Blogaround

A fuzzy puppy laying flat on the floor. Image source.

1. Why Joy DIDN'T send the Core Memories to HQ with a Recall Tube! - EXPLAINED! (posted March 26) An "Inside Out" theory~

2. Black Marjory Stoneman Douglas students want the movement to include their voices too (posted March 29) "To him, extra cops around doesn’t mean more people to protect him; it means more chances to become a victim of police brutality."

3. Abortion and hospitality: we know what we feel (sometimes) (posted March 13) "You may have been taught that this is what you’re required and expected to feel."

4. That Is Not What ‘Lovesick’ Is (posted March 23) [content note: murder, toxic masculinity] "This is not the way things play out in real life — sometimes a woman is just not interested in you and there just is not a damn thing you can do about it, and we need to start doing more to raise boys who understand this."

5. The Difference Between a Welcoming Church and an Affirming One Is Huge (posted April 3) [content note: queermisic "hate the sin, love the sinner" ideology] Yep this rings true. And I am so done with Christians carefully trying to parse the nuanced meanings of various buzzwords- we are "accepting" and "loving" but not "affirming"- ugh, so done with it.

6. Austen Hartke Loves His Body (posted April 3) An episode of the Queerology podcast where Austen talks about being trans and Christian.

7. The Nazi History Behind ‘Asperger’ (posted March 31) [content note: Nazis, killing children, eugenics]

8. Teenage Activism and Conservative Hypocrisy (posted April 3) [content note: school shootings] "In 1999, evangelicals used the Columbine teens and their tragedy to bolster their calls for revival."

9. Spectrum (posted April 1) An art piece related to asexuality.

Globophobia part 2: God Didn't Help

Photo of a mountain. Image text: "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move. NIV Matthew 17:20." Image source.

[content note: this is a post about the intersection of autism/phobias/mental health with the Christian teaching of "dying to self"]

"From my point of view, telling someone "I'm afraid of balloons" made as much sense as saying "I don't like it when people kick me." Like, isn't that obvious? If you really believe that it's something you need to actually say out loud, that means you accept that your preference not to be kicked is something unusual. As a little kid, I refused to accept that. On some level, even though I didn't have the words for it, I truly believed my reactions were right, completely justified and reasonable based on the incredible pain caused by a balloon pop. (And please note: I was right, even though none of the adults understood.)"
(from last week's post, Globophobia)

I was right. When I was a little kid, I knew I was right- I stubbornly refused to believe that I was the weird one for reacting the way I did to balloons. The sound is overwhelmingly scary and bad, and I am the only one whose reaction makes any sense.

What I didn't know was that other people are actually hearing the sound in a different way than I was. But I was right about myself, when none of the adults were.

So this is the story of how I accepted that I was wrong about myself.

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When I was a little kid, maybe in middle school, I remember going to a family reunion or some kind of party like that. Somebody had bought a package of balloons- and I took it and hid it. Then when it was time to set up for the party, people were all looking around like "where are those balloons?"

My mom knew it was me that had taken it. She tried to get me to tell where it was. But I didn't. I refused. I never told anyone.

I look back on that story, and my first thought is, "Wow, that was definitely before I devoted my life to Jesus." Because if that had taken place after I made the decision to devote every single bit of everything 100% to God, then I would have told them where the balloons were. Because stealing is a sin and because I need to put others first- if other people want to have balloons and I don't, the correct Christian thing to do is to submit and die to self and let them have the balloons without saying anything about it.

If this was after I devoted my life to Jesus, then I could have been guilted into "doing the right thing" with a bit of talk about sin and selfishness and trusting God and obeying even when it's scary. It would have been framed as a choice between the "sinful" thing (hiding the balloons) and the "Christian" thing (submitting to other people's choice to have balloons at the party).

In that ideology, there's no way to recognize what's really going on: That loud sounds are unbearably painful for me and so I have a 100% legitimate NEED to not be at a party with balloons. I was never taught to get to know myself and my needs, I was never taught that it's okay if my needs are different from other people's, I was never taught that I should insist that my needs be respected even if other people didn't think that was important.

It was wrong to take the balloons and hide them (ideally I should communicate my needs to other people and be free to not attend the party if those needs aren't met) but I don't regret it one bit. It was the only way I had to protect myself back then. It would be another 10 to 15 years before I had access to concepts like "sensory pain" and "advocating for myself." (And autism.)

I don't think my parents ever punished me for that. Then again, I can't imagine any punishments that would be worse than enduring a party where people are touching balloons.

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When I was a freshman in college, I devoted my life 100% to Jesus. Before this, I was a Christian of course, but, as I used to say in my testimony, "God was the most important thing in my life, overall, but in certain parts of my life or certain situations, it wasn't always clear if God was the most important thing or not." But this all changed- I devoted every single part of my life to Jesus, 100%. When I woke up early every day to read the bible, it wasn't because that's what good Christians are supposed to do- it was because I loved God so much, I was so overwhelmed by how amazing God is, that I wanted to sacrifice my sleep time for God. I prayed constantly. I was so full of God's love that I just wanted to share it with everyone. I was so happy all the time, full of energy, loving my life, so free because of God.

And then one day, I went to a party, walked in the door, saw balloons on the floor, and turned around and left.

And I felt so bad. So terrible. Because I had been living so completely happy and free, like I can do anything through Christ, and then suddenly I couldn't go to that fun party which I wanted to go to, because of balloons. I decided that night that God didn't want me to live like that, with the phobia- God wanted me to be free; "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

I was so committed to God, and this was what God wanted me to do. I believed it was possible; God would work a miracle and cure my phobia. And then I would react- or rather, not react- to balloons like a "normal person."

