The Over Intellectualization Of The Autism Parent
I have no desire to write this article at all. Do you ever have to do a thing that you really don’t want to because it will be like holding up a magnifying mirror in order to see all those ugly pock marks on your face? Yup, like that. Here I go anyway, despite the squirmy feeling in my belly.
When my son was suffering labels like ADHD, autism and just good old fashioned neurotic and psychotic tendencies, I didn’t realize the extent to which I was part of his problem. While he was stimming, lining stuff up and being some kind of crazy OCD boy, I was suffering the exact same gestures without knowing it.
You see, I wracked my brain anxiously every waking hour with, “How am I going to fix this kid … how am I going to fix this kid … how am I going to fix this kid?” Although I left the hand-flapping to him, I was stimming the same thought patterns over and over and over again. I lived in terror that I was never doing enough. That I was NOT enough.
I lived in terror of the realization that somehow I’d damaged my most beloved son and now I’d better bloody well fix this mess that we were in. I was constantly at the hospital (seven times that I counted), desperately wanting them to help me get his bowels operating with milk and molasses enemas; one time they even put him under general anaesthetic to manually remove the two-week old impacted stool from his body. Still I stimmed, “I’ve got to fix this kid if it kills me!” And actually, it was doing just that.
The fact that he’d bite, hit and scream mostly at me was a result of the repressed rage that I had successfully armored below decks in my own nether girl, leaking out in neurotic tendencies. My house had to be just as orderly as Jordan’s lined up matchbox cars, or I’d feel entirely out of control. The laundry always done, the sinks spotless and the food prepared like some kind of messed up Cordon Bleu chef.
In fits of desperation I took my son to every therapist imaginable, hoping against hope that this one would shed some light on the cause of his disorders and help me solve his issues outright. Nothing worked! Decades later, we see an entire autism industry built on this desperate cry from desperate parents.
We moved him from classroom to classroom, from teacher to teacher, from doctor to doctor, from homeopath to homeopath, to no avail. We tried every diet out there, switching from GAPS to ferments to combinations thereof. As a result my son hated mealtimes, often refusing to eat. What a bloody power struggle!
We took my son to speech therapists, occupational therapists and cognitive therapists. We consulted with a variety of chiropractors, energy workers, and naturopaths who charged us small fortunes and then let us examine their frayed ropes with regard to a true diagnosis and faulty treatment plans. It was a nightmare, until one day …
Finally, we came to Heilkunst Medicine and learned the underlying causes of Jordan’s ills. It was part miasmic and part environmental and the sequential timeline was a clear, definable protocol that we addressed each month when we met. I learned how my unresolved issues of anxiety, grief, rage, terror and fear were also part of Jordan’s autism issues. This realization was difficult for me, but I committed to the process to get at the underlying cause to get us both well.
It was scary, unnerving, embarrassing and it is true that early on, I hated the process. Who loves a cheval mirror turn around for you to see every pockmark, ugly belief, and rotten pit of intellectual stimming, anxiety, feelings of violence, hate and terror brought up for their viewing pleasure? God, it was so brutally painful.
However, over time, Jordan got better. First he became sick, really sick, with fevers, vomiting and diarrhea. The progress that followed every month was astounding – he started to make eye contact, stopped stimming, and began to speak. He was passing stool regularly and he was even eating a small variety of new foods. After just 12 Heilkunst treatment sessions, he’d gained 12 lbs and 4 shoe sizes. I was elated! It was like living the Pinocchio dream; I finally met my real boy, for the first time, at four and a half years of age. 
In turn, I also experienced massive healing reactions that you can read about in our FREE audiobook here. I wailed, grieved, exposed my hate and squirmed with unresolved childhood issues like my mother’s suicide and my father’s early death at 43. I hated my life, was suffering PTSD, and while Heilkunst wasn’t easy, at least it was productive. Over time, I gave birth to my essential self; I stopped the intellectual stimming and became a real parent, a motherly version of Gepetto.
I stopped running wildly to every therapist, cleaning my home like a maniac, and making a different meal every single night (yes, part of my intellectual stimming and ADHD patterning meant that I never prepared the same meal twice … ever!) My kind of crazy was also tied inextricably to Jordan’s kind of crazy. Guess what my own mother had been diagnosed with before she turned the car on in the enclosed garage at 32, when I was eight? Schizophrenia and manic depression. Can you see the hereditary link?
In my case, it did not “skip a generation.” I was her and she was me, and Jordan was embroiled in more than four generations of a Syphlitic hell (my grandfather was committed before I met him). In my son’s case the MMR shot, laced with mercury (thimerosal), triggered the deeper issues associated with this genetic disease, spawning symptoms such as OCD, bone pains, ADHD, anger, hostility, blaming, hyper-vigilance, aggression, hate, and stimming. I presented with many of these same tendencies, which is why my Heilkunst Physician insisted that I also be treated.
It is also why, as a Heilkunst Practitioner of 14 years, I too insist that the parent(s) be treated with the child labelled in the spectrum with ASD issues. Part of the cause lies in the environment and the child cannot get better if the parent’s issues remain at large. I know; I’ve lived this phenomenon in my own experience as a parent, and have borne witness to hundreds of parents and children that my partner, Jeff Korentayer, and I have served.
It has taken me 20 years of looking full-on at myself in that mirror. My son, thankfully, has long since been out of the spectrum; he lives a full and whole life as a trampoline acrobat and teacher, and trained Bowen Practitioner. He and I are really close and there is a deep, abiding love for how we helped each other to resolve the underlying cause of our ills and shut down the genetic miasm(s) that had us both pinioned with gestures of OCD, stimming and a primal fear that held us hostage.
It is isn’t easy when a new patient comes into my practice, describing their autistic child and how they’re taking them to every conceivable therapist, guiltily trying to rescue the child to the exclusion of themselves. Just so you know, I will be turning around your mirror, my friend, and I will also hold you through the process of remediation as I too was once held. Some days you also aren’t going to like the process but you will love its reliable outcomes and efficacy. Just as I did too!
How true. My first one a high functioning autistic, second ADHD son, have had an overly anxious mother with OCD traits. Always wanting them to be on their best behaviour. Like you said, the environment also has to be calm, and here I am my mind racing all the time with what to do to fix their issues. A mother should fix her issues first as kids can read how worked up I am, they can sure feel it in my every move or word.