Aces Up Your Sleeve
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Aces Up Your Sleeve
Adult Autistic Shutdowns
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This week is all about autistic shutdowns with a side-serving of alexithymia! If you struggle to know how you’re feeling while you’re feeling it, this episode may resonate with you. We’re discussing how to support yourself when you’re shutting down, how to find an outlet for emotions and even possibly identify them, and more. Autistic adult shutdowns don’t get enough airtime!
We're answering:
- I was clinically diagnosed this year before my 51st birthday with Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1. Long story short I grew up in an abusive household and was taught at a young age to hold every emotion inside lest I upset someone. How do I know if I’m having a shutdown or if it’s my trained reaction to conflict? What can I do to reduce these moments? Mental health therapy is not accessible to me where I live with my income unless I turn to a platform that seems to churn out therapy to the masses and I don’t feel great to do that. Thank you both for your thoughts.
- All About Autistic Shutdowns: A Guide for Allies: https://reframingautism.org.au/all-about-autistic-shutdown-guide-for-allies/
- Neurodivergent Friendly Workbook of DBT Skills 2nd Edition by Sonny Jane Wise: https://www.livedexperienceeducator.com/store/p/neurodivergent-friendly-workbook-of-dbt-skills
To ask us questions, fill out the form at www.neurokink.org/auys
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Sabrina at www.radicalingingishtsconsulting.com or @radicalinsightsconsulting on social media (FB, IG)
Kade at www.cryptidlearns.com or @cryptidlearns on social media (FB, IG)
This is the Aces Up Your Sleeve podcast, and we're the Aces Up Your Sleeve in relationships from romantic to workplace, parental to platonic, your relationship with yourself and everything in between. Let us, two autistic aspect kinky therapists, be your secret weapon in neurodivergent life.
SPEAKER_00This is your disclaimer. This is not therapy or therapeutic advice, and we are not on the clock. This is for entertainment purposes only. This is not a replacement for therapy. What you'll hear are our thoughts on different topics, what we might do in the situation, and how we've supported others through similar things.
SPEAKER_01I'm your host, Cade. And I'm your host, Sabrina. We're here today to talk about autistic adult meltdowns. No, shutdowns. We've covered meltdowns. We're on shutdowns this time. Yeah, the meltdown episode was pretty popular. We got a few follow-up questions because I think in that one I had mentioned, you know, that I'm a little more prone to shutdowns and they don't get talked about a ton. So I'm gonna cover that today. Let us know in the comments if you're you know, shutdowns, meltdowns, which one are you more prone to have or your loved ones more prone to have and experience? Love to know.
SPEAKER_00And if you don't know the difference, we'll cover it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, maybe we should start with that. Like what what how would you define for folks who don't know what an autistic shutdown is?
SPEAKER_00Well, you're the one more prone to them, so why don't you start?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it there are a couple different things that could lead to it, but I think one of the more universal definitions is a lot of overstimulation, a lot of unaccommodated needs, a lot of pushing through and continuing to perform socially, executive functioning-wise, that lead to you being unable to talk, move, do things anymore, eat, drink. Sometimes people report that they lose the ability to swallow, that breathing becomes really labored. I think there are kind of different intensities of that shutdown, but that's kind of a broad definition.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think of like meltdown as like instead it's almost like more up than down, right? So it's like big and outward. And then shut down as more of the internal kind of like if we're doing like fight, flight, freeze would be more of the shutdown and that kind of thing. Yeah. So I think all of those, you know, unmet sensory needs or overwhelm and all those things, I think can be either one. But I do think that the way that a shutdown presents will be a lot more like shut down, right? Like you there's a lot not a lot going on, maybe you won't notice because it's just like someone sitting quietly, X, Y, and Z, um, versus like a uh meltdown is like like nuclear reactor melting down, right?