So I got to work. I told a bunch of friends I was planning to go through the steps to get myself "desensitized"- the same idea that the doctor had taught me all those years before. I got a group of friends to support me ("accountability"), and I wrote emails to them on a weekly basis about the progress I was making. I made a list of scary balloon-related things, in order of scariness, and scheduled when I would do them- the plan was to get "desensitized" to each one, and work up to the scariest ones.

I had so much faith. The idea that I could be "like a normal person" seemed impossible, but this time I believed God would do it.

See, when I was a little kid, I was "stubborn." I resisted the term "phobia." I was a good kid who followed the rules, so I probably never said this out loud, but I was very much NOT in agreement that my avoidance of balloons was an "irrational fear." I believed that balloons were just self-evidently terrible, and I hated how people wanted me to explain what the problem was, as if it wasn't OBVIOUS that the sound was unbearably, inhumanely loud. My mom took me to therapy for globophobia, and I went along with it like a good kid, obeyed what the doctor said, but on a big-picture level, I wasn't really on board with it. I didn't truly believe there was anything wrong with me avoiding balloons; I was baffled about why everyone else wasn't reacting the same way I did.

Please note: Little-kid Perfect Number was right. Right about myself, wrong about everyone else being unfeeling and heartless. But right about myself. The missing piece of the puzzle was the concept that different people can experience the same sensory input in extremely different ways. (Like the age-old question: When I look at something and say it's "red", and you look at the same thing and say it's "red", are we actually both seeing the same color? There's no way to ever know.)

But college-student-totally-devoted-to-Jesus Perfect Number decided that little-kid Perfect Number was wrong. I looked for information about phobias online; everything I read said they can be completely cured through therapy. And even though it felt impossible, I chose to have faith. I decided that the reason therapy hadn't "worked" back in middle school was that I was never truly committed to it on a big-picture level. But this time, I decided to believe it.

To believe that I was the one being unreasonable. To believe that the way "normal people" acted around balloons was the right way, and that God would make me that way too. To say the words "I'm afraid of balloons"- labelling myself as the weird one, rather than insisting that my response was appropriate to the reality I experience.

My whole life, everyone told me- either directly or indirectly- that I "overreacted" to balloons and to loud sounds, that it's "not that bad", that my reaction is unreasonable and wrong. But I never believed them. I knew- even though I couldn't put it in words- that I wasn't "overreacting." That all changed when I totally devoted my life to Jesus. Now I was 100% surrendered to God, and I couldn't go on insisting that my reaction was right when everybody else said it was wrong. That was my stubbornness, my selfishness, my sinful nature. It was a belief I would need to "let go of" so God could do amazing things in my life. All this time, I had been so sure of what I needed (ie to avoid balloons), but it was time to give that up and trust that God would take care of me.

Surrender. Die to self. Take up my cross.

I followed a Christianity which very much did NOT believe that people are experts on their own lives and their own needs. Instead, I believed we are fundamentally selfish and sinful, and we will have all sorts of desires for things that are actually bad for us. We think we need them, but we really don't- and giving them up and realizing God is all we need is the only way to be truly free.

So I did. I swallowed my pride. I surrendered. I told people "I am afraid of balloons." And then I told people, "Jesus said, if you have faith, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move."

I really believed God would heal me. I believed God would make me like a "normal person." I believed- even though it made no sense to me- that my reaction to loud sounds was wrong and that God would teach me to react in the "correct" way. I told one of my best friends, "Someday I'll be able to say, 'I used to be afraid of balloons.'" And she said, "Maybe you'll be the balloon-animal expert in our group!" We had so much faith.

Little-kid Perfect Number knew she was being reasonable, even when everyone else said she wasn't. She was stubborn; when the whole world reacted in a completely different way than she did, she still refused to believe her reaction was wrong. But totally-devoted-to-Jesus Perfect Number died to self and accepted what all those other people said.

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Even as I write this, it's mind-blowing to remind myself of the fact that other people hear sounds so much differently than I do. Other people experience the sound of a balloon popping not as overwhelming, unbearable sensory pain, but as a minor annoyance, maybe like being poked or hearing the sound of fingers snapping. (I guess?) All these years, this has been one giant miscommunication. I thought they were telling me I needed to learn to be okay with suffering massive sensory pain. They thought they were telling me I should calm down because it's not a big deal when something makes me a tiny bit startled. 

They were wrong about me. But back then, I thought the first step to healing was to accept that they were all right about me.

It made no sense to me. How could other people have so little reaction to something so monstrously loud? But I "had faith"- I accepted the premise that other people's reaction (or lack thereof) was right, and I need to learn to be like them. (Gaslighting.)

The rationalization I came up with was that the sound only lasts for a moment, then it's gone, so no matter how bad the sound is, it doesn't really justify the amount of anxiety I felt and the lengths I went to to avoid balloons. Which is partly true- to a certain extent, this is a phobia- but that doesn't mean the solution is to "be like a normal person" and pretend the pain doesn't exist at all. (The solution is to recognize the very real pain that loud sounds cause me, to treat it as a serious thing that people need to care about, and decide on appropriate measures to take to protect myself from the pain. It's the same as a food allergy.)

