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AI Chat: Comparison of Holly Bridges’ A.R.T. and Danny Raede’s Defence Mode

AI Chat: Comparison of Holly Bridges’ A.R.T. and Danny Raede’s Defence Mode

Danny Raede and I were playing around with AI chat. This is what it came up with – it’s pretty cool!
“Holly Bridges’ ART (Autism Reframe Technique) method and Asperger Experts’ concept of Defense Mode are two distinct approaches aimed at understanding and helping individuals with autism, specifically those with Asperger’s Syndrome. Although they share some similarities, there are significant differences in their core concepts and strategies.
Holly Bridges’ ART Method:
Focus: The ART method is a holistic approach that aims to help individuals with autism improve their self-awareness, self-regulation, and overall well-being.

Mind-body connection: Holly Bridges emphasizes the importance of the mind-body connection and how it impacts the individual’s perception of the world and their own experiences. ART incorporates techniques from fields like kinesiology, movement, and mindfulness.

Reframing: A key aspect of the ART method is helping individuals with autism reframe their understanding of the condition. Instead of viewing it as a disorder, ART encourages seeing it as a different way of processing information and experiencing the world. This reframing process helps reduce self-judgment and promotes self-acceptance.

Polyvagal Theory: ART incorporates Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory, which explores the role of the autonomic nervous system and its impact on emotional regulation and social engagement. The method uses techniques to help individuals with autism better regulate their nervous system, leading to improved emotional regulation and social engagement.

Asperger Experts’ Defense Mode:
Focus: Asperger Experts’ Defense Mode concept is centered around the idea that individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome often experience a state of heightened anxiety and stress, causing them to withdraw from social situations and daily life activities.

Fight-or-flight response: Defense Mode is described as a chronic fight-or-flight state that is triggered when the individual perceives their environment as threatening or overwhelming. This state makes it challenging for individuals with Asperger’s to engage with others and participate in everyday activities.

Identifying triggers: The Asperger Experts’ approach focuses on helping individuals identify the triggers that cause them to enter Defense Mode, so they can better understand their reactions and develop strategies to manage their stress and anxiety levels.

Building support systems: This approach emphasizes the importance of creating a supportive environment, including strong relationships with family and friends, to help individuals with Asperger’s feel safe and secure. By reducing the perceived threats and stressors, individuals can gradually move out of Defense Mode and improve their overall well-being.

Comparison:
While both methods aim to help individuals with autism improve their overall well-being and functioning, there are some key differences:

  1. ART emphasizes the mind-body connection and incorporates techniques like kinesiology and mindfulness, whereas the Asperger Experts’ approach primarily focuses on identifying triggers and managing the Defense Mode state.
  2. The ART method promotes a reframing of autism as a different way of processing information rather than a disorder, fostering self-acceptance and self-awareness. Defense Mode, on the other hand, focuses on understanding and addressing the specific anxiety and stress-related challenges faced by individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome.
  3. Holly Bridges’ ART method draws upon Polyvagal Theory to help individuals with autism regulate their nervous system, while Asperger Experts’ Defense Mode is centred around the concept of a chronic fight-or-flight state and building support systems to manage it.

In conclusion, Holly Bridges’ ART method and Asperger Experts’ Defense Mode concept both offer valuable insights and strategies to help individuals with autism navigate their unique challenges. However, they differ in their focus and approach, with ART emphasizing the mind-body connection and reframing autism, while Defense Mode concentrates on managing anxiety, stress, and building support systems.”

Then it made this!
Can We Be More Like Dogs?

Can We Be More Like Dogs?

We spend a lot of time discussing hacking the ventral vagus nerve and getting it back online, getting ourselves back up to speed. We want to be perfect, enough, on point, thrive and survive!

But the truth is in order to do this, we need to stop, we need to slow down, we need to rest and recharge and to do this, we need to access our dorsal states. Our dorsal state is where we sleep, where we go ‘offline’, where we engage in intimacy, in spiritual connection, lucid dreaming.

