"Alternative approaches in working

with challenging behaviours"

 

 

A WORKSHOP BY DONNA WILLIAMS

www.donnawilliams.net

 

 

1) Definition of challenging behaviours: 5 mins

 

A question of whose ‘normality’ or a question of functioning?

 

When eccentricities have a place in the world too.

 

A role for educating the community into accepting diversity.

 

Sensory/emotional/social sensitivities/overload as challenging behaviours, but whose?

 

 

 

2) Exploring Issues in addressing challenging behaviours: 40 mins

 

voluntary vs involuntary

 

if its involuntary, what does it mean ‘to control oneself’?

 

if its voluntary, what does it mean to be ignored or hear ‘no’?

 

Suppression versus change: what’s the difference?

 

Self injury and abusive behaviour as biochemistry issues

 

Self injury and abusive behaviours in relation to mood, anxiety and obsessive/compulsive disorders

 

Self injurious and abusive behaviours and the system of sensing

 

Self injurious and abusive behaviours and the interpretive mind

 

Self injury and abusive behaviours in relation to processing problems and overload

 

Learned Dependency as a challenging behaviour.

 

Pathological attachments as a challenging behaviour.

 

Smearing as a challenging behaviour

 

Toileting problems as a challenging behaviour.

 

Screaming as a challenging behaviour

 

Stripping off as a challenging behaviour

 

Snatching other people’s things as a challenging behaviour

 

Inability to stay in a seat as a challenging behaviour

 

Shredding, breakage and dropping obects as challenging behaviours

 

Obsessive questioning as a challenging behaviour

 

Tics versus stims: very different challenges requiring very different approaches

 

Binging, food refusal, eating objectsl and food fads as challenging behaviours

 

 

 

 

 

3) Responses to challenging behaviours: 45 mins

 

Working with adrenaline addicts

When yes= no & no = yes

The way out of escalating control-counter control dynamics

Playing hard to get

Leaving the person wanting more; the power of small doses

Being self-owning

Playing “cat”, playing “dog”

Surealism and silliness

Co-opting obsessions-compulsions as a calming/learning tool

Addressing your own psychological/emotional reality and why it’s important

Self calming strategies: forced compliance versus self-owned ‘modeling’.

Indirectly Confrontational counseling.

Strategic variations on Social Stories for adrenaline addicts

Communication and when to adapt it for different groups.

Sensory and boundary issues with self injury and abusive behaviours.

 

4) Dealing with challenging behaviours;

building empathy as a tool to countering war responses (things to consider in your own time) .

 

 

·     Where do you best feel like communicating/expressing yourself personally?

 

-      standing up, sitting on the floor, back to the wall, whilst doing/watching/thinking about something else, in comfortable lighting, with gentle music in the background, when not being watched, when alongside rather than opposite someone, with the door open or closed, on your own territory or theirs, when free to move about, in small doses or with regular changes of focus, with or without extreme focus just on you, in uncluttered/easy rooms, outdoors, in open or enclosed spaces?

 

 

 

·     how might you feel when you are pursued whilst in a hungover, chaotic, disoriented, ill, addicted or tired state when expected to do the following?

 

-      small talk, chit chat

-      expectation to be more than pragmatic (ie: personal or ‘polite’)

-      a sense of expectation

-      getting praise, attention, over the slightest achievement

-      having people sit watching, focused on you, fussing over you.

-      Feeling controlled by others ever ready to pounce on whatever you show/express.

-      Being subject to others inviting unwanted stimuli/experiences into the home.

- if you push yourself beyond what you can

emotionally stand? Why would you?

 

·     when would you feel like initiating?

 

·     what kind of emotion might it take to relax about the initiations of others? Would your response always be about THEM?

 

·     what if your very withdrawal and self protectiveness triggered a heightened focus, invasiveness and loss of boundaries on the part of the environment?

 

·     what if, beyond your own immediate environment, you FELT these same social pressures to ‘rescue’ you, to ‘join with you’ were coming from society in general, in most TV programs, in conversation, in storybooks and novels, in what was modelled in shops, on the street, in the schoolground?

 

·     Being functionally non-verbal, little simultaneous sense of self and other, being largely meaning deaf and meaning blind due to delayed information processing, can create an intense self dependence, especially when feeling ill or having wildly fluctuating sensory/emotional extremes. This means you may cut off not your nose to spite your face, but perhaps your head. What does this mean when people like this are pidgeon holed into programs based on forced compliance?