Because I was willing to surrender everything to God, I accepted that my reaction to balloons was wrong. To use analogy about physical pain, I understood it in this way: "Everybody else is fine with it if someone just comes up out of the blue and whacks them- and refuses to apologize or acknowledge that the whacking even happened. The pain only lasts for a second, so it's not a big deal. Why can't you be fine with it too?"

I believed God would teach me to be fine with it.

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So I had faith. I believed God would heal me, even though it seemed impossible. I believed that God would help me have the same (lack of) reaction to balloons as a "normal person" did, even though for my entire life I had been completely, utterly unable to fathom what the heck is wrong with people to make them (not) react the way they do. Again, please note: I was right about myself. My inability to understand why everyone else didn't hate balloons in the same way I did meant that there was some crucial piece of information I was missing, NOT that I'm being selfish and God wants me to just give up my sinful desire to have people notice and care about my pain.

I started my DIY desensitization. I watched videos of balloons, inflated balloons and hung them in my dorm room, and watched other people (who had promised to be very careful and not pop any) inflate balloons. These are all things I actually can become desensitized too; these are things totally in the realm of the phobia- no sensory pain at all. While experiencing these things, I listened to Christian music and read bible verses. I told myself over and over to trust God and that God would heal me.

Meanwhile, I began encountering balloons at an astonishingly high frequency as I went about my regular life. Saw them hanging as decorations in various places. There was even a physics class where we were talking about how the fabric of spacetime expands, and the professor gave everyone a balloon we were supposed to inflate as a hands-on way to understand the concept. Another time, I was at a restaurant, and a guy came around from table to table making balloon animals for customers- and I was so shaky and nervous, and my friends wanted to help me but I said no we can't tell him not to come to our table, I can't go out of my way to avoid balloons, that's how the phobia becomes worse (the "pretend to be a normal person" strategy that I had learned from the therapist all those years before). But one of my friends went and told the balloon man not to come to our table anyway.

I believed that God was causing all these balloons to appear in my life unexpectedly- maybe God was trying to help me with my therapy, or God was showing me how important it is that I do the work to get "healed" because "you can't avoid them forever."

Seriously, I swear to you, from the time I started "working on" my phobia and trying to get "desensitized," I encountered balloons at an abnormally high rate, and I was sure it was God's doing. (It was maybe about once per day.) It's okay if you don't believe me- I probably wouldn't believe someone who said that. I'm a math nerd, I know what confirmation bias is. You guys, I made graphs. I sorted the balloons encounters into different categories- an offhand mention of balloons gets less weight than an actual sighting- and made graphs of the frequency at which they occurred. It was a lot.

But it's okay if you don't believe me. I no longer believe in a God who would do something like that anyway. If God really wanted to help me, maybe God could have caused the words, "Some people experience loud sounds (like balloons popping or fireworks) as intense pain- if you think that hearing a balloon pop and getting slapped hard are about equally bad, maybe this describes you, and in that case, your pain is a real thing and it's totally reasonable to avoid balloons" to appear somewhere, perhaps in an article I read as I researched globophobia online. (Followed by "Also maybe check into getting an autism diagnosis." Yeah that would have been nice.)

(And actually, there was an awards dinner I was invited to, for having a high GPA or something, and I was SO SURE there would be balloons there. Because God was causing balloons to be in all sorts of unexpected places, so surely the awards dinner would also be decorated with balloons, right? I told people, "I'm going to this thing, I'm sure there will be balloons there, pray for me." And then no balloons there. Make of that what you will.)

Anyway, I got desensitized to all the things that don't involve popping. Because, wow, it makes so much sense now- of course I can get desensitized to those. The popping sound will always be unbearable pain for me, but in addition to that I have globophobia, where I associate balloons with "people don't care about me", which is indeed an irrational association. (But very understandable how it came about- over and over again experiencing overwhelming sensory pain, and having everyone tell me "you're overreacting, it's not that bad.") That part truly is a phobia, and it can be completely cured. But the part where loud sounds are painful isn't going to change. So of course I can get desensitized to everything about balloons except for the popping sound.

So I worked my way up the list of scary things, and became desensitized to all the items on the list that did not involve loud sounds. All that was left was hearing real-life popping. At that point, my DIY therapy kind of lost momentum and stopped. And now it's obvious why, but at the time I didn't really understand. Of course, to me it felt obvious that anything involving popping sounds would be orders of magnitude harder to get "desensitized" to, but remember, I had "died to self" and accepted other people's opinions on what should and shouldn't be hard.

I don't even remember noticing that I had stopped doing the therapy. I thought I had made a lot of progress, and I felt good about it- at one point I literally did say the words, "I used to be afraid of balloons." And I guess I didn't encounter any balloons for a while after that. Until this one time, I was at a party, and somebody starting making balloons, and I suddenly felt really guilty because the previous few weeks I had been thinking a lot about attractive boys, and I prayed, "Oh God I'm so sorry I've been so interested in boys and I'm acting like I don't need you but oh help, you gotta help me, you gotta take me back, you gotta help me be brave and be okay with these balloons." And I believed God had sent the balloons like the famine in the story of the prodigal son. So. In case you were interested in examples of the intersection of purity culture and autism.

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I want you to know that I believed in a God who thought it was wrong for me to advocate for myself. From the time I was a little kid, I believed that the sound of balloons popping is unbearable and it's reasonable for me to avoid it, and everybody told me- directly or indirectly- that I was wrong. When I finally devoted my life 100% to Jesus, I knew that it meant I would have to swallow my pride and accept that I was wrong and everyone else was right about me. Die to self. Even though the concept of not really reacting much to balloons popping had always been an unfathomable mystery to me, I put my faith in it. Because of God. Because it was sinful to keep insisting that I had a need that everyone else said wasn't real. I had to accept that they were right about me.

