Negative response to our struggles and trauma
Have you heard about “learned helplessness”???
It is not something that happens only to autistic individuals, but can happen to anybody
“Learned helplessness” comes about when we begin to believe that no matter what we do or what we try, we will not be able to change our lives, our circumstances, our selves, or any situation we may find ourselves in.
Autism fills our lives with sensory challenges and struggles. Our responses can be those responses to trauma, fight, flight, freezing, or fawning.
Over time we may develop a negative thinking pattern, that says “what is the use? I can’t get out of this situation” “what is the use? I just can’t do what they expect me to do”!
This negative thinking can become deeply embedded in our daily lives, our responses to almost any challenge. We may give up trying, completely, especially in cases where we are overwhelmed.
People who are abused often develop learned helplessness as a response to physical and emotional abuse. We have all heard of many cases where an abused person refuses to leave a partner because they believe they are helpless to stop the abuse or change their situations. Abused children can develop unhealthy patterns of behavior in reaction to continual abuse as well.
Think of the multiple ways in which an autistic individual might fail where the general population does not. We have many more “opportunities” for failure every day.
Autism predisposes us to negative experiences through continual bullying, intimidation, childhood training using strong negative reinforcement such as spanking, humiliation, punishment for unintended mistakes, etc. We struggle with mistaken understandings, sensory overwhelm and overload, poor coordination, poor understanding of the intent of others, and frequently we lack insights into task performance and problem solving which may be obvious to others.
We soon learn to wait to be told what to do rather than take initiative. We soon learn to become apathetic. No matter what, we will be criticized, scolded, mocked, bullied, hurt physically, we will fail and fail and fail. Do you relate to these struggles? Many autistic individuals probably will!
I have been reading about learned helplessness and am amazed at the comments from psychologists and therapists saying that almost all autistic individuals they have worked with have had some form of learned helplessness.
Individuals with learning disabilities may have parents and caretakers who just “do it” for them because they struggle and are slow with whatever is asked of them.
Individuals with perceptive struggles may have the same problem.
I don’t do it right, exasperated caretaker, partner, parent, etc etc either writes me off or punishes me, taking over and “showing us” by doing ” it ” (the chore, the skill, the task assigned or expected) themselves how easy the action is and shaming us, punishing us, and even more deeply convincing us that we are inept, stupid, useless, a loser, a bad and willful person , etc. No wonder we give up!
Depression can have its roots in learned helplessness. Can you understand why this may be so?
We may give up on trying to do those things that are hardest for us. We develop a negative mindset. “what is the use of trying”. We resist challenges, we break down, refuse to even try. One more scolding or punishment averted!
“learned helplessness” is something we get from being constantly overwhelmed, when we feel absolutely powerless to stop whatever negative thing is happening to us and when we simply give up trying.
Thinking back on your childhood, youth and life before discovering your autism, can you discover a pattern of hopelessness, helplessness, or overwhelm that set your mind to believing that you will never succeed at whatever you tried, that you became so overwhelmed that you stopped trying?
I can think of many instances in my own life where this was so. I had a very strong negative attitude to myself first, and to all parts of life.
I found out about learned helplessness in counseling which I got at age 30, I needed to have somebody explain to me that I had alternatives to the fixed patterns and beliefs of my early life.
I was able to learn through being taught, that I could choose to respond to others in any situation in many ways, rather than the rigid learned responses I had been conditioned to in all my earlier life experiences.
I needed to learn that I do indeed have multiple choices in almost every situation and every part of my life.
If you suspect you might be one of those who learned to give up, please reach out and ask for help. It is never too late to learn new ways of thinking, to see and learn new ways of doing life.
I was so lucky to get counseling at age 30 to learn new life skills that made my life so much better. Even though I did not get my autism diagnosis until I was 68, in therapy I got every day life skills and tools I could use to make life better.
I repeatedly tell people that therapy saved my life and my sanity. If you are living your life in misery and emotional pain, please reach out to find a therapist to work with.
Learn that you have choices to make and take the emotionally very scary chance to live a better life when you let go of your learned helplessness burden and learn to fly!
Tag: autistic negative thinking
Autism Self Love
Autistic negative feedback” baggage” and learning to love ourselves.
Self love is a very difficult concept for me.
I think it is difficult for many other elder autistic people too. The very idea that we deserve anything as an individual has been driven out of our thoughts by negative feedback for too long.
From my earliest memories I recall feedback from others about my selfishness, laziness, thoughtlessness, worthlessness, my failures and my seemingly deliberate wickedness.
Those negative statements about me and my behavior, plus early and continual childhood training as a Christian (where everything is about taking care of others, service to others, selflessness, giving and humbleness) were absorbed early and taken to heart. Having no other guidance and trying to understand the rules for living life, it is no wonder I got so much of it wrong.