 

·     In a foreign country, how might you communicate simple needs?

- what is our very most basic of all needs without which we have no desire nor motivation for life?

 

·     In a prison in which your captors did not speak your language, how might you communicate simple needs and would resentment/self protection stop you from doing so?

 

·     In a cell with your own prison guard present, how might you communicate your needs without drawing the attention of the guard?

 

·     If you had complete control over your environment and had it watching, waiting for your every move, you might be caught between your own exposure anxiety in front of them and the loss of control if you were to lose your control over them. How might you react to this chaos? How might you resolve this catch 22, this escalation to a stalemate?

 

 

5) Responses to underlying causes of some challenging behaviours: (to consider in your own time)

 

-      what kind of things can the environment do to address challenging behaviours related to:

 

 

-      A) allergy, cramping, sick stomach, arthritic pain, gas, migraine, excema, poor blood oxygen/blood sugar problems etc.

 

-      B) food/nutrient/toxicity/immune associated behavioural issues.

 

-      C) adrenaline addiction

 

-      D) communication frustration caused by exposure anxiety

 

-      E) communication frustration due to information processing problems

 

-      F) lack of pain combined with sensory fascination

 

-      G) a need to control the sensory environment

 

-      H) a compulsion to control the social and communication environment of

Others

 

-      I) shame, hatred or fear of situations which heighten awareness of one’s own differentness

 

-      J) a feeling of dissociation from one’s functioning or deadness caused by exposure anxiety within, especially when expected or valued for that functioning or compliance.

 

-      K) a feeling of intense frustration with being imprisoned by involuntary behaviour due to exposure anxiety avoidance, diversion, retaliation responses and the compromises necessary to have ability

 

- L) feelings of alienation and fear where others are not what you can

sense them to be or when people won’t be themselves.

 

-      M) “social claustrophobia” related frustration at being constantly watched or the focus of attention and praise.

 

 

 

 

 

6) summary and conclusion (things to consider in your own time).

 

-      why maintaining a sense of your own boundaries is so important

 

-      thinking beyond the advice of the GP, speech therapist, teacher, psychologist.

 

-      Why one size fits all approaches need serious consideration with big players in the field of self injury and abusive behaviors.

 

-      The value of an indirectly confrontational approach, surrealism and flexibility whilst maintaining our boundaries can be such important tools.

 

-      Thinking about the environment, placement and style of interaction and communication as a tool for self calming and self management.

 

-      Thinking about self injury and abusive behavior as a dialogue- not to let it hold us to ransom, nor be dogmatic in our use of an approach which doesn’t work, but to think strategically and remember the value of and rights to your own existence at all times.

 

-      Thinking about our priorities for the whole person and the realization that striving for functioning without connection to a retarded, frozen, social-emotional self may be a recipe for later institutionalization, depression and in some cases suicide.

 

-      Life is not just about appearances, it is about wholeness and experience.

If we cannot shape the individual into an existing pigeon hole, can we invent a hole that fits the pigeon and, in the case of employment possibilities, even creatively, and in an indirectly-confrontational way, market it for the purpose of self sustained independence.

 

- Thinking about concepts like equality in difference, empowerment, detachment, self ownership, modeling, inspiring and giving space whilst being in our own.

 

 

About the Presenter

 

I was born in the rock and roll years , in the inner city mangle of urban Australia in the days when 'autism' was unheard of even though the condition had always existed. I grew up in a family with more challenges than my own and spent most of my first 24 years with undiagnosed milk allergy, dairy/gluten intolerance and Salicylate intolerance. In other words, I was like someone on LSD and cocaine who had never touched the stuff. I was off my head, unable to answer a direct question, to stay sitting in a seat, to hand in any work or acknowledge what I did or didn't understand. I was labeled emotionally disturbed and tested for deafness a number of times.