I remember how my mom decided to take me to therapy, all those years ago when I was in middle school, because of an incident at a school carnival. There were tons of carnival games in the school gymnasium, and I was with my family, playing games and having fun. Except that whoever was in charge of the helium balloon tank was really really bad at it, and over and over balloons exploded. You know how sound gets trapped in a school gym? It was loud, overwhelmingly loud. It happened again and again, and I ended up outside the school refusing to go in. And apparently my mom thought, "this phobia has gotten so bad, now she can't even participate in fun things like the carnival" and that's when she decided I really need to go to therapy.

And now I think back on that, and I'm struck by how incredibly reasonable my behavior was. It wasn't safe for me in the gym. Over and over, with no warning, there were moments of huge, unbearable pain. How can you expect anyone to stay and play ring toss in that kind of environment? I couldn't put it into words back then, but my behavior was right, even though everyone else thought it was wrong.

And through all those therapy appointments when I was in middle school, I did what the adults said, but I never really accepted their claim that there was something wrong with the way I protected myself from balloons. I don't even know if I was fully aware that the adults all believed my behavior- refusing to go in the gym- was wrong and that they were trying to "help" me change. To the extent that I was aware, I COMPLETELY DISAGREED. Because I'm "stubborn."

But in college I finally surrendered all to Jesus, and I accepted what everyone else had been telling me for my whole life: It's wrong for me to protect myself. It's wrong for me to expect people to care about my pain. It's wrong for me to claim I have needs different from those of a "normal person."

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Related: "Seek First God's Kingdom" Doesn't Work If You Have Autism

Comment policy: I don't really have any patience for any comments along the lines of "oh you misunderstood the verse about faith moving mountains, here let me explain it to you" or "I've never met you, but here is my baseless speculation about what God was actually doing in your life."

Globophobia

Scared little girl. Image source.

[content note: this is a post about when I was in therapy as a child and it was extremely harmful, for reasons related to undiagnosed autism]

I was planning on never blogging about the time I was in therapy for globophobia. Because I don't want my mom to feel bad. My parents and the doctor really cared about me a lot, and were doing their best to help me, but actually that therapy ended up being very damaging for me. I'm just now realizing the long-term effects. I don't blame my parents at all, because they didn't know, so please don't feel bad. But I want to write about this in case it can help someone else in a similar situation.

So here's the deal: From the time I was a little kid, I have had globophobia, which is a phobia of balloons. When people asked "why is she afraid of balloons?" my mom used to answer "she's sensitive to loud sounds" and eventually that was the answer I too would give when people asked.

But the problem is that that explanation completely misses the point. Here's what's actually going on: I hear sounds much louder than other people do, and sounds like balloons popping, fireworks, explosions, etc cause overwhelming, unbearable sensory pain for me. Saying "she is sensitive to loud sounds" makes it sound like it's just some silly emotional quirk that's not really a real thing, that I'm weak and if I tried harder I could "get over it." No, what's actually happening is the actual reality I am experiencing is different from what other people experience. And my reactions- avoiding balloons, covering my ears- are totally reasonable in the context of that reality.

Back when I was a little kid, we didn't know that I hear the sounds louder than other people. Who would have suspected such a thing was possible? My parents didn't know, and I didn't know. I always hated how I had to tell people what the problem was- like, how was it not obvious? Did they not notice that huge, overwhelming, unbearable sound that had just exploded through the whole room? I spent my whole childhood utterly confused about how seemingly kind and compassionate people could be so unfeeling and unaffected. And I never said the words "I'm afraid of balloons" until I was in college. Because to say "I'm afraid of balloons" implies that my fear was an abnormal thing that other people shouldn't be expected to just know automatically. It would be like admitting that I was the weird one and there was something wrong with the way I reacted. From my point of view, telling someone "I'm afraid of balloons" made as much sense as saying "I don't like it when people kick me." Like, isn't that obvious? If you really believe that it's something you need to actually say out loud, that means you accept that your preference not to be kicked is something unusual. As a little kid, I refused to accept that. On some level, even though I didn't have the words for it, I truly believed my reactions were right, completely justified and reasonable based on the incredible pain caused by a balloon pop. (And please note: I was right, even though none of the adults understood.)

But anyway, when I was in middle school (maybe 12 years old), my mom took me to therapy for globophobia. I read about phobias online, read about how, with therapy, a phobia can be totally 100% cured. So that was the goal of the therapy. The doctor told me to make a list of scary balloon-related things, in increasing order of scariness, and we would slowly work our way up the list, becoming "desensitized" to each one.

And that treatment model was really really bad for me. Because what none of us knew at the time was, this wasn't just a phobia. It was not just in the realm of emotions, which can be totally cured. No, I experience unbearable sensory pain because of those loud sounds, and that's never going to change.

Unfortunately, the goal of the therapy was for me to "become normal." And it didn't really make sense to me, didn't seem possible, but I was a good kid so I went along with what the adults told me to do. But when I saw "normal" people barely react at all to the sound of a balloon popping- as I said, it baffled me. Totally, utterly baffled. (What's wrong with everyone???!!!) Like an unexplainable scientific phemomenon- we can observe it over and over, so it must be real, but it just makes no sense at all. I didn't really believe I could ever become like that. But my mom told me I need to believe it's possible, or else the whole thing is doomed from the start. And in the bible, God did miracles, and the recipients of those miracles probably could have never imagined it beforehand. The walls of Jericho fell down just because the Israelites walked around them- like, how? And so maybe, by following the steps the therapist gave me, trying to "desensitize" myself, I would become "normal."

