by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman
#1: Grandiosity is a thing and I can let it go.
Before I knew I was Autistic, I felt personally responsible for virtually every bad news story I heard. Hearing about rainforests burning, or wars starting, or disasters striking I would flinch – not only because I’m a hyper-empath who feels pain when I witness suffering. But because some young part of me actually thought I should have stopped whatever bad thing had happened.
I cognitively knew the belief I should save the world was ridiculous. But it was something I’d carried around since I was very little, and it lived in some primordial part of my psyche that wasn’t changed with logic or years of talk therapy.
After the 2016 election, my mental health plummeted. As a climate activist, I wasn’t just upset because my side had lost. I was upset because I should have personally done more. I wasn’t just scared because of very real threats to the climate and vulnerable people I cared about. I was scared because things were totally out of my control. I imagine many of you, on any side of the political spectrum, may relate to these feelings.
Six years later, I discovered I was Autistic. And I learned (1) that grandiosity is the name for when a person believes they have more power or greatness than they do, and (2) that grandiosity is a common coping strategy for gifted, undiagnosed Autistic children. (Unmasking Autism: The New Faces of Neurodiversity by Devon Price talks about the idea that many gifted children feel they owe the world greatness to justify their oddness, pp.84).
Kids like me conjure a fantasy that we are destined for greatness to make sense of our unusual gifts, vulnerabilities, and our unexplained sense of difference. Imagine Superman’s self image as a kid, before he knows he’s from Krypton (When did Martha & Jonathan tell Clark about his origins?)
Poof! My grandiosity was gone. Twenty years of therapy couldn’t shake it, but one very cogent explanation for its origins could. I wasn’t in charge of saving the world. I was gifted, disabled, exhausted, confused, & in love with a hurting planet. But I was just a regular, Autistic woman. Learning about grandiosity finally let me off my own hook for being a superhero. It brought me down to size.
#2 My control is limited, even in my own family.
When I learned about PDA, it brought this lesson in limited control to a whole new level. (For those reading this post outside the PDA community, check out my FAQs on PDA for background.)
Turns out it is very hard to maintain the delusion that you have an outsized influence in social movements when you cannot influence your own child to wash his hands, change his clothes, go to the bathroom, or leave the house. Being the mom of a PDAer has taught me the limits of my control. As hard as this can be, it was and is actually remarkably freeing.
#3 I can conserve my energy to make wise choices within the constraints of reality.
Mothering my PDA child has taught me to stop spending so much energy raging against difficult realities, whether they be on a personal or societal level. I now save my energy to understand the situation, generate creative options for action, weigh those options, and act as wisely as I can. This doesn’t mean I don’t get upset. But I am more easily able to move from rage to grief to wise action. I am much less emotionally exhausted, and spend much more time emotionally regulated.
#4 Meeting fear with love is transformative for everyone involved
Being a PDA parent has taught me how disabling a true threat response can be. It has taught me that responding to that threat response with anger or judgement will only further push the person – or, in the case of America right now, whole populations - out of their thinking brain and into survival mode. It has taught me that meeting fear with love is a way to keep my own sanity.
I’ve known about meeting fear with love for years before I knew about PDA. It’s the practice at the heart of my own husband’s coaching practice (presencetree.com). Meeting fear with love goes like this: When I’m afraid, I listen to what the fear wants for me - which is usually something good. I let my fear feel heard & appreciated by my thinking brain. This helps my threat response calm down so I can think clearly & make good choices. If someone else is afraid, the practice is to get curious about their fear instead of getting reactive. I may co-regulate to support them to come out of survival mode.
It’s one thing to know all this cognitively. But it’s another level of mindfulness bootcamp to live in a house where meeting a threat response with love is literally the only way the household can function.
I’ve gotten a lot of practice.
Being the mom my PDA child needs me to be has slowly but surely brought me closer to being the person I want to be. As hard as it can be, I am so grateful for all I’ve learned and how much I’ve grown as a human.
The PDA Safe Circle™ is launching as an app, course, and community of practice in 2025...
Imagine belonging to a community of adult PDAers, parents, & allies where everyone learns the powerful & simple approach of The PDA Safe Circle™.
Imagine being welcome in regular group coaching that I lead, but also opting in to intimate, ongoing, interest-based group(s) for peer coaching.
Imagine that, by joining, you are supporting systemic change to make the world safer for PDAers.
Imagine feeling empowered & connected.
Imagine staying as long as you want to.
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