5. Fight, Flight, Freeze: How Neurodivergent Kids Respond to Triggers

Hi, I'm Kate Morris.

And I'm Dave Whittingham. Would you say that your neurodivergent child experiences more anxiety than other children their age?They might be experiencing more than just exhaustion from life. Their brain might be interpreting more aspects of life as threats and their baseline anxiety might be rising.

Well, hi, Dave. It's great to be doing another episode together. We've already covered so much ground over our past episodes.We've been looking at particularly some aspects of life for neurodivergent people that can be giving energy, that can be calming and rejuvenating. And we've also been looking at how these same aspects can be complicated and can take energy, can be triggering and can be draining.

Hi, Kate. Yeah, great to be back. It's been exciting. I've found it really exciting to see how they can.We already know about the negative aspects of the sensory overload and the other things, but also to look at the rejuvenating things. That's been really exciting for me.As I've been thinking about it today, though, we're diving really deep into some things that can be quite negative. And particularly we're diving deep into the brain, aren't we?

We are.We're going to be looking at part of the brain called the amygdala with the aim to be thinking through what's happening in the body when we're triggered, when we are anxious, and how the brain can be impacting that.

Oh, hang on, Kate, you've just used a really big word there. Amygdala. What is the amygdala? Tell us, what's that doing in the brain? How does it help us?

Well, it's a big word, but it's a tiny part of the brain. So it's about an almond size.It sits in the brain and it's helping us regulate emotions and think through how to be responding to input that we're registering in our body.

Okay, so why is this a topic particularly to think about for neurodivergent people?

Well, research suggests that neurodivergent people, especially those who are autistic, can be particularly reactive to certain triggers. And this is because of the amygdala. So it means that sometimes the body will interpret a signal as being a threat, something that's dangerous.And so the body will trigger a fight, flight, freeze response from the person. They can be feeling panicked, they can be feeling anxious.Instead of just maybe mild discomfort from a sound that's too loud or from a smell that's uncomfortable, their body can actually be saying, this is a threat, this is dangerous. And when our amygdala decides that it's danger, it sends adrenaline and cortisol coursing through the body, ready to either fight or flee or freeze.And so it's really important that we understand, you know, as parents, that for our children, when they say that light's too bright or they're looking like they're scared, there could be more going on than just my eyes are feeling sensitive to the light. It could actually be a brain body response.

Yeah. And that fight, flight, freeze thing is actually, it's a natural thing.The classic explanation of it is if you're a caveman and you come across a dinosaur in the, in, in the bush, your body has a reaction where it's got to decide, am I going to fight the dinosaur, am I going to flee from them or am I just going to freeze? Is that going to be the best thing to do?And your body puts out all these chemical reactions that are happening there, but unfortunately, those things can come out also at the wrong time. So if you're in, if you're sitting in church and, you know, the microphone suddenly screeches. For some people, that'll be a mild discomfort.They'll get frustrated at the sound guy or whatever and. But they'll just move on. It won't be a big part of their day. But for a neurodivergent person, they could hear that screech.And for them, it's like coming across the dinosaur in the forest. Their body suddenly is producing all these chemicals that are saying, oh, I've got to fight something, I've got to run away or I've got to freeze.And that's a big reaction within their body, isn't it?

It's huge.And it's helpful to understand that this is going on because, yeah, if that microphone screeches suddenly and loudly and then as a parent, you're trying to reason with your child, you're trying to talk to them, you're trying to ask them to do something, it might not be the moment. It might be quite complicated. For some kids, they'll respond by being quite restless.Their eyes might dart around looking for a way to escape or watching the time or something like that to be thinking about escaping the situation. They might be bottling everything up inside and inside, absolutely falling apart from something like a microphone SCREECH.