In reality, the efforts to "desensitize" me to loud sounds communicated to me that my pain didn't matter. That I would just have to accept it when something hurts me, and I shouldn't react or expect other people to care. That's what the therapy was for me- though I'm sure the adults involved didn't know it. It was "sit here, relax, try to act like a normal person, and then absorb and suffer the overwhelming, unbearable sensory pain without bothering anyone else or making any visible attempt to protect yourself."

We didn't know that. I didn't know that, and I didn't have the words to communicate what was gonig on. I never would have thought to use the word "pain" to describe what I was feeling. Because sensory pain doesn't feel anything like the pain you feel when you fall down or hit your head or someone steps on your foot. How can you describe what a sound feels like? A sound feels like a sound; it's completely different from any other sensory input.

It wasn't until I was 23, that I went to a therapist (for a different problem) and mentioned how I'd been in therapy in the past for globophobia, and she said "that doesn't really sound like a phobia, sounds more like a response to pain from sensory overload, possibly related to autism." She was the one who diagnosed me with autism, and she was the first one to ever use the word "pain" to describe how I felt about balloons.

And at first I didn't believe it really was pain- because, as I said, it's different from all the other experiences that I've heard people describe as pain. But then I realized, if I had to choose between getting slapped, hard, in the back of the head, and suddenly hearing fireworks, well gosh, I don't know which is less bad. They are about the same. And it blew my mind to realize that for other people, those wouldn't be the same.

So let me make an analogy. Let's say someone steps on your foot, really hard. Everyone sees it happen.

And you say "OWW!!!!"

And then everyone stares at you, and they ask, "What? What happened?"

And you know that they saw this person step on your foot. You can't understand how they can be so dense as to not know the reason you're crying out in pain. But you say, "You stepped on my foot!"

And then everyone continues to stare, with a very confused expression, and they're like "... and? What's the problem?"

And you say, "That hurt!"

And everyone says, "No it didn't. You're overreacting." And they kind of roll their eyes, like "ah she got us all worried that there was an actual problem, but really she's just weird and overreacting to some harmless thing," and go back to whatever they were doing.

That's what it's been like, throughout my entire life, every time a balloon popped. And I haven't been able to put it into words until now.

Let's talk about gaslighting. Gaslighting means telling someone that their actual lived experiences, memories, or emotions aren't real. Like "you think you feel that way, but you're wrong" or "no, that thing that you said you experienced never actually happened." It's a tactic that can be used by abusers to get a victim to doubt their own mind. I wasn't abused; people did this to me because they really thought it would help. But it is gaslighting. My whole life, everyone has been telling me that the pain I feel from loud sounds isn't real. I'm "overreacting." I need to "get over it." It's "not that bad." And I'm just now realizing how much psychological damage this gaslighting caused.

(People with autism are not "overreacting" to sensory stimuli. We experience them much more intensely than other people do, and our reactions are appropriate for what we are experiencing.)

The therapist I saw in middle school asked me, "What's the first time you were afraid of balloons?" I said I didn't remember the first time, but one particularly early example I remembered was at Hannah's birthday party [names have been changed]. I didn't know why the therapist was asking me; it didn't seem like it would matter what the first time was. But I was a good little kid, always obeyed the adults, so I told her the whole story.

But now I know. There were assumptions behind her question. She was thinking about how a phobia is often caused by some traumatic experience involving some certain object, and then the person associates the emotions and the object and develops an irrational fear of the object itself- even though the object is pretty harmless. That's why she was asking- she wanted to find one traumatic thing in my past that had caused me to illogically believe that balloons could hurt me.

Nobody understood that balloons actually do hurt me, and that every single time it happens and nobody seems to care about my pain is a traumatic experience. Every. Single. Time. Is a traumatic experience. Even the "therapy" itself was just more of that- "relax, it can't hurt you" *pop* "see, that wasn't so bad." Gaslighting.

They wanted me to take deep breaths and learn to relax my body- not to cover my ears or brace myself against the pain. If I could hear the pop without covering my ears, that would be success, then I would be "brave." But I covered my ears and hid in the couch cushions, and they said okay that's fine for this time, we'll work up to it. And after I heard it pop, then I relaxed. Of course. Because the danger was gone.

It was just the same as if the doctor had hit me and told me I was "bad" for tensing up, putting my head down, trying to protect myself, and I needed to be "good" by sitting there "relaxed" with barely any reaction.

And then there was one time, where the doctor did pop a balloon in front of me and I reacted in a more "correct" way, probably I just sat there, looked a little startled, didn't say much or try to hide in the couch. And then in the car on the way home, my mom (who had been there too when it happened) really wanted me to tell her about how I felt. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want to think about it. At the time, I couldn't understand why. But now I know. My whole life, I've been looking for someone to acknowledge and care about my sensory pain. But "success" in the therapy meant accepting that no one cares, and being okay with that. On some level, I didn't want "success," and I was very uncomfortable with how I had apparently had the "correct" reaction and the adults thought it was so great that I had hid my pain and not asked anyone to care about me. I didn't have the word "pain" back then; there's no way I could have even understood what I was feeling or explained it to anyone. Especially because it sounds really bad to say I don't want to "get better."

(As I write this, it occurs to me that people who have a phobia of heights probably aren't told that they need to "face their fear" by jumping off a building.)

