Latest / Aspergers & Autism Podcast [The Aspie World] AuDHD / Autism Therapy at Home 7 DIY Ideas That Really Work
Transcript
- 0:00Autism at home therapy is here at 7 DIY ideas that actually do
- 0:04work and if you implement these, they can actually help you in
- 0:06your daily life because it's not always easy to get to a
- 0:09therapist. What's going on in my head?
- 0:14Hey guys, what's going on Welcome back to the aspy world.
- 0:16My name is Dan. I have autism, ADHDOCD and
- 0:19dyslexia and I make videos on this stuff daily.
- 0:22So if you do not want to miss out on these videos, make sure
- 0:24to hit the subscribe button down below.
- 0:26So you see those daily videos from me, and if you're watching
- 0:29on Facebook, just make sure you follow this page for the same
- 0:31reason, videos from MOA. OK, so autism therapy, it's
- 0:36really interesting. A lot of people either have
- 0:38never tried autism therapy because they don't think it
- 0:39could work or that the therapy sounds a bit too far out.
- 0:42Maybe therapy doesn't agree with you or your culture or religion,
- 0:45and maybe there isn't access to therapy in your area.
- 0:47There's a whole host of things that can stop you actually
- 0:49having access to autism therapy. But I think that therapy is so
- 0:53interesting and so needed in certain situations.
- 0:55Not everyone, but I think that we could all benefit from
- 0:58certain types of therapies. And being a counsellor myself, I
- 1:01think therapy is such a good thing.
- 1:02However, there are things that we can do at home that will help
- 1:06us as autistic individuals. Now, this is aimed at adults.
- 1:10You can adapt this for children as well.
- 1:11And I think that it's so important.
- 1:13And as adults, we forget a lot of these things because we're
- 1:16all, we're adults. We don't need this type of thing
- 1:18or we're adults, we don't need therapy.
- 1:19And I can take care of myself. I'm kind of like, we brush it
- 1:21off, right? But if you are an adult who is
- 1:23struggling with autism, confidence, anxiety, and
- 1:26motivation, I have a free program that you can take right
- 1:29now for free. You can download the whole
- 1:30thing, go through it in your own time called the Bulletproof
- 1:31Brain. And you can go to
- 1:32www.bulletproofbrain.org right now and download it for free.
- 1:37Or the link is down below this video or in the link in my bio
- 1:41if you're watching on Facebook or any other platform.
- 1:43OK, so how this works, I'm going to go through seven of the
- 1:46things right now so you can get all the information right now.
- 1:50OK, so the first one is structured daily planning.
- 1:53Now, a lot of autistic individuals thrive off that
- 1:56structure of daily planning, but they never implement it.
- 1:59And it's so difficult to then think about it once you're
- 2:03outside of the loop. But what I would say is that use
- 2:05a simple daily plan. Know when you're going to wake
- 2:08up, when you're going to go to bed, how long you're going to
- 2:09work for, what meals you're going to have, when you're going
- 2:12to rest, when you're going to sleep, taking breaks.
- 2:14And if you keep this a visible predictable calendar or just
- 2:17literally just you can go onto Canva free app or you can go
- 2:20onto Google or even chat on GPT these days and just say, hey,
- 2:23make me a simple daily plan for this.
- 2:26Print it out or put it on the background of your phone.
- 2:28And you have that as long as it's visual.
- 2:31This will actually help you lower stress and decision making
- 2:34fatigue because decision fatigue is something that hits US really
- 2:38hard. That's a big autism thing,
- 2:40trying to make decisions when we're already burnt out.
- 2:41It's so difficult. But if we can lower those
- 2:43impacts, then we can do a lot more things.
- 2:45I was talking about this in another video where Mark
- 2:47Zuckerberg would have a closet full of clothes that just
- 2:50exactly the same identical. So he'd have no decision making
- 2:54for what he's going to wear in the morning.
- 2:55Get up, brush your teeth, have a shower, put those clothes on, go
- 2:58straight out the dew. Because when he did that, he
- 3:03took away the time of the fatigue that he would make for a
- 3:06decision to say, oh, what am I going to wear today?
- 3:07Oh, this time get rid of it. It's superfluous.
- 3:10And then it made him more productive, which I think is
- 3:12amazing. And I think we can all benefit
- 3:14from that type of thing. Maybe not that extreme unless
- 3:15that's what you want to do, but you get what I'm saying.
- 3:18OK, so #2 is sensory regulation setup and this is basically
- 3:21creating a calm space that you can go to.