Yeah. And it has a. It's quite overwhelming, isn't it?Because if you are facing the dinosaurs or keep, you know, presumably we don't have dinosaurs in churches.But if you are facing the dinosaur, if you're actually facing the threat, a real threat, then all those chemicals then get used up in the response, don't they? So your body is able to then cope with that.But if it's not a massive threat and all those things are still sitting there inside you, your body gets quite overwhelmed by that.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And so now you picture a child sitting in class or in church. They've just had this response in their body. Their body is saying, move.It's got that adrenaline, that cortisol, and the teacher is saying, calm down, sit still, stop calling out. As much as we do need people to be calm, and sometimes we need people to be sitting and calling out can be problematic as well.If we're not understanding what's going on in the body, then we're just dealing with this symptom and not actually thinking through what's happening underneath. And so it can be really important oversight.And if we want to be loving our children and loving people around us, we need to be understanding that responding just with calm down or stop or be quiet might not be the loving response that that person needs at that moment.

No, no, not at all.

And part of what's going on in the brain at these times where the amygdala is saying, this is a threat, respond appropriately. Part of what's going on is our brain doesn't have the same access to the logic part of our brains.The part of our brains that's good at planning, at reasoning, at thinking through what a logical next step would be. We're in that primal response of I need to preserve my life in this moment.And so part of what is happening at that time, if we are communicating with our child, expecting them to be accessing that logic part of our brain, we're also not going to get the response that we hope we get.We say things like, we'll just sit still and I'll give you a prize, or don't forget the rules in the classroom, or it's disturbing people around you that you're fidgeting. We're actually not accessing part of the brain that we're hoping to access.

Yeah, the command is actually just not possible for the child at that stage. And I know, you know, I think back to parenting mistakes that I've made along the way where I just haven't understood this.And I've been making demands of my child which require self control. They require logical decisions. They require them to be interacting with what you're saying at a logical level in order to calm themselves down.But the logic part of the brain is not able to serve that function in that moment. There needs to be other things that are going to bring that child down because the logic can't do it.

That's right. And you mentioned sort of parenting guilt there.I know I've got a lot of that looking back at times where I haven't responded in a way that's actually going to be helpful to the child. It can seem on paper like the right parenting response. And perhaps it would be the right parenting response if their brain wasn't going through this.But understanding the brain is going through this. Sometimes you respond in quite the opposite way.Instead of saying, stop this action that you're doing, we might actually need to be responding calmly and working on regulation in order to help them gain access to that frontal part of the brain.And so we might be in kids church as a leader and we have a child who's constantly calling out rather than responding, saying, stop calling out, stop calling out, stop calling out or even stop calling out or you'll sit at the back or stop calling out or you'll sit over there or sit on your hands or these other ways to respond.A better way might actually be, I'm going to sit next to this child, hand them a fidget toy, hand them something that we know is regulating and calming for them, sit with them, remind them that they're safe, be calm next to them, regulate with our own breathing. That will calm them down. And focus first of all, work on releasing that tension that might be in the body.And then saying, now do you remember that we're not calling out? Do you remember that we can be speaking in about three minutes when this part of the kids church ends?Speaking to them about logic things after we've first helped them regulate.

Yeah, so it's kind of like there's a, you know, you've got your emotion side of the brain and you've got your logic side and there's a bridge between them and that bridge is just burnt down. And so we're trying to say what's happening on the other side of the valley.We're trying to interact over there, but they can't get over that other side of the valley.But you're saying that the sensory input and these other close things, you're bringing them in as tools for rebuilding that bridge back to the logic center of the brain.

Yeah, that's exactly right.And isn't it great getting to know your child, or a child who you care for, or a child you support in kids church, getting to know them so that you know, for this child, what they love is stroking a soft teddy, or for this child, what they love is being able to stand outside and breathe a breath of fresh air while they're calming down or whatever it might be, getting to know what works for that person in order to help them to regulate through this. And as you said, it's like, it's like crossing that bridge or having that bridge rebuilt, being able to access that part of the brain.And it's good that our brain shuts these things off.If you've got to do something about that dinosaur that's there, you've kind of got to just act and not waste brain and body energy trying to think about what the, I don't know, cave rules are. Something of escaping from a dinosaur.