Let me tell you what would have happened if that therapy had "worked." (After a while we stopped the therapy, so it never got to this point.) It would mean me accepting the idea that nobody wants to hear about my pain, that I'm being bad if I scream or run away. My reactions are causing trouble for other people and it would be better if I could just shut up about it and accept that no one cares. Accepting that no one will protect me, and they will think I'm bad if I do what I need to do to protect myself. It would mean withdrawing into myself if I'm in a situation with balloons, not willing to speak- because what's the use of going along with the rules of socialization if none of these people care about me? What's the use of pretending everything is fine- I can't keep up appearances like that when I know they won't protect me, I need to protect myself. It would mean staring at the ground, emotionless, no smile, because the emotional trauma is so great, I'm not able to show it on my face without breaking down- and what does it matter if I follow the social rules about facial expressions and eye contact, it's not worth the trouble, no one cares about me anyway. I'm alone. Like a zombie; shuffle along, follow the rules, don't make trouble, suffer pain and accept the fact that no one cares.

But even though that therapy was just for a short period of time when I was in middle school, it did long-term damage to me. There were many, many occasions after that where I would go to a party, discover there were balloons there, and either leave immediately or leave after people started touching the balloons and I just couldn't handle it anymore. And every time I left, I felt like a failure. I thought, "It's so awful that this phobia has so much control over my life, I miss out on fun things because of it, if I went to therapy and worked on this, I could get better- so it's my fault." Every time, I told myself those things. I'm such a failure, it's my fault, I'm letting the balloons control my life.

And I internalized the idea that it's wrong for me to advocate for myself- to specifically take steps which a "normal person" wouldn't, just because of my sensory issues (for example, letting the host of a birthday party know beforehand that I wouldn't be okay if there were balloons). The whole entire reason behind that therapy was "you can't avoid them forever"- that it was bad for me to be active in protecting myself and communicating about my needs. Avoidance makes a phobia worse, the doctor said. Instead, I was supposed to "face my fear" because "you don't want to have this problem for your whole life, do you?"

If I didn't even make an attempt to "be normal," then I was "letting the phobia control my life." My desire to avoid balloons wasn't seen as a real need that should be taken seriously, but as a sign that I was weak and was inconveniencing other people because I wasn't willing to go to therapy and do the work to "get over it."

So that meant for as long as I could, I would pretend to "be normal." Go to a birthday party, notice that there are balloons there, pretend I'm okay with it, be jumpy and nervous the entire time, constantly looking around to see if anyone is touching the balloons, unable to focus on what's actually happening at the party or people trying to make conversation with me, just waiting for it to be over... until there comes a point where the stress is too great, where I can't keep up the "normal person" facade anymore, and I "freak out", which usually looks like suddenly running from the room. And everyone is confused about what's wrong with me.

What would it have been like, if I had known "loud sounds cause real pain for me, so I am not able to be near balloons" and treat that like an unchangeable fact of the universe? (The same way that people let you know they have a food allergy.) Not to be like "I have a phobia, and it's my fault so it's unreasonable for me to bother or inconvenience anyone because of it." What would it have been like if I could have communicated with people who were throwing parties, if I could have told them "Loud sounds are extremely painful for me, so if the party has balloons I won't be able to come"? But of course I couldn't do that. The doctor said avoiding the object of your phobia only makes the phobia worse.

What would it have been like if I didn't try to "be normal"?

The strategy I use now is to be very clear about what my needs are and communicate them to the people who need to know. And accept that it's okay if people don't know balloons are a problem- because, as it turns out, they are literally hearing the sound in a different way than I do. Tell them I can't be near balloons, use the word "pain" instead of "phobia", and be confident- not apologetic- because I have the right to have my needs respected, and I have the right to leave if I am in a situation that is not safe for me. When Hendrix and I are out in public and I see a balloon, I talk to him and make a plan about what to do. Usually "let's walk past it really fast." And I'm able to stay calm because I have a plan which takes my needs seriously, and because Hendrix supports me 100%.

My globophobia is caused by the unchangeable reality that loud sounds are extremely painful for me. I can never "be a normal person" around balloons. But the phobia part- the irrational fear- is because I associate loud sounds with "people don't care about me." And that's something that's completely in the realm of emotions, and can be completely healed through therapy. But healing doesn't look like "be a normal person." Healing from the phobia component means taking my sensory needs very seriously, and communicating clearly about my needs. It means knowing that I don't need to be afraid because I can rely on people who care about me to help me avoid balloons.

I'll always need to avoid balloons, but that doesn't mean I'll always have globophobia. Maybe someday I can avoid them without thinking "no one cares about me."

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Related: 
The Sound [strong trigger warning for globophobia]
How Are Autistics Supposed To Know Which of Our Pain is Socially Acceptable To Express?

Next week there will be a post on the intersection of globophobia and evangelical Christianity.

“Easy” Jobs and “Hard” Jobs

Book cover for "Asperger's on the Job."

I recently read the book Asperger's on the Job: Must-Have Advice for People with Asperger's or High Functioning Autism and their Employers, Educators, and Advocates. For the most part, it didn’t really contain any mind-blowing new ideas- it said things like “people with Asperger’s often have a hard time with small talk because it seems pointless,” which, yeah, no kidding? Most of the chapters just gave general statements about an Asperger’s trait and how it can cause problems at work, but didn’t give me any amazing new solutions I didn’t know before.

