Escape or exploration?


Another “aha” moment for me. ( they are still coming even after 5 years past diagnosis)

I have been reading information about “elopement” that sometimes accompanies autistic behaviors. Most articles are yet aimed at controlling children and keeping them safe.
Autistic children get lost /wander and have fatal accidents at a much higher rate than the general population of children. These children seem to fall into two categories – escape or exploration.

Those who seek to avoid something will leave the triggering situation or event/ sensory or emotional overwhelming experience. “runaways” fit into this category. They seek to escape anything that makes them feel desperate to avoid the input they are experiencing, whether noises, crowds, punishment, scolding, rules of the household, school, etc etc. Escape is flight response to trauma and instead of concentrating on the action of the child (or adult!) One must also look at what triggers this response.


I am going to guess that the individual in flight does not know there are other alternatives to this “response” behavior.
Feeling unsafe and/or inadequate to cope are huge activators of the flight response. I use a controlled flight response to remove myself from any distressing experience, excuse myself as soon as I recognize my discomfort and leave the situation to my “safe place” where I can gather my resources and get myself composed in security and in privacy. I plan ahead for “safe places” when I travel or do things outside the home. In many places, I return to my car or a public bathroom, etc. I recognize that my primary response to any upset (response learned from early childhood trauma) is flight. See information about “fight, flight, freeze, and fawn/appeasement” as responses to trauma.

When I was isolated for punishment/ scoldings, being chastised and blamed/shamed, as a pre teen and older, I would leave the house and not come back until supper time when the family would be distracted and gathered together, my father being present, and my mother would not scold me in front of the others. (she chose to abuse us privately with no witnesses. until very recently I had thought I was the only one in the family this had happened to! -I am 73 and learned this from my sister). Mother was pleased to tell me she was going to put me in a “home” if I didn’t change my ways and I understood that she did not want me and did not want to deal with my disobedience/ displeasing autistic ways. I believed she never loved me and was focused on finding new ways to blame and shame me, looking for more ways in which to tell me how bad I was, how immoral I was, how lazy I was, how thoughtless…. the list could run to several pages… I simply could not please her. She seemed to look for excuses to make me feel bad. So I eloped to escape her.
I chose an abusive first spouse, who followed almost exactly the same behavior of family patterns that were already established and which I had learned all my life. We seek what we know and are comfortable with, so no surprise I ended up in exactly the same situation ( but even more abusive) when I left the nest upon my first marriage. I ended up in flight several times within the framework of myrelationship even before marriage. I simply did not know how to find other ways to deal with the misery. I attempted suicide as escape finally.
I had been depressed and anxious since age 8 and finally at age 29 I took that step. It was purely desperation to escape the situation and in my mind there were no other alternatives. Inflexibile thinking/ rigid behavior learned as a child kept me from finding or understanding I had many choices and alternatives. I had to be taught “how to do it” , an outsider had to explain in great detail exactly what I had missed as a child growing up in that unhealthy household. There were “no ways” besides what I had been raised to, I simply could not imagine alternatives on my own.

I was rescued from the suicide attempt and told that I would go to jail if I did not get psychiatric help/counseling. I tried 4 therapists before I found one who “got me” and who finally was able to reach and teach me the healthy communication and decision making techniques to survive in the world outside of the sick patterns that I had learned in my family growing up.

Therapy saved my life and my sanity! Having alternatives and choices to the way I respond to any individual every single time, besides the ways that had been “programmed” into me has given me healthy alternatives to flight as a response to overwhelming experiences.

Learning that I have options in my choices of response and planning ahead of time for ways to “flee” or escape from overwhelming situations has kept me safe now for over 40 years.
If you are prone to suddenly exit upsetting situations, leave your home under duress, leave work, gatherings, or other overwhelming situations (anger from a boss, spouse, friend etc for example)
consider getting therapy to learn new ways to deal with distress and overwhelm. I believe that we as adults can learn to do this.

