Tummy full of worries

Hello everyone 🌈

Harry’s feeling much perkier today, so returned back to school.

He did return home though with a head full of worries.

I’ve spoken before about how Harry’s anxiety can often lead to big feelings of worry. But also how hard it is to process them into smaller chunks. I have been working with him on “what’s in our control” and “what is out of our control”

Doing the worry diary I created (on my website) has helped start to learn how to make them into smaller manageable pieces. But at the minute a lot of his worries stems from the unpredictable responses from other people.

Such as a child saying “no to playing games with him” or as he said today a child who told another child not to play with him.

So he said to me “what if they listen to them and won’t play with me tomorrow?”

I talked to him about how people’s responses are not in our control. But what is in our control is how we respond and what we do. Such as asking someone else to play or finding his sister to play.

But I totally can relate to how he feels, and I sum it up like this:

How many of us preplan conversations in our head we are going to have with someone?

Especially if we are to ask them a question, that we hope the response goes the way we would like.

Sometimes for us its the pondering, like what if that person says no? What do we do then?

We may get other people who tell us “ohh but hey they might say yes. So don’t think on the negative side” which gives us a glimmer of hope.

But I think sometimes we forget we are all human and perfectly within our rights to say no to things. Such as changing a shift for someone or collecting something etc. So we shouldn’t expect the answer to always be a yes and as such should plan for the NO.

But what happens when people do say no?

Because you have to accept the answer and process it, but actually we don’t always take that into account either. Even more so for our children who struggle socially, the rejection from a no despite that it may not even be malicious towards them is hard to take. But also the communication that follows from that no, is also often then broken. Which sees the child react differently on the hearing of the word “no” .

To me it takes empathy and understanding to grasp the context of no, without it becoming personal or a choice that’s made to damage us. Which is a really big thing for our children to have to do and grasp. Especially with the social and communication barriers.

So for Harry I’m not trying at minute to get to him understand the No or peoples reasons behind it. But rather that he be responsible for his yes’s.

Yes I can go find someone else to play with, yes I can choose something I want to do.

These moments only happen with intervention from me. He needs support for what to do next, when these moments arise. I help him find some ways to do things in his control, in response to a situation that is out of his control. I think as it’s down to communication and social aspect, it’s really difficult to make the connection of what to do on his own. ❤️