However, there was one bit that was really really interesting for me. It was a section advising readers with Asperger’s about how to choose a job that’s right for us. There was a chart to fill out, where you can write different areas of interest and then in the next column, write things that could be difficult about working in that type of job. Social things, sensory things, etc. For example, for a lot of people with Asperger’s, interacting with a bunch of different customers every day would be really hard, maybe even unbearable. We’d rather have a quieter job with a lot of alone time. So go ahead and write things like that in the second column.

This was really mind-blowing for me because I’d never thought of my issues with social interaction or sensory stimuli as ACTUAL REAL THINGS that should be treated seriously and taken into account when making big life decisions, like choosing a job for example. I always thought those were just silly little things, just my own personal issues, and I should just “get over” them and learn how to be a regular person who’s not bothered by them.

When I was in school, choosing a job was always related to education. What degree do you need in order to do this job? Bachelors? Masters? Phd? What classes do you need to take? And in society in general, there’s a hierarchy of jobs: jobs that require less education and pay less are seen as “easy”, and jobs that require more education and pay more are seen as “hard.”

I’m an engineer. I write code for robots. And often, when I tell people that, they say, “Wow that’s so hard! I could never do that!” And I don’t know what to think about that. For me, it’s not “hard.” I would hate to be in a job that didn’t involve learning new technology and solving challenging problems. I used to teach English, and actually that was “harder” because it required way more people skills than I have. Basically, as an English teacher, I was an actor. Go into class, put on a smile, make eye contact with the students, try to pay attention to their level of energy and interest, do activities that students will find engaging. Yes, I was an actor, because none of that comes naturally to me. It was exhausting. Being an engineer, talking to computers all day instead of people, wow it’s SO MUCH easier.

(Like, I can do any kind of math you want, but talking to people is way too hard.)

There’s a Burger King that Hendrix and I go to often. Sometimes, after work, there are tons of people waiting in line to order, and the cashiers are taking orders at the same time they’re putting food on trays for people who already ordered, and sometimes they don’t have this or that particular type of hamburger and they have to keep telling customers it’s not available and then sometimes the customers get angry about that, and the cashiers have to deal with that, and also somebody is like “hey you gave me the wrong drink” and it’s noisy, and it’s just chaos. Wow. That sounds like a horrible job.

(This isn't just related to autism- I think for most people who work in fast food jobs like that, it's really stressful and hard and society doesn't give them the credit they deserve.)

I tell people I’m an engineer and they’re like “wow I could never do that.” And then I see the cashiers at Burger King and I think “wow I could never do that.”

There was this one place I used to work, where the doors on the bathroom stalls would slam so damn loud. Every time I came out of the bathroom stall, I would stand there and use my hand to guide the door shut slowly and quietly. But for people who just came out of the stall and walked away without giving it a second thought, the door would accelerate so much as it swung back and it would slam against the door frame so loud. It was so loud. It was inhumanely loud.

Every day at that job, I would avoid going to the bathroom as long as I could. I would time it so that I would only need to use that godawful bathroom with the slamming doors once per day. And when I did, I would try to get in and out as fast as possible. In the stall, I used both hands to plug my ears, and when I heard the sound of someone coming out of a different stall, I would plug my ears even harder and count to 20, waiting for the sound of the door slam.

The worst was when someone would come in, look into the first stall, decide that it wasn’t clean enough, and move on to the next one, leaving the door to slam itself. In that case, there would be no auditory cue (like a flush or door-unlocking sound) to tell me the slam was coming, if I was in a different stall and couldn’t see what was going on. Oh, oh it was terrible. That slamming sound was so inhumanely loud. Hearing it was like getting punched in the head. Like, if I had to choose between getting punched in the head, and hearing that door-slam sound unexpectedly, well it’s hard to choose, they’re pretty much equally terrible. I mean that 100% literally.

But I never saw any of my colleagues using their hand to slow down the stall door so it wouldn’t slam. I was the only one. Even though they worked there and used that bathroom every day, and presumably were aware of how loud those doors would slam. Back then, even though I knew that I hear sounds louder than most other people do, I hadn’t fully thought through what that meant. I didn’t realize that, for other people, that sound was NOT the equivalent of getting punched in the back of the head. Maybe they thought it was a minor annoyance, but not so bad that it’s worth the trouble of spending 5 seconds helping the door shut slowly after using the bathroom. Wow. I mean, wow, as I write this, this is the first time I’ve ever speculated about why other people didn’t seem to be bothered by those godawful bathroom doors. At the time, I just kind of internalized the idea “other people are fine with it, why can’t you be fine with it?”

And I can totally imagine a situation where a problem like that could lead to me quitting my job. Or hating my job, or developing depression and having no idea what was causing it. Because trying to force myself to be okay with loud sounds that don't seem to bother anyone else has always been just a normal part of my life. It wouldn't have even occurred to me to think "oh, THIS is the reason I'm so unhappy." It's just how my life has always been.

As I think about that experience now, I’m imagining what would have happened if I had gone to my manager and told him the work environment is unbearable for me because of the incredible loudness of the bathroom doors. What if I suggested talking with the maintenance people, and maybe putting some sort of padding on the edges of the doors, so they wouldn’t be so loud when they slammed? If people were reluctant to do it, I could even offer to pay for it and do the work of sticking the door pads on all by myself. Of course I would be willing to do that! And pay for it! Like wow, can you imagine, just pay a little bit of money and spend half an hour sticking pads onto the edges of the bathroom doors, and the sound problem would be gone? Wow, can you imagine? I’d be willing to pay a hundred dollars. I’d be willing to pay two hundred dollars. Of course I would. (Instead I'm here blogging about it, years later, because it was THAT BAD.)