SPEAKER_01Is like I think that's part of why they get discussed more often, too, is because people see and notice it more. A shutdown can look like someone who's isolating or needs more alone time or is stonewalling or something like that, and the meltdowns usually impact other people a lot, so people are more prone to talk about it and try to troubleshoot. Yeah, I think so too. So our first question for today is from a listener. It says, I was clinically diagnosed this year before my 51st birthday with autism spectrum disorder level one. Long story short, I grew up in an abusive household and was taught at a young age to hold every emotion inside lest I upset someone. How do I know if I'm having a shutdown or if it's my trained reaction to conflict? What can I do to reduce these moments? Mental health therapy is not accessible to me where I live with my income unless I turn to a platform that seems to churn out therapy to the masses, and I don't feel great to do that. Thank you both for your thoughts.
SPEAKER_00God churn out therapy to the masses. It sucks to you because like there are there can be good providers on those, but it's really a crapshoot. You've got no idea, and then how long they'll stay on it and things like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that is tough, and I see why this person is kind of avoiding that option. If you are open to therapy, I might recommend looking into any um within your state, if you're in the United States, any group therapy for later identified autistic folks. That usually comes with a cheaper payment than private pay one-on-one type of therapy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Or interns, uh, master's level clinical interns. I think some people might have stigma working with them, but honestly, A, there are some really, really solid interns. Um, they're under good clinical supervision, hopefully, and often they will offer at low or no cost in therapy. It is annoying because like sometimes you have to jump around because like they'll like graduate. Yeah, they finish up their their year, their internship, but just as another option. But yeah, I that like I feel like that's really common, the not knowing is this something I was born with, or is this something that like I'm experiencing based on something else or like a learned pattern.
SPEAKER_01And I think it is true that when we're raised in a household that wants you to suppress or repress or hide emotions or sweep everything under the rug, it does become part of our pattern to do that, or to go really far in the other direction and not want to follow along with that. Yeah. It's tough when you're in your 50s and trying to figure out how do I now express emotions, uh, otherwise I keep having shutdowns. I mean, this person saying, How do I know if I'm having a shutdown or if it's my trained reaction? It could be both. It could be that one feeds into the other. If you are autistic, it's likely that at some point you'll experience a shutdown, you know? So as we defined it earlier, if that sounds like what you're experiencing, and if you go online and look up other autistic adults talking about what a shutdown feels like to them, and you're noticing, yeah, there's some similar things in here to what I go through, it likely is at least in part that. I think the group therapy or therapy with interns could help you explore how you want to express your emotions and build some comfortableness and confidence in doing that, and then that will also help parse out, okay, sometimes I do that now and express my emotions, other times I'm still leading into a shutdown.
SPEAKER_00Or like it just feels like I am expressing my emotions. It's just not in the same way that other people tell me that I should be, in which case it might just be your kind of natural. I'm a proponent of a both and fucking shocking for anyone who knows me, right? Dialectical. Right. Like I don't think that there's I'm a big, pretty big proponent of like both nature and nurture. I think a lot of us have the natural proclivity proclivities that we would have in terms of like how we naturally would respond to the thing, and then it's reinforced either positively or negatively in the system that we're in, right? When I was really young, I had a lot more meltdowns. I think we talked about that on the meltdown episode or in the bonus content. And then I think I got into a phase of shutdowns because my family was also one of like suppression and things like that. And now I've found what I am aiming at a middle ground. But I also think that like if my natural inclination had been shutdowns, that would have been really strongly reinforced in my family unit to the point that like it would be very hard for me to tell is this now like my natural inclination, is it boosted by my environment? Like, where is this coming from? Because like I was raised by two white women, one um like what is it called? Like Midwesterner, I guess, is where Wisconsin is, and one from the south. Certainly not anything emotive happening in my house.
