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Asperger's 101: Breaking The Barriers

Transcript

www.aspergerexperts.com

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(Music)

Hello and welcome to Asperger's 101 Breaking the Barriers. My name is Danny Raede . I'm the cofounder of Asperger Experts and I was diagnosed with Asperger's when I was 12.

And I'm Hayden Mears, the other cofounder of Asperger Experts and I was diagnosed at age five, but not told until I was 12.

So throughout our work here at Asperger Experts and in this audio program, what we're really gonna be talking about is breaking down those barriers, because there are barriers that separate you from someone with Asperger's and doing a great job and helping them grow and basically maximizing their life. There are a few things that we see a lot of people just get in their way and therefore people with Asperger's never get the help they need. And then they never grow and they don't experience life to the fullest that they can.

Right. They have a subpar way of living and they end up in group homes, institutionalized, what say you. I mean just whatever they can do, basically.

And that totally does not need to be the case. I mean when I was diagnosed when I was 12, my parents first thought it was ADD actually and then took me to

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a psychologist, who said, "No, in fact, it's Asperger's." And at that point, they didn't really know what I was gonna do. And for me, it was just kind of like, "Oh, okay. I have Asperger's."

People ask, "What was it like when you were diagnosed?" I didn't know. I was not aware enough to even just – I recognized that on an intellectual level. "Oh, okay. There's some diagnosis thing," but then it was like, "Leave me alone. I wanna play my video game."

When I was five, the doctor told my mom that I would never have any friends, that I would never, you know, have a good life. I would be institutionalized. I would never function on my own. And my mom still recalls the day that I was diagnosed and they were told this. That my dad was crying against the car in the parking lot because there was no hope for his son. And let me tell you that I'm glad that I didn't listen, that me or my parents did not listen to those doctors. And my mom discovered these barriers and broke them down for me so that I could live the amazing life that I have today.

Yeah. There totally is hope. I mean I think that –

There's always hope.

There's always hope. We've seen people with severe autism go on and graduate from Ivy League schools and live amazing lives and anything is possible. I mean we're gonna talk about this in a little bit here, but the brain can be changed.

Right, but you have to know what's going on with their brains and what makes their brains different in order to help them change.

Yeah, so it's like if you get into the guts of a piano or computer or something, you can totally change that thing, but you need to know what to do and you need to know –

You need to know every part, every piece of that piano.

Yeah, or every piece of that computer and you need to know, oh, if I do this, it will do this, and actually I don’t wanna do that. I want to do this instead, so that's what we're here for. As I said, throughout our life, we've had some challenges, but I'm sure that you have some challenges as well. The number one thing that people come to us is my child doesn't get anywhere, or the clients I work with that have Asperger's, if you're a teacher or a therapist or something like that or the students I work with that have Asperger's, they aren't doing anything. They're just kind of living and just existing and not growing.

Right, and a common question we get is what do I do with my child, or my patient, or this person with Asperger's? How do I get through to them?

Yeah.


And that's really what this product is gonna get to, is helping you get through to your Asperger's child, or patient, or whatever relationship you have with them and maximize their potential, because they have a lot of it. They've just got all of this extra crap that gets in the way.

Yeah.

And these barriers or this crap, after this program, hopefully, you can break it down and get rid of it.

Definitely, so when I was growing up, I mean really the first thing that I had to do to get over myself and to get over all this stuff was to really just get myself out of defense mode. And we're gonna be talking about that a little bit later on, but for me, once I started to figure out how to break down these barriers and once my parents worked with me to break down these barriers, even though they didn't really know exactly that's what they were doing, that's when I really started to flourish. Because you're working with someone with Asperger's, whether it's as a parent, a teacher, a therapist, whatever. You understand that they are extremely brilliant and can tell you all sorts of science facts and stuff about computers and trains or whatever they're interested in.

Abnormally high IQ's too.

Yeah. Way beyond their years, so there's a lot of potential there, but then on the other side, there's all the social stuff, which is me and which was Hayden. I mean that's where we're at, is the extremely nerdy person who was really good at something, but didn't know how to talk to people and had no friends and then therefore had low self-esteem.

Yeah. Spent hours on the computer, video games, reading books, whatever kind of escape they could have from the pain of the real world.

Yeah, and since we've really gotten to the place where we work with our clients on what matters instead of let's teach you social skills, which it doesn't really work unless you do some things first.

Right. You have to build foundation. You've gotta get them on the defense mode. There's all sorts of things you have to do before you teach them life skills.

And we're gonna be talking about those.

Right.

So since we've been working with our model of getting below the surface, we've honestly had some amazing results. I don't say that to be like, "Look at us." I say that to be this stuff works.

Kaitlin. You wanna tell Kaitlin's story?


Yeah, within two months of watching our life propulsion program, she went form staying at home, stagnant, doing absolutely nothing, you know, watching TV all day to having a job and having her own apartment.

Yeah. Completely moved out. Now, a disclaimer here. Results not typical, yadda, yadda, yadda, all that good stuff. We are not doctors, etc. Do not trust us for any advice in any fashion because otherwise legal stuff. Anyway.

Right, but this is based on our experiences and what we have found works.

So yeah. This is all coming from our experience.

Use at your discretion.

Yes. Anyway, so there's kind of really two worlds here in Asperger's and most people think of the old world as the only world, where your kid's diagnosed with Asperger's.

And that's it.

Yeah, or your client is diagnosed with Asperger's and maybe you're the one doing the diagnosing.

Right, and that's it.

And yeah.

You give them meds. You give them pills. You say, "Okay, go have fun. Maybe you'll end up in an institution. Maybe you won’t."

And that's it. That's the help and it's assumed, "Oh, they're never gonna do anything. They're gonna remain at the level they're at."

And it does them a huge disservice because sometimes they're not even aware of what they can do.

Yeah.

And you have to help them get to that point, because then they'll be so much happier.

Definitely, so this old world, this kind of stagnation and just, well, they have Asperger's. They're always gonna have the exact same symptoms. Nothing's ever gonna get better. We just kind of need to deal with it.

Right.

Versus this new world. In the past 30 or so years, and even a little bit beyond that, there's been immense research into what's called positive psychology, which


is psychology for the rest of us. It's not just how to be happy and how to be positive and all of that stuff. It's how to live amazing lives, how to be fulfilled, how to have meaning.

And there's been a lot of work done in transformative psychology, transformational psychology as well, which is how do you change someone's thought processes so that they can radically shift their entire perspective of life? So what they've shown is that, look, the brain can be changed. It's what's called plastic, meaning that it can be molded and changed and things can be done and new skills can be learned. We look at everything as a skill and it can be learned.

The Asperger's brain is no different. We might have differences in our brains, but at its core, we still have that plasticity to our brain.

Yeah, so what that means is that there is scientific proof for hope, essentially, because the brain can be changed. That means behavior and perception and awareness and –

Skills. Everything.

Skills. Everything can be changed and improved.

Right.

Which is a game changer, because no longer is it just this person has Asperger's. We're not in this old world of just they have Asperger's, they're always gonna have Asperger's.

Yeah. "Go have fun kind," of thing.

We are in this new world of we can take all the amazing things that are Asperger's, like them being extremely intellectual. And then we can take the stuff that isn't so fun, like the sensory issues and the stress and all the stuff we're gonna talk about. And we can go through a process and just do some things. And set up the environment and talk to them in specific ways. And really rationalize out and work on that part so it's severely minimized. So you keep the good stuff, but the bad stuff kinda goes away.

It's suppressed greatly, to a point where it's not even noticeable anymore.

Well, I wouldn't even say it's suppressed. It's more like some of it just dissolves and it's not like you're holding it down and it wants to come up. It just doesn't exist anymore.

Yeah.

So really, when you're talking about dealing with someone with Asperger's and you want them to get to this growth point, there's four main barriers. And as we


said, teaching life skills is the fourth one. You do not wanna do that first. That's what everyone does. It's a mistake. It will not work. You'll spend a decade of your life trying to teach them social skills versus if they were super aware and super energized and super confident, you could teach them social skills in a day.

Most people go backwards. They go teach life skills and then onto defense mode first.

Yeah.

And that's not the way to do it. You have to do it in the order that we're about to describe.

So the order is first, the defense mode. People with Asperger's are so in defense mode all the time that until you get them out of defense mode, nothing else is going to happen. Yeah, and then the next one is understanding the Asperger's mind. So once you get them out of defense mode, you need to understand. Okay, how does our mind work? How does the Asperger's mind work?

What differences are there in our brains from a neurotypical brain?

Yeah, and what differences are there in our minds, which some argue is different from the brain.

Right. Right.

