The breathing techniques works for my son. He also says things like he should not be part of the family or he should go to jail. When he gets like this we have him breath in deeply and blow it out. We make it funny and a game and that usually will get him calm.

I would like to suggest a calming technique where to tell him to "smell a flower and blow out a candle" over and over and let him practice breathing with this until he has calmed down a little. I have a picture of a flower and a candle to make it a little easier for my twins to imagine doing these things and I breath like that with them until they are relaxed enough to try again. I hope this helps.

He needs more time. He has different needs than others. You can get a schedule... 1 we go to school then 2 we go to lunch. He needs warning for him to cope. In 10 minutes we're going to lunch.. in 5 minutes we need to start getting ready to go. He may need a lot of prepping. Or if he hurts someone let him have a plan.. bring out the board. What happens when we have an accident. we make sure they're ok and then we say we're sorry and then we can hug it out (or whatever). It will give him a direction on how to act appropriately and so then he has a plan in place already so he won't have to worry being empty handed

I just have to say, I struggle with this all the time and it's so hard especially when I respond emotionally to my son's anxiety. Got to work on my own self regulation too! I've thought about seeing a child or family therapist. Has anyone gone that route?

We are working on the breathing thing too. We've talked a lot about the zones of regulation--you can look that up and there are great materials on it. Also we have a mindfulness book for kids that he likes and we do the "shark fin" breathing exercise together. My son is high functioning too. Also we have found that a sensory diet of "heavy work" like ball exercises, pushups makes a big difference when we can get ourselves to make him do it.