Yeah, totally. So you've just got to run or you've just got to fight. Exactly.And so in a sense, you're trying to find a way to communicate with the body that it's not in danger. And so even that breathing exercise of taking deep breaths in and slow breaths out, you don't do that if you're running away from a dinosaur.You're just breathing as hard and fast as you can. But you're almost reverse engineering it, aren't you?So by getting a child to breathe calmly and slowly, that is saying to the rest of the body, hey, why am I breathing so slowly when there's danger? And maybe the danger isn't so bad, maybe the danger is not there. Maybe I need to get out of this fight fright fleet. Maybe I need to get.Maybe I need to get out of that thing and get back into. Oh, I can logically work through this.

And so we've been looking at over the last few weeks of how we deal with things that are triggering for people. And I think it always depends on the child, on the situation.So if there's a child who is curled in a ball and you know that they're having a flight frightening freeze response. There are a couple of ways you can go about this.If you've just turned a bright light on over this child, perhaps begin by turning off that bright light. That could help eliminate that trigger.If it was something like we mentioned before, like the screech, the sudden screech of a microphone, I mean, we know that now's not the time to change the church's sound system or the school assembly sound system. Now's the time to move to the next thing, which is mitigating what else we need to be doing.So if there's a sound that can't be stopped, then you need to be thinking about whether the child is able to put in their earplugs or if they're able to remove themselves to a different situation.And then we need to be working on this regulation that we were just talking about and so thinking through the situation, thinking through the individual child and working out what we do next.

Yeah, and it's important to know that.So if your child has collapsed because a bright light has come on and they've gone into that fight flight freeze thing, you should turn the light off because it's not going to help them to keep that on. That's going to continuously trigger them.But turning the light off isn't actually going to take them out of that moment because the triggers have already happened in their body. Certainly you need to turn the light off if you can, but. But then you need to do those other things of helping to draw them back.It's not just a simple process of like, yeah, what are you worried about? I've turned the light off.

Yeah, that's exactly right.And all of this makes me think about meltdowns as well, which is a different topic that we'll look at in the future if you're interested now, we'll put a link in the show notes for some articles I've written on meltdowns. It'll be sitting there with the citations as well as always from the episode.But as, as the child goes through life constantly being triggered, this actually does something for the baseline of anxiety as well. Makes sense, doesn't it? Your anxiety kind of baseline level increases and increases.And so over a busy triggering day of constantly going into this fight flight freeze mode, a person might become increasingly anxious.And we know from research that a lot of neurodivergent people will have higher levels of anxiety, both on a day to day basis, but also as a anxiety complication that can last many, many years or even a lifetime.

Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? Because that's not something that you physically see when you look at a person. So as a parent it's.This is another one of those things where I have to slow down my thought response to be thinking what is going on for my child, what's been going on today and in the last week and those sort of things because those, those anxiety levels might be really high not just because of one event that's happened, but because of this Constant buildup. And I need to be really compassionate towards them in that and be understanding and loving.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And this is what we've been looking at too, isn't it?That as we help them understand their response to the environment and understand how to reduce triggers, mitigate triggers, prepare for triggers, respond to triggers, as we do all of that, we're helping them see both that we're on their team and that we're going to help them walk through this complicated world.But we're also giving them ways to reduce that anxiety, reduce the triggers, make it easier to step through life, make it easier for them to come home and recover, as opposed to being bombarded much more by triggers at home.In order to help them step out into the world more confident, more able to do what they need to do to be able to face this really complicated and stressful world that we're in.