And then step three, this third barrier is then you need to learn how to communicate to someone with Asperger's, because you've gotten them out of their own world. You've gotten out of defense mode. You understand the mind. Now you need to kind of have a translation in between. So you need to communicate to someone with Asperger's in a way they understand.

This step is super important because it not only builds from the first two, but it also leads into the next one perfectly, because if you can learn to communicate with them, you can communicate the life skills that you need to teach them.

Yeah, and life skills, we mean relieving anxiety.

Social skills.

Social skills, emotional skills, communication skills, job skills, life skills.

Basically functioning in society.

Yeah, anything that you'd fall under we needed to teach them how to live, that's what really life skills comes down to.

Right, because a lot of times they're just not good at life, but that's because no one teaches them. They're not born with these skills.


Yeah.

And they might need a little bit of extra work, but if it's gonna improve their lives, then why would anyone give up on them?

See, the sad thing though, is I see a lot of people that do give up. You know, when your kid's learning to walk, you don't go, "Oh, they tried once. Never gonna happen. Okay."

Right. It's the same idea.

Yeah, it's the same thing. You don't go, "Oh, well, you know, we've only had five years of this. They're never gonna do it. Just screw it. It's just not gonna happen."

Right. Yeah, they're done.

Yeah. Don't do that. You're really saying, "Okay, I'm done with the effort. If it doesn't work, try something else."

Right, but always keep trying something new because you owe it to your kid, or your patient, or whoever you know who has Asperger's to stick with them, because inside them, I'd be screaming for help.

Yeah. I know I was definitely screaming for help when I was growing up, so what a lot of the times these doctors and therapists and school providers and everyone else do is they give up hope, because it's kind of an attitude of, well, if they don't try, then they're never gonna fail. And if you have a dream and you fail, then that's horrible. And we don't want them to have them.

Right.

But what they miss is what we just talked about, that you only fail once you give up.

Yeah.

For me, I have some pretty lofty goals in my life that I wanted to do.

Me too.

And statistically, that's not gonna happen. It's like .0001 percent chance that that's gonna happen if you look at the statistics, but you know, when I tell people these, they're like, "Oh, you probably shouldn't do this." I had a school counselor tell me in high school, "You're never gonna do anything with your life. You're probably just gonna go to city college and work at a McDonald's or something." Hopefully they mean well, but what that does is it destroys any chance they have, because you're condemning them to that life.


Everything you say to your Asperger's child, or patient, or whatever, they remember it, and it affects them for years to come.

Yeah.

I remember I was kicked out of a school. It was called Riverfield Country Day in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I was kicked out in my sophomore year because I had this nervous tic that I would do due to my Asperger's. I would make this noise, this guttural noise with my throat. And I got kicked out of school because they called it distracting. And then my doctor called it discrimination and we almost – because they didn't even accommodate me at all. They just kicked me out.

Yeah.

And that destroyed my self-confidence and that sent me spiraling into depression. And they had no idea how much that affected me, so kind of branching off what Danny said. It has an impact.

It has a great impact, so instead of going, "Oh, they can't do this. Let's not try." If you try, they'll be amazed. You'll be amazed what you see from them.

And how receptive they are to that.

Yeah, it's how receptive to our – one of the themes that's gonna be throughout this thing is encouragement.

Right. We're going to say it a lot. Encouragement is so important.

Because I mean that's really the juice that we thrive on is you need to encourage. You need to encourage a lot because there are a lot of people that are not nice in the world, to use a nice word. They're not very nice.

And especially to people with Asperger's who are different, who aren't what these people are used to. And so they treat them extra cruelly.

Yeah.

And so all our lives we're told we can't do things and so every time we're told we can't do something, it just piles up and piles up and piles up until we wanna explode and do nothing.

Yeah.

So encourage them.

Now, what would happen if we were told we could do things?

Right.


Just let that question kind of bounce around for a little bit here.

Let it sink in.

As we get into barrier number one, getting people with Asperger's out of defense mode. This is the most important thing. This is your foundation. This is your base.

This is the first Jenga block in the Jenga stack.

Yes.

If this block isn't positioned well, the rest of the tower falls over.

And what we see most people do is they try and build the tower from the top down.

Right.

And then the whole thing comes crashing down and you're like, "It isn't working." Yeah, because you don't understand how gravity works.

Yeah.

So this is just some foundational stuff where we are so in defense mode all the time that if you try and input something new into someone with Asperger's, it has to go through a mode and a –

A filter, all kinds of filters. Yeah.

– and they don't – through tons of defenses and filters and sorts of this crazy stuff.

It's like walking up to a giant castle with spikes everywhere and a moat and just everything and just trying to just waltz on in.

It doesn't work.

It doesn't work. You will probably die.

But what most people do every day when working with people with Asperger's, they do just that. They go up to this giant castle and they knock on the door and expect to be let right in. And then start teaching and transforming the place and doing interior decorating and stuff.

Right. They've probably gotta go through a guard. They've gotta go through the king. They've gotta go through everyone.

Yeah, which is –


Yeah, go ahead.

Which is why only five percent of this stuff you teach someone with Asperger's about doing this works.

Because only five percent of it actually gets in.

Yes. The rest, the whole 95 percent of it that might be amazing life transformational stuff that they need –

It's turned away at the door.

It's turned away at the door. Now, the cool thing is, what we're about to do is show you how to remove the door, how to remove the castle.

Right.

How to just show that it's them and that you say, "Hey, here's how we learn social skills," and they go, "Great. Here's how to learn social skills." They learn social skills. Life is amazing versus here's the other ones. I said, "Oh, I don't need to do it. Nothing's wrong with me. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Blah, blah, blah. Go away." And then nothing ever gets done.

Right, and we have a lot to deal with already with everything and because we're always in defense mode, we're very touchy. We're very quick to take things personally. It affects everything. It affects our entire perception and our reactions to everything.

Yeah.

So if you say to your kid – you yell across the house to the kid and say, "Hey, feed the dogs," just because of the physical act of yelling, the kid will think – we had a case of this.

Yeah.

The kid thought that she was mad at him and he started being disrespectful and screaming at her. And it caused a whole blow up that didn't even need to happen.

Yeah, so the first thing, when you're working to get someone with Asperger's out of defense mode, is don't do anything that could be construed as an attack.

Right. Be very careful with how you approach.

Yes. Yelling, touching, criticizing – we'll teach you how to criticize in the right way in a little bit later on, but criticizing, any of that stuff, out the window.

Right. Touching is a big one. A lot of them hate being touched.


Ugh.

I hate being touched.

Me too.

If someone taps me on the shoulder to get my attention, I freak out.

Go die in a fire. Really. That's the level of I hate touching that it is. When I was 13, I had my bar mitzvah and everyone came up to me and touched me and congratulated me. I'm like, "Ugh, go away."

You know like nails on a chalkboard? You really do not want to hear that all the time. It's that, but it's someone touching you. Same type of feeling.

And multiplied by ten.

Yeah. So what happens and the reason why we're all in defense mode all the time is because our sensory input is extremely heightened. The sensation that we have coming in through ears, eyes, nose, etc., is extremely heightened early in life. Now, because we don’t have the capacity to handle that much information yet, what we do is unconsciously we install an awareness filter is what I call it. And because of that, we've become extremely unaware. And because we've become extremely unaware, then we don’t learn social skills because everyone else learns social skills via looking.

Right. We're kind of afraid to be aware, because when we're aware, we're super aware.

And it's physically painful.

It's physically, emotional – it's everything painful. It affects everything.

Yes, so the very active awareness is painful. Up until you're a fully developed human, then just in the past two years, I've started to become more and more aware just because I can handle it now.

Right.

So what that means is that up until someone's 22, 23, etc., when their brain starts to finally get there –

And with people with Asperger's, it might be a little bit later than that.

Yeah.

But up until that point, whenever that point is, they're gonna be constantly in defense mode.


Right.

Because the whole world is attacking them all the time.

Right, and so they put up all these barriers and these awareness filters, like what Danny said, and I've seen one of my friends with Asperger's almost get hit by a car because he just walks in front of the street without looking. He just puts up all these barriers and these filters. And I had to physically drag him out of the street so he wouldn't get hit by this car that clearly wasn't paying attention.

Yeah.

And so neither parties were paying attention.

So when you're trying to focus on this, the main thing is comfort. You want comfort and security, right? That's where we're getting at. You wanna do things that go toward comfort and security. Whenever you're doing anything with someone with Asperger's, ask yourself, "Will this give them more comfort and security?"