The dorsal state is different from the ventral. The ventral vagus is about being outwardly connected. It is our newest evolutionary function and a valuable resource. But it isn’t where we sleep. It isn’t where we engage quietly with the deepest parts ourselves. To do this we need to go inward and to do so, we need to shift into an alternate, physical state. (This can be easier said than done!)

Our mental states are constantly being reflected by our physical state. Or to be more precise, our mental states are allowed by the corresponding choreography of our nervous system.

Day and night, we are constantly moving into different states of consciousness that are only accessible by the body being in a synonymous state. If the body is in a heightened autonomic state, our brain moves into a similar formation, if we take ourselves into a harmonious state of mind, the body follows.

All our flow into states of consciousness – sleep, awake, mindful, flight/fight, fatigue, fawn, festive, fearful are all body states as much as brain states. They are intertwined, where one goes, so too does the other. Our bodies enable us to be this individual consciousness and in this sense, the consciousness and body are one.

The moving into all these states is allowed by the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve allows us to choreograph these changes and allows us to mobilise into different states of being. When we are alert and active, we are in a more ventral state, when we are in a more dorsal state, we are accessing different aspects of our consciousness. For example, when we sleep, our bodies don’t stop, they just change states. The body is still working in sleep. It is repairing organs, neural pruning, creating vitamins and hormones, processing imagery, collating your day. When you are sleeping, dreaming, meditating or praying your body is in a dorsal state. It is the land of the deep.

A dorsal space is a harder place to access for many. We spend less time teaching our children how to access these states. We spend less time in nature, we spend less time listening to our deepest callings, because we are so outwardly focused, so survival driven that we lose sight and connection of our inner sight, our inner drive and knowing. We not only lose connection with these vital aspects of our consciousness, but also our ability to get ourselves into the physical state to access them.

In Western society, we have mostly lost the language and the art of the dorsal states. More and more people can’t get out of a heightened state. They can’t sleep, or they need medication to sleep. It’s an elusive thing to try and meditate. We are told to relax! We’ve forgotten how and yet it is the most natural of things.

All mammals, humans included, have a ventral vagus to communicate through their social engagement wiring. They also all have a dorsal vagus for rest and repose, and just like dogs and cats and lions and guinea pigs, we are supposed to know how to move through these states effortlessly. We are designed to be able to move up and down the vagal line depending on what we need. A cat will deeply rest, yet be able to mobilise at a moment’s notice; puppies will play-fight with teeth and hackles up, moving effortlessly back down to a softer pose. We are supposed to be able to do this too. Yet many of us are stuck like a car in a jarring, fifth gear trying to pretend everything is fine.

By moving too far into valuing the mind, have we forgotten the importance of the body? Have we forgotten the languid languages of rest and just being? Do we need to start to relearn how to relax upside down like a dog on a sofa with a quiet smile on our face and an empty mind? If we do, the way through is remembering the lost language of the body. The way back is simple, we listen to the body. When we learn how, we begin to remember states of simplicity, silence, surrender, sentience and that we are all, embodied consciousness.

Nightmares and Body Inertia

Nightmares and Body Inertia

Some of my autistic clients with chronic inertia tell me that they have recurring nightmares. They often wake from their sleep in a state of fear and anxiety. It’s weirdly normal for them and often they don’t tell the people in their lives as it is just one more thing they are dealing with. It’s exhausting and it’s debilitating.

Common approaches to dealing with this are psychological. We tend to look at the meaning of dreams as indicators of emotional stress and psychological discomfort. We might apply a CBT approach to manage the anxiety and to help think ourselves cheerful when we wake up and have to initiate our day.

But what if there was another reason for the nightmares? What if there was an entirely different approach to helping them to diminish?

Over the last few years I have watched many of my clients resolve their nightmares without any psychological intervention or dream analysis and it has occurred to me that their physical inertia has a huge role to play in the occurrence of their nightmares.

Think about this. People on the autism spectrum have physical systems that very easily go into a shut-down state, where it is hard to initiate movement, thought and speech. They immobilise. Their system will go from a state of flight / fight to shut-down super fast. Their nervous system is generally not as robust and has not got the strength and flexibility to efficiently mobilise through different states of arousal. When they slide into an immobilised state, it is very hard to move out of it.

