DIR and the Science of Hope

Affect Autism: We chose play, joy every day

Photo credit: Pixabay

What is DIR?

What is Floortime?

DIR Glossary

DIR and the Science of Hope

by Affect Autism

https://affectautism.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-12-20.mp3

This Week’s Episode

My returning guest is Licensed Professional Counselor, Mike Fields, who is an Expert Developmental, Individual differences, Relationship-based (DIR) Training Leader at several clinics including a Across All Ages, a new Floortime clinic in Avondale, a part of Atlanta. We will be discussing DIR and the Science of Hope, a topic he presented on presented on at the 2024 ICDL DIRFloortime conference in October.



Bonus Insights

DIR Parent Network click HERE

DOWNLOAD KEY TAKE-AWAYS

Key Takeaways PDF for Members

We will never share your e-mail.

Download

Success!

Hope as Inspiration

Hope has always been a central core value for Mike, an obnoxious optimist. When he came across Hope Theory, it really spoke to him, and creates a path to being able to make hope something that is tangible and measurable rather than an empty wish. It is so fitting because it really is what keeps parents committed to DIR. I mentioned many times before that in 2013 Dr. Gil Tippy gave me the hope which gave me my paved road, or my pathway, forward like Floortime gave Mike hope when his autistic son was very young.

Mike says that in moving from pathway to potential, it was Mili Cordero and Barbara Dunbar who gave him that hope. Instead of looking at things from a medical perspective where there’s something wrong that needs to be corrected, they helped Mike figure out what he liked doing with his son and what his son was good at and how him and his wife could use that going forward in a strengths-based approach. Positive Psychology is the foundation for hope theory, Mike says, something that Dr. Rick Snyder wrote about and that shift lines up with DIR so well.

This what hooked Mike in the beginning–being able to not see his son as broken, but as an amazing, unique human being whom he loved, cherished, and wanted to the best for, and this journey has been about not wanting to change him, but to support him in what his son feels is important and what his son wants. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) has a white paper on being careful when you’re doing therapy by considering who the therapy is for. Is it for compliance to make a client fit in and make other people more comfortable or is it something that can improve their quality of life?

Hope Theory

Mike says that saying, “I hope you’re doing well” is just an empty wish, but there is a science of hope coined by Dr. Rick Snyder. The University of Oklahoma has a Hope Institute headed up by Dr. Chan Hellman who defines hope in 3 components:

1. You have to have a Goal, such as wanting to be more intentional and less reactive. Mike talked about the title of the Star Wars episode entitled, A New Hope where Luke Skywalker was the embodiment of the hope and Mike’s friend 3-D printed him Luke Skywalker’s light saber that he wants to paint.
2. Is there a Pathway to the goal? Dr. Hellman refers to that as “way power”. In order for Mike to have the pathway to display his new light saber with his other objects of joy, he would need to sand it and paint it. When Mike first learned about DIR and saw his son through a strengths-based perspective, it was such a profound shift for him that he wanted to share it with others, so he changed careers and has been a therapist now for about 15 years. He likes to think of himself as planting seed for others by sharing what he knows that might be useful and beneficial to others and pass on hope.
3. Agency Dr. Hellman refers to this agency as “will power” which you can also think of as “discipline” as Mike’s therapist, Shelley Marcus calls it, which is a field of study. It’s also a practice, Mike says and it ties into pathways and praxis, i.e., being able to understand what the steps are and their order, and having back-up plans if something doesn’t go right where we have to figure out another path.

Children's Hope Scale

Dr. Rick Snyder’s team created a Hope Scale for children where you can score your level of hope. People with better praxis who are more resilient, believe in themselves, are better problem solvers, can anticipate problems, can work through problems, and don’t get overwhelmed by those have increased physical, psychological, and social well-being. You can find more information at the Alliance for Hope website as well.

Due to neuroplasticity, Mike continued, the brain can change and we can continue to learn and grow. The agency or willpower part is being able to muster up the energy to do things and achieve goals to reach self-actualization. The goals, the pathways, or the way power, and the agency are what’s behind the science of hope, he says.

Individual Differences

I asked Mike what his experience of hope has been like with clients in his practice. Mike said that another place this fits in well with the DIR model is with Individual differences. Mike has worked with families who lacked in financial resources but who had an abundance of community resources. Maybe they were more hopeful. Locus of control is another individual difference. It is really about location of control where do you believe the control resides. Is it within you or outside of you? If you do well on a test is that because you worked hard or got lucky?

Mike would work in early intervention and would see families as the second, third, or fourth therapist they’ve seen. He would ask, “What is your favourite thing to do with your child? When are you the most connected?” He was shocked at how many parents couldn’t answer. While we don’t ignore challenges in DIR, Mike explains, we all have things we’re working on. Mike had a client ask him how he finds the strength and hope to get things done, but Mike said that this is only how he does it. We’re all different. What works for one may not work for another.

So, Mike worked with his client on identifying assets and strengths, and this is where community can help, Mike adds, or the R in DIR: Relationships. If you can’t answer what strengths you have, Mike continues, go back to the first step and make that your goal. Let’s identify what strengths you have. Mike used to think that his son had to do all of the things he did in order to be happy, but, “There are multiple paths to adulthood“, Dave Nelson told him. That’s the way power of hope.