Now, obviously there are times when that's not possible. If they have some lung issue and they need to go to the hospital and they need to surgery, it's not gonna be that comfortable. They're not gonna feel that secure. Otherwise they're gonna die, so life happens sometimes. But for the most part, regardless of the other situations like surgery and things like that, for the most part you wanna have them be comfortable and secure. And that means in the home, in the house.

In their sanctuary.

In their sanctuary, in their place where they can get away. It needs to be 100 percent trust, 100 percent comfort, 100 percent security, meaning that they feel completely at ease and they can let down all of their barriers.

And tranquility to peace.

Yes. So half the battle was finding the balance between that nurturing and comforting versus the enabling piece, because it's great to nurture and comfort. And that's really what we're aiming here. But if you go toward enabling –

It's dangerous. Very dangerous, because then they become reliant on you. And they're eating fish sticks and cheese puffs in your basement for the rest of their lives and you don't want that. You don't want that. At that point, it's a burden and they're squandering their lives at that point. And you don't want that to happen.

Yeah, because what you've done is you've said, "Hey, I'm always gonna take care of you. It's all right to fail and do all that stuff because I'm always gonna be there for you."


Because I got your back.

Yeah.

Now you could still have their back while letting them do their own thing.

While letting them make mistakes and learn and do all that stuff.

Right.

If a toddler's about to touch a hot stove, instead of always pulling their hand away so that they never know what a hot stove, you let them touch the hot stove. They're going to learn very, very quickly, "This is hot. I probably shouldn't touch it."

Right.

Sometimes that pain is necessary for them to learn, but there's a difference between pain for learning, like, oh, I made a mistake in life. Now I need to learn from it. Like you put a pink sock in with all your white shirts when you're doing laundry versus always attacking them and adding to it and causing more and more stress. There's a difference there and the life lessons you want to keep. You want to keep them screwing up on their math test so that they learn and you not rescuing them so that they learn that they need to do better themselves next time.

Right. I've learned that the hard way. I'm terrible at math. Writing is my thing. Math is not, so when I used to screw up on math tests in high school, my mom would just be like, "Hayden, you've gotta do this on your own, dude."

Yeah.

"I'm gonna help you a little bit, but I'm not doing the entire assignment for you."

And that's the key balance point right here, exactly what Hayden said.

Right. Right. She would do two problems for me and then she would give me the pencil and make me do the same problems or the next two problems that are the same type of problem and see if I could do them. And if I couldn't do them, I had to keep trying until I got them.

Yeah.

I had to look back at what she said, but she wasn't gonna help me anymore after those two problems.

Yeah. She might explain it, but she's not gonna do it for you.

Right. She would go and cook or take care of my little brother or something. I


was pretty much left to do it on my own at that point. And it really helped because I actually got a little bit better at math. My skills aren't anything to speak home about, but you know.

So there are three main attackers that cause this huge amount of defense mode all the time that always kind of comes in and builds all these barriers in someone with Asperger's. And those are sensory attackers, overwhelm and –

Jerks.

So we need your help to defend against those attackers, because as someone with Asperger's, that's all we do. Every single action we take and every single action we do is to defend against those three, mainly.

Right.

And –

No matter inappropriate or socially unacceptable, it's all in defense.

Yeah, it's all in defense. So once you get someone out of defense, then they can do amazing things. I talked about this in a video that we did, but one of my favorite pieces of history is there's a little island called Crete in the Mediterranean Sea. I believe it's near Greece and on that island is what I think is one of the coolest cultures ever, the Minoans because these guys had plumbing 3,000 years before everyone else. And the reason that they were able to do that is because that island was situated in such a way that there were only two beaches, so they didn’t really have much to defend.

And because all their time was not spent in battle and preparing for battle and raising kids to go to battle and all the normal stuff like that, they had time to do stuff like build multistory buildings, create pottery, do athletics, things that weren't always defense. And because of that, they grew beyond everyone else until a volcano came and blew it all away. But you can't really help that part. But the idea is, is that they weren't always in defense, so they were able to be just in growth mode.

And flourish.

Yes, and flourish beyond. I mean it was 3,000 years before they had plumbing again. So if that shows you how important getting out of defense mode is, then I don't know what else would. So let's talk about the first main attacker here, sensory issues. Now, as I've said before, we're hyper aware, right? We have a huge amount of hyper awareness and sensation.

And each individual has an area that is just very overwhelming to them. For me, it was hearing. It was sound.


Yeah.

During fireworks shows, I would clap my hands to my ears and just start screaming, causing a huge scene. I'd drown out the fireworks sometimes, and that's exactly what I was trying to do, is drown out the fireworks. That's why I would start screaming. Now, the way to avoid this, obviously, do not take Hayden to fireworks shows. My parents learned that very quickly. Don't take Hayden to fireworks shows. Now, I can handle them now, but that's after years of loud noises and movies and so I adapted. But up until we – very recently, I couldn't stand fireworks shows because they overwhelm was so much.

Yeah, my think was and still is taste and smell. I cannot handle that at all. Do not open a can of sardines within 200 feet of me, ever, or I will just leave the room. I don't care if you're the president of the United States, you open a can of sardines. I'm gone. Or anything smelly like that.

But in addition to these things that we just can't do, there are things that we love and we process most of that through it. For me, that's audio. For me, that's sound. I'm a very good talker. I can listen and all that stuff, but I can't do two audio things at once, so if Hayden's trying to talk to me, I need to stop what I'm typing or something like that, and then listen to him or have him wait.

Right. Same thing for me and writing. I'm a very good writer and that's where I take pleasure in, so my writing is Danny's speaking, basically.

Yeah, so we have these modes of processing, and then we have that – or the sensory stuff that we love and then the sensory stuff that we hate. The reason why Hayden was screaming at the fireworks and you think, "Okay, well, isn't that just a loud noise too? Why is he making more loud noise if he can't have no loud noise?"

To drown out the loud noise that's bothering me.

Yeah, and the cool thing is, is that he could control his screaming. So it wasn't ever in a situation where he was too loud for him, because he can control it. He cannot control the fireworks, therefore he was trying to drown out the noise of him that he could control with the noise that he couldn't control.

The fireworks.

It was control, which is a basic need that we need met.

Yeah, and we'll talk about that a little bit later on, but it's totally one of those needs, and so what happens is because of all of this sensory stuff, it's very, "Whoa, way too much," especially early on in life. "Oh, ha."

There was just some things that I could not do, I still can't do. Sensory stuff is just the worst sometimes. Imagine if you were extremely hypersensitive to


everything. Lights gave you a headache and certain tastes were amplified 10X.

And smells made you gag.

Yeah, all the time, everywhere, not just the ones that normally make you gag. Every smell.

You would never go outside.

Yeah, and if you were forced to go outside, it would not be fun, and then therefore, hey, guess what you'd do? You would retreat into your own world and basically turn off your awareness so you didn't have to deal with all that stuff.

And you might end up like my friend, who almost got hit by a car.

Yeah, so the first way to deal with the sensory input is simply as Hayden said, remove Hayden from the fireworks show. For me, do not take Danny to the fish market.

Ever.

Yes. Simple things like that. Don't eat sardines around me, so if you see someone with Asperger's or your son or daughter or whoever, and they have a huge sensitivity to noise, probably taking them to a concert would not be a good idea.

Right. Well, you don’t have to worry about wondering what's bothering them. They'll let you know.

Yes.

Because it's the worst thing in the world. They might be quiet about everything else, but when it comes to a sensory problem, they will do everything they can to drown it out.

And that might not be, "Hey, mom, this is bugging me," but it might just be screaming at the top of their lungs, so some way or another, even if they're nonverbal, they will let you know.

Right.

You will see an immense fear of that thing, something like that. There will be some reaction that says, "Hey, this is what's going on," because behavior is really communication in some fashion.

Right, and we'll talk about that later.

Yeah, so the first thing is just remove the sensation, right? If Danny has a huge sensitivity to fish, don't take them to the fish market. And the next thing is


training in those filters for the long term.

To get to a point where you can go to concerts, you can go see movies, you can watch fireworks shows with your girlfriend on 4th of July.

Yeah.

That kind of thing.

So the way we do this and this is more long term and this is kind of after you get them out of defense mode.

This is a later thing, yeah.

This is a later thing. The first thing you wanna do is you wanna deal with the sensation. I couldn't have fluorescent lights. I love the CFL's with the little swirly bulb, but the light gives me a headache and it's really annoying. I like straight light bulbs because of that reason, so you might need to do little swaps like that, and those will have amazing, big impacts.

Right. Little things are big deals for us.

Yes. Anything audio, I need almost complete silence when I go to bed and I've gotten a lot better at that.

