Parental Burnout with Lisa Galley
Last Wednesday we were joined by Lisa Galley to talk about parental burnout in our community. Lisa has a popular FB and Instagram page, and is the author of a soon to be published book, How to Parent your Autistic Child.
Lisa Galley, author
She started by reassuring us that she wasn’t going to advise taking bubble baths or ‘making time for yourselves’ - although both of those things are valid ways of performing self-care. She spoke about the harsh reality of 65% of parents of autistic children experiencing stress and 75% of parents leaving their jobs or reducing hours - losing on average £21,000 per annum. Lisa talked about how much social judgment there is around parenting. When Lisa’s children were young a certain TV ‘nanny’ gave all kinds of advice that was risky and counter-productive and Lisa explained how she spent much of her early years as a mum flip-flopping between the parenting she knew instinctively was best for her neurodivergent family and what society seemed to be expecting her to do. With mounting difficulties around schooling and one child unable to attend school at all, Lisa found herself feeling increasingly unwell, eventually bedridden for months with migraines and infections and a diagnosis of ME.
It was at this point that Lisa gave herself permission to parent differently, and this, she believes, is the way to avoid and emerge from parental burnout. Now she coaches parents around this and has thousands of followers on Instagram. To spread her message further she has written a book about her experiences and ideas. She explained how society only seems to value one neurotype when we are a spectrum of different neurotypes. We have to recognise this, let go of the expectations of others AND the expectations we place on ourselves; then we find ourselves with more capacity and energy. Parenting can still be exhausting but we are more able to manage our exhaustion if we aren’t extending energy on anxiety over not meeting artificial parenting standards.
Lisa talked about how chronic stress underpins burnout - that our bodies go into survival mode and that the levels of stress parents of children with additional need experience is similar to that of soldiers on the battlefield. The stress cycle is something like this: We DETECT a threat (meltdown, absconding, demand avoidance etc) We REACT to the threat We RECOVER from the threat However, we often don’t get a chance to recover - we lurch from stress to stress, and become dysregulated ourselves. We are flooded with stress and can’t complete the stress cycle unless we take action to do so. The first thing to do is locate where in our body the stress is making itself felt - in the jaw, stomach, back, throat, hands - do a stress body scan. Then we need to do something to help our body recognise that we are safe. It works best if it something active and repetitive like: Cleaning teeth Moisturising hands Brushing hair. It only needs to be a two-minute exercise but it’s enough to signal to the brain that you are safe and allow the cycle to complete. If you can’t complete the cycle your body will pull on the brakes and your capacity to cope will collapse.
Lisa described the three things that keep a person stuck in stress cycles:
1: OVERWHELMING DEMANDS - small things start to feel huge, like washing your hair or making a phone call. They seem to need so much energy that we don’t have. Demand outweighs the capacity to cope. The key here is to reduce the demands to redress the balance, and again, give yourself permission to do so. Decide which demands are important and which demands are those you are imposing on yourself to meet societal expectations. Lisa described how they eventually abandoned family holidays because they caused so much stress and she realised they were going on them because they thought they should. Reducing that demand made everyone happier and eventually they found a way to holiday separately and at different times which worked for them.
2: ISOLATION - When you have a ND child, your Neurotypical friendships can suffer. You find yourself comparing, worrying, maybe being judged so that it becomes easier not to see your NT friends. Burnout, Lisa says, feeds on isolation. It removes the human connections and co-regulation our nervous systems need. The answer to this is to ‘Find your tribe/village/community’ - families in a similar position, support groups, activities and alliances where you don’t have to explain and differences aren’t just accepted but celebrated.
3: EMOTIONAL OVERLOAD - In burn out we tend to catastrophise and magnify feelings of guilt, judgment and grief. It’s easy to lose perspective and find ourselves turning to numbness as an escape. It’s tempting to try to switch off your feelings but that just adds to burnout. It’s important to process these feelings, but keeping perspective. Also, give yourself permission to parent differently, avoid internalised ableism like ‘looking like we’re a normal family!’ It does take time to do that as it’s so internalised, and remove the emotional weight.
Lisa used a rather rude acronym to sum up her approach - you can gather what it is from my summary below - it made us all laugh!
1 - FORGET NT expectations. Autism has its own unique developmental pathway and milestones. Losing the comparisons with Neurotypical children will make more space for the joy you can have either your own ND children.
2 - UNDERSTAND YOUR CHILD’’S NEUROTYPE You are parenting a unique nervous system and difference brains need different parenting and different expectations. From a place of safety you can build your child’s capacity for change. Lisa described a ND child’s capacity to do things as like an elastic band - force it wide suddenly and the elastic snaps. Stretch it carefully and gradually and it will broaden and grow successfully.
3 - COMMUNITY - find yours. Meet those who ‘get it’ where you are safe to share experiences, feel less alone, laugh and share ‘small wins’ which aren’t that small to you. Experience co-regulation and stop feeding the burnout with isolation.
4 - KNOWING WHEN TO LET GO - Process your feelings without shame; feelings of grief for example, for the family life you thought you would have. Make space for the parent you need to be and this is the hardest thing of all to do. Recognise that and give yourself credit when you start to do this.
5 - INSTINCTS - trust yours. Listen to your body to recover from the stress cycle and know that you are the expert in your child. Many parents might feel shamed out of this by society but give yourself permission to act on what you know to be right for your unique situation.
6 - THICK SKIN - Grow one - it gets easier over time but practise being confident in your own parenting. All of the above will help you to ignore the looks, the comments, the judgments and do it your way.
Finally Lisa asked us to think about how we manage things we can and can’t control - and to let go of some of those things - ask yourself, is this particular thing, person or event worth my time and my energy? Will it matter in find years time? If not - chuck it in the bucket and move on! Lisa recommends choosing an anchor word to focus on in times of acute stress - like ‘Pause’ ‘Worthy’ or Enough’ as a way to break through the stress of a moment. I like ‘pause’ and will use that myself. Lisa took some questions on: professionals judging parenting (protect yourselves but don’t lose sight of your parenting ability) Close family members getting on board with parenting differently (maintaining healthy boundaries around family events, Christmas etc) It was a really insightful session and you can find Lisa’s book here, available to preorder.
To support both Lisa and a local business you can pop into That Little Bookshop on 16th September where Lisa will be signing copies of her book!
Amazon link