#1 CRITICAL MISTAKE ASPERGER EXPERTS

Transcription

1 #1 CRITICAL MISTAKE ASPERGER EXPERTS

2 How's it going, everyone? Danny Raede here from Asperger Experts. I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was 12, and in this video, we are going to talk about all this stuff. There's a reason why people with Asperger's are stubborn. There's a reason why they have hygiene issues. There's a reason why homework takes five hours when it should take 15 minutes. That's actually the same reason. See, what happens is we see so many people that just skip what we're about to teach, and then immediately just go and try and teach life skills and fix things, and go, "Here's how to get out of anxiety." "Here's how to talk to people. " "Here's how to do your homework." Meanwhile, it doesn't work because the person with Asperger's is not absorbing the information. You know, as I was growing up after being diagnosed with Asperger's -- my parents originally thought it was ADD. But after being diagnosed with Asperger's, things were slow at times -- very, very slow. What I mean by that is that it would take me a long time to get things. I was very stubborn. Homework would take five hours, and, literally, I mean we'd have to set the timer, or, otherwise, I would not be able to get things done, and I'd be stressing out over math forever and ever and ever and ever, and it would not be fun. And then, on top of that, there was all the bullying issues and the fact that some teachers were bullying me, and I was just pretty much in a constant state of overwhelm. So, as I grew up, I finally started to realize that I needed to kind of get my defenses down and lower those walls because, while it was good that the bad couldn't get in, the good couldn't get in either. And people were all the time trying to give me all the answers. They were giving me all the answers that I was seeking in my own life. I was just so stubborn that I wasn't receiving the answers. And because of that, I didn't really start to explode in growth until I was 20 years old, and then things slowly progressed and picked up from there.

3 So, I've been through it all. I've been through the IEPs. I've been through the school bureaucratic nonsense. I've been through the bullying, the picky eating -- still do a little bit of picky eating -- meltdowns, sensory issues. You name it, I've been there. And here at Asperger Experts, that's what we try and do. We try and bring in what really goes on in the Asperger's mind and not what people say does because a lot of times, they're blatantly wrong. I've heard things from, "People with Asperger's don't have imagination." Wrong. "People with Asperger's don't have emotions." Wrong. "People with Asperger's don't have empathy." Wrong. We'll talk about that one for a second here. The reason why you see 'people with Asperger's don't have a lot of empathy' is because it doesn't get out. We have the empathy all the time, but what happens is in order to empathize with someone, you need to be a little bit vulnerable, and we are unwilling to do that because so many people have put us down and said you're not good enough that it's scary to be that vulnerable. So, therefore, we just cut it off and go, "That doesn't matter," when it really does. But to continue on, I've heard people say that people with Asperger's don't have imagination, and I have no idea where they got that one from. So, there's a lot of misinfo out there. There's a lot of stuff that just plain doesn't work. So, what we're going to do in this video is we're going to show you what's broken and teach you how to alter some ways of things that you're doing so that things are no longer broken. Because, let's be honest, if the system worked, then people with Asperger's would overcome their limitations and lead amazing lives and everything would be good. But what happens is more like you battle with the school system every single hour to get any accommodations at all, and then you go to a therapist who doesn't really know at all what they're doing.

4 So, you end up with pretty much like one percent growth over, like, 10 years. And what we like to do is we like to kind of go with a different approach, which we're about to teach you here, and what that does is it does, like, 100 percent growth in the span of two months, meaning that they grow so much it's almost like they're a different person in very short time frames. That's what we do here. So, there's a reason why people with Asperger's are so stubborn and want to do things their way and want to control everything and it's pretty much their way or the highway. There's a reason why even though they're fully capable of dealing with all the hygiene issues, they just don't take a shower or brush their teeth every day. I mean, it got to the point for me where I was going to the dentist every three months just because I wouldn't brush my teeth. There's a reason why homework takes five hours when it should take 10 or 15 minutes, and that has to do with what you're focusing on right now because most people, they focus on the skills. They focus on, "You must not know how to do math." "You must not know how to brush your teeth." "You must be very stubborn, so I'm going to try and argue with you and convince you that you're not stubborn," which, by the way, never works. Again, if it did work, you wouldn't be here watching this video. So instead, your new number one focus needs to be getting people with Asperger's out of defense mode. So, what I mean by that is that we're so busy trying to protect ourselves against a lot of things, mainly sensory issues. But we're so busy trying to protect our self against all this stuff that we have no time to focus on anything else. So, there's three things that happen here. When we are under attack, there are three main things that kind of happen.