Right. When I come in late at night, it'll wake Danny. He'll go right back to sleep, but it'll wake him up because he's so sensitive.

Yeah.

We're roommates. I think I didn't clarify, but yeah, even if it's like 3 00 in the morning and I was out doing stuff with friends, he will wake up no matter what time of day – what time of night it is. He'll fall back asleep, but that's the complete silence that he needs.

Yes, so when you're training in filters for the long term, what you wanna do is give them complete control of the situation. So Temple Grandin explains it like, okay, the kid's afraid of the fire alarm. You put the fire alarm in 10 blankets and have it go off. Then you let him decide when it turns off. And then you remove a blanket and then do it again and let him be in complete control.

And Danny gave a good example where whenever his parents would cook fish or something, they would let him know that they're cooking fish and say, "You might wanna go in the other room for a little bit."

Yes.

They were letting him know what they were doing so that he could go in the other room and get away from it.


Yes.

Because he's very sensitive to that kind of thing.

Yeah. Now eventually I've stayed in the room just because what happens is the more you expose yourself to a sensation, the less strong it becomes.

Right. A couple of months ago I cooked crab in the kitchen and he was fine.

Yeah. I was watching TV ten feet away.

Yeah. He was fine. I was really impressed.

So what that means though is that it's kind of like when you go into a really bright, sunny day and then you walk into a really dark room. Your eyes take a moment to adjust.

Right.

It's the same type of thing. Eventually we will adjust, but we need to build in those filters when everyone else already has them. And that's just repetition from the sensation, in complete control of them. So that's sensory. The next attacker here is overwhelming.

Which is usually a result of sensory.

Yeah. And I mean a few other things, but sensory is the main component there.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah, like Danny said, there are several different things that can cause overwhelm, but sensory is the head honcho.

So what we can do when it's not sensory stuff, when it's just overwhelm – I have too much to do, there's stress – is chunk things. And what I mean by chunk things is change the size of the information. So if your son has math homework to do and they have English homework to do and they have history homework to do, they might be thinking, "Oh, my god. I have to do these 27 problems of math. And I have to write these 200, 350 words for the English thing and read these 8 pages for history."

That sounds like a lot. And if you change the size of the information, it just means I have to do English, history, math. And that doesn't sound like a lot at all. That just sounds like I have to do English, history, and math. So if you frame it differently, then that helps.

Now, sometimes we'll be like, "Well, it's still there. It's just hiding." And what you can do in that case is just focus on the one thing at a time. Instead of focusing on English, history, and math, you focus on five math problems. That's all you have to do right now. You do the five math problems, go onto the next


five math problems.

That's what I needed. I needed five or ten at a time.

Yeah.

And if you told me that I had English homework afterwards, you can forget me doing homework that evening.

Yes.

You know, I'll go and watch TV. I don’t care what anyone would say at that point. I would be overwhelmed.

Yeah, so one thing at a time if you need to go there, and that really helps with the overwhelm. Now, another thing that helps is just giving time to decompress, because again, school plus dealing with social situations, plus sensory stuff, plus school cafeterias, plus all sorts of other fun equals stress and that means we need time to just chill.

I need that. I need at least an hour and a half.

Yeah.

Of time to go in my room and listen to music after school every day or else I won't function very well. I just need time to either go watch a movie. I just bought some new movies. Or listen to music, read a book, write, whatever I like to do that's my calm time.

Yes. We need it. We definitely needed the calm time. For me, my calm time – funny story – came in the bathroom every day when I got home. Even if I didn't have to go to the bathroom, I'd go to the bathroom and I would just sit there and read a book for 30 minutes or 40 minutes. Then my leg would fall asleep and then I'd come out. But that was my alone time, because no one's gonna disturb you if you're in the bathroom.

That's pretty sound logic.

Yeah. I know, right? So that was me just ... okay, I need time. Don't bug me. Don't do anything. I'll come back to you in an hour.

Right.

And we need that time every single day and if we don't get it, then things do not end well.

Right.

Let's just put it that way. That's why I love going on cruises and all that stuff,


because it's about relaxation.

That's the whole idea behind the cruise.

Yes.

Is relaxation, vacation. Don't do anything stressful. Enjoy seven days on the ocean, going to islands, and living it up.

Yes. For me, vacation, although my parents have a huge, different idea of this. Vacation does not mean go run around, be crazy, go on hikes, go to museums, go tour and do all this crazy stuff all day. Vacation means I can do some of that and that's cool. Like one thing a day, but for the most part of the day, I just wanna sit in a chair and just relax and go explore and eat good food and stuff. So decompression time, very, very helpful and very, very needed.

Right.

So sometimes we just get way too much overwhelm, way too much sensory input. And that equals a meltdown. And when that happens, first of all, just let it run its course. If they're in the middle of a grocery store, if they're in the middle of Trader Joe's, or Walmart, or something like that, take them out. Put them in the car. Go home.

Immediately.

Yeah. Now, what you want to do there is they're having a meltdown because they're overwhelmed with something that's either some smells, some sight, the lights, something.

Right. They might hate the salmon special in the corner, or they might hate the smell of the bakery, or the lights might be weird, like Danny said.

Yeah.

You just don’t know at that time, so just get them out of there as soon as possible.

And the logic has gone out the window at that point. In our mind, it's survive. Get out. We're in animal instinct mode.

Fight and flight, yeah.

Yes. So first of all, you wanna remove what's going on and get them back to the sanctuary, AKA home, and then what you want to do is then just let them calm down. Once they are calm, then you can talk about it. Then you can use the communication strategies we're about to give you.

Right. Don't scream at them and say, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" That


will not help.

Yeah.

They will just scream to drown out your talking.

Yes.

So don't ask them what's wrong when they're in the middle of screaming and thrashing.

The idea is to get them away from the current situation because – get them away from the environment that is causing them to scream and thrash and then they'll calm down. Then you can talk to them. Then you can figure out how to deal with this in the future so it doesn't happen.

Right, but when they're having a meltdown, your number one priority is to get them the hell out of there.

Yeah, to put it nicely.

Right.

So the third attacker is jerks, and these are just people who are not so nice. We could've called this a bunch of other names, but really, these people – I mean bullies are there because they feel so bad about themselves that they try and pull everyone else down.

Right.

This includes teachers, by the way. A lot of teachers are bullies.

Oh, yeah. I went through it too.

Yeah. I mean I've had a few not so nice teachers that should never touch a child ever again. So when you can't really deal with the jerks themselves because they're just gonna be there. You can't control other people.

You deal with your response to the jerks.

Yeah, and the way you do that is eventually if you know – speaking as someone that has Asperger's, if you know that you are good enough and you're a certain way, then what people tell you is now a blatant lie, and you can go, "No, it isn't." They say, "You're stupid." "No, I'm not. I know I'm smart, so you obviously feel bad about yourself. I'm sorry for you. Go away."

Right. Once you get to a point where you can disprove them in your own mind, what they are saying to you has no validity whatsoever and you just brush them off like an annoying fly.


Yeah. So the way you get people with Asperger's to that point is by having the majority of the talk be encouragement, because the reason that they think the way they do and they think they're not good enough and they think all that stuff –

People tell them.

Is because people tell them that the majority of the time.

Right.

So –

Oh, the encouragement to discouragement ratio is very uneven.

Yes, so what you need to do is flip flop that. Encouragement needs to be more than discouragement, and that does not mean good job. That is not encouragement. That is you're trying to do it and not do it well. We see that. We have a good BS meter. We see that immediately, and that honestly just hurts us more because you don't genuinely put in the time. You're just like, "Good job." It's like, "Yeah, okay. You really don't care."

And on top of that, we don't know what you're saying, "Good job," to. You could have said, "Good job," to us calling a bigger person fat.

Yeah.

We don't know that.

So you need to be specific in your praise.

Right.

Don't say, "Good job." You say, "Hey, good job going up to that person and saying hi to them."

Right, and if you wanna constructively criticize them using an addition instead of a replace, so say, "And next time."

Yes. So you don't go, "Okay, that was bad. Do this instead." You go, "That was good. Do this as well."

Right.

And what that does is that still builds their self-esteem while course correcting them because they might have gone up to a fat person and said, "Hi. You're fat." You're going, "Hey. You did a really good job going up to that person and saying hi. And next time, try not calling them fat."

Right.


Instead of, "Don't do that. Why are you always ruining blah, blah, blah?"

Because their defensives come right back up.

Yeah. The cool thing is, is that all those defenses that we've been talking about can be turned off in an instant. They can also be turned on in an instant.

They're always at the ready.

Yeah.

