Beyond the Echo: Honoring Autistic Communication with Farwa Husain

I would love to start with the power of co-regulation, like explaining what therapeutic presence is and how you use that with the tiny humans, but also with their caregivers.

Because, and I know that's like a three-part question, but And truly, when I walk into a session, especially for feeding, because it's such a personal and could be intrusive, I have to be regulated before I walk in the door to work with that child and the family.

So can you help us understand what co-regulation is?

Yeah, so co-regulation is actually a physiological process where the child and the individual is borrowing our nervous system and borrowing our calm.

When they have repeated exposures of our energy, our calm, it helps them with their self-regulation.

Our little beautiful children and even some adults haven't figured out how to do it on their own.

So they have to practice the skill to be able to do that.

So think about yourself as riding a bike.

When you're initially starting to ride a bike, you have training wheels on.

So you have the earth to ground you.

The more practice you put on that bike, those training wheels come up and then you're able to do it on your own.

So the same thing happens to us starting from like babies.

Babies start using their moms to help them with all of their coos and knowing that there's somebody warm there to help them.

And then as they become older...

they can be able to move through feelings and emotions and all those things to build independence.

So think about it as like independence for your insides.

You're letting you know how to navigate when to be able to do the higher level things of executive functioning and problem solving and creativity and being able to move in situations under stress.

The only way we can do these things is if our brain is out of fight, flight, flee.

And if we have a regulated nervous system, if we have regulation within our sensory systems, how are we going to learn? By borrowing it from us as clinicians, by borrowing it from our families, by borrowing it from parents.

And many times what happens is when you have a family that does have a neurodivergent child or that does have a child with multiple disabilities, parents themselves are in constant crisis because those around them don't know what it's like.

Those around them don't understand the invisible load that the parents are holding.

So I recently went to a session and the mom just sat there and cried.

She was like, My mom, I have help.

They come in, but they don't realize the help that I truly need.

They think them coming is enough of a help.