5 The first is overwhelm, meaning because we're always under attack, we get so overwhelmed that nothing else can happen because when you're overwhelmed, you can't produce. You can't do activities. You can't live life. You're too busy trying to get un-overwhelmed, and that is your main focus. Your main focus is survival. That's where the stress comes into play -- that's number two -- because what happens is because when we get overwhelmed, we get so stressed, and then we have tons of anxiety. And because all these three come into play -- the overwhelm, the stress, and the anxiety -- there's really no room for us to grow at all. Think of it like if you go over to a soldier in Afghanistan who's in the middle of fighting somewhere -- or really anywhere in the world. But if you go up to a soldier, and they're in the middle of fighting, and you're like, "Today, I'm going to teach you knitting," and you try and teach them how to knit, they are so busy trying to fight for their life, essentially, that they don't care that you're trying to teach them knitting. They are so overwhelmed, they're so stressed, and they have so much anxiety that knitting is the last thing that they ever want to think about. So, when we go back here, the reason that we're so stubborn is because we are very locked down into our ways because, for us, that's what works, and no one, really, is competent enough to show us, "Hey, we have some other way of saying this actually works, too." So we lock down. The reason that we don't do hygiene is because, again, we're busy fighting. We don't care about brushing our teeth. We're too busy trying to survive. Same thing with homework. It'll take forever, but we're trying to survive, and we're trying to survive via overwhelm, stress, and anxiety. Now, the way that all this stuff works -- and I'm not really going to go into what causes this right now. If you'd like, there is another video right below this called The Sensory Funnel video where I go in depth and do how this all stacks

6 on top of itself and how we get overwhelmed and anxious and lots of stress, but I'm not going to cover that here. So, when we're under attack, which is pretty much 24/7 when we're growing up until around age 22 if you do things right -- if you don't do things right, until forever -- but if you do things right, which we're about to teach you, then until age 22, we're pretty much constantly under attack. So, we get overwhelmed, we get lots of stress, and we get lots of anxiety. And what that causes is little growth. We call this the "Asperger's Growth Spectrum." So, when we're in lockdown, when we need to control everything and basically, survive, there's little to no growth, if any at all. Now on the other hand, when we're open and aware, which there are times when we are open and aware if you look for them -- generally, it's easier if you're a parent because you see them more often -- but there are times when we are open and aware, and that's where lots of growth happens. That's where it's really easy to grow. Because we're so intellectual, we can grasp concepts, easily implement them, and make radical shifts in very, very short time spans. But most of the time, we're over here -- we're in the lockdown. We're very stubborn. We're just kind of like shelled off. And the reason for that is because there's a lot of things attacking us, so to speak. We're in very heightened sensation. There's people bullying us. There's things going on that our life is not perfect, so we feel like we need to retreat and just try and survive. Now, in our program, Asperger's 101: Breaking the Barriers, we talk specifically about what the three main attackers are, but for now just understand that there's a lot of stuff that causes us to be overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious, and what that does is it causes little to no growth.

7 So, your goal is, number one, get them out of defense mode, but, number two, lots of growth. You need to get them to the open end aware stage. This is what most people don't even think about. They skip right to, "Let me teach you social skills." "Let me put you in a social skills group." "Let me teach you how to relieve your anxiety." "Let me teach you how to do this " "Let me put you on pills." "Let's do that " when they don't focus on this. So, they're always over here trying to teach stuff, and it doesn't work. It's like the soldier trying to be taught knitting -- it just doesn't work. They might pick up something occasionally, but it's not going to work as far well as if you take them out of the combat situation, you stick them in a room, and you go, "I'm going to teach you how to knit," and they're safe, and they're fine. They you have their full attention. Then they can pay attention to it, and then they're open and aware, and they can grow. So, what can you do to get someone with Asperger's out of defense mode? Well, there's three things. First, you want to avoid obvious sensory triggers, meaning that there's certain things that set people with Asperger's off. For me, one of those was going to the fish market. Couldn't handle the smell of the fish market. So, the obvious thing to do? Don't take me to fish market. There's obvious things that might not be so obvious at first, but once you look, you'll start to see the patterns. People with Asperger's, there's always something sensory going on. It might be light. It might be sound. It might be they don't like to be touched, and then the thing is you just don't do it. If they don't like to be touched, don't touch them. If they hate the smell of fish, try cooking something else, or do it in a way that doesn't cause a lot of smell. You want to kind of minimize the sensation. Now, the second thing that you can do -- and this one is very simple -- is creating a sensory-free zone. Because we have so much sensation all the time