Is the thing. We always have them there, so if you are encouraging us in doing a good job, but then you digress and go back to something else, to the negative way of teaching us, our defenses will come back up. And you're back at square one.

Yeah, definitely. So that really covers getting them out of defense mode. This is your foundation. This is your base. Do not skip over this.

This is so important. Please. We can't stress this enough.

I mean this is literally why we spent pretty much 45 minutes talking about this thing is because it is the most important.

(Music)

Barrier number two, understanding how our mind works. How does the Asperger's mind work in there? What goes on inside of our minds?

I actually think it's fascinating because it's so different, but we're trying to fill the same needs kind of thing. It's amazing, I think.

Yeah, definitely, so we're very black and white in our thinking.

No grey area. It's either this way or this way and there's no in between.

Yeah.

You try to tell us there's in between, we won't believe you.

Which is why people with Asperger's generally do not lie a lot, because lying is bad. Okay, we won't lie. Oh, wait. No, never mind. I didn't mean go up to the fat person and tell them, "You should lose weight," or whatever.

I use that example a lot, but it's you either lie or you don't lie. We don't get to have this some of the time in anything. We need to know, okay, when some of the time is it, and if you can't explain that, then we're just gonna go back to either do or don't do.


Right. Because we'll overthink it. We always do.

Yep, that we're the over thinkers. It needs to be logical. Think about programming it into a computer. If you need to tell a computer when to lie and when to not lie or when to do this and when to not do this, if you can't give it if/then instructions, like if this happens, do this, and they can't be super clear, then we won't understand it.

Right, and you probably should mention the situational things. You should just say – frame it in a way that's either this or this.

Yeah, unless you can mention the situation specifically.

Right.

So we're also very logical in our thinking. What happens is because we spend all of our time in our own mind, we think a lot more than other people.

A lot more about things that might seem trivial to other people.

Yeah.

Right now, I'm looking at Danny's red shirt and asking myself how the light is reflecting off the shirt and everything like that.

Yes, so we are always contemplating crazy things like that, so it seems to me like we're ahead in that area, you know? We do a lot more thinking than other people.

Right, but it evens out because we're behind in other areas.

We're behind in the social and emotional skills.

Right.

So what happens is this very lopsided thing and you can't push down the logic. You can't dumb it down. You need to bring the social and emotional up to the level of the logic.

Because then if you bring it up to the level of the logic, think about how amazing that is. Our levels of logic are incredibly high.

Yeah.

If you bring the social and emotional skills up there, you're unstoppable.

Yeah. That's pretty much whatever you wanna do in the world. Cool. Done. So when we're learning, right? Most people learn by watch me. Okay, now you do it. Doesn't work with us.


Right.

There's a specific system in the brain called the mirror system and the mirror neuron system controls you looking at something and then being able to do it. That's why you can feel the same emotions that other people feel and that's why when you're watching America's Funniest Home Videos and someone crashes on a skateboard, you go, "Ooh, that hurt," because you can know what that feels like.

Me, I go, "That was stupid. The guy shouldn't have been on the skateboard," and it's all very logical. I don't think "Oh, I feel sorry for him. He's hurt." I'm just like, "Why did he do that? Didn't he think about how that would turn out?"

Yeah.

So our mirror system doesn't work and because of that, we cannot learn as well through watch me now, you do. Monkey see, monkey do.

We have a cracked mirror system, basically.

Yeah, so what we need to do instead is learn through logic and learn through example.

Logical examples.

Think about it like you're teaching a computer how to do something. You can't just say, "Watch me, and now you do it." If you're teaching a robot how to do laundry, and we aren't robots, by the way. I'm just using this as an example. We have all the emotions and I've heard people say, "People with Asperger's don't have imagination or emotions." What? What?

Yeah.

I have no idea where they got that from. We have every single emotion. We might not express it. We might not identify it as such, but they're all there.

A lot of times we have the emotions, but they're, you know – what we show is the logic and the stiffness.

Yeah, we show the Spock.

Right. Bring on the Spock.

So you kinda need to explain it. Do this, then do this, then do this, and one step at a time sometimes because otherwise, you know, the overwhelm comes into play. But the goal in all of this is to have us not focused on survival, because if you do the barrier one, get him out of defense mode, and you understand that we need very step by step logical instruction, which we're gonna talk a lot about in a


communication piece here, about how to say that, then you can teach something very effectively. And we can understand it effectively.

That's why I was so always good with computers. There's no questioning with computers. There's no misunderstanding. If you click here, this happens.

It's all very logical, very analytical, very precise.

Yes.

And that's how we think.

Yes.

We are very much – we're not computers, but a lot of times we function like them.

Yeah, whereas, it's very, okay, this is what's gonna happen, and that means that this is gonna happen.

Right.

And that's based on the programs that we run in our mind, right? We might be running if/then, or we might be running just, oh, well, this happens, then this might happen. And sometimes it's way off. We have rules for things. The cup in the dishwasher must always be placed down and if it isn't, then I'm going to freak out. There are all these little things that it's just our operating programs for our mind.

Right, and if something doesn't go the way we think it should go, if it doesn't fit our rules in any way, we freak out.

And that's where anger comes into play, because anger means that our rules are broken, whatever they may be.

Right. Whatever we wanted done or to happen wasn't met.

Yeah. So what is, wasn't.

Right.

And our rules are based on our examples. We see something. We think that's how it should be.

Right.

So if you wanna change some of the rules and therefore change what they get angry about and therefore change how they perceive the world, you need to change what they see in their examples of the world and how they experience


things. So they need to experience a wide variety of different examples, proving that, hey, this is really the case and this is not the case.

Right, and to also show them that there are multiple things that can happen from one situation. If you just say one example of one situation, they think that's the only thing that can happen.

Yeah, and then they extrapolate that to all situations.

Right. Immediately.

Yeah, immediately, so you need to get very specific examples in a lot of different areas for us to get it, so to speak, so let's talk about behavior here for a second here, since we're talking about understanding how our mind works. So it's helpful to understand how our behavior works because that really dictates what we do and what we do drives our life, because you know, what you do dictates really how your life turns out. Um, so what we call this is we call this behavior balancing, because all these behaviors are to get to a certain need, just like you need vitamin D and you need calcium, and you need all this different stuff. We need different psychological needs. Everyone on the planet needs them, not just us.

But us especially need these things and those are comfort and security, worth, social interaction, and control. And it's mainly the control, which is where the defense mode comes into play, and that's what we're talking about is mainly we just need to be in control because that's how we feel like we're safe and secure. But the other ones, and comfort and security obviously is a giant portion as well, but the other two, worth and social interaction, those have a huge part to play as well, because why we call it balancing is because each of these needs a certain amount. You need a certain amount of control, otherwise you feel like you're out of control or a control freak.

So you need the right amount of control. By the way, there are three times of control. There's you having all the control and the person with Asperger's having none of it, like you going to school. There's no question about it.

Right.

Then there's multiple choice. Do you want chicken or do you want beef for dinner? And then they get half the control in this case. And then there's them getting all the control. Hey, what do you wanna do for the weekend? So you mix these three types of control to give them the right amount of control so that they do not feel out of control or a control freak.

Yeah, and then there's some variety in their control too.

Yeah.


Yeah.

Exactly, so let's go to the next one. Social interaction. When we're talking about social interaction that just means that they need a certain amount of talking to other humans.

Right. It's a basic human need to want to talk to others. There's a form of torture actually that they use in wars and stuff where they would just put you in solitary confinement. And you would go crazy.

Yeah.

For weeks and months, because you needed that. It's a basic human need, is social interaction.

So it's a little bit harder when someone doesn't know how to do social interaction and they don't know social skills. So what ends up happening is weird, awkward talks with strangers, or going out to people, or in extreme cases, hey, look at me. I need to be worth something, right? I just need social interaction. They all kind of wrap around each other a little bit.

Right. It's all intertwined.

Yeah, so the way to give a good amount of social interaction, and we're gonna talk about this when we're talking about social skills here, a lot more, is to just get them in groups that have similar interests. Again, we'll talk about that a lot in the social skills section.

I joined a poetry club in high school because I liked to write and I had never really tried poetry before, but I assumed that poets were writers and that they were likeminded. So I joined the group and I actually made a lot of friends.

I did not know that.

So it was actually a lot of fun and I still have some old poems from that group.

Yeah? I joined a website making club in my junior high school, and we made the school's website, which is now since gone. They've redone it and all that stuff, but anyway, so the next one is worth. And what that means is just I need to feel like I matter. I need to feel like I am worth something. That's where encouragement comes into play. If I don’t feel like I have enough worth, then what that means is that I feel unworthy. I feel like I'm not good enough.

Right.

