Try This: Step Up, Step Back

Fun 2006 dance movie, lots of sequels,
no relationship to communication,  but I couldn't resist!

I am fascinated by "group work." Amazing things come out of group projects, group discussion, group social gatherings, support groups, book groups, the list goes on. There is something really special that happens when we put our heads together. Hellen Keller said "Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much."

I am especially interested in the patterns of communication that happen in a group. No matter the topic or setting, there are two main types of group participants. There always seem to be participants who are the first to speak and to take up the most time and space with their opinions. And there are others who remain quiet, either speaking last, speaking briefly and quietly, or not at all. Then there are others who rest comfortably in the middle but usually tend to one side of this spectrum. The larger the group, the more unique individuals there are to navigate and the more polarized the extremes become. In life there are introverts and there are extroverts. There are linguistic thinkers and there are visuospatial or analytical thinkers. There are outgoing people and there are shy people. But when we are committed to a group's collective consciousness, every voice is important. 

I recently found myself getting acquainted with a new (and super amazing) group of individuals as I embarked on my latest journey: Yoga Teacher Training Program at Inner Strength Studios. I am thrilled that these people are on the path with me. They are loving seekers and I can already tell I will learn so much from this community. But we each come to the table with old habits and patterns, some that serve us, some that don't, and some that served us in one moment but are no longer aligned with our highest purpose. Like any group, we have some who are outspoken and some who are more hesitant to speak.

People who know me are often surprised to learn that I tend toward the quiet, speak last side of the participant spectrum! But this absolutely showed up in my first group discussion experiences with my new community. Sitting on my yoga mat in a big circle discussion, I was reminded of a valuable tool taught in many Unitarian Universalist communities. "Step Up, Step Back." This is a guideline for group discussions that encourages individuals to be aware of their own tendencies and consciously do the opposite. Those who find it easy to speak might wait to make space for those for whom it is more difficult. And us quieter folks might go out on a limb and speak up.

At first I was irritated by all the vocal, confident speakers not making space for people like me to use their voices. But then, lightbulb moment, I remembered the other half of the tool: "step up." It is MY responsibility to use my voice even though it sometimes feels scary or vulnerable. As the weekend went on I got more practice with stepping up, and I worked on trusting that my insights and ideas were valuable to the group. Speaking up, and stepping up became a little easier. Although I am fine to know that this is a growing edge for me and I am not done yet.

Every voice counts. Every person arrives with their own unique set of experiences, strengths, and thoughts. Every opinion can inform the collective consciousness. When we allow for all voices to be heard, whether that is by stepping back to make space for them, or by stepping up to offer our own, the group wins.

What type of group participant are you? Where can you "step up" or "step back" in your life for the greatest good of your community and of yourself?

Candied Citrus Peels

• Yes, there is sugar in this recipe. Actually there is a lot of sugar in this recipe. But it is homemade, and made from seasonal ingredients, and it's delicious. So I feel okay overlooking the sugar part. Especially because many of us have a little sweet tooth after all. And at least this recipe contains no Red Dye #40 or other weirdness!

• 
  

• Ingredients
• Peels of 2 grapefruits, 3 oranges, and 4 lemons. Oranges make the sweetest candies. Lemons have a sour patch kids kind of flavor, grapefruits are quite bitter, but still yummy.

• 4 cups sugar, plus more for rolling

• 4 cups water

Directions

1. Carefully "zip" the peels of a bunch of citrus fruit (make about 6 slits from top to bottom so the peels are easy to pull apart from the fruit). Save the fruit for other uses like seasoning fish with the lemons or just munching the oranges. Slice each piece of peel lengthwise into 1/4-inch-wide strips. The more even your slices the prettier the candies will look when you are finished. Use a knife to slice away as much of the white pith as possible.
2. Place strips in a large saucepan, and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, then drain. Repeat twice.
3. Bring sugar and water to a boil, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves and forms a thickish syrup. Add strips to boiling syrup, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer gently until strips are translucent (about 30 minutes).
4. Scoop strips from the syrup and lay onto a wire rack. Wipe off excess syrup with paper towels, then roll strips in sugar. Arrange in a single layer on a wire rack, and let dry for a long time (mine took 1-2 days to be fully dry).
   Gift. Share. Enjoy!

