in this video I'm gonna be talking about selective mutism so that by the end of
the video you'll know way more about it coming up hey I'm Dan I have Asperger's
syndrome ADHD OCD and dyslexia I make weekly videos on autism and mental
health so if new around here and you want to learn more remember to hit that
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like and follow so you'll see every video that I upload so I'm gonna be
discussing all about selective mutism and everything that you need to know
about it and also I'm gonna be talking about some of the symptoms and ways you
can spot it and if you have it yourself but then I'm also gonna discuss some of
the personal insight that I have as a person who has selective mutism as part
of my autism spectrum disorder and I find that may be valuable to you guys
hey guys welcome back to another video thank you so much for taking the time
and choosing that time to join me and hang out and chill out today I really
appreciate those thank you so much from from bottom of my heart thank you so much at
the beginning of every single video I always read out three questions that
I've been asked through my Instagram stories so what you need to do if you
want to be featured in a video just like this is head down in the description
click on my Instagram page so give it a follow and make sure you hit the
notifications on for my Instagram so when I asked you to ask me questions
you'll be able to do that and you may be featured in a video just like this okay
so the first question is from H GU NN dot 2005 and they said what was the
hardest thing about having autism OCD and ADHD in school as a teenager
now that's a very good question I find that the hardest part of this was
actually relating to my peers and having that the communication that they you
know it was hard to communicate socially it was very difficult and I feel like
anybody on the spectrum will understand how difficult that can be the next
question is from klsBoswell and they said having Asperger's what is the
hardest thing to cope with in day-to-day life that's a very good question do you
know I think the hardest thing is knowing what people are saying knowing
what people's intentions are I find this super difficult I'm not sure someone's
angry happy sad being serious if they're joking all this
stuff is very difficult to understand so I'd love to be able to know more about
that and that's a huge daily struggle the last question here is from Carson
geek and they said how do I become as cool as you are on a daily basis well
Carson geek you already are cool as ever and that goes for every single post
motion video remember how awesome you are
and just yeah just keep that keep being awesome dudes it's awesome okay so I
want to know where you guys are watching from I'm always like super intrigued
leave me a comment in the comment section right now tell me where you're
watching from I am right now here in Wales North Wales to be precise in the
United Kingdom so thank you for joining me okay so selective mutism let's talk
about what it is so selective mutism is like the inability to socially
communicate in social situations where you should be expected to speak for
example if you're at like a birthday party or you're in a group in school
then people will want you to join in in the conversation or be part of a social
group that are you know putting stories back and forth and putting their input
in now selective mutism is where you will have
an inability to do that for a number of reasons you know there may be a hundred
causes but the fact of the matter is that you aren't able to contribute to us
our social situation at that time it's also characterized by the fact that it's
not caused by a language barrier so it's not you know it's not that somebody is
speaking in Portuguese and then you're speaking in English and then you can't
join in the conversation it is always to do with the fact that you have the
inability to talk when you're in a social situation it's not to do with
language and you should never be confused with a language barrier issue
and it also isn't to do with any like profound disability where you won't be
able to talk physically or mentally doesn't you know it's nothing to do with
that it's to do with a deep-rooted social anxiety issue so the origins of
it for manifesting in the fact that you're unable to speak in in a party so
for instance let me give an example touching on my personal experience in my
life this is an example of how it is for me when I am at home or when I'm with
like you know my best friend or my cousin like we could talk for hours
about music and UFOs and like just cool crazy stuff and I love talking
about the things I'm really interested in but then when I go to my girlfriend's
parent house where her mum lives and they have like parties for people's
birthdays and stuff we're all like sitting about and everyone's like having
this huge discussion and debate and there's about eight people then so
there's like eight people versus just like two people like me and another
person and I just kind of freeze up I can't talk I don't know it almost like
drains me it kind of zaps the how like the way it feels like kind of just zaps
out of me adds up the energy to actually talk to anybody and I'm just unable to
do that and this isn't the first time experience this I experienced this when
I was in college were technical quality in the UK which is still high school in
America age and I was around other peers who were kind of like had ADHD and
hyperactive as me but by being around more than two or three of them I became
like unable to speak in certain situations and I just felt drained like
it was just I just it physically drained me now school is one of the most common
places that you're gonna be able to spot this when you're a child starts school