Look for a therapist who can help you learn healthy communication and decision making skills with less probing into “feelings”. The first 3 therapists wanted to talk only about my “feelings” “how does that make you feel” sent me into sobbing spasms “I dont know” was the best I could respond to any of them. I can still remember the distress of trying to figure out what this oblique suggesting meant, what I was supposed to learn by re-living so much pain and trauma. I could not get any of them to explain, they just wanted me to “think about it”.
I guess I was supposed to figure it out for myself (then why were these people there?) My rigid thinking in those days before diagnosis simply did not allow me to see implied lessons or to sort cause and effect.

It was such torture to go repeatedly to re-live trauma without any explanations.. It was such a relief to find that 4th therapist who “got it” and could see what I needed, explain to me, and teach me the skills I needed. The process of finding a good therapist alone took me about 2 years. All that emotional pain for all that time did nothing to help and is still so upsetting to remember.

I hope if you struggle with elopement due to distress (and you might need to think about this to see the patterns in your life surrounding this issue) that you will look for new and healthier ways to deal with these events. I do believe it is something we can learn. If I could do it I believe anybody can.
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About “wandering”. First, it does not make sense to me to classify evasion elopement together with exploration elopement. They really are “something else” with entirely different motives and objectives.
I am a wanderer, but was never a wanderer as a child because of strong restrictions laid down since infancy… I learned to stay put, whether in a chair, on a rug or piece of furniture, or to stay in the fenced yard we had by the time I was 8 years old. Those boundaries were well defined and I could not leave without permission for fear of punishment. Fear has been a great motivator even before I could speak and worked well to “keep me in line” when small.
But once I began to walk to school, I dawdled and took “alternate routes” home from school, often arriving well after my sister, who attended the same school. We walked for a while together to school, but I don’t remember a single walk home from school together.

My mother did not drive, and she had 3 other younger kids to take care of, so I was free to take my time and explore on my way home. I got scolded when I arrived late each day but it was worth it to be free from anybody else’s demands and to be alone for that short time each day. In a family home of 6 there is mostly chaos, and very little peace or privacy.

As a teen I was allowed to leave the house, and I spent hours and hours walking all over our small town, sometimes even exploring country roads. I walked for miles every day and my favorite long walks were after dinner as it became dark, I left the house and walked until my curfew… I think the parents were relieved when I was gone and did not object, and I certainly was able to relieve my considerable anxiety by the stim of rapidly walking for miles and miles.
Many times when I got home, the rest of the family had already gone to bed. It was peaceful and safe to slip into the house and make for my bed in the dark and the quiet.

Today I walk the shorelines and the wooded trails near my home as often as possible. I have strong curiosity and appreciation for the natural world and these forays bring peace and enjoyment as nothing else can. “Alone time” is so very important to me, as is the activity of walking which I rely on for release of energy and to help find my emotional center while satisfying my curiosity about so many things in nature’s realm. I believe walking is a “stim” for me.
Small children wandering are often exploring, or trying to find a way to get to an experience they would like to repeat (a trip to the beach, to the favorite fast-food restaurant, to grandma’s house? Wherever they want to go. Kids who leave the house alone at a very young age while unattended may simply be exploring or trying to find stimulation, satisfy curiosity, or to find other ways to interact with their surroundings.

Plans can be made, and precautions can be taken to prevent wanderers from leaving unnoticed. We had to put complex latches high on the doors in our house when our children were small. We learned tricks to keep them with us in public unknown places, we found ways to work around the sudden impulse (in our smallest it was sheer energy and exuberance combined with impulsivity- ah if we could bottle that energy)
As adults we have the ability to choose when and how we wander (unless we rely on others to make this happen for us).
Have you ever experienced elopement personally or in others close to you? How did you deal with it? What alternatives do you have to help keep safety first and still provide the release that is needed for escape or satisfaction of the need for motion, the stimulation of curiosity, etc.? there are loads of articles “out there” about preventing elopement and about enrichment experiences.
I had forgotten all about my “running away” until recently. Little by little, the aha moments are decreasing as I gain better self understanding. I hope this is true for you too.