Low Arousal

The Low Arousal Approach has evolved from its original definition to encapsulate a philosophical and practical guide to managing challenging behaviour. Given that stress is an ever present part of the lives of people with autism, low arousal approaches to managing crisis situations focus on a number of factors which may be contributing to an individual's behaviour. Low arousal practitioners are encouraged to focus on stress reduction, trauma-informed approaches, reflective practice, humanism, crisis management and mindfulness. Understanding, compassion and forgiveness are important pre-requisites to the low arousal approach, which at its core asserts that challenging behaviour is the natural product of stress, trauma, and poor self-regulation. By acknowledging the ways in which environmental factors can affect mood, well-being, control and ultimately behaviour, the low arousal approach encourages a mindful and holistic view to managing behaviour. McDonnell (2010) identified four key components considered central to low arousal approaches, which include both cognitive and behavioural elements- Decreasing staff demands and requests to reduce potential points of conflict around an individual- Avoidance of potentially arousing triggers e.g. direct eye contact, touch and removal of spectators to the incident- Avoidance of non-verbal behaviours that may lead to conflict e.g. aggressive postures and stances- Challenging staff beliefs about the short-term management of challenging behaviours. These apparently simple behaviour management strategies are often difficult to apply in practice as they involve changing one's own level of arousal, which requires a practitioner to reflect on their own approach.