Responses to Previous Post on Treatment of Social Skills for Children with Autism

Last month, I blogged about my controversial opinion on treatment of social skills for children with autism. Here are some of the amazingly thoughtful and insightful responses from the facebook community. These individuals are parents, speech pathologists, educators, and/or spiritual teachers. All have an interesting take on this clearly complex topic.

• • 
    

    Ken: Faith leads us to accept each person as they are, and encourage them...as you say... to be themselves. It takes some people many years to learn this wisdom. Blessed Be

    
    
  • Janie: with autism, we can't just 'let them be themselves' when they CAN'T tap into their own underlying potential without professional help.http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video?id=8281792
    

    
    

    Video: Autistic Teen Finds Inner Voice

    
    

    Unable to speak, 14-year-old Carly finds refuge from disorder by typing.
  • 
    

    
    

    Sue: Ahh - teaching the niceties. You have brought up an excellent question - should we teach children (autistic or not) how to say things that aren't true for them? Should we monitor other's feelings and then adapt our conversations to fit THEIR needs? Tough questions.

    
    
  • 
    

    April: I love this Brenda! Especially since I was just worrying to myself about not teaching these skills to my ADD son who has social anxiety. It makes me feel good to be reminded of these things at times like this.

    
    
  • 
    

    Heather: I think this is definitely something SLPs struggle with in terms of how and what we teach students with autism about social skills and relationship building. There is something very off-putting about changing a person to fit our neurotypical view of the world. However, we all know that people without these skills cannot easily find success in terms of a job and income. I have heard people take this further and suggest that these kids won't find happiness or loving relationships, but I don't really think we know that. We don't understand how they experience the world. As you said, I think it is critical to teach them the rules of the game while at the same time supporting their individuality, creativity, and uniqueness. Does forcing them to be different foster a belief in themselves or pride in who they are? I believe in teaching them about what "unexpected" behaviors look like and sound like, but I never teach that these behaviors are wrong. I want my kids to recognize these behaviors and decide for themselves if they want to suppress them in the moment. I don't think they should lose any part of themselves just because it seems different to me. To quote Paul Collins, author of "Not Even Wrong", "Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It's that you're destroying the peg."

    
    
  • 
    

    Kim: That is a wonderful perspective! I think parents of children with high functioning autism would take comfort in this. I certainly know people who are obsessed with what others think of them and would probably be much happier without so much social anxiety. 
    I don’t specialize in autism either, but while I was reading this, I was thinking about a 5th grader, whom I officially see to fix his ch sound, but end up working mostly on social skills with. I’ve realized that the deficits in theory of mind that come with high functioning autism are a 2 sided coin – yes, you aren’t ruled by social anxiety, but you aren’t ruled by empathy either. The combination of the 2 has made this child a pill to be around. The rest of the speech group (myself included) is always relieved when he is absent, because his attitude is so unpleasant. What I want to help him with more than anything is how to be likeable. I believe his life would be richer if his peers and teachers enjoyed his company, because only then could he begin to make friends.

    
    
  • 
    

    Gael Chiarella Alba: Hi Brenda!  How bold you are to be so honest! How wonderfully important to recognize the mandate to speak truth - no matter the topic. You address the enforcement of "the parasite" on our children (I love the direct naming of social conditioning for the sake of acceptance as spiritual teacher Don Miguel Ruiz calls it) which we are each called to claw and climb our way out of as we reach for authentic self-realization - while rising to the challenge of healthy interpersonal community, which requires serving each other well. As you keep your eye on the prize I surmise the journey will continue to clear as you help to build a new world for all of us one word - one glance - one truthful step at a time. Namaste. (www.yokibics.com)

Take a Lunch Break for Goodness Sake!

Recent changes at my workplace have lead to a pretty significant change in my daily workflow. Some days are very busy and include one or more trips, by car, to another campus. Change has always been hard for me, and so this has been a bit of a bumpy transition. The most difficult part for me though is that these trips back and forth have affected my precious daily lunch break.

Here is my trusty lunch bag.
Try using real silverware, it's extra nice and fancy.