If you feel like you have too much worth, that's when the ego comes into play, and suddenly I'm better than everyone.


Right, and I met people like that where there's a complete imbalance in the whole worth department.

So once you get more confident and just feeling good about themselves, which, by the way, is what our program life propulsion does the majority of the time. That's when the worth starts to balance itself and then comfort and security. They just need a good amount of comfort and security. Too much, they're enabled. Too little, they're freaked out and in defense mode.

Right.

So if you follow what we talk about in the getting them out of defense mode section, then that should help a lot.

Right.

So disobedience and all that bad behavior is their attempt to rebalance their needs. That's all it is, is they're trying to get a certain amount of attention, connection, worth, social interaction, control, etc.

Right. Their needs is a scale and the scale is tipped a little too much.

Yeah.

And they're trying to either take away or add just enough so that it's back on track.

Yeah, and that's where stims come into play. That’s where those repetitive movements come into play, because that's a sense of trying to feel control and security, because if you do it over and over, you're in complete control of it. And then you just get the right amount and you stop. It's mostly unconscious. They don't think oh, my control's unbalanced. I need to rebalance my control. Hold on. Let me rock. It just happens unconsciously, but just be aware, that's why it happens.

Right.

So to change any behavior, you just need to fill their needs with another activity that isn't the bad behavior. Like if they scream all the time in an attempt to get attention, if you take them to a social skills club, or a club with similar interest people –

They'll get attention.

They'll get attention. Suddenly they're not gonna scream anymore.

Because chances are whatever they're interested in, they're pretty good at.

Yeah.


And so they'll get the attention in that club, like in my poetry club that I joined, I got a lot of attention because I actually turned out to be really good.

Yeah.

And so that's how that need was met.

So once you start to look at what needs are not being met, what needs do I need to meet, and for the person with Asperger's, and you start to meet those, then all sorts of things dissolve themselves. And you don't need to work on them having all sorts of strange rules for control and always needing to hold the remote or something like that because they have enough control. They don't wanna do it anymore.

Right.

(Music)

Barrier number three, communicating in a way that we understand. See, there's a big difference between communicating to people with Asperger's and just communicating. We're in our mind a lot of the time. We have that logic thing going on that we just discussed, so what you need to do is use what we call CLP, complete logical path. Basically means explain why. We were talking about programming the computer and stuff like that. What you need to do is you need to explain each step and why. We have so much going in daily that we are not gonna do something new unless you give us a good reason to.

Right, so if you tell us to brush our teeth, say, "Hey, Hayden, go brush your teeth so that you don't get plaque, so that girls wanna talk to you, and so that you can maybe have a relationship in the future." And for some people that might not be too important, so adjust your complete logical path to meet their priorities.

Yeah, to meet what they feel is important.

Right.

Not what you feel is important. What they feel is important.

Right, because what you feel is important doesn't affect them at all.

Yeah, so beyond that and explaining why things are. And explaining the logic behind things. And here's why you need to do this. The next thing that I would say is the biggest is encouragement.

Right. We've kind of explained this a little bit, but encouragement is basically what gets us going, what keeps us going, what keeps us motivated.

Yeah.


What really makes us go, what really galvanizes us into action?

Yeah, and the more you encourage, the better we'll be, so encourage a lot. Make sure you aren't moving into enabling territory.

Right.

So we need lots of examples in life, and we've kind of talked about this a little bit before because we extrapolate the rules for living from those examples. So like we were talking about in the understanding section, it's very important that you give us a wide variety of examples and a wide variety of situations. So explain things. Well, this person's doing this because this is happening right now.

Right.

And explain what's going on because they might not get the whole picture. They can only see what's in front of them. If there's some stuff they need to infer, you might need to tell them and show them first and then they will be able to infer.

Right, and don't ever assume that they know what you're talking about.

Yeah.

Because oftentimes they probably don't.

But at the same time, don’t talk like –

Don't talk down to them.

Yeah, don’t talk like they don’t know what you're talking about because –

They'll pick up on it.

Yeah. They'll pick up on that really easily. We pick up on that stuff really easily. I mean we're intelligent intellectuals, so if you start talking down, it's like, "Okay, I'm not five. Thank you very much."

Yeah.

Or even when I was five, I got mad at people for doing that.

Yeah. Not three.

Yeah, I know, right? We said most of this before, but no yelling, calm tone of voice. That goes back to getting them out of defense mode and getting people with Asperger's out of defense mode, because if you yell and you don't have a calm tone of voice, we're right back into defense mode.


Right.

The defenses go up again. Do not yell.

Right back to square one. Then you've gotta deal with everything else before that.

Yeah, so when you're trying to do some encouragement or something, even criticism. The and instead of a replace, smile. It's not that hard.

Look them in the eyes and smile.

We pick up on that one, as long as it's not a creepy joker smile, like I'm gonna kill you in your sleep.

Yeah.

But if it's a legitimate smile, like, hey, I'm here for you, we'll pick up on that.

And that's gonna flood us with confidence and with positivity and we're actually gonna want to do what you say.

Yeah, so dependent on the child, we've said this again before, but with instructions. You're gonna be super specific. Give one set of instructions at a time, so go clean your room. Okay, what does that exactly mean? Clean up the clothes from the ground. Make your bed. Clean the trash from the table.

Be very specific.

Yeah, the more specific, the better. Again, think of it like you're trying to program a robot to do this task.

Right.

We are not robots by any means.

Right.

I'm not insinuating that we are robotic. All I'm saying is that you need to think about in the same way when programming tasks type of thing. So you do one thing at a time and be very specific in what you want them to do. Then we start to implement what you taught us, remember? That's after you get out of defense mode and all that stuff. Then we start to implement, because you're giving clear, precise instruction.

Right. The implementation comes only after everything else.

Yes, totally. The reason why we implement is because you're giving that clear, precise instruction with the reasons why. They're explaining why. That's why


the CLP comes into play.

So logically, moving forward is the only way to go at that point.

Yeah.

And it makes sense to us, so we do it.

Right.

And then it's really as simple as that. Now, sometimes you have a hard time getting attention with people with Asperger's. See, when you use pre-frames and attention getters. Attention getters are just things like, "Hey, John. I have something to tell you."

He'll perk up immediately.

Yeah. If you're that direct, "Hey, I have something to tell you." "Okay, what is it?" Or, "Hey, I have something important to tell you," or, "Hey, I need you to listen right now."

You've got them at that point.

Yeah. Tell them what you need. And a pre-frame is just a way to kind of frame the information so that it's not necessarily this isn't gonna be anything bad. This isn't gonna be this. This isn't gonna be this. I just wanna talk.

Right. So that their defenses don't go back up.

Yeah, so you might need to use those in addition to CLP to really get through to someone with Asperger's and to initiate the conversation.

Right.

Now, let's talk about motivation for a second, because that kind of falls under communication. You need to communicate to people to motivate them.

Right.

So when you're motivating someone with Asperger's, you wanna – just with CLP, you wanna kinda find out what they're already interested in and then you build from there. See, you wanna create big and clear reasons.

Right, like with the poetry example.

Yeah.

The poetry club or the computer club.


Yes.

From earlier. It got us motivated to talk to people because we were doing something that we liked doing.

Yes. That's the key, when you base as much as you can off of doing something you like doing. In high school, my physics teacher, awesome guy. I still keep in contact with him, but I had failed a physics test or done really poorly. I forget exactly what happened, but he remade the physics test in the style of World of Warcraft because that's what I was into at the time. And because of that, I was more motivated to study, and I did really well because that's already what I was interested in.

That's actually amazing.

I know, right? I love that guy, but the reason that worked is because he used something that I already liked at the time, World of Warcraft, and then applied it to something that I didn't so much like, physics tests. And suddenly I was more motivated to do the physics test.

Right. So you can apply not so cool things with cool things and all of a sudden they'll do it.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Now, big and clear reasons, they motivate. The little, puny reasons don't. Make them big. Make them clear.

Make them specific and it actually helps if you have someone with Asperger's do this themselves, so instead of giving them the reasons, you ask them questions. So turn your statements into questions and then what that causes them to do is that causes them to come to their own conclusions. The same one you want them to come to, but it causes them to come to it on their own, and because they come to their own conclusion on their own, there's zero defense barriers.

Right. And they also get a kind of control from that.

Yeah.

From getting it solely on their own and maybe some confidence too.

