Steady, Calm, and Strong: On Stress and The Autistic Person
Pictured: Adult hands holding young child
by Troy Krombholz
You know kids have a way of teaching us parents things from time to time in the most peculiar ways. And those lessons we learn help us become better and stronger every day.
“My youngest son Micaiah is seven and the fifth generation in our family who lives with autism. Micaiah and I are very similar in our neurological makeup. It’s uncanny how our sensitivity to light, textures, social settings, reactions, and stress are frequently the same. Whereas his older nine-year-old brother predominantly displays a neurotypical demeanor. So needless to say, our home is diverse and complex.”
In higher stress situations, I keep Micaiah closer by my side. He is often very scared. But you’d never know it, because he might be smiling although he’s experiencing social fear. I can tell he’s scared by putting my hands over his heart to see if he’s calm. Sure enough, sometimes he’s not calm at all. There may be a smile on his face, yet his pulse rate is easily well over 100, perhaps even over 120. I don't technically count his engine’s rapidly firing pistons, but I do know that he’s scared when he’s like this. A parent has an instinct about their child. And as an autistic parent with an autistic child, there’s a lot to pay attention to.
Most people would never know that Micaiah is stressed, but I do. So, my wife and I calmly help to navigate the situation, and carefully leave if we can. We have done this frequently at social events for many years, but up until this point, I hadn’t learned why Micaiah’s heartbeat staying calm was so important. I was about to learn something that would exponentially validate my concern.
Some months later, I visited my heart doctor for a checkup who enlightened me about “beats per minute” (BPMs). Mine were low as always, but then he said, “Troy, because of your specific medical issues, it’s good for your heart to be in or near bradycardia regularly. That is, a slower heart rate near 60 beats per minute, or slightly below. Exercise can also help lower heart rate. And because you have fewer BPMs, over time this puts less strain on your heart, and your longevity should be increased.” So, a slower heart rate over time means less long-term wear and tear on the heart.
This was a profound thought to me, that our overall health can be improved by having a slower pulse rate. Of course, I had to confirm his thoughts against a myriad of medical journals and scholarly articles. And sure enough, he was right. The general consensus by a vast majority of medical professionals is that a slower regular heart rate is better for the life of the engine in the long run. In that moment, I felt a cartoon light bulb pop open over my head with glitter and stars shooting everywhere. It was a true epiphany moment. I realized that we need to protect my son and all autistic individuals better during these common crisis meltdown moments. This is way more than just a neurological concern. It’s equally important to consider the heart, and how the whole body is affected by stress, not just the mind.
Pictured: Children’s artwork that says “Daddy, please help my heart to stay calm please! Thanks”
The Hidden Problem
It’s been a few years since this discovery, and I’ve focused a good portion of my research on stress and its effects on the autistic person. It has burdened me greatly over the past three years, especially because of the COVID pandemic. During this time, I saw a rampant increase of stress in the autistic community and much of that has not really left, or can be easily forgotten. Parents, teachers, even my own friends who are autistic, have spoken to me over and over again about their stress since Covid. It’s become a burden and passion of mine to bring awareness to this problem. Stress is hurting all our bodies and especially autistic people who have a hard time processing and dealing with the stress.
In the human body, stress is like poison. Anyone in the medical community knows that fact. When meltdown moments are happening, most people only pay attention to the meltdown—the loudness of it, the strangeness of it, or what the brain is doing to cause it. But I think we forget about the whole person, the engine, the bodily system, all of it. Stress doesn’t just affect the mind, it affects the whole body. Every time a traumatic circumstance occurs, which as we know is more frequent for autistic people, the heart rate races, and that engine goes into overdrive. And when you run a car hot like that for years, eventually the car will shut down.
Yet we must learn to see the hidden stress within the autistic individual as well, and learn how to help them calm down. Not only in their mind, but also in the body. With my son Micaiah, I had to learn as a parent that just because he didn’t look stressed, it didn't mean that stress wasn’t present. Stress is often an invisible undercurrent, and only attentive caregivers and concerned family members will take the time to look deeper to solve the bigger problem. So, when you see a crisis meltdown in the autistic person you care for, think about one word: longevity. The longer you wait, or try to delay helping the autistic person through their crisis, the longer that car stays in overdrive. That means over time more engine wear and tear, and lessened longevity. Without having words to communicate, many autistic people are saying to us, “Please help my heart to stay calm!”
The Rock on the Train Track Illustration
Pictured: Train tracks
If you want to know how to stop a meltdown, start by seeing that meltdown differently like a rock on a train track. An autistic person’s brain has many trains going on many train tracks at the same time. That fast-speeding intense train of thought is on a journey somewhere of learning or exploring. Social circumstances, life experiences, sudden changes, or simply being interrupted comes like a rock thrown onto those train tracks, and those multiple trains on their discovery missions hit the rock and derail all at once. Imagine the intensity of several trains derailing at once.
