Day 23 Inspiration Parenting Autism Real and Raw with Siobhan Wilcox

Hey, Everybody. It's day 23 of parenting autism Ruling. Ron, My name is Siobhan Wilcox. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch this video. You know, I just wanted to talk to you a little bit about overcoming fear and the language we use. You know, I realized. I thought. I think my first workshop on overcoming fear 15 years ago was a long time ago, and it was really empowering to teach that. It was really expansive to teach that for me. It made me look at my beliefs around fear, my beliefs around the language I use, the energy I ran around situations. But I felt I had kind of slipped into a rut again in my life, you know, and particularly parenting a child on the autism spectrum. There's a lot of routine, a lot of sameness in my day, a lot of need for things to be monitored, recorded. And so I decided to see if I could shift that energy for myself. And I chose to do something totally crazy. I chose to join a charity in rappelling down the tallest building in downtown San Diego. This is 33 floors, and it is terrifying. At the same time, it is exciting and exhilarating. And so I decided to do this almost in a spur of a moment. I was invited to from a women's group I'm in, and I said, yes, I'm gonna do that. And it's to help children with disabilities, children with autism, children with multiple disabilities in wheelchairs. And it's an inclusion charity, so it's kids included together, and they go in and they help train preschools, daycare centers, after school programs on how to work with children with disabilities. So I thought to myself, well, I'm the only person in the women's group that actually has a child that has special needs, so I need to step up here. However, what I didn't figure when I chose to step up, and because I hadn't taught this workshop and overcoming fear in so long was. It wasn't my own fear I needed to overcome. It was everybody else around me. It was their fear. I am feeling excited about this. Everybody else is nearly passing out with fear. So, you know, I was. I decided I needed to get fit to do this fitter than I am now, because it's a lot of work to come down 33 floors. And I'm working with a personal trainer to try and build my muscles for a little bit. He's given me just some exercises to do to help kind of bring that all together for myself. And I said to him yesterday when I was working with him, I said, you know what? The biggest challenge in this, it's not me. It's other people's fear. The minute I said it, a huge weight lifted off me. I went, oh, look, there goes everybody else's fear. There it goes, Bye bye fear. There goes my parents fear. There goes my husband's fear. That goes my sister's fear. That goes all my family, all my friends who are going, oh, my God, you're totally crazy. What the heck are you doing? What the. What that? Yeah, maybe. How exciting. How exhilarating, how expansive. So when we are surrounded by other people, the language they use to describe the situations we're in strongly affects us. You know, many people use the word devastating when they speak about autism. And I've always wanted to not use that word because, yes, aspects of autism can appear to be devastating. However, that is a word that very challenging to get back from. I prefer to use a word like autism is challenging. Challenging is a word that you can overcome. Challenge is something that can be conquered. And sometimes again, it's not the curing of the autism that is the conquering, it's the curing of our reaction to the autism. It's our perception of the autism. It's how we believe in our child. It's how we step ourselves out into the world. It's how we step up. It's how we shift our internal compass. So I want to just put that to you today. How are you using internal language for yourself? But how are those around you using internal language? Who are you surrounding yourself with? And so we can really shift things for ourselves. And this is a really key piece to shifting our stress levels, our stamina levels, our internal processing levels. When I worked with my personal trainer yesterday, he couldn't believe this. I, of course, could. When I said to him, I did the first set of everything he wanted me to do, and I reached like a minute 15, and he said, you've really increased your stamina since the last time. And I said, well, you know what? I'm determined to get this done. I'm determined to be able to come down that side of that building. But I said, the only thing I need to do is overcome other people's fears. I said earlier, as soon as I said that and it lifted off me, I increased my ability to do all the repetitions. That's not normal. Normally you're more fatigued at that point. Normally you can't go on and do jump roping at a faster pace than you just jump rope the two previous sessions. Normally you can't go and sit at the wall for a longer time than you had just done. Normally, you can't do your upward row bench presses with your 10 pound weights faster and much more successfully than you did your last one because your muscles are tired. But my brain had shifted internally, my language shifted internally, and I let go of other people's fear and therefore I increased my stamina. I increased my time. It was the proof of letting go. Shifted my physicality, shifted my energy levels. So hold that thought in your life. What are you holding onto that isn't serving you? What can you shift? How can you change things for yourself? I'd love to know. I'd love your comments. I'd love you to like this video. As always, you can email me at siobhanautismexpertsalliance.com and join us at autismexpertsalliance.com we'd be very honored to have you there. You can join us on our community on Facebook. Parenting Autism With Grace with Siobhan Wilcox. We're just gathering people now for inspiration to to put up their ideas to co create together. So have a wonderful and blessed day. I am off to a counseling session with my son at the hospital and then I think I will bring him to Legoland for a treat. So next time I see you, I'll be Legoland outed and we'll talk again. Have a great one. Bye.