We live in a culture where business is often thought to be equal to "effectiveness" and maybe even (dare I say) value and worth! Tim Kreider wrote a great Opinion Piece about this in the NY Times last year. I find this to be true in my community and it really shows up at lunchtime. I will often notice my coworkers skip lunch, or I will see them in the cafeteria grabbing a small cup of soup or a granola bar as they scurry to the next thing. This does NOT work for me. My lunches are usually my largest meal. They are usually hot and hearty, often leftovers from dinner I prepped earlier in the week. I try to spend at least 20 minutes chewing and swallowing my food during my lunch meal (and I will get into the importance of chewing more in another post).

So, I will be working with my employer and coworkers to make sure we can all have an opportunity to take a lunch break, sitting in one place, at a consistent time each day, with real food.

Here are the reasons I need to eat lunch:

1. There is a long way to go 'till dinner. Generally Americans eat their largest meal in the evening. Not long before going to bed. I usually need to get a lot accomplished between noon and 7pm. Half my workday, errands, maybe some exercise. And I need fuel for these jobs.

2. Ayurvedic traditions recommend eating three full meals per day to maintain our body's expected cycles of blood sugar boosts and depletion, just in time for the next meal. A skipped or late lunch can be confusing to our bodies and make them go into energy saving (read: fat storing) mode. 

3. I get cranky! Just like a child, because lets face it, I'm just a big version of my child self, my mood is less stable when I have not had a good nutritious lunch full of whole foods. 

4. I need a break. I notice that I am much less effective on the days I go straight through without a "brain break." Sometimes I put on a little Pandora, write a personal email, talk to a coworker about something other than work, or call my mom. Then I can feel refreshed and ready to jump back in to serving the patients and clients I love so well. 

How often do you take a lunch break? What do you eat? Does your lunch break 'feed' you?

My Controversial Opinion on Treatment of Social Skills for Children with Autism

I work with all kinds of patients at my full time job at a small community hospital. From fluency to brain injury, I need to be prepared to support anyone who comes through the door. Every once in a while I get a referral for a child with autism. Usually these individuals are very "high functioning," meaning that their communication and cognitive skills are relatively strong when measured on the autism spectrum. And generally I am providing supplemental therapy for older children (age 10-15) because their parents and teachers feel they need extra support. Most of these kids have access to great treatment in their public school, with therapists who specialize in working with children of their developmental level and often with extra training and experience working with autism.

I'd like to take this opportunity to give a big shout out to the amazing school SLPs out there. They manage big caseloads, lots of budget and policy red tape, and sometimes less than ideal conditions, but boy do they make a difference in these kids academic lives. I will be frank: autism is not an area of specialty for me. However, I feel confident that I can support these kids and their families. I love each of my kiddos and I learn so much from working with them.

A primary area of focus for nearly all of the children with autism that I have worked with is Social Skills. Well, to be fair, it is an area of focus for these children's parents, not for the children themselves per say. Social skills include things like eye contact, topic maintenance in conversations, and "saying nice things to people (and here is the part that gets me most) even if you don't mean it." Though we call them skills in the speech therapy world, these socially acceptable ways of behaving and interacting are really more like "rules." Typically developing kids learn these rules easily, without having to be explicitly taught, because blows to self esteem, fear of being rejected, and being policed and judged by peers are common occurrences in our interactions from a very young age. Children with autism often seem to be immune to these methods of learning. This is sometimes a source of frustration for their families and peers. I hear them say "he doesn't notice when our eyes glaze over because we are ready to talk about something other than scorpions." Or "he doesn't wait for everyone to be ready before he puts away the game."

Here is my dilemma. I have actually spend these first few years of my adult life trying to unlearn many of these rules, or at least free myself from letting them dictate my every interaction. I am trying so hard to learn and internalize the TRUTH which is: the only person I need to take care of is myself, and by doing that I am serving the highest good of all around me. I don't need to manage other people's feelings or make them happy (this is called people pleasing). I don't need to say things I don't mean in order to be liked. I don't need to do anything I don't feel like doing! Of course it's complicated, because some aspects of these unhealthy ways of being have actually skyrocketed me to where I am today. I probably couldn't have scored glowing letters of recommendation, aced the job interviews, and occasionally schmoozed my way out of speeding tickets if I wasn't paying attention and using social skills like those mentioned above. But I just feel so wrong drilling these children to be hypervigilant people pleasers, when I know in my heart of hearts that they are ok just the way they are. In fact I envy them at times. Oh, to be completely free of social anxiety!