Totally, so motivation really works just kind of – the way that we are motivated to do one thing over another, like smoke or not smoke, or eat or not eat, let's say. You're on the couch, watching a TV show. The way that you're gonna decide if you need to get up and go to the sink and get some water is your reasons. Right now you're gonna have more reasons to stay and watch your TV show because it's a really cool part. But as soon as the commercial hits, you have no reasons to stay there and you have more reasons to leave, so you're gonna go up and you're gonna get some water. Whatever we have more reasons to, we're gonna do, and that's what we're motivated towards. So if you manipulate that, then you can


really get someone motivated to do anything by building on what they already like.

Right.

(Music)

Let's talk about barrier four now, teaching life skills. So at this point, we've gotten them out of defense mode. You understand how the Asperger's mind works and you understand some simple communication strategies that you can use to talk to people with Asperger's that make sense.

Right, and at this point, you probably started leveling with them. You probably started communicating with them in an effective way that's conducive to their growth.

Totally, so there's a few life skills that we're gonna talk about here, mainly anxiety and social skills, because those are the big ones.

But we're gonna talk about a few little things as well and then you can kind of extrapolate from there if you wanna teach them how to do laundry. We don't really need to go into that or anything like that. You just use the same skills and apply it to laundry, or cooking, or whatever it may be, making friends, whatever. So we're talking about anxiety. We are always in survival mode.

I've said this 10,000 times. We get a lot of anxiety because we're always worrying about, oh, my god. Is this sensation gonna happen? Oh, my god. Is this person not gonna like me? Oh, my god. Am I gonna be overwhelmed?

We assign worst case scenarios to everyday situations and it affects everything. We shirk our daily responsibilities and we just give up because we're afraid to do anything because the anxiety is always there and it manifests itself in the cruelest and most unpredictable ways.

Yeah, so what happens with anxiety is that a lot of the times we think, "Oh, my god, what happens? This is gonna be horrible." I was talking to a client the other day and he said, "I'm really anxious about," well, I'm paraphrasing here, but he said, "I'm really anxious about going to my new school's cafeteria room, because it's gonna be really loud."

And then he started to freak out and go, "Oh, my god. It's gonna be really loud. I can't handle it. Yadda, yadda. What if it's gonna be really loud?"

And that's where the anxiety stemmed from. Now, the way to get rid of all that anxiety and the way to cure the anxiety is just go, "Okay, well, what if?" Literally, you ask the question. Now answer the question. What if the schoolroom is really loud?


So I asked him. He was like, "Oh, my god. What if the school room is really loud?" I'm like, "What if it is?" He goes, "Well, then I put on my headphones." "And then what?" "Then it wouldn't be loud anymore." "Okay."

Case closed.

So if it's really loud, you're putting on your headphones and it won't be loud anymore, therefore you know the answer to your question. There's no more anxiety.

Right.

Anxiety, is an issue because we don't know how things are gonna turn out and how they're gonna play out.

Right.

And because of that, we freak out, but once we go through and go, "Okay, well, really here's the worst that can happen." And I don't like using the question, "What's the worst that's gonna happen?" Because if you're in anxiety, you can go, "Oh, my god. I'm gonna die," or something, but if you answer your questions that you're asking because of anxiety –

Right. So the what if approach instead of what's the worst that can happen approach.

Yeah.

And then instead of saying, "What if the lunchroom is really loud," you can change it into a positive and say, "What if the lunchroom is actually really quiet?"

Yeah, because most likely what happens is we tend to overestimate our experiences. There's a part of the brain in the prefrontal cortex, I believe, right near your forehead, that is responsible for experience simulating, meaning thinking about how things are gonna be before they are. And it tends to do too good of a job, meaning that we overestimate things a lot.

Everything. Yeah.

Yeah, so it's hardly ever the intensity we think it's going to be.

Right.

And because of that, we can go, "Okay, well, what if I go here and then I get a shot and it really hurts?" Well, what if you get a shot and it really hurts? Well, people don't answer the question and that's why they get stuck in this anxiety loop.


Right. Because there's an unknown with it. If you take away the unknown and make it known, then there's no anxiety. It explodes.

Yeah. It literally doesn't exist anymore, so in this case, what if you get a shot? Well, then it would hurt for a few seconds and then what? It wouldn't hurt. Okay.

And it's over.

So that's it and then what happens is then I find when I do this to myself and when we do this with our clients is that we get a lot more energy, because anxiety takes a lot of energy to keep worrying about that.

Right. It drains you. Oh, yeah. There were days in high school and even in college. Even now, I get really anxious and it drains me. I go in and take three hour naps in the middle of the day, which is not like me, but when I get really anxious, it's the defense I've put up to avoid.

Yeah, and once you start to answer your own questions about anxiety, then suddenly there isn’t anymore. So beyond just answering questions and anxiety, there's two more things. Should I really be spending my energy worrying about this? That's another question that we get asked, because once you rationalize it out and go, "Okay, really here's what's gonna happen. I'm just gonna put on my headphones and everything is gonna be good. Should I really be spending my energy worrying about this? No. Okay, so I won't." Then the next question, and this is something that goes a lot deeper into anxiety is what outcome am I trying to get by worrying, because you're worrying for something, right? You're worrying because you don't want this to happen.

Your mind's trying to meet a need.

Yeah, so in the case of the lunchroom, I'm worrying because I want safety, so if I just got safety in other ways, then I wouldn't need to worry.

Right.

And that's just another approach we take to it. Now what you can do as the parent, teacher, mentor, therapist, guide, is do what we call pattern interrupt or pattern breaking. That's just interrupting that vicious cycle of anxiety thoughts by interjecting a totally different thought in there.

Like what's your favorite color.

Yeah. Do you like cantaloupe? The more ridiculous, the better.

Because it'll get their attention and they're like, "Wait, what?" And then their anxiety implodes. It's gone.


Yeah, like what does the grape Skittle taste like to you? If you ask that when they're freaking out about something and it's just like, "Wait. Huh? Why would you ask that?" That causes them to stop, get out of their anxiety loop, and then go in and think about your question for a few seconds.

Because they do that, they're no longer in an anxiety loop and then they're good. So that's really what we like to do with anxiety besides simple breathing patterns, just breathe in, breathe out. But that's a little bit more advanced and that's more for people with Asperger's than for parents and teachers and therapists and such.

Right.

So let's talk about social skills.

This is a big one.

We're finally here. We're finally talking about the social skills. Anyway, the number one thing that you need to know when dealing with social skills and actually teaching someone with Asperger's how to communicate to the world is it's mainly a confidence game. Because if you get someone confident and motivated enough, they can do anything in a day.

Right.

Well, most things in a day.

Their work is cut out for them if they're confident.

Yeah. If they're confident, then –

They're determined.

It's easy.

Right.

So the way you get them confident, go back to when we were talking about specific, positive praise and encouragement. That's how you get them confident. A light should be coming on right here. "Oh, that's why they're talking about encouragement so much." Because if you get them confident and you encourage them, then suddenly –

They do stuff.

And they aren't scared to. And they'll try new things and they'll fail. And then they'll get back up on their feet and they'll do it again.

As long as you keep a steady flow of that encouragement and those additions


instead of replaces and stuff like that.

Yeah, so what I did to learn social skills, and I'm sure Hayden did a variety of this, is practicing with peer groups that have similar interests. For me, it was online. I actually practiced my social skills early in life online in the online roleplaying game. Perfect opportunity, because if you screw up, you can delete your account, create a new one. Suddenly you're a new person. No one knows who you are. And because of that, now you can try again without the fear of rejection or anything like that.

Right, and when I was really little, I loved to play outside. I loved to play outside. I would run around and get cut up by glass and stuff. I loved the act of being outside, and so I met up with kids who liked being outside and who liked playing ball, who liked exploring cool, forbidden areas of the neighborhood like there was something magical about it. And these people who agreed with me, I ended up being very close to. So practice with peer groups that share your interests.

Yeah, especially like computer nerds and that stuff, which is where I mainly hang out.

Yeah, it's a very focused niche.

Because then they don't care what you do. They aren't scared if you're different, because they're different. They're the weird kids playing outside and eating frogs and playing in the mud and stuff. Probably not eating frogs.

Catching frogs, yeah.

Yeah. Catching frogs. They're the weird kids working on the school website during lunch. So they're already the nerdy, weird ones.

To other people.

Yeah, but not to them, so if you go hang out with – if someone with Asperger's goes and hangs out with people that are like them, then it doesn’t matter. They're friends because they have a shared interest already. Now, beyond practicing with safe peer groups like that, and by the way, you can go on places like meetup.com or just do a simple Google search for groups that have all sorts of them and Meetup has everything from hiking to – I saw one group that was everyone bring their corgi to the park and we'll all hang out for an hour to so.