8 happening to us that when you create a sensory-free zone -- that's somewhere with as little noise as possible, as neutral a temperature as possible, an area that doesn't have crazy textures, crazy sounds, the lights can be turned on or off and aren't intensely blinding. If you can create that type of space, we can go in there, and we can just decompress for a little bit and put in whatever sensation we need and then just breathe deep and decompress. And then we can go out, and then what happens is because we decompressed, we can go out into the world, and move from over here to over here. So now, we're open and aware because we're like, "Okay, things are good again." Now, it's going to slowly build back up, and then we need to decompress again, but the more you give someone with Asperger's the opportunity to just kind of chill out in their decompression space, then the easier time they'll have getting over here. So, avoid obvious sensory triggers. If they don't like the smell of fish, don't take them to a fish market. Create a sensory-free zone, meaning that there's as little sensation as possible. Now, some people, they go, "Okay. Well, why do people with Asperger's sometimes seek certain sensations but avoid others?" and it just has to do with balance because we try and avoid some sensation. That means that we really like fuzzy blankets or big hugs or something because we still need sensation. We just need it in a certain way. So, that's where some sensory-seeking activities -- that's why some people smell stuff. That's why some people like fuzzy things. That's what I like -- I like really fuzzy blankets. That's why some people like pressure. It's just a matter or rebalancing. And the third thing to really help someone with Asperger's get out of defense mode is to just encourage them, and you want to do this in a specific way. You don't want to encourage by just going, "Good job," and kind of

9 passively doing it or encouraging their abilities, like, "You're smart," "You're a talented artist," or something like that. You want to encourage the process and not the outcome. So, what I mean by that is instead of going, "Good job. You did a good job on that test," "Good job. You must have studied really hard. I'm proud of you for using your problem solving skills." Big difference than, "You're smart." "Good job for using your skills. You're smart." One is good -- the 'good job for using your skills.' Praising their abilities? No, because what happens then is once you praise their skills, they think that they can improve the skills, and they can get better versus if you just praise their ability, their abilities are stuck where they are, and you can't really do much with that. So, you want to praise their skills. And once you start to encourage and praise their skills, they're going to feel more confident about themselves. They're going to have more self-esteem. They're going to let their guard down more, and then if we go back to the chart here, they're going to move over to open and aware. That's when you start to teach. That's when you can teach the social skills. You can teach how to talk to people. You can teach communication. You can teach anxiety. You can teach organization. You can do everything that you've already been doing once you get them over here. So, again, this is super important, so I'm going to reiterate this. Avoid obvious sensory triggers, create a sensory-free zone, and encourage their skills, not their abilities. So, what we've been talking about here is just one of the first four barriers that most people face when dealing with those with Asperger's. Obviously, number one is getting them out of defense mode. Now, in the next video, we're going to talk about numbers two, three, and four. What are these other barriers? Because once you get them out of defense mode, you're not done yet.

10 There's three other things that you need to do that are very specific. In order to take us -- in order to take someone with Asperger's -- to maximum life and maximum awesomeness and not a lot of frustration and stress and struggle and all that stuff, there are three other things that you need to do, and that's what we'll be talking about in the next video. So, look for that in a few days, and we'll talk to you then. And, by the way, please leave a comment below. Tell us what you think of this. Share this link around, and I'll send you the next video in a few days. Thanks. Find this video at 1 us: expert@aspergerexperts.com