I was colorful and I tried within the confines of my emotional and perceptual chaos I was nine before I could fluently understand with meaning three sentences in a row. I was largely meaning deaf and meaning blind but learned to map pattern and feel shifts and changes with remarkable ability in spite of pretty much no ability to interpret. I had no idea why anyone did anything but I knew if someone was 'real', when a fight was coming, whether others were trying to invade 'my world'. My senses and perception were chaotic, fragmented and constantly shifting and fluctuating and the ability to understand things with meaning was so delayed I looked like I wasn't 'on line' but also like someone very behaviorally and emotionally disturbed. I stored huge strings of sound patterns and sang and chattered to myself most of the time, often in stored lines, jingles and adverts.

I loved life and I loved the sensory world. My reflection was my best friend and family. I was fascinated by my playground that was the wilderness of the streets in what was a feral childhood with all its fortune and its horror. When I was nine I was put on zinc, vitamin C and multi-vitamins and I realized meaning existed, not just pattern. At fifteen my estranged family could no longer cope and I fended for myself in a world vulnerable to the wants and prejudices of strangers.

I had the fortune that after a lifetime of chronic ear and chest infections, asthma and juvenile arthritis from the age of nine my health finally collapsed completely at the age of 24 into M.E. It was only then that this rather 'loony girl' I was finally diagnosed with severe digestive and immune system problems, the beginning of over a decade of journeying into treatment for not just the M.E but the cerebral allergies which had kept me in an invisible cage. It was a year later after intervention by medically qualified practitioners in nutritional medicine that the bars of my invisible cage began to progressively melt.

Then in the chaos and disorientation I wrote my autobiography, Nobody Nowhere in a desperate last attempt to understand where I'd been and ask if there might be some hope beyond what I'd struggled to construct as 'life'. The book, the first of six in the field, got left behind in the UK at the time and accidentally became an international bestseller and the first mainstream publication of an autobiography of someone who came to be diagnosed 'autistic'.


But I'm more than an 'autie'. I'm Donna (it took me most of my childhood to connect with that name or that any name was inherently linked with the feel of a person). I'm wild and wooly, with an incredible naughty streak, prone to phobia and compulsion with a great determination to strive for balance and detachment yet a great love of connection and discovery.

I found a diamond of a person and he shone so bright I asked him to marry me. Chris adores me for whatever I am and however I change, when diet gets messed up and in the stability in between. 

I believe in being free to be oneself, in challenging ideas of ourselves in order to find out who's really there and in daring to be bold in the face of change and criticism because there is no greater reward in life than the freedom to find out who we are not and to infinitely discover ourselves in the becoming of it.
I live for adventure and warmth, belonging and being equal and part of that expresses itself through music and sculpture, through art and writing which are all other parts of having a voice out loud to myself before the world if it so chooses. The first bite of my own pear, though, is mine.


I believe in God, the Pooh Bear God within myself, my own being ness so much more balanced than mind and consciousness can fathom. When I have a question or need a direction, I don't assume to have the answer nor assume to have the sense to plan, but ask the question, tell the desire for change, as if to the air. In the morning, it progressively is there. This is God, the unraveling of invisible string when I but out. I try to see past the enemy within myself and my own self righteous rigid black and white beliefs of absolutes, what's what and who's who. I believe in trying, and in staying happy and wild and seeing the world in a piece of fluff. I believe in the strength of daring humility.


I believe in diet, and that's not easy. It's a choice between a drugged state and being part of the world. I strive to discover life after gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, additive free, low salicylate… and if I can discover in there new elastic definitions and incarnations of 'ice-cream', 'cake', bread', 'custard', 'icing', then there is one more day I don't feel like crying. Besides, it has helped me turn life into the buzz which compensates for a lack of shop bought pizza.


I'm a consultant to schools and do workshops and lectures, catering to the Education Authority, Social Services, the National Health Service and the Autistic Societies as well as the general public. At my first US talk (Connecticut) I came out and sat and cried for the first five minutes. The audience was silent and patient and I was so moved they didn't try to control me or talk to me, they just let me be, they trusted. I honored that respect and eventually got to my feet and read the pages I couldn't understand in this state of shutdown until the words began to have meaning. In between I looked up, cried again and continued. They taught me I could dare to be me before others no matter what. They gave me so much more than I could give. Now I just walk out and introduce myself and talk out loud allowing others to hear. I even challenge my audiences to question me and answer them without the middle man of typing and paper.


However I may be criticized or praised and for whatever reason you came to see the website of this once someone loony girl with more labels than a jam jar, I am proud of me just to be and you are welcome to find your being ness here for your own sake.