Yeah. Oh, it's so hard, isn't it? I wish we could sort of magic the difficulty away, but, you know, our kids go through a lot.We go through a lot, but they go through a lot, and we want to help them. We want to build them towards resilience. But there's actually. This is one of those things that's hard to remember.There's actually a blessing that comes through the pain. There's this wonderful, wonderful passage, 2 Corinthians 1, 3, 4. I'll read it out.It says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.It's quite a wordy passage, but when you delve into it, it's so wonderful because it's saying, one, when you are struggling or when our children are struggling, God is actually helping. It's, you are not alone. They are not alone. God is actually comforting, helping, caring for them.But then that actually means that next time when they see someone else going through struggles, they can actually take that comfort from God, the good things from God, and pass it on to that other person so that the blessing that they've actually had in their struggle becomes a blessing for someone else. Isn't that a wonderful way of God working?

It's so wonderful. And this is actually what I want more for my kids, more than having their triggers magicked away.What I want is for them to turn to God for comfort and to be used by God to be a blessing to others. And so this is Such a helpful passage to remember that that is exactly how God is at work in those who trust him.

Yeah. And the world is. I think the picture that we always get and that we want is we've got to. We want to always be moving away from suffering.And there's a truth about that. I mean, we're going to the new creation where there'll be no more suffering. But.But as Christians, there's a sense in which we want to embrace suffering and hardship and say, okay, what is God teaching me? How is God helping me?And then passing that on to others, because we do live at the moment in a world of suffering and discomfort and pain and hardship, but saying, okay, there are good things about that and there's good. We can take from that, and we want to enjoy that.And when we are working with our children, alongside our children through all this and pointing them to God and helping them to see what God has done for them so explicitly making those connections to the care of God, then they will be more equipped and set up to help people in the future and draw other people to God and help people through their struggles. What a wonderful thing.

Absolutely. So wonderful, isn't it?And as we live this out, as we go through struggles as parents and keep turning to our dependable God and our children, see that we're witnessing to them through life, but also as we explain to them our comfort and our hope and our dependence on God. Yeah, it's this beautiful picture we have as a family, not a family who has no struggles in life.None of us have no struggles, but as a family who in their struggles will turn to God, and God is completely dependable. Well, I think that's probably a good place to end there, Dave.I feel like we could talk about this forever, but I'm really looking forward to next week's episode. We're going to have Dr. Katie Unwin join us.Katie is a researcher, she's a lecturer, and she works in the field of all autism, with a particular focus on churches.And so she's done some really important work and she's going to help us next time to think through church and how as parents, we can be helping our kids, understanding our kids. And I'm really looking forward to that episode. So definitely join us next week.

Yeah, she's got some wonderful things to say. Hey, Kate and I are really excited about doing this podcast. We hope that you're finding it really helpful and we're enjoying it.It does cost us money. It costs us time. It costs us money. And there are a bunch of little costs in doing this. There's some big costs and we want to ask for your help.We want to ask if you would consider contributing towards the cost of this podcast. We've set up a GoFundMe page where you can donate.

You.

You can donate small, you can donate big. But that would really help us to keep producing this podcast and to make it a resource widely available for people.So just something for you to think about. We're going to put a link in the show notes. There's a link on the website.If you go to faithfulgod.net and you go into the neurodivergence podcast part of that page, you will see the link to our GoFundMe page where we would love you to come on board as financial supporters. If that's not possible for you, that's okay. Keep listening. We want you to enjoy this. We want you to learn from it.But if it is possible, please take that opportunity to support us. But for now, Kate, thank you very much for this episode and we'll talk again next week.

Thanks, Dave.

Bye bye.

And so can actually be sending people into the. Have you heard of the flight fright freeze response? If I can spit it out. The flight fright. My goodness.

Fight flight freeze.

You were doing this.

Sorry.

No, I had no problem ever with this. So, Dave, you know the fright Flight freeze.

I know the fight fright. No, that's.

Do this. My goodness. So you know the flight fright. Honestly, it's catching. How did this happen?

I'm so sorry. You've got to fight through this cape.

So, Dave, you know.