For example, people on the spectrum don’t have empathy. They positively hate it when I say this but it’s true. If your “Aspie” doesn’t have all of the elements of empathy, it’s the same as Zero Degrees of Empathy as you well know. Your “Aspie” may have cognitive empathy or a rather flat logical understanding of the facts, but they struggle to connect it to the emotional meaning. Or they may be highly sensitive and cry at the drop of the hat, but be unable to speak about their feelings. Or they may care deeply about social justice or personal cause, but be unable to connect with others on the issue.

Disconnects between emotions and thoughts, no awareness of the intention behind human behaviors, using idiosyncratic words that carry no meaning for others, . . . these methods create a kind of language that can seem impenetrable. Autistic children seem to have a language of their own that no one can fathom. Autistic adults, even our high-functioning “Aspie” have the same unusual language patterns. Once we break the code, it’s much easier to communicate and relate.

If you’re not a member of our MeetUp group, Asperger Syndrome: Partners and Family of Adults with ASD please join our group to continue our discussion.

Bring examples of the mysterious language of your “Aspie” for our discussion. Even if your “Aspie” uses a different code word than another person on the spectrum, the system they use is the same. But the real goal is more than understanding their code; it is also to reduce distress and find a way to connect with your loved ones.

Recently, one of my readers shared a valuable resource with us, and we’d like to share it with you. It’s an article entitled: The Psychology of the Fear of Flying and How to Overcome It.

Many people refuse to board a plane. They would rather not go to an important event rather than confront their fear of flying. Or they opt for the more inconvenient or time-consuming means of travel such as automobile or train.

In their article, you’ll see whether fear of flying is a phobia or a rational fear. You’ll also discover a number of triggers and how the psychology of a fear of flying works. It also discusses ways to overcome the fear of flying. Here are a few highlights:

• Curb your imagination.
• Think about the destination, not the journey.
• Meditate to calm yourself.
• Challenge negative thoughts.
• Drink plenty of water and limit alcohol and caffeine.
• Accept that you cannot control everything.
• Maintain a positive attitude.
• Talk to the cabin crew.
• Learn about what is triggering your anxiety.
• Study positive information about flying and the fear of flying.
• Talk to someone about the problem.

I also appreciated the information for helping children overcome their fear of flying so that it doesn’t become a phobia. Here are a few highlights:

Living with a mate who has “Asperger’s Syndrome” is filled with stress. You love them but they are unpredictable. You never know how they’ll react to an ordinary situation. Therefore, it’s not surprising that many NT (neuro-typical) mates report a variety of psychosomatic and immunodeficiency illnesses, such as migraines, arthritis, gastric reflux, and fibromyalgia. When the body is regularly thrown into a state of alarm, the over-production of adrenalin and cortisol wreaks havoc with the body’s natural defense mechanisms.

Recently I wrote an article for PsychCentral on the need to care for yourself first. This may seem impossible at first, because of the chaos of family life. But it is essential and possible if you learn the art of detachment.

Detachment is learning to protect yourself from all of those not-so-ordinary moments. It doesn’t mean you stop caring about your loved ones. It simply means that you:

• Stop taking it all personally.
• Stop worrying if you’ve covered all the bases.
• Stop beating yourself up for your flaws.
• Stop expecting more from your AS spouse than he or she can give.

When you learn the art of detaching, you actually free up some energy to care for yourself. And that creates the energy to make better decisions instead of flitting from crisis to crisis.

There are two methods for achieving detachment:

1. Emotional self-care is doing all of the healthy feel-good things you can fit into your day. If you notice that you’re drinking, eating, or smoking too much, you need healthier self-care. Make it a point to always plan healing rest and recreation in your day, too.

2.Cognitive self-care consists of education. When you can’t fathom what’s going on with your “Aspie,” and they’re accusing you of things you didn’t do, stress increases. It’s bad enough to be misunderstood. It’s quite another to try to operate without a frame of reference for the misunderstanding. Even though it’s work to read a book and to attend psychotherapy, knowledge is power.

When I was learning to deal with family members with ASD, there weren’t that many resources. So I founded a Meetup group, Asperger Syndrome: Partners & Family of Adults with ASD. It has helped many cope as they connect with others living through the same experiences. Check it out and if it feels right for you, please hit the “join” button.

Having counseled couples for over thirty years, I’ve come to appreciate that communicating effectively is more of an attitude than having specific skills. The skills seem to emerge when your heart is in the right place. In one of my books, Entrepreneurial Couples: Making It Work at Work and at Home, I shared advanced truths of healthy communication to help couples become better communicators.

Embracing these truths will assist you so that you can (I) more clearly define the problem or topic of discussion, (2) more accurately listen and understand your partner, and (3) develop even more flexibility and expediency in accomplishing your communication goals.

There are four advanced truths of healthy communication. In this post I will focus on the first two:

#1 The explanation used to describe a person or situation is not the person.

We all build hypotheses about our partner in order to understand and respond to his or her behavior. For example, one couple I worked with faced a communication breakdown (their names have been changed). Kurt wanted to move to get a promotion and his wife Trish refused to leave even though she’d been willing to relocate in the past. You see Kurt assumed that Trish always followed his career moves because she put his career before her own.

In reality, Kurt’s promotions opened career doors for Trish also. Furthermore, moving to a new town every few years when she was younger and childless was not a problem for Trish. But with twin daughters to care for, a desire to put down roots in a community, and a career of her own that she loved, Trish demonstrated another side of herself that did not fit Kurt’s explanation of her. As Kurt expanded his consciousness, both he and Trish learned that there is more to their partner than one simple explanation.

#2 People do not operate out of sensory experience, but rather out of their interpretation or map of reality.