There was 30 corgi dogs in the park, hanging out. So meetup.com has a ton of resources for groups. It's mainly adult, but there are some parent/kid groups as well. So beyond that peer group stuff, getting the awareness up is amazing for social skills because then they learn social skills like everyone else, through just watching and then doing. Normally, we don't, but it works to a certain degree. I started to pick up hand gestures. Now I gesture with all my hands all over the


place just because I started to watch other people do it.

Right. Once the awareness is up, they're at the level that everyone else is at and they can learn as quickly as other people can.

Yeah, totally, so the way that I built the skill of awareness, because we think everything is a skill. The way that I built this skill of awareness is simple. Notice something new every day. That does not mean a person or something that constantly changes. Notice something new every day that doesn't change.

Like a billboard.

Yeah, or something in your room. If the person with Asperger's, if their bedroom doesn’t change much, which it probably doesn't because they like routine, notice something new. Sometimes I do this with music I'm listening to. I'll listen to a song for the 30th time and hear some bass in the background that I haven't heard before.

Right.

Or when I'm on the train going somewhere and we have a light rail train here, I'll notice something new in the background that I didn't notice before.

Right. Maybe an extra ridge to a mountain or something that you thought you looked at closely before.

Yeah.

Or an extra building. There's this awesome, cool cathedral place out by where we live. I didn't even notice it until three months ago and we've lived here for a year. It's pretty prominent too. It just shows how unaware I am, but yeah, I noticed it one day and I was like, "Whoa, Danny. Do you see that?" He's like, "Yeah. Hey, I've known about that since last year."

So once you start to do the notice something new, just one thing. It takes about a second to do. At first it's hard because you're looking around going, "Okay, I'll look on the ceiling. Look on the floor. Look for something new," but what that does is it trains your brain to start to notice things and start to become more aware.

Then you'll start to notice something new with people, with social interactions, with talking, with the jock going up to the cheerleader.

With what you've just said to insult someone and didn't mean to.

Right.

And that’s where the key is, because once you start to get this awareness, then


everything becomes easier. And it takes about 30 days to build this skill and make it a habit. So just start and one thing a day. Notice something new. Now as far as what to actually teach regarding social skills, we learned social skills through a combination of observation and analysis.

Like I would literally go out and go, "Okay, why are these people doing this? Okay, when do I do this? And how can I change this?"

Then I started to kind of look at some books and start with the small winds. So what I mean by that is instead of trying to learn all the social skills, just go up and talk to someone. Have a great initial conversation. I can now talk to people and make small talk just fine. Work on that.

That's a small win.

Yeah.

Some people have to do that for a long time, but for some people, that doesn’t come as easily, and when they achieve it, it's kind of a cool thing.

And then you build bigger and bigger wins on top of that.

Right.

So then you eventually have a conversation with someone.

Right, and your perceived potential goes up too exponentially.

Yeah.

And you think you can do more, so you try more.

Yes, and then you try more and then you get more results. Then you think you can do more. By the way, this is called the confidence triangle, which we teach in life propulsion. That's where I'd start, is just initial conversations, going up to talk to people with some of our clients.

We were saying, "Okay, they're having a bunch of anxiety. New school year, all that stuff, so just go up and say hi to one person. Here's exactly what to say." Come to find out that he's talked to 20 people and now has a new friend group, because once you start with something, it's very easy to continue with it.

Right.

That's why with parents that are struggling to get their kids to watch life propulsion or anything else, we just – hey, have them commit to watching ten minutes. Now, what happens is 95 percent of the time they watch more than 10 minutes because they've already committed to it.


Right, because the ten minutes is a small commitment and then it becomes a bigger thing.

Yeah, because they don't need to commit to the hour of watching it, but they commit to the ten minutes, they're already doing it. It is easier to continue than to stop and do something else.

Right.

So just as an example, you can apply that to a whole bunch of different areas. Now, there's a few good books to read on social skills I like. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie and the other one is How to Talk to Anyone. I do not know the author of that one, but if you google How to Talk to Anyone on Amazon, or actually if you google it or look it up on Amazon, rather, you should be able to find it. So that's really how to do social skills.

Now, there are a few common mistakes that we see a lot of people making that we'd like to just address here. Make sure you do not fall into those traps. Sound good? Cool, so the first one we're gonna talk about is called the Pygmalion effect. Fun name but what it basically means is that your expectations of people define their potential.

They've done some studies where they've taken two groups of kids. I think it was in math. One was the gifted group and one was the remedial group. Needed extra help and they put new teachers in, but they told the teachers that the gifted group was the remedial group and the remedial group was the gifted group. They switched places, meaning scores and work output in the matter of a month. So the remedial group now suddenly became gifted level.

Gifted level suddenly became remedial level all based on expectation. So if you have the expectation that someone with Asperger's isn't gonna do much, that's what they're gonna live up to. If you have the expectation that they can and will live an amazing life –

Then they will.

Then they will. Simple as that.

They will meet whatever standards you set for them.

Yeah. As long as within reason.

Right. Don't say you're gonna sprout wings and fly to the stars someday or something like that.

Expect things of an eight-year-old that an eight-year-old can do.

Right.


Maybe a nine-year-old can do, right?

Right.

Don't expect an eight-year-old to behave like an 18-year-old or have the same abilities.

Because that's just not gonna happen unless the child is a prodigy or an alien.

Yeah, but beyond them being an alien or something, their brain physically has not developed. A lot of people don’t realize that. It sounds simple once I say it, but the brain develops as you grow and you gain new powers, so to speak, like introspection and the ability to see things from other people's point of view and stuff like that at certain ages. It isn't all there. Next mistake, Hayden, do you wanna go over that one?

Yeah. Not making the home a safe place. Not focusing on the comfort and security. That's a big no-no. If they don't feel safe at home, they're not gonna feel safe anywhere.

Yeah.

And it's a big deal that you make their sanctuary an actual sanctuary where their barriers can come down and they can be at peace with themselves and with others. And then the next one is not encouraging. If you don't encourage them, the Pygmalion effect is gonna jump into high gear and they're not gonna do anything. They're not gonna want to do anything. Their whole drive to live is just gonna be crushed and their drive to live and grow is gonna be crushed. They're just not gonna have any reasons to do anything special with their lives.

Until they have the ability to reason, generate, and think forward in life, which again, late teens, and even then, they're still teenagers. They aren't thinking about what they're gonna do later in life.

Right. Mid to late teens and with people with Asperger's, sometimes early 20's.

Yeah, for me it was early 20's. The next mistake that we see very common, and this is kind of the whole basis of this whole program here, is trying to teach any life skill to someone with Asperger's without getting them out of defense mode first.

Huge no-no. Huge thing you do not want to do, because it's just gonna make things worse.

Well, I mean you're welcome to do it if you only want five percent of what you talk about to stick and if you wanna have to keep repeating yourself and repeating yourself and repeating yourself for a decade.


Right, like the castle example.

Yeah.

You're never gonna get into the castle.

Yeah, so you're welcome to do that. You just aren't gonna get anywhere.

Right.

So you just need to provide a safe place so that there isn't a castle to begin with. The last mistake that we see a lot of people make and a lot of people make is –

A lot of people meaning most people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like 90 percent of the population is tackling the effect and not the cause.

Again, do not do that. The effect is just what you see on the surface. The cause is what's really, literally the cause for what's going on.

Yeah, the driver of the effect.

If you can change the cause, you'll get a different effect.

That's why we were talking about behavior balancing, so you could punish and tell them to go to their room and have timeouts and all that stuff.

Or ground them, yeah.

Or you could just change their needs structure and then therefore they won't do that in the first place because they don't need to.

Right. The negative effect has vanished.

Yeah, so if you can get to the core of something, it's so much easier just to get to the core, change that, and then everything else because of that changes versus trying to change all the little individual pieces.

Right.

Which takes forever, honestly, and doesn't really work that out. So here's what to do now. Focus on the first barrier. Get them out of defense mode. Your first order is to focus on that comfort and security. Get the home a safe place. That might mean changing the light bulbs, getting rid of the old fragrant stuff you have in the entryway, doing whatever it takes.


Little life changes.

Yeah. Get the home a safe place. Then you wanna focus on the main three attackers, sensory, overwhelm, and jerks. And build their confidence and then go from there. Re-listen to this and then go through barriers two, three, and four. So there are a few other programs we offer. Life propulsion is one, where we teach people with Asperger's how to get confident, motivated, find a direction in life, and all of that good stuff, which you can find at AspergerExperts.com and click on the top tab there.

Go to AspergerExperts.com for the latest programs and products and we will see you guys soon.

And if you have any questions, email us. [email protected]. Thanks and you all have a great day.

Bye.

Bye.

(Music)

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