The Fears and Terrors of Autistic Children
Fright
fight - flight - freeze
Elemental instinctive psycho-biological panic reactions to fright, especially those of a baby’s premature awareness of bodily separateness from mother/carer
1. Bodily Terrors
especially when becoming aware of being a person and having a soft vulnerable body:
* part of their body will fall off, spill away, be lost, torn off
* feeling so small or meaningless, that they could fall apart/ dissolve/ disintegrate/ disappear
down a small hole and never get bigger/ stronger/ grow up
* feeling so small they could be squashed like insects
* afraid that the sky might come crashing down on them
Experience of Skin:
* afraid that their skin or hair will wash, fall, rub or peel off
* damage to their sense of skin, holes in their shell, of being wounded
* pierced by sharp voices, nasty sights, ‘hard’ eyes
* having no skin, skin breaking, dissolving, leaking,
Bodily Holes:
* parts of themselves spilling, seeping, emptying out
* anything ‘bad‘ entering their body through their mouth, eyes, ears, nose, anus, genitals
2. Black Holes and Nothingness
* pervasive sense of despair, - of hope not lost but extinguished
* threat of not-being, - worse than the fear of dying
* fear of being dropped down a black hole, abandonned, lost, forgotten
Petrified by Grief
* devastated by wordless baby-experience of utter loss
* loss of a ‘something’ never found: to experience its loss, you have to have had the
experience of having found something
Frozen with Terror
* a bottomless void having opened up before them with nothing to hold on to
* falling down endlessly into nothingness
* terrified of their own flaming rage and icy panics and of
* being burnt by their own rage/ exploding in their tantrum
Threatened by the Dread of Being
* attacked, or hacked to death, by archaic nameless
monster-like terrors
* devoured by predatory mouths and savage creatures
* bitten up by sharp teeth, stabbing voices, driven out
of their minds
Email: info@reachingautism.org
Fright
fight - flight - freeze
Elemental instinctive psycho-biological panic reactions to fright, especially those of a baby’s premature awareness of bodily separateness from mother/carer
1. Bodily Terrors
especially when becoming aware of being a person and having a soft vulnerable body:
* part of their body will fall off, spill away, be lost, torn off
* feeling so small or meaningless, that they could fall apart/ dissolve/ disintegrate/ disappear
down a small hole and never get bigger/ stronger/ grow up
* feeling so small they could be squashed like insects
* afraid that the sky might come crashing down on them
Experience of Skin:
* afraid that their skin or hair will wash, fall, rub or peel off
* damage to their sense of skin, holes in their shell, of being wounded
* pierced by sharp voices, nasty sights, ‘hard’ eyes
* having no skin, skin breaking, dissolving, leaking,
Bodily Holes:
* parts of themselves spilling, seeping, emptying out
* anything ‘bad‘ entering their body through their mouth, eyes, ears, nose, anus, genitals
2. Black Holes and Nothingness
* pervasive sense of despair, - of hope not lost but extinguished
* threat of not-being, - worse than the fear of dying
* fear of being dropped down a black hole, abandonned, lost, forgotten
Petrified by Grief
* devastated by wordless baby-experience of utter loss
* loss of a ‘something’ never found: to experience its loss, you have to have had the
experience of having found something
Frozen with Terror
* a bottomless void having opened up before them with nothing to hold on to
* falling down endlessly into nothingness
* terrified of their own flaming rage and icy panics and of
* being burnt by their own rage/ exploding in their tantrum
Threatened by the Dread of Being
* attacked, or hacked to death, by archaic nameless
monster-like terrors
* devoured by predatory mouths and savage creatures
* bitten up by sharp teeth, stabbing voices, driven out
of their minds
Email: info@reachingautism.org
