I’ve been going to therapy for many years now and something surprising has been happening lately, I’m finally starting to get it!!! It hasn’t taken this long because my therapist hasn’t explained it well; sometimes it just takes hearing the same thing over and over before a concept finally clicks.
We spend a lot of our days in a state of repetition with D’s stimming and hyperfixations.
She is officially in the stage of asking the same question or requests followed by “please, please, please, PLEASE!” I’m not sure if the question is a stim or if she is truly curious about the answer but we end up having the same conversation all day long. We also have the privilege of memorizing her current favorite 10 second clips from movies or songs. I actually don’t mind it! It gives me more opportunities to calmly respond, practice patience, or memorize phrases she’ll want to talk about later in the day. All of these become ways to connect in a healthy way.
From the time she’s been little, I will gently squeeze her hand to the syllables while saying “I… love… YOU.” The other day we were walking home from school she grabbed my hand and unprompted, started squeezing my hand saying “I … love … Mommy!” My heart instantly melted. She had never done this before. Years of repeating the same gesture and it had finally left enough of an impression to comprehend and reciprocate. It was a rewarding moment I’m holding onto.
With so much repetition happening, I’m slowly reframing the way I approach it both with my daughter and my internal thoughts. We spend our lives repeating thoughts to ourselves. Some of them encourage us, but some don’t. Both the positive and negative thoughts become background noise, things we don’t even question anymore. It makes sense that learning NEW ways of thinking wouldn’t happen overnight either. It takes time, it takes hearing the same truth again and again until it finally clicks.
The truth I’m putting on repeat is the fact that I am capable of changing for the better. We all are!