SPEAKER_01That's a great point that it could be uh something that was emphasized and reinforced over and over. And yeah. You know, as we're talking dialectical stuff as well, even if you can't find like a late-identified autistic group, don't count out DBT groups. Even if they're not autistic specific, I think you'll find a lot of folks who also are like, I don't know how to go about expressing emotion, and it leads me to certain behaviors that I don't really want to engage in anymore, and that could sound like a shutdown, could sound like a meltdown, could be anything in between, and you could still get support there. So if that's more accessible, I know a lot of insurances will help cover DBT groups.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes some DBT groups, because technically the group aspect is run as a skills class, won't take insurance because insurance doesn't usually cover psycho-ed groups. Yeah, like usually it covers like process groups. I think I have that the right way around. And so it kind of depends, but it's definitely possible it's worth looking into. I I know that there's a lot of discourse about DBT and all that. I think it's a modality like any other where people can use it poorly or can they can use it well. And I do think that it is, I mean, I know that it is based in behaviorism, it's dialectical behavior therapy, and so that turns a lot of people off, which makes sense. I also think that it is radically accepting a reality that our behaviors are based in the experiences that we've had and are reinforced by things around us all the time, regardless of the intentionality of that reinforcement. You know, I could do a whole whole podcast just on that. I do think that it's worthwhile to look into okay, the people who have emotions that they express in ways that either hurt relationships or are not how they want it to be, or any other type of thing, what are they doing to support themselves and maybe trying to see if you can uh use those things as well.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Yeah, if you've got somebody who's leading the group who can really center on the autonomy of here are some skills that if you want to be the most effective in communicating your emotions to someone and your needs, but you don't always have to phrase it this way, and it's up to you how far you want to lean into certain parts of it, that is pretty helpful for autistic folks and anybody. Outside of of just that, you know, they're asking, what can I do to reduce these moments? So outside of therapy, if we pretend that that truly is not an option in any form, I think starting to express your emotions will help. Because then you can start to figure out, okay, is this always tied to not being able to or feeling like I can't express my emotions, or is it maybe more of a shutdown piece? So whether that's through art, through writing, through songs, you singing along with your favorites, whatever's gonna get those emotions out of the body. And uh yeah, I think that could help.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, even sometimes before I'll start expression, I'll start um like identification um and non-judgment. So, like it's gonna be a DVT heavy episode. There's a reason that core mindfulness is what we come back to in DVT over and over, and it's because core mindfulness has our how skill and our what skill, which include like observe and describe. So, like we have to actually understand what like if I'm like, okay, you need to express your emotion, and you're like, okay, but I don't know what I'm feeling, which is not uncommon with shutdowns. How am I gonna express it if I don't know what it is? Right. And so it if it's like, yeah, I don't know what I'm feeling, I'm like, okay, well, try listening to sad songs and you're actually pissed off and you're angry. Sad songs are not gonna like help you to express that feeling and to like sit in it and and respect it. Um, and so I'm a big fan of like starting just with identification, which can be hard because like if you've got Alexithymia again in a household that like really was not about emotions or had a lot of judgment about different emotions. Um, and so sometimes if that's where you're starting from, it can even just be helpful to like deep dive on what emotions are, what they do for you, like what their purpose is, right? So, like anger is one of my favorite emotions. Its purpose is to motivate us to create change in our life, right? No change has ever happened in anyone's life or like all this stuff, unless there's at least some amount of like like if you think of like big social change, right? It always comes with anger, right? That's the light, the fire under your ass, right, to get things going. Now, that's not to say that like people can't be like, oh, I want the room to be colder, right? And so I'm gonna go and make that happen. Like that, fine, right? But anger is larger, yes, anger is like hugely important in creating like big, meaningful, lasting change. It also like tells us when we're not being treated how we want to be treated or things like that, right? Grief tells us that we loved someone. Fear tells us that a that we're safe or not safe, and like when things are important to us, right? So, like anxiety, oh, I have anxiety about a job interview. Okay, that tells me that you probably care about that job interview, right? Like, if it was completely neutral to you, you wouldn't really be that nervous about it. You care about it in some form or function, whether it's I like the job or I really want to get out of my current job, right? So that's gonna be your like safety piece or like whatever else. That's what fear does. So, like actually understanding like what do the different emotions do in general? What are some common experiences of them? Everyone's gonna experience emotions a little differently. I know people who are angry criers, I know people who, you know, all these different things, but like what are some common experiences? So, oh, a lot of people who experience anxiety or worry experience some kind of chest involvement, right? Something's happening, it feels like a balloon in their chest or an elephant sitting on their chest or their chest hurts or is tight or whatever. Okay, can I ever think of a time that that's ever happened to me? Right? And if not, like can I try to be a little bit paying attention to like the next time I watch a scary movie, do I feel anything in my chest? Maybe, maybe not, right? But you can kind of try to notice, like, okay, these are this is what the emotion does, these are common experiences and times that they happen. And like the hard part is there's literally DBT worksheets for all of these. And like I sound like a shell for DBT and I'm not, you know, actually understanding these things and then working on being present enough with yourself in neutral situations to start noticing them before you try to just like, well, yeah, the next time you melt down, try to tell if you're if your chest hurts. The next time I or the next time you shut down, the next time I shut down, I'm gonna be shut down. I won't be able to tell what's going on around me. That's not gonna be the time to check.
