The Lifespan of a Household: Shared Living Space (EP 66)

Join Dr. Regan for this third episode in the "Lifespan of a Household" series. This episode highlights topics important to living in shared space, including the sensory environment, alone time, and control over objects. Also, check out links to resources on her website and a transcript of the episode below. 

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Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining me for this third episode in our series on autism and the lifespan of a household. My name is Dr. Theresa Regan, and I'm your host. I'm a neuropsychologist, a certified autism specialist, and mom to a young adult on the spectrum. This series is the result of listener requests about living as a couple or as a family within a shared household. And as we've touched on, one of the challenges of tackling the topic is that households can take so many different forms. And I know that I can't do them all justice in just one series, but I wanted to touch on some important life seasons within a household.

So our first episode was about dating, and the second covered the topic of physical intimacy and relationships. And today we're going to talk about sharing physical space with other people. So joining households, living in the same space. I'll also let you know that a lot of my website renovations have been completed. There are still some things I'm tweaking and trying to make work better, but lots of the pages are active and working. And I also now have the new service of video visits for people to consult me about the topic of autism or how that impacts you in your household. There are some geographic limitations and there are some specifics about payment and if you are interested in that type of service head on over to my website at adultandgeriatricautism.com and look under video visits.

So there are many different instances where physical space might be shared in a type of household. So we may be talking about a traditional couple or a family household or even other situations like having roommates or renting a portion of someone else's home. And sharing living space can be complex for lots of reasons, but for the autistic, there may be a few specific challenges that we could cover in the episode today that would help people navigate those things. So in particular, we're going to cover the sensory environment, alone time, and having control over objects.

So let's tackle the sensory environment first. First, because the autistic individual may have sensory sensitivities, living in the household with other people may be overwhelming because people bump into each other or reach over each other or they brush against each other to navigate the physical space. Noise can be another sensory input that's elevated in a household, and the noise could include voices, babies crying, arguments, even just surround noise like television or music. How things smell can be important to someone on the spectrum. The scent of food cooking or aftershave, candles, cigarettes, cleaning products, taste and texture can come into play if we're talking about shared groceries or family meals, does everyone have to eat the same thing?

Let's not forget about visual inputs. So not only does this include lighting, but a very common issue that I hear about is concern for the visual space or having visual chaos. So for some on the spectrum, the sight of a visual messiness or overcrowdedness or chaos can be overwhelming. And this could include things like decorations, messy work areas, things on the floor, clothes, garbage, food, strewn about various surfaces. And this visual chaos can feel overwhelming. Now, before you start laughing because you've seen someone's space and you know that they're not concerned about visual chaos, that's true. Not everyone on the spectrum will have the same sensory processing feature. And neither will everyone who is neurotypical. So people in the household will have different preferences. Many people on the spectrum may have very little care for the visual cleanliness or organization of their space except for a few specific things. So maybe they have very significant care about where their favorite objects are placed or how things are lined up, but other things are strewn over the floor and there's not much care at all. The more people there are in the household, the more mix there will be of habits and preferences and clash with the habits and preferences of others. Another complicating factor is that as people age across life seasons, their sensory processing and preferences can also change. So you have not only complexity, but you have this multifaceted, always changing sensory sensory environment, and sensory preferences across multiple people within the same shared living space. So that is a moving, dynamic, complex kind of issue.

Now, one of the best ways to start addressing this is what we've talked about in multiple other episodes, And that is self-awareness. So that's that ability to say, hey, I know what makes me tick. I know what my nervous system likes and doesn't like. I know what I need today. And I also observe and have talked to and am aware of other household members. I have awareness that what they need may not be the same thing I need. And this place is shared by people with different needs. So having awareness of what the needs are is a huge place to start. The next step is to add the right now element. So the self-awareness that we talked about, that's the always element. Like, I know what's generally, typically always true about our household from day to day. Now, look at the right now element. So in this specific moment, what do people need? What do people need this morning, today, this week, this holiday season? One way to accomplish this in a household is to have huddles. So a huddle is a very quick rundown. It's a triaging process. For those of you who maybe use that in a workplace or know what that means, triaging is the ability to quickly scan what's happening, what's most important, what needs to be done the quickest, and to prioritize how these things will be handled. So in a triaging process where people are able, they're already self-aware, they're are able to highlight how their system is doing and what the day will be or has been like given their schedule. A huddle could take place between two parents of three young kids, maybe in the morning and after work. This type of brief communication helps everyone get on the same page. So instead of this confrontation and argument where one person says, I told you to do this or why are you doing that? We start with, hey, this is really chaotic. what do you need right now? This is what I need. This is the schedule for the day. This type of communication also represents and reestablishes that the household is committed to partnership. I want you to do well. I want to know what's important to you and what you need. And here is what is a priority for me today. So rather than being impulsive and reactive to what's happening throughout the day, oh my gosh, something just happened to me. I react to it because I want it to stop. We can start off with awareness and a general game plan rather than kind of flipping around crisis mode, and often that means pushing against other people.