WHAMMO!
If this would happen to you perhaps you would have a meltdown, too. Neurotypical people and many caregivers often just pick up the train and put it back on the track and keep driving it forward. But this isn’t possible for us autistic people! We have to figure out what caused it to wreck, look at it from all sides, perhaps recreate it to explain what happened, even getting others attention to try and figure it out. Point is, the autistic person isn’t free to “move on” until you solve the problem of the rock on the train track.
“And yet imagine how it feels when a caregiver takes the time to slow down and help them find the rock. You help the autistic person find greater freedom from the confusing or painful thought that they can’t break free from themselves. Stress then stops, and the heart has a chance to slow down.”
Anne Sullivan is a great example of a caregiver who took the time to stop and be compassionate towards the trapped Helen Keller. And when she did, she took the time to communicate and help her free her thoughts that were stuck inside, unable to be shared. Her stress levels decreased because of that care. Fred Rogers of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood also showed an excellent example of true caregiving in listening and watching children intently. He used a very similar approach any parent, medical personnel, or teacher would be wise to employ. If you take the time to watch for hidden stressors that can throw rocks on the train tracks, you can be much more successful in freeing a heart, mind, and body from negative stress. But this takes intentional observation and great patience.
Autism is a language that’s not easy to learn or understand, but if you do think past the more familiar neurotypical thought, the quality of life can improve for people who get derailed more easily and already tend to obsess about problems they can’t fix, and certainly not without help and real care. Leaving stress to play out (seen or unseen) doesn’t favor the autistic person’s lifespan.
Pictured: Children’s artwork that says, “Thanks big guy for helping me to stay calm too! Love you buddy, daddy”
How to Help
All of this conveys the passion I feel for helping people better understand autism. I feel deeply that we humans were made to nurture and to be nurtured. As a daddy, I nurture my son Micaiah in stressful situations, and bring him closer to my side so he can feel and sense me being steady, calm, and strong when I see it’s overwhelming him. It's my job as his caregiver to ensure that his wellbeing is seen and understood. It’s my role to listen to his unseen emotions that are screaming, “DADDY, I AM STRESSED OUT! HELP ME!” Little does he know that he also helps me stay calm in social settings too—we help each other. My older son does the same thing for me. He watches me like a hawk and he comes flying in to sit beside me in a gentle way. I'm so thankful for my two very different sons. What a comfort they are to my soul.
Pictured: Temple Grandin
Photo Credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images
“I believe wholeheartedly that Temple Grandin had it right when she observed the cows and their stress levels in the livestock industry. She took extraordinary efforts to do something about what she naturally felt for them and could see in their eyes and behavior. And their quality of life greatly improved. And yet here we stand together as an autistic community today, still not understanding the full impact of stress on autistic people. It’s been overlooked for too long.”
I'm no professional at dealing with stress yet. You could ask my doctors about the effects of stress on my body for years. I’m learning the hard way, much later than I needed to, that I have internalized stress and that it’s wearing on my engine. But we're trying to turn things around and leave stress behind for good. My family is all learning—through 5 generations of autism—that we must navigate better and do something good. I want to be wiser, smarter, and try harder to pass down good education to the next generations. Then we’ll truly learn how to conquer autism’s greatest nemesis: stress.
“If the language of Autism continues in our generation with stress prevailing, then I believe we’ve failed the autistic community in much of our efforts. We must learn to sharpen our eyesight and look for ways to find the stressful rocks and remove them quickly and consistently. We must remember that the battle front isn’t only in the mind, it’s also in the body. It’s about longevity and quality of life.”
If we take the time to acknowledge the autistic person’s neurological reality, and choose to stop whatever else we are doing, to help them, and try to understand, perhaps we can calm stress habits and patterns before it is too late. Every moment matters. Every chance to nurture better is worth it. And I know it’s true that we can stress all of you neurotypicals out too. So, thanks for not giving up on us! And together, we can build a wiser, more loving community.
Author the author
Troy Krombholz is a published author who focuses his content on visual storytelling. He also writes original music as a composer, performs as a concert pianist, and is an award-winning nature photographer. Troy is also a speaker and activist for Nature Conservation and Wildlife Protection. He also lectures on Autism Awareness and strives to see Educational Progress and Advancement for Adults and Children who live and struggle with Autism. Troy is married to his lovely wife Susan, and they have 2 wonderful sons. They reside in the Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee where he and his family spend most of their free time hiking, picnicking, camping, and enjoying the captivating beauty of the mountains. On most of his evenings as the day closes, Troy can be found sitting at his piano expressing some of his feelings through music.