Autism

Thanks for understanding, it's a lot to deal with and it's great your reaching out.

• Hyperarousal refers to symptoms that signal that you're overstimulated (fight-and-flight response, anxiety, reactive emotions, agression, defensiveness). Hypoarousal are symptoms that signal that you're being understimulated (think disassociations, withdown, fatigue, intrusive thoughts.) Being able to target the zone between these states (the window of tolerance) where you are aware of the present moment, able to regulate emotions, and feel secure lets you regulate the thoughts and emotions.

Understanding what over and understimulates helps identify triggers, especially since emotions can be quite intense. There's a few ways to regulate and it's all about finding what works for you.

• The strategy I leaned into was breaking down my mental processes into "Thoughts, Feelings, Behavior" so for example Thoughts: Literally no one would use this basketball. She's holding onto it like everything else like a hoarder. Feelings: Anger, Frustration, Disappointment Behaviour (Things I want to do or did do): Loudly stomping, throwing things. This let's me analyse it and evaluate whether this is rational, valid, reasonable etc as well as stop my thought process and try to improve such as not making presumptions or talking with her.

If you can find it, the stuff my therapist and I referenced are in a book called The Neurodivergent Friendly Workbook of DBT Skills by Sonny Jane Wise (2022), specifically Section 3 and Section 5. Hopefully a pdf is available somewhere but I don't have time tonight sadly.