The household itself will also need some adaptations to the sensory needs of the individual. So not only do we start with self-awareness and then have up-to-date huddles, like this is what's going on this morning, this is what's going on after work, we also have to look at the sensory needs in the whole household and how that can be adapted. So there will likely be some foods that are completely off the table, like there's just such a high smell, taste, or texture aversion that cannot be avoided or coped with that it's not worth the amount of drain on people in the household. So one person may love fish or collard greens or something with a strong smell or scent that's really overwhelming to someone else and there's just no way around it. It just gets into the house. So those foods are off the table. If you're going to have that food, go out to someone's house as a guest and eat it there or eat it at a restaurant. Some adaptations may not be all or nothing. They may have to do with getting equipment like sound-canceling headphones or earbuds for people, sometimes having a designated quiet time if the kids are old enough to understand stand and regulate this. Like 12 to 1 is quiet time. A weighted blanket may be a good sensory tool for calming, as might something like a rocking chair or a swing set.

Another thing I want to point out that may be confusing to people about the sensory environment in household with neurodiversity is that the person who is sound sensitive may also make a lot of noise. And that seems to be because the noise they make is predictable and controlled by them, whereas the noise that comes at them can feel repeatedly startling and overwhelming and they don't have the control that they need. And another thing is that sometimes, you know, it's this hard to understand presentation because the person may be loud because they're overwhelmed and need quiet. So it can be, you can't always kind of look and say, well, you're being loud, you must not need quiet. Or you're running around and crashing and rolling, you must not need quiet time. So a lot of times those kinds of behaviors are a signal that the person does need some regulation help, and that can be achieved by a quieter space, time alone, a weighted blanket, and those kinds of things.

In addition to having things about the environment that support sensory needs within the household, consider having separate time or alone time so that people don't have to do things together. I know sometimes as a family, we try to create this together time or a family evening or a forced family time. And sometimes that's great and there are great memories. And other times, you may become aware that the needs of the people in the household are such that separation time is so important that there's a place for that as well. So for example, one person could do homework in one household location and a second person in another. So rather than having both kids at the table doing homework so that it's convenient for for the parent to help or whatever, that just may be unrealistic for either of those individuals and their sensory needs. They may need space and quiet and time. One individual could work on a chore at a separate time or space than another individual doing their chore. So I worked with a family once that had two teen girls and one was neurotypical and one was autistic And they were very perplexed at the autistic individual who didn't have a diagnosis that all of a sudden she would melt down and push her sister and just be so, quote, unreasonable, end quote, that she'd have to wait outside until she could calm down and come back in. And what actually was happening is that because they were doing chores in the same room, which was the kitchen every night, but the chores were split. The shared space was too much. And sometimes the sister would do just silly, friendly, wonderful things that she thought would be no big deal, but were really overwhelming. At the end of the day, you know, the resilience for the one child was just really low and touch, especially unexpected touch, a hug from behind, tapping on the shoulder would just set things off. So allowing people to do their chores in separate areas.

There could also be individual variants. Sometimes our kind of go-to within a household is that everyone is the same. It's most fair if everything is the same for every child all the time. And actually that just may not be realistic and it may not end with the best outcome. So sure, there are some things that are the same for every person in the household and there probably needs to be some individual variance as well. So this is your toothpaste flavor. This is your shampoo scent. And in the end, the target will be a balance of number one, no one does this. So maybe that's smoking or Cook's Curry or Blair's Music all the time. Number two, individual variations. So we make sacrifices for each other and we give each person breaks and some alone time. And number three, some of we all do this. Like we all have huddles. We all try to figure out how everyone can get their needs met. We all try to focus on compromise and having an awareness in the moment. So having a mix of this never happens, this always happens, and let's do some individual triaging. That's going to work really nicely.