SPEAKER_01Definitely not. I like that you start with the step before because I'm pretty electhymic. I don't know what I'm feeling when I'm feeling it. It takes me sometimes days to be like, oh, actually that's really messed up of that person. Easier for me to identify if it's messed up towards someone else when it's towards me, really tough. So for me, I'd have to listen to the sad song and go, no, let me change to a happy, no, let me change to an angry, before I could start to be like, oh, that's what it is. I need some like external prompts and the body-based stuff also doesn't resonate with me. And yeah, so if you're listening and you're like, well, I don't know, I'll I'll try what Sabrina's saying, and it doesn't go well, you you're like, I'm not making connections, that's okay. Many of us happen to be alexothymic, and that's kind of its own little scale of you know, all sorts of different experiences being alexithymic, but whatever it takes to start to figure out what you're feeling, even if it's like okay, neutral, positive, negative, that's a little bit better because then you might know what supports you and and what feels better to do when you're feeling positive or feeling neutral or negative.
SPEAKER_00And you can even just like take notes and be like, I don't really feel anything in my body. This doesn't really distress me or or feel any type of way. And then over time, right, like case of like two days later, if you're like, I'm so pissed off about this, I actually realize this sucks balls. Okay, like there's actually like nothing wrong with that being the feeling you have a couple days later, you can still follow back up on that. It doesn't change or negate anything just because it's a few days later. It is interesting to me. Does it feel because like that's an interesting way for Alexa Thymi to show up that you can tell how you feel when it's someone else but not when it's you? Like, is that Alexa Thymi or is that a like learned?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, tough to say. We might have had a similar discussion on the bonus content for the meltdown one, but it's like, yeah, it could be a both and. I don't know. I just know it's easier to notice when someone else has been tr being treated in a way that misaligns with my values than it is for me to notice when it's happening directly to me. I don't know if I'm too in it to notice in the moment or what it is.
SPEAKER_00Is it usually with people? Now I'm just curious about your experience.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Is it usually with people who themselves can tell that they're being treated poorly and are upset about it, or is it like with anyone, even if they don't notice themselves?
SPEAKER_01Anyone, yeah. Yeah. It'd be easier if it was like it'd be clearer cut, I guess, if it was only for people who did or didn't notice, but then it would be that external.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. That strikes me. I'm not an expert on on alexithymia, and I don't feel that I experience it, but that strikes me as less alexithymic and more like a personal misattunment with like your experiences. Because like if you can feel it for others even when they're not noticing it, then like clearly something is happening there.
SPEAKER_01It it could be other things that are also at play, but I do see that a lot in in conversations with other alexithymic people that witnessing it, I don't all it also doesn't always spark a feeling except for, oh, that's not right, that's not good. You know, like I can tell that that that's not fair to that. The fairness almost comes up more than just uh an emotional like I'm angry on behalf of this person. It's usually a, oh, that's messed up actually and shouldn't be happening. How do I and I can tell now what this person either is feeling or might feel in the future.
SPEAKER_00But you can't tell that it's not fair to you if a thing happens to you that's not fair.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, or I s I notice it a little, but there's not a feeling attached with it right away.
unknownHmm.