it's thrusting them into a social situation that they have never been in
before and this is very interesting because this brings across a situation
that presents itself very social and if you've never been a social person before
this is gonna be something that you like oh my goodness one earth is going on
here and it could cause social anxiety to you know show itself and then also
selective mutism so that's how you can categorize it but it also can present
itself in working environment it's not to say that just children have it let's
be very clear here it's not just a child thing it could be an older generational
thing it could be something that develops later on in life when you
develop a an anxiety or a phobia and again this comes from the fact that it
has a deep-rooted issue the issue is caused by a an intense phobia or fear of
social anxiety of social interaction one of the interesting things as well is
that if you have it as a child a lot of people grow out of having it which is
quite interesting I didn't really think about this before but it's people who've
a you know it's selective mutism as a kid as they grow older they kind of rock
out of it a little bit which is very interesting and fascinating it also is
very notable when it interferes okay so we know that
like if you're having issues in social circumstances and social situations then
it's going to be present like selective mutism is going to be present in those
social situations now another way that it can be present or you can notice it
is that it interrupts educational functions of vocational functions and
what this means is that like if you're in school or in work and you want to
communicate to your peers or your teacher or your boss and you have a huge
issue about doing that then it's gonna interfere with that and it's going to
stop you communicating with those people and it's gonna cause upset and this is
gonna disrupt your life in a certain fashion this is very very interesting
because this is one of the diagnostic criteria which will kind of summary of
it in few minutes again but this is one of those criteria and another way that
you can spot the fact that you know it's sort of mutism or not something else is
that it's present for at least a month or more now all of these criteria and
stuff are taken from the dsm-5 which is the diagnostic criteria for mental
health and neurodevelopmental issues today's day and age this is how
psychiatrist and neurologist and stuff diagnose certain conditions in people
having the presence of selective mutism longer than one month would rule out any
ability for it to be classed as just shyness because well people can be shy
and you can like get overly Shiro stuff but if you're completely shy you know if
you're just shy and you've completely shy then shyness would kind of go away
and you get to warm up to people but selective mutism definitely needs
therapy or a time of longer than one month to overcome it extraneous kind of
will go after them and that's the idea of having that so the diagnostic
criteria for selective mutism is this and I'll just read these out again just
so we have a summary here so first one was failure to talk in social situations
were expected that's number one number two is interrupting the educational
session vocational functions of your daily life so again you know you find
out how to say oh I need help with my work or I need help with this project in
school or I need to speak to a teacher about my grades blah blah blah it will
you know show itself in that fact that you can't do that you can't communicate
to the people because you have that selective mutism you know you're mute
for that period of time and then the number three is its present for longer
than one month like I said if you're if it's if it's longer than one month it's
becoming an issue it's not just shyness it's
so if you if you can see those three things in order those are present in
order then it's definitely selective mutism and not something else now I just
want us to talk a little bit about selective mutism treatment so you know
it's ok say ok I've got selective mutism and or you know somebody's got selective
mutism or you are watching this video and you already have selective mutism or
your kid has it or whatever and you wanna know what treatments available so
there's a bunch of different like treatments available and therapies
available for selective mutism and I've just like pull three up here that I've
known that I've been floatin about the Internet and the first one is SK which
is a social communication anxiety treatment which is kind of like the gold
standard I mean think about it this specifically target social anxiety and
as we know from earlier on in the video selective mutism is a direct result of
having social anxiety and they becoming an intense fear or phobia of talking in
social situations so that would be that's kind like the gold standard
that's the one that everyone says like that's the one that you should be taking
to do that which I find very very interesting oh guys just let you know if
you're interested in watching a video on autism or Asperger's syndrome I'm gonna
leave a link in account above here of ways that you can spot autism in people
just so that it may be handy for you if you're watching this video and you're
interested in other things that you know somebody may have autism so definitely
check that out and I'll put it on the end card as well okay so the second
selective mutism therapy I'll talk about here now is a psychodynamic therapy and
this is basically when it's in children it's like play therapy kids can use play
to communicate in a certain way rather than like it's very clinical if you sit
down and ask me a question directly they're gonna be like oh can you do this
for me or how do you feel about that and you may just like tense up and you make