So what we covered so far was the sensory environment. And the second point we're going to talk about is alone time. So alone time is typically really important for the regulation of the nervous system for the autistic. So protecting someone's alone time likely needs to be a very high priority. You can see how this gets easily eaten up, particularly if there's kind of a traditional family unit where there are multiple people in the same household. Everyone comes together at dinnertime. They have multiple things that they need to get finished. They need to work together. There are errands to run. And there's a lot of times when other people need something from you. I want a snack, I need help with this, I need you to do X, Y, Z so I can have a break. This would be a good time for a huddle. So let's regroup. Let's get a game plan that we actually decide on rather than just reacting about. And let's not let life roll over us and us trying to keep up with the flow. You might want to designate where someone can get alone time. Maybe there's a tree house, a garage apartment, a basement area. Try to be creative and create space for this. So it may be in a corner of a room with a small tent-like structure and pillows inside. Maybe under a table with a blanket for small children. The adults need alone time too. Regrouping after After work, it can be really hard for both spouses to come home from work and then feel like they both need alone time and yet they have kids running around in the house or other demands on them. The huddle can help work together to figure out how each person can decompress. Maybe alone time is riding your bike after work, driving your kid to baseball practice, but needing to read a book in the car rather than getting out and visiting with parents or watching practice. Maybe there are things the family do all together, like eating meals or doing chores or playing games or watching movies, but there may be room for thinking about who needs alone time rather than together time, and not to have this picture that the family is doing the the best when everyone wants to be together all of the time. So really trying to protect and designate alone time and separation time for each family member based on what their nervous system needs.

The third thing I want to talk about in a neurodiverse household has to do with having control over objects. So this may or may not be something that rings a bell with you or that you relate to. But for many people on the spectrum, they just have a real keen eye for objects and they may like to accumulate them or have collections of them. They may have a hard time throwing things away or sorting through things that they don't need. And so there can can be this real feeling of importance about where the objects are and are they safe and can I see them? And so that may have to be taken into account within a household as well. The person may say, yes, a place for everything and everything in its place. Again, that these objects are important and the symmetry of them is important and where they go is important. And I want people to put everything back where it should belong. One person may really focus on keeping items rather than parting with them to free up space and reduce clutter. letter and that can be a difference in how different people in the household want to work. So it could really stress someone to have too many objects in the house and it can really stress another person to part with an object.

Take for example an autistic child who leaves their stuffed animal in the family car and wakes up in the middle of the night and realizes that that they don't have their stuffed animal and they're very worried that rabbit is not going to be okay in the car. So if I can't see where rabbit is, then I feel like they might not be okay. I really need parent to go out and get the stuffed animal from the car. Now for the autistic child, that may be a very strong, important nervous system need because they may actually really worry about this object if it's not in a known location. So understanding is one of the first steps, right? I understand why this child needs this and I respond according to how high the importance is for them. Compromise is another part of this. Like if I have self-awareness that that objects are really important to you, and you have self-awareness, that visual calm is really important to me, then can we compromise? Could a compromise be that we store things in a storage unit that are not out in the open, but you know that they're safe and protected, and you can can alternate objects whenever you want. So you could take some objects that are on display at home. You can go to the storage unit and change them out for other objects and bring those objects home. So some sort of compromise would be ideal. So understanding this actually is really important to them. And them understanding what's very important to you.

So what doesn't work is these repeated conversations about, it's fine, it's just a stuffed animal, it's just a transformer collection, it's, you know, even for people who are retiring and downsizing, we hear this, that, you know, I just can't get rid of my collections, it would be like a death in the family to downsize. It can be that upsetting. So again, I think the part I want to point out here is that that neurologic. Strain is very real for them. That's really a very difficult thing to do. And reasoning with the person about why you don't need these boxes anymore or the cleanliness of the area or the safety of the area, that's really not going to be that compelling to them. What might work a little bit better is number one, seeing if they can give some of the objects to a trusted person so that it has a good home, rather than just throwing it out or giving it away to an unknown person. Another thing that could work is compromising about a space where things can go. As we said, it could be a rented space, it could be an outbuilding, a place in the basement, and how much can be visible at one time. And it also could be compromise about spaces that are protected. So you have your space in this man cave here or whatever, and you get to put your objects in this space. But every other place in the house that's a family area, we compromise about. And then I get my space. And so I get to make decisions totally in my space about visual calm and being uncluttered. So we have some compromise space and some individualized space.

Living in a household is complex because everyone has a nervous system. Everyone's system is a little bit different than the other person's. And the best place to start is self-awareness. And knowing that there's going to be this fluidity from day to day and from life season to life season. The things that are calming or soothing or upsetting and frustrating are going to be different to a two-year-old than they are to an 18-year-old than they are to a 50-year-old, etc. So this dynamic and moving thing that is a household is going to have these elements. So self-awareness, compromise, huddling up, making some decisions about the space and how the space can support the needs of the individuals, and really knowing what is legitimately very difficult for each person.

I'm so glad you joined me today to talk about living in a household, sharing space, joining households. Households, and I hope you'll continue to listen to this series on the Lifespan of House