In a recent online discussion and subsequent blog ( Was there Love?) wrote thoughts about how most of us in my autistic forums on line felt unloved and unlovable. This is sort of continuing the theme and enlarging on it. What do we do with all of those negative feelings about ourselves and our lack of worthiness?
I got therapy at age 30 due to suicide attempts and depression/anxiety I could no longer control by my willpower alone. The therapist probably had his worst problems in me with my self worth and my inability to stand up for myself.
I did not understand that my thoughts and opinions or preferences had any value. I had to learn that I had worth as an individual, and then I had to learn how to express my thoughts and preferences, set healthy boundaries and above all, learn to take positive actions to keep the boundaries and to take care of myself instead of sacrificing my self in response to other’s demands and desires. I had learned to appease others when I was very small, to avoid punishment and anger. I had to be taught that I was a person in my own right and that it was OK to want things, to ask for things, to have my own beliefs and ideas. Autistic rigid thinking was at work, and I had no idea that I had alternatives. It was terrifying to suddenly be responsible for my self.. I had to take responsibility for my thoughts, my behavior, my ideas, and above all to take action to enforce boundaries to declare myself a person and not a servant, slave, or accessory. ( among other roles I was expected to play )
I was not able to get past the idea that I was at all worthy of being more than a puppet for others to use as they chose.
I ended up having to look hard to find the time in my childhood when I began to learn the negative things and believe them.
I ended up seeing myself between ages of 5 and 8, and being able to find the little girl who was so afraid and who felt so unloved and unwanted. When I was able to do this, ( and remember I can not picture a thing in my mind, so I need visual aids such as photos, models, maps, or drawings to “see” things), I purchased a sad looking child-doll (not a baby!) and put her near my bed so I could see her and think about that child and how I was now able to give her what she had need and not got. I took care of her in my mind and heart. I took pleasure in giving her new clothing, imagining her being cherished, supported, fed and cared for, helped with struggles and given love. I was able to transfer those feelings first to my childhood self, who had missed it all, then to my middle school and teen years and the years of my early 20s.
Breaking though that initial barrier of feeling unworthy took a lot of time, though, and emotional homework. I cried for that little girls a couple of times, but not for long. I had been trained to believe my feelings were not worthy of being recognized and taught to hide them deep within myself. That was yet another skill to learn, to identify my own emotions and to recognize them properly, and to learn to respond to them properly.
Autistic people have many struggles identifying emotions and sorting them out as it is,
our proprioception/ interoception neurological issues being common to most of us.
I was taught to deny my emotions or to redirect them until my whole idea of self was buried deep in what I hid, and never thought or understood that there were other ways and that other people handled these things differently.
It has taken a very long time and lots of hard work to develop new behaviors and to find new ways of thinking. I am certain that many of us, especially older people who have never considered they might be autistic, grew up with similar training… and with similar results.
Years and years of negative feedback from family, neighbors, schoolmates, co workers, spouse and other contacts in our experience have led to our deep self hatred. How could we get things so wrong? How could we fail over and over to perform as expected? How could we mess things up so badly. It was our fault! We were useless, stupid, worthless. Years of negative feedback is a lot to overcome.
When I learned about my autism, suddenly things began to make sense. No wonder I could not do what they wanted me to! I have neurological struggles which they do not have! They expected me to behave as they do never knowing, any more than I did, that I simply was give a different “tool box” from which to do what they expected of me. So amazing!
No wonder I failed! No wonder I could not work to expectations ! No wonder everything was so hard!
Diagnosis changed everything for me, even though the therapy 38 years ago helped me survive and do better in the world, it was not then that I discovered how much my autistic struggles contributed to the difficulty and distress in so many parts of my life.
Here is my message.
You are worthy of respect. You are worthy of caring, you are worthy of love and friendship.
You are an amazing survivor of so many things that were so hard to understand and so difficult to live through, never knowing about autism and about how it has worked in your life to cause so many struggles that others simply do not have.
There are so many new ways to live and to care for yourself, to assure your needs are met and to give your life a richness and fullness you might never have thought you could have.
Please take the time to explore the options, to feed the needs inside of you for so many things you have been missing all these years. Take time to find self care, self comfort, self accommodation, self interest!
If you struggle with self care, I suggest that you think about a stranger you might come across, who has had a very hard life and is full of hurt and feeling un-cared for and misunderstood.
How would you help that person?
Would you punish, shame and chastise them?
Would you be constantly angry at them when they struggled to do things that were difficult for them?
No, I doubt you would.
Instead you might try to help and encourage them, wouldn’t you?
I hope you can look at the lost stranger inside yourself and be at least as good to them as you would be to any other person .
OldLady With Autism 