I suppose one answer is to show and teach these kiddos about all the different ways we can be in relationship, so they can make the choice about whether and when they want to "play the game." Show them the tools and let them reach for them if they want to. And always to be learning from them as much as they are learning from me.

I welcome your comments, especially those of you who work with people with autism and see the benefits of treating social skills. I trust that we are striving to improve people's quality of life, and not just teach them "the right way." And I encourage you to learn from my friends with autism. If you want to talk about scorpions till the cows come home, do it!

Grounding Shepherd's Pie

I enjoyed this delicious warming and grounding meal on a chilly winter night. It's a bit more labor intensive than some of my other go-to recipes, but soo worth it. I made a lot and packed it for lunch for a few days.

1 lb ground grass fed beef
Olive oil
2-3 carrots, grated, no need to peel!
2-3 red beets, grated
1-2 golden beet, grated
1 medium onion, peeled and grated
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup (or so) chicken broth
1 tsp pepper
½ tsp salt
1 tsp rosemary (fresh and minced is best)
fresh parsley, chopped (to taste)

4lbs of potatoes
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 pkg of Boursin cheese
1 – 1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper

Chop potatoes into chunks. Boil in a large pot of water until tender.
While potatoes are boiling, combine oil, ground beef, and garlic in a large pan. Cook on medium high heat, stirring and breaking up meat chunks frequently. Once meat is cooked through, add the grated vegetables. Cook till veggies are tender. Add chicken broth. Season with pepper, salt, rosemary, and parsley. Stir. Remove from heat.

Once potatoes are tender, drain and transfer to a large bowl. Use an electric mixer and whip until potatoes are mostly broken down. Add butter, chicken broth, and Boursin cheese. Beat until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

Preheat broiler to high.
Transfer meat mixture to a large casserole dish. Spread potato mixture evenly over the meat mixture, broil until potatoes are as browned as you would like them.

No-Pasta Spaghetti and Meatballs

Many people are aware of the gluten free movement we see in the nutrition and health fields lately, and with any popular diet comes marketing and new products to meet your dietary needs. Most grocery stores have at least one or two gluten-free pasta options on the shelves made with flour rendered from other grains. These products went through a lot of machines and processes to get to your table though. This can make them hard to digest and often full of extra ingredients that your body doesn't need.

Here is a true gluten free, whole food, seasonal option to meet your spaghetti and meatball comfort food craving this winter.

No-Pasta Spaghetti and Meatballs

Yum! Leftovers for lunch at work the next day. Cook once, eat twice... or even thrice! 

Simple Meatballs 

1lb of ground beef or your choice of ground meat, grass fed and local if possible

2 eggs

frozen chopped spinach, thawed with excess water squeezed out

basil, oregano

1/4 cup of parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Place all ingredients in a large bowl and mix with your hands. Add more eggs or more dry cheese to make the right consistency. Roll into 1.5 in balls and place in a glass baking pan. Bake for about 20 minutes. 

I made a ton of meatballs a few days ahead and froze them. I took out what I needed for this meal and have plenty more to thaw for other dishes in the future.

No-Pasta Pasta
1 Spaghetti Squash
1 large crown of broccoli
4 shallots
basil, oregano, thyme, red chili seeds
parmesan cheese

Preheat the oven to 350, cut the squash lengthwise and remove the seeds. Pierce the skin all over with a fork. Cover the bottom of a cookie sheet with a 1/4 inch of water. Place the squash, cut side down, on the cookie sheet and roast for about 45 min (until sides are kind of squishy and easy to pierce with a fork). Let cool for a few minutes, then use a fork to scrape out the flesh of the squash, like magic it comes out in long spaghetti fibers.

While the squash is cooking, chop up the broccoli florettes and shallots. Saute in a wok or large pan with olive oil and your favorite Italian-style herbs like basil, oregano, and/or thyme and some salt and pepper. When squash is done, toss in with the veggies.

Serve with a few meatballs and top with parmesan cheese and red chili seeds.