SPEAKER_01Like that felt weird.
SPEAKER_00Guess I'll define what weird is later. Don't really know. Is that like when you put intentional effort into figuring out weird, it just continues to be like a roadblock?
SPEAKER_01No, I think sometimes there's a little roadblock, like I know this is usually more of our bonus content stuff, but had a friend, some stuff with another friend happened where I was like, oh, he's actually treating this person not great, really bad. He's reinforcing really problematic things right now. This goes against all my values, and I don't know him to be this way. Let me bring it up and try to reroute and see if he's gonna fix this and do some repair. Are we not as values aligned as I thought? It was definitely that one, just for listener engagement. For him to then randomly at some point delete me and unadd me when we've been friends for quite some time, like quite close friends. Long time, yeah. Felt weird at first, like, oh. Huh. Deleted out of nowhere.
SPEAKER_00Enraged immediately.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And I just can't even like even with the other part of that that I also knew about, like, that enraged me less than how much it enraged me that like your whole friendship went down for nothing, essentially. Like that interesting.
SPEAKER_01And so if I don't lean into it and think about it much, which to be fair, logically I know it sucks, and it feels weird and uncomfortable to still be in online spaces with that person and some other weird stuff, but I don't know if I'm sad, angry. I don't like I I just I don't know. And there's not really a word or a feeling that comes up. And I think that's fine for now, you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh no, I definitely think it's fine. I just I think it's interesting, and I wish that we came, and I like back to this question answer a little bit too. Like, I think that there's something really important about like non-judgmentalness when it comes to these things, right? Like finding a way to be curious without it being tied to outcome, right? So like I have no, there's nothing in me that cares whether you feel things for yourself or not, as long as you're living a life that like brings you joy and like healthy relationships that serve you and all those things, right? Um, because as your friend, that's what I want for you. And I am curious and interested in just the way that you your brain works because like that's just interesting to me. And I think that if we can all build that for ourselves, like that's where it it lies. It's being able to ask the question without being like, because it's bad if that's the answer, and it's good if this is the answer, or because like if this is the answer, I have to change a bunch of things about my life. I don't, I think that tying any answer to any specific outcome is where we start losing the grip versus being like, oh, I'm noticing that I don't know. Like I've heard a couple different ways in which someone might have the same reaction that I am identifying with having. Let me get curious about what that could be, but it doesn't mean that like no matter what, this is how I react to things. And I can accept that and and it's okay, right? Or if it's burning relationships down, I can still like work on it not burning my relationships down, kind of regardless of where it comes from, in a way.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Absolutely. And I think it's hard too in our society where there's a lot of shoulds. I think most people, if they knew all of the situation, would go, Well, you should feel angry because how dare he throw away five-ish years of friendship over one tiny thing, not even about you directly. Or right, like there's I was I was enraged thinking about it. I know, I know. And like I even feel a little like, shouldn't I be very sad? Shouldn't I be reaching out? Shouldn't I be saying like judgment?
SPEAKER_00Right, is like the like, oh, am I because like should means that like something. Is better than another. Except it's there's not.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I don't think there's a right or wrong response in most situations. Like this one, I don't if someone else was in my shoes, I have no idea what they would do and if it would be right or wrong to do whatever they did. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00This was a thing I had to get really comfortable with. Like, um, my biological mom passed in 2020, and I met her for the first time, like in person on her deathbed. I was lucky enough that like she was in North Carolina when it happened, so I could still have my therapy appointment that I was scheduled for that week, um, which I did like from the hotel I was sitting at with my siblings. And like so much of that session was just like, there's no right or wrong way to to to feel what you're feeling. Like, even if someone else had been in the exact same situation, which is a weird and rare situation, right? To be meeting your mother as she dies. Fucking weird. But like, even if that were like a common enough experience for there to be a norm necessarily, that still wouldn't matter. Because, like, and this is my biggest thing with shoulds in general, is that they they literally don't matter. Shoulds, um, as much as everybody was pissed off at me about the um, what was it? I was like, oh, um, common sense is not real. Everyone's all pissy, right? I'm gonna do another one. Shoulds don't matter, they change nothing. It like it functionally does not matter what you should feel, because what you do feel is what you feel. And thinking that you should feel something different is not going to change that. It's just going to make you add like shame on top of all of the other things you're like very validly feeling.
