My daughter has been having a very hard time lately with her increased vision loss. She’s feisty by nature but the reduction in vision is causing her a lot of anxiety. I had a chance to talk to her therapist today on the phone to get some guidance and make sure my husband and I were handling it the best way we could.
What she said was my daughter is operating from her amygdala. She’s afraid all of the time, about everything. This fear has increased dramatically over the past three weeks or so, and follows what seems to be the additional vision loss. She doesn’t want to go near the road because of cars. She is afraid to get near the friendly puppy because she might jump up on you. Today at the beach she wouldn’t go into the sand because my husband said there was a crab way up the hill, wouldn’t touch the water because there had been a jellyfish spotted and tried to hide on the other side of the boat because a green head fly bit Uncle Eric on the other side.
She doesn’t feel safe, which is different than being safe. We can tell her we’re keeping her safe, but she doesn’t feel that way, because she’s out of control of her life and mobility. As a result, she’s living in the reptilian part of her brain and living in fear. She’s not able to detect if a situation is a threat or not so she’s evaluating everything as a threat.
We can tell her we’re keeping her safe, but we need to help her through experiences and then, afterwards, talk her through what happened so she can gain solace from those successes. We don’t need to talk about her vision or how she can’t see, just go through what happened and how everything turned out okay. It’s going to take time for her to adjust. This is trauma and she’s been through trauma after trauma with her vision. We have to be there and help and she’ll work through it.
There’s another thing that’s happening now. She needs attention constantly. She wants to do things with you all the time. With someone, anyone, because she’s bored. Or so I thought. In part it’s that, because when you can’t see, there are a lot less things you can do to be entertained. Her therapist said that’s only half of it.
Right now she can’t self-regulate. She’s co-regulating. She needs someone there, with her, to feel okay, safe and regulated. Unfortunately, for now we can’t help her much with this. While she’s living in her amygdala, she’s going to need to co-regulate.
She and my son were working with their integrative therapist a few weeks ago and were talking about their amygdalas. Liz was talking to them about what happens and how we feel when our amygdala is in charge. To make it a little more concrete she had the children name their amygdalas. My son named his, “Mister Small Guy” and my daughter named hers, “Chocolate”.
So for now, we’re going to do what we can to help Chocolate feel safe and not alone in the world.
The Big Boy Update: We were out on the boat today and my son was trying on his most “cool” poses wearing the clout goggle sunglasses. Kyle said to him, “do you want to borrow my hat?” thinking that might add to his posing. My son replied quickly, “no, I don’t want to risk getting lice.” Kyle and I looked at each other and laughed as he replied, “I don’t have lice, I have style.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: This never happens. My daughter never, ever says she’s upset because she can’t see something. I don’t know how she processes things she can’t do or see, but she never verbalizes them. Today my son got up from lunch to demonstrate a dance he had created combining the Dab and Floss dance moves. My daughter said rather quietly at the table, “I’m so mad I can’t see that.”
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