Muscle Memory: Raising A Son With Special Needs

On the way to take his driver's test, I told our 16 year-old son that his body had the muscle memory to parallel park and to stop thinking about it. But what about emotional muscle memory? That's my term for sliding down a dark hole of familiar and very negative feelings. Being around Willie for only 30 minutes yesterday, after a month apart, is how long it took me to travel down that nasty emotional muscle memory lane.

Willie walked in the door for Columbus Day weekend and I immediately told him we needed to get his signature notarized for a replacement Disability Parking Placard. Maybe that is what set him off, as I am sure he was looking forward to chilling at home.  Either way, on the 15 minute car ride to the Notary, he walked down a path of catastrophe and self-deprecation that he knows so well.

And as he continued this way, my own muscle memory set in.  Within moments, I felt pummeled and drowning in all things negative about Willie.  It's a path that is well travelled and etched permanently in my heart and mind.  I never before thought of it as muscle memory, but it is.

So as Willie easily skidded down this sliding board of "I am quitting Newspaper class due to Mary, (an explosive student) who might hurt me" to "I can't ever be in a class with Mike again," I slid into my own destructive thinking. I can't do this, Willie is hopeless, feelings of despair, overwhelm, and doubt about Willie and his program, more than I could handle.

The thing about negative thought patterns and reactions is it is hard to get out and see a wider, more hopeful view, to interrupt the spiral.  To ask someone with a Brain Injury to snap out of it is asking quite a lot as I, neurologically intact, was stuck as well.

Then we were out to dinner and the pattern continued.  Willie was perseverating on bad things, bad people, bad events with no way in to infiltrate or help him.  But all of a sudden an old friend from the past, who also has Special Needs, stopped at out table, heartily patted Willie on the shoulder, listened to him complain about the "bullies," and gave him some advice. This friend said to ignore them.  The same advice I had been handing out all afternoon.  But Willie was able to hear this friend. And that was it for Willie.  This encounter had snapped him out of his slump.  His posture changed as he sat up in his chair, his voice lightened and resembled Willie's true, sweet self, and we began to talk of happier things. Later, Willie said "he sure is a good friend," and you could see the self-doubt, self-recrimination, and narrow thinking all subside.  Maybe Willie just needed to see that he has a friend, is likable, and felt heard.

Living with Willie, you learn you must celebrate when he is happy and positive.  Unfortunately, your own sorrow and despair are hard to escape from. It's that muscle memory concept.  The more you do something, the better your body and mind get at it, so that it is almost automatic. Switching to a happy mood is not so easy when you are raising a son with special needs.