fries and you may not be able to talk again selective mutism kicks in and
kicks you in the butt but if you are using this dynamic therapy the
psychodynamic therapy it's using play to get kids to then communicate certain
things so that they're playing a character and then they're playing along
and they can then communicate what they want to somebody and this will help in
turn have them overcome that fear that anxiety that barrier that's stopping
them top talking in social situations now the third one I've picked up here as
treatment for selective mutism is behavioral therapy and this is quite
interesting so behavioral therapy is the er the idea
to reward positive behavior that's basically the bad principle of it but
the idea is that if you're if you're able to kind of like push through and
try and talk a little bit in situations where you may be unable to talk in those
situations like so say you're I don't know in a party or you go with your
parents to see a group of family members and you have the inability to talk but
then you kind of FOSS through a little bit of like nodding and gesturing and
maybe saying yes or no then this behavior is rewarded if you
reward yourself after that behavior then it will help train your brain to kind of
be more open to those situations it's kind of like a it's a very old kind of
trick but it definitely works and I find this this is very good I mean positive
reinforcement for behavior it is always a good thing but be careful of the
therapy that you choose make sure that you choose the right one and that you
know I'm not telling you to take any of these I'm saying that you know go and
look at them if you're wanting to get therapy for you know selective mutism
the choice is down to you to check that out okay so I want to talk a little bit
in this part of the video about how do I know if I have selective mutism right so
the interesting thing for me was that I didn't realize I was presenting
selective mutism until somebody said it to me I was doing a video with a girl
called char Davis who has autism I moved in a collaboration video together and
I'll leave that in a cat above here if you want to see that and it was all
about you know autism in girls so she was talking about selective mutism then
when we were talking about it it kind of made me think and reflect oh my goodness
that's what I do and that's the things I've do so no one's ever said to me like
oh you've got a selective mutism because of this but when you reflect on it you
go oh my goodness that's exactly what it is
so now I like my occupational therapist and my therapists are like oh yeah that
is selective mutism but nobody ever figured to point it out to me in the
first place so I found that interesting so I've written three things that it's
like you know how you can identify selective mutant okay so number one is
selective mutism is part of social anxiety now if you are suffering from
social anxiety then there is a huge possibility that you could also suffer
from selective mutism okay it's gonna present itself somewhere rather because
I feel like it becomes part and parcel with social anxiety and I do believe
that anybody who has social anxiety will display some form of selective mutism
and this will be present within the as a person okay so number two is
selective mutism and autism so for anybody who doesn't know autism is a
neurological condition that impacts the social and communicative part of a
person's brain and how they interact with the world around them socially and
and communicatively now people with an autism spectrum
condition obviously have the social advice and anxiety comorbid lis in there
as well as OCD and dyslexia and bipolar disorder depression stress all these
things comorbid with an autism spectrum condition but one of the most
interesting things is that selective mutism is commonly associated with an
autism spectrum condition so if you already have an autism spectrum
condition and you're experiencing things like I said like you go to a family
gathering or a party and you're not able to join in the conversation but it's not
that lack of trying or not wanting to you just oh I can't join in this
conversation and I'm unable to speak then it could be down to the fact that
you have a selective mutism as part of your autism condition okay so number
three is selective mutism symptoms okay so some of the symptoms of selective
mutism and opportunities out here which I've kind of made notes for is overly
anxious when talking in social situations that you do not want to talk
like it's it's like you're not comfortable talking you have a fear of
talking when you're around those people and you it could be you know that the
cause of it is is could be a number of things but the fact of the matter is
that you're you can't talk because you're on a fear talk in front of those
people that's a huge sentence like number one symptom okay the second one
is the inability to talk in a social situation and you kind of retreat back
into yourself so as you'd be like talking blah blah blah with your friend
when you're you know experiencing selective mutism you kind of another
symptom is going back into yourself and kind of like closing up a bit and not
wanting to talk and not wanting to have that discussion out because it's
something that is just I know you lose all the energy you lose all the ability
to do that and it just happens you have the inability to talk in social
situations now I myself have definitely experienced all of these over my time of
just looking back and highlighting to myself what's you know social anxiety
and do I have and does that come with selective mutism
in yeah I've actually experienced those so I would highly recommend checking out
the other video here in my end slate and definitely check out the videos in the
description of this video so thank you for watching guys and I'll see you next
time peace