Day5 Parenting Autism Real and Raw with Siobhan Wilcox

Hey, everybody. Siobhan Wilcox here, founder and creator of Autism Experts Alliance. Thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to Parenting Autism Real and Raw Day five. Wow. I've got up five days in a row and I've done this. It's been so exciting to really be motivated and connected and to be getting all your wonderful feedback. I mean, I'm so honored for the time you're taking because I know how busy you are. But just it feels so nice to know that I'm making a difference and I'm serving. So thank you again for taking the time to email me. And if you haven't already and you want to, you can email me@siobhanautismexpertsalliance.com and don't forget to visit Autism Experts alliance and register for our free upcoming interview series I'll be hosting. Got some great people coming up. Medical specialists, nutritionists, behavioral therapists, occupational therapists. I'm even trying to get some incredible financial people there to help advise families on, you know, the long term finances and short term how we can harness our resources better. So, you know, today I was we're getting ready for the bar mitzvah. I'm really excited to go to Hair as you see and half dressed with the almost there. The hair is the finishing piece. The kids. I can hear my son running up and down outside. This is one of the things he does. He doesn't stim but he runs. So he's running, making his running noises. His he called it and he's going to go. So if you hear noises in the background, that's what it is. And you know, I'm excited for him to go to this because it's a boy from his school and there's going to be lots of other parents there with lots of other kids from his school and it's going to be a nice community. It's going to be a nice day for him. I'm still bringing all the stuff, the headphones and the brush and the rescue remedy as a backup. But I know his teachers are going. So I think it'll be a really, it'll be a really safe, safe place for him to be in and I think he will really enjoy himself. I had a thought this morning when I woke up and I was thinking about books and I remember that book I used to read as a child, a little engine who thought she could. And you can hear my kids in the background now. It's all go here. I'm gonna have to rush off in a second, but I Just love that story so much because I was writing my book yesterday and I was writing around thoughts and how our thoughts really affect our body. You know, we can create within our physical body, we can create an enhanced stress response just by how we're thinking in a situation. We can create a panic attack just by how we're thinking in a situation. In the same way, we can create a relaxation response in our body just by the thoughts and languaging we're using to ourselves. And I was really thinking about that book, you know, the Little Engine who thought she could, and how all the other engines said they couldn't because they gave their reasons. But she was the smallest engine and she'd never done anything like this before. But she believed in herself and she said, I think I can. And it's about really just shifting our brains. You know, I'd like you if you can. I know. This is what really helped me in the beginning when I was trying to catch those thoughts, because they're unnatural. They're not unnatural, but catching them is unnatural to us, you know, and scientists have shown that 70% of all our first thoughts or negative thoughts. And so every thought after that is the ones we have charge of in a situation. The first one is a reaction. It's an automatic reaction. But the thoughts after that first automatic reaction are the ones that really can shift the physical response, the stress response in a situation, our emotional response in a situation. But it's all coming from that mental area, from the thought patterns. And I really love you just to take some time throughout your day and to see if you can catch yourself saying, I can't, saying negative thoughts to yourself, I should. I can't. There's no way. This is impossible. And just see if you can capture them. Because when I did a thought journal when I had that stress burnout, you know, if you saw my last couple of videos, I spoke about my stress burnout at 25 and how I really, really physically created such pain in my body. You know, I had chronic fatigue, I had swellings in my joints. I couldn't really walk a lot. It was exhausting just to get to the top of the stairs some days, which wasn't like me, you know, we didn't have a track team at our school, but one time they decided they'd do a track team to enter a competition on the day of the competition. I mean, it was just crazy. So they got us all out, whoever wanted to run. And I was in the top five people picked to be on that track team. So out of like 800 girls, I just was fast. So being so fast and athletic at school, to suddenly not be able to get to the top of the stairs without being. I had to sit down halfway up was very, very challenging for me. But when I actually sat and looked at it, a huge amount of the stress I had created for myself was coming from my thought patterns, was coming from how I thought in the different situations around me. And so I'd like you, if you wanted to start monitoring yourself. You know, when I first started monitoring myself, I thought to myself, oh my God, I have no good thoughts. There was nothing positive going on in there. Like. But when we think that, scientists have shown that 70% of all those thoughts we have are negative, of course it's going to seem like there's not a lot of positivity going on in there. But you can rescript that for yourself, which is what I did. And I shifted that and I caught myself. And it's really the catching that is the key. Because once you catch the pattern, then you can change the pattern. If the passion runs like a CD or it's so old, it runs like a cassette tape. Cha. Chunk. Right? And it's running in there. If you don't, if you're not aware of what that is, that tape that's running, you can't recreate that tape. You can't stop that tape. You can't re pattern yourself in that moment because you aren't aware of what you need to change. So that's just an idea, guys. If you want to take that on as an action point and just even, you know, you can put your comments below if you find stuff that you catch and you're aware of to inspire other people. Because maybe your thought may be something that'll go, oh my God, yes, I've been thinking that too. And I wasn't aware till I saw somebody else thinking it. This is what's really helpful about this. You can also email me about it as well. You can message me on Facebook. So I look forward to connecting with you again soon and have a wonderful blessed day.