So what happens when we sleep? In sleep, we go into a state of immobilisation. Our bodies wind down into a state of blissful, partial paralysis so that we can fully rest and the brain can get to work tidying up the body ready for the following day. We follow sleep patterns. We go through stages of sleep and our bodies follow, taking us into deep states of slumber. When asleep, we are in an alternate state, we dream, and then hopefully we wake up refreshed. Hopefully, we emerge from this deep state knowing who we are, knowing where we are and having an innate knowing that we can mobilise ourselves up and out of bed.

But what would happen if you woke up and found you couldn’t move your body? Would you be alarmed? What if it happened daily and it had been like that most of your life? Would it be a daily terror that you can barely explain to the people who love you? Would the mind be desperately trying to figure a way out of this state, would it try to alert you?

I think this is often a reason for autistic nightmares. The brain is trying to resolve a problem, but it’s not so much a psychological problem as a physical one. You start to wake from sleep and you are part-paralyzed and it is terrifying. The system does not feel safe, it cannot escape.

During the day, people with chronic inertia, speech and movement difficulties, often go down in this immobilised state and they find it very hard to rouse from it. At night, when they have gone into an even deeper state of paralysis, it must be even harder to rouse the body from sleep. Potentially, there is this interim time upon waking, where the body is still paralysed and they have awareness, but can’t can’t move. This is the stuff of nightmares and it is potentially far more common in autism and other inertia oriented issues that we have been aware of. It may also explain why people don’t want to go to sleep!

The good news is that I keep seeing this problem resolve itself. As we work to strengthen the vagus nerve; as we get the system more robust; as people start to have more control over their motor function – they have a greater resilience. They start to sleep better, they feel better and, I think, they start to be able to mobilise themselves out of this deep, sleep state because their nervous system has greater facility and control. One way we see this change reflected, is that their nightmares start to disappear.

To learn more about how the vagus nerve influences our sleep and mental functioning, see my online course

Promoting Sleep and Enhancing Mood – Without Cannabis

Promoting Sleep and Enhancing Mood – Without Cannabis

While we often feel we have to use drugs and medicines to help us rest and sleep, we actually have all we need inside us.

Our bodies have a natural ability to rest and restore, but when we don’t know how to tap into it, we turn to pharmaceuticals. For thirty years now we have known about the Endocannabinoid System. It was found in the 1990’s by researchers exploring compounds in cannabis. The ECS is a complex cell-signalling system in your body that influences sleep, mood, appetite, movement, memory, pain and fertility. 

Drugs like cannabis use the pathways of this signalling system to move the body and brain into a more inert state. By activating the ECS, cannabis can help to reduce inflammation, to relieve pain and to allow us to experience our body in a softer state. While it has many benefits, cannabis can also have side-effects. Even the softer cannabis options can make you drowsy and unmotivated. It can leave your head a bit cloudy and affect movement. So what else can influence pathways to the ECS to bring our body into a softer state?

We have found recently that the fascia is intimately connected to the endocannabinoid system. Our fascia is a highly sensitive, connective tissue that surrounds all of our body. It holds our organs, blood vessels, muscles, bones and nerve fibre in place. It responds to the flight / fight system and it mobilises when we are safe and can get restricted when we are stressed or in pain. The fascia is like our inner ‘spidey suit’, it responds very quickly and helps us to move and it helps us to relax. If we are in pain for a long time, it can get fixed and stuck. We can access the fascia by massage and touch and help it to release and soften our physical system and it seems that this, in turn, softens or accesses the Endocannabinoid System.

Studies are showing that there are endocannabinoid receptors in the tissue of the fascia which suggests that the fascia communicates with the ECS.

Drugs like cannabis have been shown they may stimulate the fascia to become less tight and let the tissue soften and expand, however since the fascia responds well to touch, it also suggests that stimulating the fascia might also signal the ECS receptors and promote relaxation and pain reduction – thereby offering an alternative to medication.

More and more we are finding studies that show us that touch is a modulator of pain relief and these recent findings help to explain why. The body communicates in intricate, bidirectional ways. Everything is interconnected and we have so much at our disposal if we can see the innate sophistication of how it all works.

