Mia

Mia is a 26-year-old female with Asperger’s syndrome, associated anxiety, depression and obesity. She suffers with OCD and struggles with contamination. When we started supporting her back in late 2016, she had recently lost her father, had become very insular and was living with/reliant on her mother. She was unsure about having support in the first instance and had said that she recognised it was because she knew she would have to start changing unhealthy habits.

Mia’s support worker started slowly for the first month, mostly spending time in the home working on building a rapport so that she could trust her.

We set small goals, starting with taking her dog for short walks as she had expressed wanting to lose weight, get fit and learn how to cook healthy meals with confidence. She had also said she would like to feel confident in making ‘small talk’ with people when she was out walking Milo, so this is something her support worker did with her also. They would start with just saying ‘good morning’ in passing to someone. Mia initially felt that people would think she ‘spoke funny’ or ‘awkwardly’ but eventually built the confidence to say hello to strangers when in the park with her support worker.

Once Mia started feeling confident while out with her support worker, we pushed her a little more and suggested trying to help with travel training. She and her support worker would use buses together as she had said she felt too anxious to go on a bus on her own and would often catastrophise situations such as ‘what if I miss my stop? I will have to sit on the bus until it goes all the way back around and that could take all day’ ‘what if I get on a bus and there is nowhere to sit?’ etc.

Mia’s support worker would offer positive reinforcement to challenge her anxieties and negative pattern of thinking, such as asking her if she noticed people on the bus or if she thought people walked funny, would she help if she thought someone was in distress on the bus and would she think less of that person if that were the case?

Mia said she felt it helpful when she was asked to see it from a different perspective.

Mia has also been building confidence in her ability to cook. She will now use her own kitchen to prepare food and has been losing weight steadily. She has now lost just over 2 stone. She still requires her support worker to be present when cooking but the fact that she is doing most of the preparation is such a big success.

Mia is now living in her own flat and has 2 support workers from ELT, each doing 2 days per week.

Her progress is something she is extremely proud of.