As a parent of a beautiful adult with Autism and as a member of a neurodiverse family, I can attest that DBT skills and principles have dramatically shaped my life. I have been an intensively trained DBT provider for several years now. It is a structured treatment designed to treat emotion dysregulation in emotionally sensitive individuals. But in my own personal life, and in my work with clients, it has offered so much more.
Dialectical Behavior Therapy principles help individuals with Autism/Asbergers and their entire family increase effective communication and behavior. Many families struggle for years with communication barriers and problem behaviors that have stemmed from neurodifferences. Often specific behavioral patterns go unobserved for many years, even though the outcomes are quite negative. Parents and siblings often make small, subtle behavior adjustments to avoid conflict. Some family members ramp up ineffective behavior in order to garner their own share of the attention. It becomes a dance of behaviors that leads to a very low quality of life for a family and often a profound sense of social isolation. The isolation eventually worsens as socially inappropriate behaviors start to show up. Then, somewhere in the early teen years, parents start to realize that the family life has been hijacked by behavioral forces that feel too big and too entrenched to change.
A DBT Therapist, skilled in working with families impacted by Autism, can help a family analyze behavior patterns at a micro level in order to bring about order and an improved family structure. Skills such as “Radical Acceptance”, which helps family members to move through sorrow and into a new beginning. “Radical Acceptance” is a skill that is practiced every moment of every day and it is born of “Willingness”–to go beyond our own idea of what a solution is, and look for other behavioral solutions. The search for answers requires “Dialectics” to consider all the many paths that have brought us to where we are, and the path through to a family that is connected, loving, and grounded in reality. “Core Mindfulness” skills to help us to observe and describe family behaviors, mores, and norms factually, while staying unattached by our own, often inaccurate stories about what is going on. From a DBT perspective, relationships are transactional, which implies that all behavior between people and within the family matters. Sometimes simple tweaks in communication can dramatically change familial bonds, if we are willing to consistently observe our own communication and adjust as needed.
Reach out to me today for more information on the use of DBT to assist your loved one with Autism and the entire family.
All the best
Christina