When we learn to work with the body, learn to give the body the right signals, we can learn how to naturally down-regulate the system. When someone has been in a consistent, constricted body state; gentle, focused touch can teach their inner system how to soften. The body can learn to experience something new and we can begin to understand the terrain of our nervous system and befriend it.

Working with A.R.T. (anxiety reframe technique) people often say ‘I feel like I’m stoned, I feel really relaxed like I’ve taken drugs, but my mind is clear’.

This may be because we have activated the ECS through the fascia, through gentle physical exercises that have stimulated the body to shift into a more down-regulated state. When we do this respectfully, with great regard for the intelligence of the entire system, we get results. When we work simply, the client is able to understand and incorporate the learning and they have tools that they can use themselves to bring their body into this state. We employ the natural ability of the ECS and fascial system to move ourselves into a calm state – naturally.

Come and learn more about how – naturally – get your nervous system back into a place of rest and restore.

See Somatic Practices for Alignment and Resilience
An Autistic Revolution

An Autistic Revolution

This quote is from an article by an adult autistic talking about her experiences with CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).

“And yet it has remained, alongside its sibling “mindfulness,” as one of the more harmful tools offered, like giving me a hammer and asking me to hit myself with it over and over again and calling it help. Because that is precisely the direction it goes, asking me to turn against myself again and again, assuming that my own thoughts are incorrect and faulty and just need to be brought into correct alignment. What a terrible offense to my own self worth and integrity.”

 

Isabel Abbott

It speaks to the growing discontent of so many autistics with the therapies offered to them. So often our therapies are jarring for people on the spectrum. They, and sometimes the therapists themselves, do not know how to attend to the autistic.

Our present therapies require interoceptive skills of knowing how you feel. They have a neurotypical framework of assessment and a neurotypical conception of what constitutes a healthy human psyche.

They very often have little idea of the physical inertia and pain that people with autism live with and so concentrate on methods that try and get people to ‘think’ themselves well. All of these things can alienate autistic people and leave them feeling even more disenfranchised, and feeling like they have failed.

But really who has failed?

The therapies have failed. Based on outdated models they fail to take into account so many premises that neurodivergents explicitly understand. They fail to understand the language and the nuance associated with a divergent way of being in the world, one that is complex, beautiful and whole on its own terms. It is one that is rich in symbolism and meaning and one that is craving room for unique acceptance and expression.

Autistics are now asking for new modes of therapy that are in line with their sensibilities. So many therapies come as a fix it model, as a one size fits all, as if ‘if you just fix your faulty thinking’, or just unlearn your unhelpful behaviour; or just learn to cope with your problems – then all will be well and you can carry on.

But they can’t just carry on. Autistics are often debilitated by an ableist society. They are often debilitated by inertia and executive deficits that make knowing who you are and knowing how you feel (let alone making decisions and putting things into action) really difficult. So telling people to ‘buck up’ and ‘if you could just get your head around it’, doesn’t work.

They don’t work, and nor do platitudes and paying unhelpful lip service to neurodivergence.

What we need is a revolution in our approach to autism. We need a therapy model that has a strong neurodivergent framework and a capacity to attend to the physical ailments that come alongside autism.

This is why I created Anxiety Reframe Technique. A.R.T. is a radically different therapy that doesn’t seek to fix, or dig into your problems with a cookie cutter solution. A.R.T. works to get you more aligned, to feeling more like yourself. It gets you feeling more robust and able to be more flexible and to express yourself authentically. It teaches you tools and skills that allow you to bring yourself into alignment – rather than always relying on others (who know better than you). A.R.T. was created by a neurodivergent mind.

This is a statement from an adult client. It shows very clearly that for her, A.R.T. ticks all the boxes.

“It was the viable way I’d been seeking. After the second day of the Intensive, I noticed that something inside me had rad-ically shifted:

 

I had a nap on the sofa in my doorless family room while there were workmen in my house. Historically, not even being alone in a locked room sufficed for me to feel calm and secure enough to rest while workmen were in my personal space, and there had been a lot of work-men in my house over the years.

