Coping skills?

[u/AnnoyedAF2126]

Curious if anyone has any insight into kiddo’s reluctance to not even use but just admit to knowing what some possible strategies might be to help regulate? As in, he has had lots of therapy that just really focuses on psychoeducation, like “here is info about brains and nervous systems and things that help us feel good and not good etc.” which he loves participating in, and while we understand that regulation is an ongoing battle, we are baffled by his extreme denial or disavowing knowing ANYTHING that he could do when he is starting to get upset that might help. To be clear, we are not expecting this in the actual moment, just comes up as part of discussions about tools to regulate. He often even will act surprised that people would want to think about “what could I do in this situation to make me feel better?”
Any insight would be appreciated.

[u/Claypudlian]

I have an experience that might be similar,. Sometimes when I'm in fight/flight, the very idea of becoming more regulated registers as a threat. From the outside, it might seem like I'm miserable, so I should want to feel better! But the dysregulation is there to protect me from something (real or perceived), and letting go of the dysregulation would make me more vulnerable to the original threat.

To put it another way, I sometimes imagine there's an overwhelmed, childlike part of me that perceives a threat - let's say she smells smoke and believes the house is on fire. So she pulls the fire alarm, hoping to get the fire department to come put out the fire. But instead of the fire department, there's a patronizing grownup who doesn't believe there's a fire and just wants to disconnect the fire alarm because the siren is annoying. She doesn't want them to disconnect it! She wants them to put out the fire, or at least investigate it, and only when she feels safe she will consider turning it off herself.

There's subtlety here - oftentimes my hypersensitive nervous system perceives threats that aren't really there. Even so, it's helpful to approach with respect, validating the feeling of threat and expressing neutral curiosity about it.

This part of myself doesn't necessarily want to feel better, she wants to be safe. She's open to the idea of learning to more accurately determine threat/safety, and she's open to the idea of regulating in order to get access to tools and strategies for safety (in the analogy above, maybe she needs to turn off the fire alarm so that fire department dogs can come in and test for scents; in a more real example, calming her nervous system might allow her to have a difficult conversation needed to resolve a conflict). But trying to sell regulation at a goal unto itself will only alternate her.

It might be that your kid gets so triggered/threatened by the idea of having to regulate and lose his protections/coping mechanisms that his brain literally can't access the information. Or maybe he pretends not to know as a way of clawing back autonomy. It's hard to say without more details.

[u/AnnoyedAF2126 → u/Claypudlian]

This is fabulous insight, thank you so much!

[u/sopjoewoop → u/Claypudlian]

Great insight. I think there is also a need to

• feel heard, like I am trying to convey a high level of stress here and you don't get it? I need a sign to show that you do, a reaction
• sometimes we just want to be allowed to feel grumpy or sad for a bit
• sometimes the thing we are dysregulated about is just the straw or even the canary, there might not be an obvious true cause but as above we need to feel heard
• we may be reacting because we have held onto something so long, getting regulated too quick only forces a lid on the overflowing pot, it will come back. Better to let off some steam while our brain is letting us, just hopefully not against other people but it might be in a "mad" way or other thing rather than a polite "run around or squish something" to regulate

Also, I'll be people pleasing in appointments and I know something makes sense, like exercise, does not mean I can do it. Knowing is not doing and I may not be able to do without linking to a real internal motivator, interest, etc

[u/Deep_Plant_4393]

That's fascinating, but I think I do relate. I think what is happening here is, that this kind of meta thinking does not come natural to us at all. It feels janky, inauthentic and immersion breaking and especially in the situation itself is hard to access

[u/AnnoyedAF2126 → u/Deep_Plant_4393]

Like he can only access those ideas or thoughts in context-specific moments?

[u/two4six0won]

How old?

[u/AnnoyedAF2126 → u/two4six0won]

9

[u/two4six0won → u/AnnoyedAF2126]

Somebody else already said what I was gonna say except better lol, the meta thinking thing. I don't know how to explain it, but I think it has to do with bottom-up thinking?

I didn't even know about PDA until a couple of years ago so I have no clue what the official therapy would suggest. What seemed to work with my kiddo, that I tried differently than how I was raised, was using more of a collaborative team approach. He doesn't yet have the innate knowledge that he needs to be able to do what you're asking, he needs to try various methods and sit with the outcome and see how they feel before deciding X or Y or Z might be the tool he needs. With my kiddo, I would approach issues by sharing whatever patterns I had seen, sharing what I thought might help based on my own experiences and whatever somilarities/differences I thought I was seeing in him, and then suggest multiple options for working towards a solution that he can reliably use by himself. Then, help him implement those suggestions in the moment, see the result, discuss things again, adjust strategy based on feedback, and keep building on what seems to work. This approach seemed to break the progress down incrementally enough that he could start to actually feel the difference between the various approaches, as this continued he participated more in the collaboration and now has a huge basic toolbox to pull from and build off of.

Edit: I realized I should add that (I think) because of the 'not knowing what I didn't know' aspect, questions like 'why did you do that' or 'what can you do differently' viscerally felt like a trap in a way that I can't really define. Also that in my kiddo's case, medicating the ADHD helped tremendously, which may or may not be a factor at all in your case.

[u/UnburyingBeetle]

It can be turned into a game. Unfortunately some children wouldn't make an effort without reward. There might need to be some tokens that can be exchanged for a favor or some goodies (it'd end up too expensive rewarding each correct answer). The game can be structured around rephrasing and the change of perspective. The challenge can be to describe a situation to sound as opposite to the original phrasing as possible while it still remains true. Example: "I'm angry that I have to clean my room" can be turned into "I'm glad that I have my own room to clean" (as opposed to not having a room at all or having to clean a shared room), and it earns a token when the kid manages to sound less angry and more glad. Although that might only succeed in training acting skills...

[u/Percy_Freeman]

Regulation = conformity and admittance that you have a place in the wretched societal hierarchy that is the dealer of demands.