The Power of Affect

We pick things that are emotionally salient to us, Mike continues, which make us more motivated. Let’s start with something smaller and tangible that is easier attainable to build confidence. Mike loves therapeutic gaming. We get to define our character in gaming, he explains. Each character has an aspect of ourself in it. You might make a character that is the opposite of you, or an idealized version of you, in a playful environment so you can play with the ideas. You can be provocative and see what the consequences are of your actions, all in play, like a practice for life.

Hope is a way of making meaning and understanding things. If you have belief in yourself, are resilient, and think your way though problems, your perspective of a challenge will no longer be something that is stopping you, but it’s something you can overcome, go through, or go around. It comes back to praxis, Mike says.

Faith

Dr. Tippy instilling hope in me with Floortime videos was my evidence for why I should have hope in DIRFloortime. I trusted and had faith in that because all my podcast guests said the same things in different ways that resonated with me, and they had all seen hundreds of autistic children in their clinics and knew that this was a good model. This gave me the buy in.

Faith is central to how we make meaning, Mike responds. What we believe affects our values and our pathways. It’s step three: the agency. What if I’m not confident that I can do something or be successful? Faith is something we can pull from to have that agency, Mike explains. It can fuel our willpower when we don’t think we can go on. Thinking about the “way power” part, we can think that we can do it “just for today”. It can be a buffer against worries for the future and can be a cover for failure or regrets from the past. All we have is the present, and this is a gift. Faith can help us be in that moment.

Resilience and the Prefrontal Cortex

Mike gives us an example of a quote from the recent Dungeons and Dragons series when one character asks, “Aren’t you tired of failing?” to which the other character responds, “We can never stop failing, because that’s when we fail!” It’s not failure if we don’t give up, Mike stresses. It’s step two and step three. That path didn’t work. Can we find another path? Do I have the resilience and resource to keep going? You have up until now! You are still here!

Our parental hope is in our prefrontal cortex, I added. For our kids, as Dr. Jeff Guenzel pointed out at Mike’s presentation at the 2024 ICDL DIRFloortime conference in October, it’s through the relationship and the sense of safety that’s their hope. We are providing hope for our kids that they will be ok. Mike says that Dr. Hellman refers to the brain as the hope engine. There’s good stress, or “eustress”, that motivates you such as stage fright that is exciting versus the bad stress, “distress”, that can shut us down, which can impact hope.

Mike brought up neuroception where our brain determines if something is a threat or not. Threat assessment, anxiety, fear, and trauma are all the unconscious way that we see things and sometimes our brain can trick us about what is a threat, Mike says. Children who score higher on the hope scale score better academically, even if they have lower IQs, Mike says. Employees who have higher hope scores are happier and more fulfilled than those with lower hope scores, regardless of income level. These scores can predict resilience and the ability to feel successful and happy.

Courage and Hope

I brought up courage with Mike, or doing something despite your fear. It’s about seeking the treasure despite there being a dragon and tempering your fear with courage in the prefrontal cortex. For parents don’t see the end path, courage is required to take action. It made Mike think of Neil Gaiman quoted G.K. Chesteron who said, “Fairy tales do not tell children dragons exist. Children already know the dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”

It also made Mike think about Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey in therapeutic gaming. That can help us act in the face of fear, especially when you have a relationship with someone who accepts you for who you are. It’s the power of relationship. It made me think of four students in Canada who created a ridiculous bucket list journal and talked about what you have to do to make goals happen such as writing them down and tell others about them. They wrote a book about their experience. Mike says it fits the science of hope. They came up with goals and felt like there was a path to get there, and felt agency as their goals began to get met.

If you want to feel confident and competent, you build that over time, Mike says. The more you experience it, the more you can internalize it and it becomes part of you. That’s why he asks client families when they feel most connected with their child. When you find that, you have hope. When you feel that, you want more of it.

Being open to potential and possibilities shifts everything.

DIR-Expert Licensed Professional Counselor, Mike Fields

As I said at Mike’s conference presentation, “Hope provides energy, clarity, focus, commitment, motivation, confidence, belief, excitement, optimism, drive, power, agency, locus of control, intention, purpose, obligation, vision, and joy in the process.” DIR is about the process. Mike says to define your own goals and your own pathways, and find your own agency to make things happen. You can find Floortime practitioners on ICDL’s DIRectory.

This episode is dedicated, in loving memory, to our beloved colleague, Kasheena Holder.

This week’s PRACTICE TIP:

This week let’s identify a tangible goal we have in relation to our child, identify the pathway, and work on what will bring us the agency to carry it out.

For example: Perhaps, like Mike, we want to be more intentional than reactive with our child. That is our goal. Our pathway is DIRFloortime. Perhaps the agency piece is that we will schedule into each day twenty minutes of mindfulness with our child where we are working on attunement and following our child’s interests.

Thank you to Mike for providing us with the scientific perspective on hope and its comparison to DIR! I hope that you learned something valuable and will share it on social media.

Until next time, here’s to choosing play and experiencing joy everyday!