LOW AROUSAL

The Low Arousal Approach is based on the notion that people with challenging behavior often have trouble regulating affect. They often react to other´s affects by experiencin and expressing the same affect. Affect is always contagious, but most people learn to differentiate between own and other´s affects early in life. Some people don´t. They don´t know if an affect they feel is their own or somebody else's. That can result in anger if somebody else is angry and telling off the one who tells you off.

We also know that challenging behavior often occurs when the someone experinces a high intensity of affect. Nobody fights when they are relaxed and easy-going. Calm and self-control is connected, and we want the service-user or child to be in control of him- or herself, so that they can coorporate with us.

We need to use this knowledge in monitoring our own affect levels. We need to be calm ourselves, but also be aware of the risk of affect contagion from the service-user or child. We must use methods that protects the service-user or child and us from an increase in affect intensity, both in the way we talk to and relate to the child or service-user and in our methods concerning challenging and even violent or self-harming behavior.

Low arousal approach is about creating a caring environment charactericed by calm and positive expectations aiming to decrease stress and challenging behavior. The methods load heavily on changing staff and parents´s thoughts and conceptions and on body language, physical distance and conflict evaluation.