 

After the third day, I had a serious conversation with a family member that was more meaningful and engaging than I’d had with that person in a long time, I stood up for myself, spoke with compassion for them, and did not implode or quickly buckle under pressure as per decades of precedent.

 

After the fourth day, I realized what had happened: that I had unlocked a key component of my ability to advocate for myself respectfully however distressed I felt. After the fifth and final day, I was seeing so differently that I made an appointment with my eye doctor, who prescribed new glasses and visual therapies.

 

Holly’s technique offers me a way to harmonize body, mind, and spirit on demand that works for me, in a way that is natural and nourishing for me. It’s play. As I do her exercises, I finally sense and respond effectively to my body telling me how long to spend in any one activity, how many times to do them, how to sequence them, like how I can sense my body telling me it’s thirsty or ready to get up. It’s fun. Her technique does not force my body to do things it doesn’t want to do or force my mind to do things it doesn’t want to do, like override every plea from my body that it’s nearing or past its limits.

 

It’s joy. Her technique is so simple that I can focus on feeling the moment and adjusting as my body needs, so empowering that even I with my demonstrably poor working memory can remember what to do, so nourishing every time that I want to do it again. Often. Plus, I keep gaining insights and making spiritual breakthroughs while doing Holly’s exercises and I keep finding better flow after doing the exercises, so it’s become my meditation form of choice and a valuable addition to my daily religious devotions.

 

It’s amazing. I feel more me. I feel more saturated and potent, like I was previously washed-out and nebulous. I experience things as more vivid and engaging. The way I speak to others is more powerful, more personal, more genuine, more resonant, more compelling. It’s like I’ve regained the open-ness and wholeness I had as a child, and it’s so better than when I was a child because I also have an adult’s discernment and wisdom.

 

I wasn’t broken, I was misconfigured; my hard-ware had the wrong drivers and firmware, so my operating system couldn’t use it effectively. It’s like the Intensive was a critical platform update and the exercises are the development kit so I can update myself.”

 

K. Davey, USA

This work is profound in its simplicity. It is easy to teach, but it requires a paradigm shift and a challenge to your preconceptions. It can be life-changing and life-bringing and sometimes, life- saving.

To learn more about this way of working please join me for my online course that includes regular live calls to support you in your A.R.T. journey

Start the New Year with something new!

In Ocean

In Ocean

I am a sea creature forced to live upon land. Although the earth has many marvels, I still long for the water, where I am home.

The ocean matches my thoughts – deep, shimmering and shifting, made of colour and light like an abstract painting. Mysterious, magnificent and needing no words but hinting at unexplored fathoms beneath. A world below, then worlds within worlds filled with strangeness and wonder.

On land, thoughts need words and labels and boundaries. They hit against social constructs and fall apart or smash into each other. Sharing thoughts that crash or trickle or drip or rush on land is so often seen as wrong – not steady, sensible, ordered or ordinary enough. Water allows my thoughts to move and twist and turn and ebb and flow so fluidly.

In the ocean, I am suspended in another dimension and captivated by the timeless soul-whisper of great poets, artists and philosophers who have also been touched by the vastness of the sea. Just me and the universe, surrounded by the space for thoughts to expand, for splendid plans and fractal dreams to flourish.

The ocean matches my weightlessness. If I don’t feel my body on land, it’s a problem – bumping into things, so sorry, oops! The land is full of spikes and walls and things that itch. It demands that you wear foot coverings yet doesn’t care if you can’t walk because one shoelace is tied tighter than the other, cannot hear the screaming in your head because the seam of your sock isn’t in the right place, and ignores you when you’re immobilised by a single grain of sand in your shoe.

Water is soft and smooth and glides like everything and nothing against my skin. On land, I don’t know where the edges of me finish and space begins, but in the water, it doesn’t matter – I don’t have to start or finish, I can just be liquid – graceful and rippling instead of stumbling. I can dance effortlessly, unbroken and free, tossing aside the laws of physics and no longer a slave to gravity, no longer plodding and always watching my step to keep from falling.

