Free to Be Here and Now

In my last post, I wrote about stepping away from the pressures and stress when you have children with autism or other special needs. The sheer act of stepping away, taking time for yourself, is difficult enough, when there are so many things that demand your attention.

But after you step away, what then? How do you clear a space for self-care?

A patient of mine named Stephanie, who is the parent of a school-age son on the autism spectrum, found it impossible to unwind, even when she had time away from her child. She compared the inside of her brain to those spinning plates that acrobats have to keep up in the air. She found it hard to break through the worries and thoughts that churned inside her head.

Stephanie's dilemma is a familiar one. You need to give yourself time to recharge, But along with taking time, you need to know what to do with that time. And continuing to spin those plates isn't the answer.

Fortunately, there are some really effective ways to detach from the spinning plates in your mind and clear a space of calm. Mindfulness meditation, the practice of focusing on one thing, such as the breath, is a particularly powerful tool. Over the last few years, a number of empirical studies with parents of kids on the autism spectrum attest to the effectiveness of mindfulness in restoring feelings of well-being.

The meditation teacher, Joan Halifax, provides the wonderful image of an Etch A Sketch to describe the power of mindfulness. When you focus on the breath and allow other thoughts and preoccupations to fade to the background, it is like shaking an Etch A Sketch, allowing your mind to clear and your body to relax.

Source: Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash

With that in mind, here are just a few ways you can shift from overwhelm and stress to feeling more grounded:

Just breathe. Focusing on your breath is indeed a powerful and effective way to clear your mind. If you want to find an easy way to get started, you can try and counting your breath. Here is one method called step breathing: Inhale to the count of 1, exhale to the count of 2. Then inhale to the count of 3 and exhale to the count of 4. Continue this process up to 10. Then reverse the process, inhaling to the count of 9, exhaling to the count of 10, inhaling to the count of 8, exhaling to the count of 9, and so on.

Tune in to your senses. Debra was worn out by the meltdowns her 9-year-old daughter, Janie, would have after school. But Debra realized that if she was already stressed out when Janie came home, things would get even worse. So Debra, who loves music, tries to take 10 or 20 minutes listening to a favorite album before Janie's bus arrives. She makes music-listening into a meditation by closing her eyes so she can better focus on the sounds, and letting other thoughts and concerns fade into the background. She finds that when she makes the time for this, it is like hitting a reset button and she can be a lot calmer when Janie gets home.

When you focus on any of one of your senses---sight, smell, sound or touch---you are shaking that internal Etch A Sketch, freeing yourself to be in the moment. You might not have a lot of free time, but this deepens the benefit of the time that you do have.

Get moving. Another powerful way to free yourself from physical or mental stress is by getting physical. Just taking a 20-minute walk outside can shift the way you feel. And when the weather is lousy, it’s great if you have a Plan B. One dreary day, before I had to make a difficult phone call to one of my son’s therapists, I took out a trampoline that we had bought my son long ago for OT, and spent 15 minutes jumping. This little bit of time made a big difference in how I handled that call.

Whatever method you use, making the intention to shake that internal Etch A Sketch helps you feel nourished and more grounded. In upcoming blogs, I'll explore more ways to create time that is nurturing for you. But in the meantime, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please let me know how you clear a space for calm.