- 3:24Now it's interesting, a space or a low light place or a weighted
- 3:28blanket, noise, cussing, headphones, something that you
- 3:31can use before things get too overloading.
- 3:33Now in your day, you're going to find a moment where you're a
- 3:36little bit stressed than usual. OK, we're all kind of stressed,
- 3:39but you'll have a more elated stress just before you hit the
- 3:42men TB. And I think that when you're
- 3:45close to that moment of having higher stress, the high demand
- 3:49weighted blanket or no noise contact headphones.
- 3:52And we do this, me and my partner, because we have five
- 3:54children between us. She has three of her and I have
- 3:55two of my own together as a blended family, Bless us.
- 3:58We have five children and it's not always easy.
- 3:59We have two autistic children. We have another difficult child
- 4:03and there's a lot of difficulties within our system
- 4:05set up. And we're autistic ourselves.
- 4:07We both have, me and my partner, both have autism and the age
- 4:09ADHD and we're both professionals.
- 4:12And so we have a lot of stresses in our life.
- 4:14But one of the things we do do is we swear by the Apple
- 4:17headphones, these ones over here, these are the Apple iPod
- 4:19Pro Max and they're amazing. And the noise cancelling feature
- 4:22is outstanding. And so we put those on and just
- 4:26for that few minutes, it gives us a sensory break that we
- 4:28desperately needed. And then it really helps.
- 4:31It's like a small therapy for just regulating ourselves
- 4:35through just a few moments or even we can keep it on all
- 4:38afternoon. And so if you're interested,
- 4:40actually, I'll leave a link for those specific headphones down
- 4:42below because they are, honestly, I swear by them.
- 4:45They're so good. They're one of the best purchase
- 4:46I've ever made. OK, so the next one is emotional
- 4:49tracking routine is right. So checking in three times a day
- 4:53with yourself in the morning, the afternoon and the evening
- 4:57and write down a word of how you feel.
- 5:00So maybe in the morning you feel like I'm tired, I'm drained.
- 5:02Maybe in the middle of the day you're like, hey, actually I'm
- 5:04motivated. Maybe I'm not motivated, maybe
- 5:06I'm still tired. It's so interesting because then
- 5:08once a day you can reflect on this and this reflection
- 5:11actually improves yourself awareness and reduces a lot of
- 5:14shutdowns because we have a lot of shutdowns because we're
- 5:16unaware of what we're actually doing or where we're going or
- 5:19what is causing issues. But when you see a pattern
- 5:21emerge, when you see that you're OK in the morning and then the
- 5:24afternoon happened, you can go, oh, actually, yeah, I did.
- 5:26I went out for ice cream and oh man, yeah, it seems that I
- 5:28didn't don't really get along with it.
- 5:30And so you'll be able to see in your notice triggers, which will
- 5:32help you in the future. It's kind of like a self
- 5:34fulfilling prophecy. It's amazing.
- 5:36So this is a really good one. And you don't have to write it
- 5:37down anywhere important. You can just put it in your
- 5:40phone notepad. You do whatever you want.
- 5:41It's down to you. So the next one is scripted
- 5:45communication will practice. I love to do this writing short
- 5:48scripts for work, family, relationships with other people,
- 5:53appointments. I I just practice these out loud
- 5:56or I have them in my phone and I can text them to people if I
- 5:59need to. And if you're interested, I
- 6:00actually have a document you can buy a whole template of 50 pre
- 6:04made scripts that I've created for you that you can literally
- 6:07just copy and paste for text messages and emails.
- 6:09If that would help you. You can get it right now.
- 6:11It's about $17.00 I think. So I'll leave a link down below
- 6:14so you can actually get that. And the communication really
- 6:17helps and also helps with lowering anxiety in real life
- 6:21conversation. But in terms of the, you know,
- 6:26in terms of the happening at the moment in time, a lot of the
- 6:28time we kind of fret and we worry about it.
- 6:31Oh no, what do I say? How do I do this order if I say
- 6:32this? And then if we already have a
- 6:34predetermined script, if we have a pre made thing, makes it a lot
- 6:38easier. OK, so this is interesting
- 6:40batching with time limits and this is really good.
- 6:43So group small tasks into sets of maybe 20 minutes, 25 minutes
- 6:46and set a timer and then stop when it ends.
- 6:49OK, Because this actually protects your energy and then
- 6:51prevents burnout. Because a lot of the time we as
- 6:54autistic individuals will be like, OK, I'm going to do this
- 6:56for 20 minutes and then maybe we won't complete the task.