Because we build hypotheses, we tend to operate in the world as if our internal maps (i.e., hypotheses or explanations of reality) are the truth. We forget that we developed these internal maps after gathering information with our senses. Once the map is built, we sometimes ignore future sensory experience in favor of our presuppositions.

Therefore, the second advanced truth is closely aligned with the first advanced truth. Knowing that you and others are operating in the world according to your own interpretation of reality releases you to notice what facts or real experience contributed to a specific behavior.
For example, another couple (names have been changed), Karla and Mike, had been ignoring their own senses with regard to Mike’s alcohol abuse. They ignored how much he drank. They ignored the irrationality of their fights. They ignored the effects of alcohol abuse on their children, employees, and friends. With the incredible success of their business, and moving into a brand-new million-dollar house, Mike and Karla felt as if they were on top of the world without a care. It seemed a contradiction that they would have serious problem at the height of their financial and material success.

Yet Karla was shaken to notice her sensory experience when Mike shattered a liquor bottle against the living room wall. Then all of the other sensory clues she’d been ignoring fell into place, too. It was time to adjust her map of reality to include the possibility that the husband she loved was an addict. Similarly, Mike’s map of reality changed shortly after Karla confronted him.

Keeping these advanced truths in mind will put your heart in the right place so you begin to trust that you and your partner really are on the same side. In an upcoming post I’ll share two more advance truths for healthy communication.

The most important thing to remember is that it’s okay not to have all the answers and to ask for help. For the couples I mentioned in this post, the communication breakdown was so severe that they were unable to achieve any solutions until they asked a professional for help. If you need help communicating with your partner, and you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

If you live elsewhere, we can also discuss best communication practices for entrepreneurial couples via a secure video Q & A session. Learn more by visiting Entrepreneurial Couples Remote Education.

People who have more nuanced views of their emotions are healthier. When you can put a name to an emotion like feeling righteously indignant versus just generally feeling bad, you are more in tune with your feelings.

The psychological term we use for this ability to pinpoint your exact emotion is “emotional granularity.” It means you experience the world and yourself more precisely. And there are a lot of benefits to increasing this skill.

People who have emotional granularity are less likely to engage in self-destructive behavior. They have better relationships, make better decisions, live longer and are healthier.

The New York Times recently reported on a study conducted by Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University. They asked hundreds of volunteers to track their emotional experiences for weeks or months. They discovered something very interesting.

They assumed that people with higher emotional granularity were just better at recognizing their emotional states. Instead they learned that the brain proactively constructs your emotional states before you’re aware of it. The brain doesn’t respond to the world in some predetermined way. It anticipates what might come next, based on a past experience. This means you get to program your emotional responses as you choose.

If you can translate your feelings into a specific emotional term that you can act on, then you don’t deplete your store of energy needlessly. Dr. Feldman Barrett likened our energy supply to a bank account. When there’s a real threat, then the withdrawal of energy translates into a meaningful action. Afterward, you can resupply your energy reserves through rest and nutrition.

On the other hand, when there’s a constant feeling of badness, it drains your account. There are no reserves of energy left for when it’s needed. You’re overdrawn. This leads to feeling trapped and overwhelmed, increasing the likelihood of mental and physical illness.

You can increase your emotional granularity by becoming more skilled in identifying the nuances of your emotions. How many emotional concepts do you have in your vocabulary? I encourage you to write down a list of new words to describe the emotional states you experience. You’ll give your brain a larger toolkit to work from, which will give you more emotional flexibility in coping with what life throws at you.

Especially during the childbearing years, women are nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression as are men. According to psychiatrist, Dr. Daniel Amen, 1 in 8 women develop clinical depression in their lifetime. Yet fewer than half of them seek help, accepting it as a normal way of life.

Why do women experience depression more than men? We don’t have a definitive answer yet. But we do know the following issues are factors to be considered when diagnosing depression.
Hormonal fluctuations. It’s possible that monthly cyclical changes in estrogen, progesterone and other hormones disrupt the function of brain chemicals such as serotonin, which controls mood. Just think of what women live through – Puberty, PMS, possibly Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), Pregnancy and Postpartum Depression, Perimenopause and Menopause. All of these are accompanied with wildly fluctuating hormones, which can trigger depression.

Heredity. A British research team recently isolated a gene, the chromosome 3p25-26, in more than 800 families with recurrent depression. Scientists believe 40 percent of those with depression may be traced to a genetic link. The American Journal of Psychiatry reports on one study that found that women had a 42 percent chance of hereditary depression, while men had only a 29 percent chance.

Inadequate coping skills. Life stressors are associated with a higher risk of depression. And if women haven’t learned to successful cope with stress, they can feel powerless, which often contributes toward depression. Some of these stressors are:

• Relationship problems. Conflict with parents, spouse and children.
• Lack of social support. Feeling all alone.
• Social and economic inequalities. Living in poverty, being uncertain about the future, racial discrimination and having less access to community resources are all issues that can cause low self-esteem and lack of control.
• Work overload. Women are juggling a career and home responsibilities. Many women are single parents, working multiple jobs to make ends meet. Plus they may be caring for sick or aging parents.
• Abuse. Women are more likely than men to experience sexual abuse. And being emotionally, physically or sexually abused raises the likelihood of depression.

Depression is NOT a normal way to live. It’s very treatable and you can lead a happier life. Please seek help if you have any physical signs and psychological symptoms of depression. Women with depression often have other mental health conditions such as: anxiety, ADHD, head injuries, Bipolar Disorder and ASD.
If you think you’re depressed, please don’t hesitate to seek professional help. If you live near Portland, OR/Vancouver, WA please contact my office and schedule an appointment.

Read more on my website: Depression and Stress.