SPEAKER_01Or if you're not feeling anything about it, and then all you feel is shame because you're like, oh, I should be feeling that's not helpful, and that's not gonna get you more attuned to yourself. It's getting you more attuned to the expectations of others, and that's kind of the opposite. That all often also leads to shutdowns, and we're trying to talk about how do we move out of that space and do that have less shut shutdowns. And yeah, if you can get in touch with your emotions and identify them and know what that means to you very deeply and have a great understanding, fantastic. If you can't, that's okay too. There are kind of other ways, you know, to to process and and uh express things and express yourself. And I think with the the shutdown piece, once you start expressing yourself and your emotions a little bit more often, if you're noticing that those shutdowns are still happening, or those things that you're like, is this a shutdown? Starting to do a little backwards thinking. What was I doing earlier today? Sensory-wise, was I getting overwhelmed, overstimulated, was there something annoying? Socially, am I exhausted or not getting enough social stimulation? You know, what's been going on socially? Is there a lot of stressors there? Personally, hygiene tasks, eating, food, water, all the things like, are you meeting all those needs? If you're finding that some of those areas are off on the days that you're feeling this way, that could be a sign that it is more of a shutdown than an unexpressed emotion.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. My personal thought is that there's not, again, the line between those two things is extremely blurred. Um, and so I do think too that like even if you are in shutdown, like, you know, once you can literally like breathe and move your body again, like you can still do the same things as what you would do if you were like trying to express the emotion and just do whatever comes naturally. So maybe like some favorites of mine. I have a favorite, God, my my IOP kids would would quake to hear me talking. We used to do this activity all the time because I love it, right? But it's like a three feeling a three-color feeling check-in where you pick three colors that represent or you pick three feelings, you identify three feelings you've had often throughout the week, and then you pick three colors to represent those, and then you draw whatever you want, you do whatever you want with those three colors on the page, and you would just skip the identifying the feelings part, right? You would just go into find three colors that most call to you in this moment, or pick three fucking random colors I don't care, and then do literally anything to the page of paper that you want to, using those three colors or not, or whatever, that like sometimes it can help because like for me, I am very body focused when my emotions are intense. And so, like, if I pick out the paper and start fucking ripping it to shreds, that tells me something. Even if I'm like, Yep, I thought it was blue and purple and serene colors, and actually I'm ripping the sheet of paper, like that's information. And so I think like there's something to be said about like you can still do some of those similar types of things. Same thing, like listen to whatever songs happen to call to you and just sit and listen to them, and that's okay. Like, they don't have to be, it could even just be the same song that you've been listening to any fucking way on repeat, you know. But like I do think there's something powerful for me again, also like talking to people helps me usually figure out my feelings about things. If I'm not out to talk, that's pretty close to me being in shutdown. Is like if I'm not there to yap, like my friend asked me earlier, like, do you want to talk about it? And I was like, not really. Cool. This thing has me pretty pretty fucked up right now, right? And like once I get through that, talking it through with people that I trust will usually help me gain some insight if there is insight to be gained.