- 6:58And then rather than just say, OK, well, I'll do that next time
- 7:02it comes around in my task list, I'm going to go through the task
- 7:04list 1 by 1 and do 20 minutes on each and then go back and do 20
- 7:07minutes on each. What it actually does is it
- 7:09compounds it because you'd actually get more done in that
- 7:11time if you just say, OK, I didn't get this one done in 20
- 7:13minutes, but I'll come back to it and finish it off.
- 7:15And then you do the rest. What we tend to do is we go
- 7:17through a list and we go, OK, this one and this one, and we
- 7:19keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it.
- 7:20We never finish it. We don't attack any of the
- 7:22others on the list. And then it just absolutely
- 7:23turns into a massive just like just a nightmare.
- 7:27And so I would suggest that using this timer and actually
- 7:32have a timer that I'm going to recommend.
- 7:35So this timer is the this is the loop timer.
- 7:38And it was made by a neuro spicy dude called Cody, an amazing
- 7:42guy. And he made this designed it for
- 7:44autistic ADHD people to use a timer as grown-ups as well as
- 7:47sound on or off the backs or lower or higher.
- 7:50And it's amazing three buttons, super sleek design, amazing loop
- 7:54timer. Look at that.
- 7:55And it's aesthetically pleasing. So it doesn't look like a
- 7:57childish timer. It doesn't look like anything
- 7:59that you know it would be out of place in your house and it's
- 8:02also magnetic. This thing sticks to anything
- 8:03magnetic. I've had it on my shelf, my
- 8:06magnet magnetic shelf further, they charge it by USBC.
- 8:09Highly recommend checking this out.
- 8:10Now if you do check it out, I have a 10% discount in the link
- 8:13down below or on my website. You can find me linking to loop
- 8:17timer everywhere. So definitely check out loop
- 8:19timer highly recommend it. It's pretty amazing it'll help
- 8:23you set the times for this task thing.
- 8:26OK, so the next one is interest based productivity.
- 8:29And this is basically starting tasks using the strongest
- 8:32interest base first and then using that as an entry point to
- 8:36then transition to my crowded tasks or stuff that you don't
- 8:39really like as much to focus on for longer periods of time.
- 8:44And the reason this works is because if we start attacking a
- 8:47task of something that I'm not really interested in, and then
- 8:49the next one we're also not really interested in, we have no
- 8:51motivation built up. There's no snowball of
- 8:53motivation to be like, Oh yeah, let's go.
- 8:55But if you start a task, that's something you're into like,
- 8:57yeah, I like doing this, so I'll do this first, and I'll do the
- 8:59next one. And then the harder task, you're
- 9:01like, look, I can do the harder tasks because I've just done the
- 9:04easy tasks. I've built off that momentum.
- 9:05I know I've completed tasks. You're getting dopamine.
- 9:07You're getting fulfillment feedback, and everything's
- 9:10kosher. I love that.
- 9:11Highly recommend doing this. And it's absolutely amazing.
- 9:14So the last one on my list here #7 super important is scheduled
- 9:19recovery time. Now block daily recovery.
- 9:23So what you need to do, and this is what I would highly recommend
- 9:26for everybody to do is blocking out certain times of the day.
- 9:29Maybe it's in the evening, maybe it's really early in the
- 9:31morning, but wherever you can fit in a 5 minute for no social
- 9:35demands, no problem solving, no, no demands.
- 9:37You just want to have something that really chills you out.
- 9:39And I learned this very quickly when I used to work for an
- 9:42American healthcare company and I, it was very demanding.
- 9:45I'd worked in reconciliation of financial reports and I'd loved
- 9:47it because I'd worked on the numbers, but also it was very
- 9:49demanding, high, high stress, high pressure, dealing with
- 9:52millions of pounds, you know, so it was very, very difficult to,
- 9:55to make sure that we get it right.
- 9:56And so every day at lunchtime, I would e-mail lunch at my desk
- 10:00while I was working. But then I would go into the
- 10:02archive room, which is like a big room.
- 10:04It was dark. Nobody went in there ever
- 10:06because it was just like a big room full of boxes of papers and
- 10:09cabinets and stuff. And I'd hide in the corner,
- 10:11lights to be off, completely silent, nobody in there.
- 10:14And I wouldn't take any devices, anything in there.
- 10:16And I'd just sit there just to recover a little bit of me
- 10:20space. And that was so helpful in the
- 10:23recovery of the sensory issues that would really overcome,
- 10:27overwhelm me and come into play during my working day.
- 10:30Now if you have anything to add, pop in a comment down below.
- 10:32I read every single one. Give this video a thumbs up and
- 10:34I'll see you in the next video, guys.
- 10:35Peace.