The sea demands no layers of clothing or makeup. A minimal covering of fabric will suffice if propriety demands it. No need for shoes, accessories, tidy hair or professionalism. Appearance fades into the background and wave-wise current-connection takes centre-stage in the swell.

The ocean matches my feelings. On land, my emotions are too loud, too soft, too fierce or too hidden – never quite correct. In the water, I don’t have to divide them into boxes and label them. I can swim in grief and joy at the same time, let them flow out of me and mingle with the waves to pound ferociously or float namelessly.

Here, in this aqueous world I can let go, sink beneath the surface, tears suddenly indistinguishable from water and fear abandoned. For a moment, there is a womb-like safety to remember and forget, to be everything and nothing – absolved, disappearing and becoming just another drop in the ocean.

The ocean matches my movement – surging breakers and rolling surf mirror my restless inner landscape and I am heard. Here, I can flick my fingers, tap my toes or fidget without constraint and the water accepts it all without judgement. Here I can frolic, dive, leap, wiggle, slam, laugh or shout and there is enough sky to absorb my sound, enough space to welcome my dimensions and enough sea to allow my eccentricity.

And here, I can also be still and let the water rock me and move for me so I can just breathe and be.

The ocean waterbed allows me to relax and be held. On land, there is nowhere that provides relief – the softest mattress and fluffiest pillows only cradle me for a short time, until the hard edges of life come poking through again and my bones and spirit ache.

The ocean matches my senses. Surrounded by the beauty of shifting sand on the ocean floor, the caress of the sun sparkling through aqua-marine water and over delicate white foam I am consumed by delight. There is so much to soothe and enchant – endless patterns of colour, vibrant shadows and lines to watch, an infinite mixture of repetition and change in a personal theatre show just for me. So much stimulation – intense but natural, unlike the assaulting sounds, stabbing lights and crowds of the land.

I can sink under the water into dimness and muffled sound or watch the light-glitter flit over undulations. On land, it’s strange to want to look at shiny things again and again, or to turn your head this way and that to see the light change. It’s weird to block your ears from too much sound or to be transfixed by the movement of leaves. On land, I am always in contact with some surface or other but in the ocean, I can choose to float and be texture-free or let sand flurry through my fingers.

In the ocean, I can escape humanity for a while. Even with others sharing the space, it’s not hard to go a little further out or to the side and claim my own piece of sea. I can duck under and ignore everyone on the surface. I need those moments of denial because on the land, rooms and walls and aisles and roads define so much space and imprison me with too many people and not enough doors. And every day that I walk again into the man-made construct of exclusive dog-eat-dog towers and societal scaffolding that will not support everybody to thrive, my essence is burnt a little more.

The land breaks time into impossibly small chunks and expects them to provide sustenance. It expects rules to be followed and small talk to be made. It expects each piece of the day to be cut up and shared in an effort to prove my value. It asks more and more of me, demanding layer after layer of paper-mache protection be built until I am glued shut and left begging for slivers of recognition.

There is no small talk in the ocean because everything is small and nothing is small and the rules are few and universal. In the water there is nothing to prove – all swimming styles are valid and no topics are taboo. I am free to imagine a world where everyone is wanted and cared for, and free to wonder what would happen if one day, I just left the land behind and let the tide carry me out to the horizon. Then I remember that the land has blue wrens and sunflowers, rare moonlit conversations, music and mangoes and I wonder if there is a way to have land and sea meet.

At a surface level, I am sea creature because I love the water. In a world draped around me like sandpaper, it feels so cool and so gloriously delicious. And diving down further, as Anais Nin said, “I must be a mermaid, for I have no fear of depth and a great fear of shallow living.”

I was not well-made for this world, yet here I am, a daughter of the sea, a selkie living on land.

Scraped raw by the hard edges of reality, bruised by fallen ideals, and worn thin by the struggle to survive. But still here. Still seeking truth and still finding relief in ocean.

Saani Bennetts

This was written by my dear friend Saani, who wrote this for me to help me illuminate the beauty that comes with autism. May we find better ways to nurture and support our loved ones as we progress and evolve. Wishing you a beautiful, joyous and inclusive 2023.

Happy New Year to all!
~ Holly