Escalation and Emotional Containment in Action

I messed up again today.

We have had a tough few weeks in our family. Bereavement, change, disappointment and sadness. Add into this that yesterday, my mum totalled her car, and today we moved my dad into care. Lots of hard emotions all around.

We were heading out for a family meal with extended family, opting for our safe, familiar place to eat. On the way there, we had to cross a busy road where there were no traffic lights. Some had already crossed, some hadn’t. I made a momentary judgement and ran across, it seemed safe, although tight. I made it across the road fine but quickly heard my younger daughter shouting.

My eldest autistic daughter, who had been waiting to cross with my mum and brother, had tried to follow me. My mum had her arm in hers and had gone with her. On seeing this from the other side of the road, her sister panicked. They were fine and had shuffled back to the pavement to wait to cross. But as my youngests brain went into high alert, she went into control mode shouting and telling her sister what to do, furious with me for running across and creating this chain reaction.

Within seconds, her dad started shouting even louder at her to stop acting this way, and I then shouted at him to calm down. They all crossed safely, and we walked on to dinner me and her falling back to try and salvage some kind of calm so as not to ruin the evening. We only had a two-minute walk to get there. Some words were shared, probably not great ones, most likely more blaming and defensive than I wanted. My brain was flooded with cortisol, and all I wanted to do was fix the problem.

Luckily, we were seated in a quiet corner of the restaurant at a table everyone was happy with. I opted to sit next to her, as this would allow me to be close to her and try to create some emotional containment. By this time, my brain was coming back online, and I managed to say quietly to her that I shouldn’t have run across the road and that if I could go back in time, of course I wouldn’t do it. She gave a shrug and a nod, and her body visibly relaxed. We both instantly felt better, as did everyone else. The evening went well, and we had a lovely time.

Tomorrow, we will chat about this. I will own my mistake here, my husband will own his trigger, and that he shouldn’t have escalated. We will acknowledge that she finds eating out really difficult, the transitions and her sensitivity to noise make it very hard. She had already been struggling before we left. Her attitude had made this very clear, which had already been triggering us somewhat.

We will remind ourselves that restaurants are a huge trigger for her because of all her sister’s many public meltdowns as a child. She is extremely protective of her sister. When she goes into fear, she goes into control. We all do. She tried to control us, her dad then tried to control her, and I jumped in to control them. It happens in the blink of an eye.

Even after all these years of learning to regulate, it can still happen. But we are so aware of it now. Yes, we still have work to do, we always will. I hope that we learn something from it each time to help us for the next time.

But as we reflect and learn, we will offer ourselves tons of self-compassion, as we, as a family, are experiencing a huge amount of stress right now.

As often is the case nowadays, my autistic daughter was the most regulated of us all.