SPEAKER_01And if you're less of a a speaker person, but you still need to process with someone else, there's a lot of great places online where you can do that. If you've got a community of friends online that you trust with that. I think getting getting a little outside support when it comes to feelings and expression can help, and it can also help reduce shutdowns. One of the biggest things that I work with with my clients, whether they're adults or teens or little kids, is coming up with a support plan, and that's not just for when somebody is feeling suicidal, that also can be for when somebody is close to shutdown or close to meltdown. What sort of things bring you comfort? What sort of things push you further into the shutdown or the meltdown? What sort of things do you feel like you need easily available and um you could create like a little grab bag of stuff that either you can grab when you're noticing that this is coming on or that someone can bring to you? Who are some of the people that you like to be around or engage with during these times? If anyone, what should others know about what will make this worse or better for you? Maybe on there there's a little line that says, Don't engage for 15 minutes to 30 minutes and then check in. Maybe it's don't engage until I'm ready to check in. Sometimes we can't reduce the frequency as much as we can figure out better ways to navigate it once we're in it. So the plan should have a mixture of both. Totally agree. You know, I I hope that that's helpful for starting to determine is this emotional outlet related? Is this shutdown related? Is it a mixture? There are a lot of really good guides online for both autistic adults and like their loved ones and acquaintances. So we could link some of those in the show notes if somebody wants a little more of a structured and there's dbt workbooks that you can just buy or check out from the library and get a little notepad or notebook or type in a Word document and like you can go through and do it yourself if you can't access the support.
SPEAKER_00And DBT does have some like weird ableist shit in it, so just ignore the shit that's weird and ableist. Like part of Deer Man is making eye contact. Gross. You don't have to do that. That's ridiculous. Right? So like just remember with with anything, you take what's relevant and leave the rest.
SPEAKER_01And maybe we can link to the one by Sonny Jane Wise, because I have a feeling there's a lot less of that in there.
SPEAKER_00Yes, there is. And I think that there's a lot of good, like the hard part is, right, like with either shutdown or Alexa Time or whatever, there's a lot of like introspection is harder to do. And so I know in in Sonny Jane Wise's, which is fantastic, the second edition is out, and it's fucking jam fucking packed. Like that thing is so full, they worked incredibly hard on it, you can tell. It has a good amount of like, okay, like what is my energy level for this thing? What is this? And I think it is okay to just put like, I don't really know. And so there's gonna be some trial and error to it, which is actually a thing that I really respect about dbt, is like it doesn't expect you to just know these things about yourself, right? Like a lot of like dbt was made for borderlines, and borderlines are typically raised in situations where their emotions are invalidated in some way, and a lot of us were raised specifically in environments where like we were not taught what our emotions were, like how to notice them, like any part of how to honor them. And so a lot of that work does come from like, hey, you're gonna have to trial and error a little bit because like you don't know. Like, I didn't know that my anger lived in my arms until I did DBT and like actually worked it.
SPEAKER_01Makes a lot of sense, yeah. We talked about some of the bonus content here around our own experiences, but we have another listener question from somebody over on our Patreon, a parent who's struggling now with shutdowns, even though traditionally they've been having meltdowns, and they kind of want to know how do I get back to meltdowns instead of shutdowns while raising two young kids and having a marriage. So we'll answer that, might share some more about our personal experiences. Um, if you're not over on the Patreon, tears start as low as four bucks, and all of that goes into supporting us and all of the funds that we put out to do the podcast. If you're a therapist and you're listening, we will be having a hybrid live taping of Aces, so a very special episode focusing more on like fatness, fat liberation, diet culture, questions like that. We've got most of our questions for it, but if you've got an extra question around that topic, now is definitely the time to send it in. And then we also, for the like second half or later two-thirds of the training, we'll actually be giving a proper training on the fundamentals of fat phobia and healthism for therapists who are working with clients. And that'll be on September 12th from 10 a.m. to 11 30 a.m. Pacific time. We'll have a link in the show notes. It's free for people to sign up. Yeah, um, thanks for listening. You can expect new episodes weekly on Tuesdays. You can find me over at Cryptid Learns. Sabrina is over at the Radical Insights. This is a new username, so make sure you're following her on the right spots on Facebook or Instagram. You can follow the podcast on Facebook or Instagram at AcesUpyoursleeve Pod. That way you can interact with us and see when new episodes release. If you've got any questions for us, visit neurokink.org slash A U Y S and you can send it to us. We're going to jump over to Patreon to record Upping the Ante, which is that bonus content. It's at patreon.comslash acesupyoursleeve podcast, but you can also listen to it wherever you stream once you join the Patreon. See you over there. Bye.