Can you imagine, if I had viewed it as a problem that could be solved by communicating about my needs and then maybe doing a bit of work and spending a bit of money? (Though ideally, the company should be the one who pays the money for it.) Instead, I saw it as “this is just the way things are, it’s not going to change, everyone else is fine with it, why can’t you be fine with it?” I remember complaining about it to some of my colleagues a little bit, but I never went to someone who actually had the authority to do something about it and said “This is a serious problem, we need to find a way to solve it.” I didn’t know that was an option. Instead I plugged my ears, tried to get in and out of there as fast as possible, and made very angry faces at people who let the doors slam. Oh it was so awful.

This book, Asperger's on the Job, says that often, the accommodations that aspies need are actually very very easy for employers to implement, and they make a huge difference in the aspie employee’s happiness and productivity. That certainly would have been the case for me and my door problem, if I had seen it as an actual real thing and insisted that other people care about it and help me solve it. Instead, I believed it was my fault for not trying hard enough to “be normal”, it was a silly thing that I should just “get over,” certainly not something serious enough that I should ask other people to care about it. It would be wrong to get other people involved just because I’m such a failure at “being normal.”

That’s why this idea about listing potential Asperger’s-related problems with certain jobs is so mind-blowing to me. (Though obviously, the door thing is not associated with any specific type of job; it’s not something I could have predicted when choosing a job.) The point is, if I know I have problems with sounds or social interaction or whatever, let’s treat that as an actual real problem that we should address and find a solution for, or maybe a legitimate reason not to even try doing a particular job. Wow.

One more fun story: I remember one time, when I was a little kid, I was watching Olympic athletes do gymnastics on TV. My mom said, “Wow, look at all those amazing jumps they do, I could never do that.” And I was like, “They put so much chalk on their hands, I could never do that.” Because oh geez, chalk dust is just the worst, makes me cringe so much. No chance I could be an Olympic gymnast, just because of the chalk. Ewww chalk.

Treating these Asperger’s-related problems as negligible little things that nobody needs to take seriously leads to stress and even unemployment for aspies (even though, in general, we are very intelligent and hard-working). The book Asperger's on the Job introduced me to the concept of “here, write down potential problems in this table and we will figure out what to do about them,” which is so much better than my previous strategy of “just get over it and be a normal person.”

The Sound

A little girl sitting alone in a classroom. Image source.

[trigger warnings for globophobia/phonophobia]

The students all shuffled into the classroom together. Jesus sat in the second row.

"Today," their teacher said, "we have a special guest who will show us some chemistry demonstrations." There was a tank of gas at the front of the classroom. Oh no, thought Jesus, I hope it's not explosions. His mind filled with worry. There was nothing he could do except hope and hope and hope that there would be no explosions. He was powerless, trapped in that classroom.

After a bit of talk about gas and molecules, the speaker pulled out a balloon. The King of kings felt trapped in his seat in the second row. A mess of emotions swirled around his mind, but the biggest one was fear. Fear of what would happen if that balloon popped. The sound, the unbearable sound. No one would protect him. He knew that. A lifetime of people telling him it's not that bad, just makes you a little bit startled, that's all.

No one would protect him. No one would care about his pain. Jesus stared as the speaker blew into the balloon to inflate it.

He lit a match.

And God put his human fingers into his ears. He tensed all his muscles, held his breath, put his head down, and then the pop came. The sound filled the whole room and seemed to fill his brain, like the whole world was blocked out for that one instant, as Jesus pushed into his ears but couldn't stop the intense pain.

It was over. But he was shaking. And nobody seemed to notice the trauma he had just endured.

Now the guest speaker was saying something about hydrogen. And Jesus began the cycle of fear all over again. He knew that guy had more balloons. He knew there was a tank of hydrogen. It was going to happen again. He was trapped in his seat, with his classmates all around, but so totally alone.

All he could do was wait for the pain to come and then it would be over, and then it would be okay.

At the front of the classroom, the speaker stretched a balloon over the nozzle of the tank, and the Messiah heard the hiss of the gas. The balloon inflated, and he squirmed in his chair, not even aware of the fact that he was pushing his fingers into his ears. It was a response he did automatically.

He was stuck, so stuck, trapped in that chair. When will this end? he wondered. Anxious, desperate, fully aware that he could not stop the pain. If- when- that ballon popped, the sound would overwhelm him again. For an instant, it would destroy the entire world, and then everything would snap back to normal, and everyone would just continue on as if they hadn't just experienced a cataclysmic event.

All he could do was stare, and worry, and wonder when the sound would come. When the pain would come.

This time, the speaker taped a match to the end of a meter stick. He lit the match and lowered the meter stick, closer and closer to the balloon, as the Creater of the entire universe- of hydrogen atoms and vibrations and sound and the human auditory system- cowered in his chair, twisting his body in an attempt to become smaller... Anything to guard against that awful, indescribable sound. It wouldn't be enough. He knew it wouldn't be enough.

And it popped. It was loud. It was overwhelmingly loud. He pushed into his ears as hard as he could, as the sound overtook him and blocked out everything else. For a moment, nothing else existed besides that monstrous sound, beating him down, and it ended as suddenly as it had come.

It was over. Oh thank goodness it was over. Surely that guy wouldn't do another one. It must be over.

The Son of God listened with dread as the speaker started talking about ratios of gases. A carefully-proportioned mix between hydrogen and oxygen would make an even more spectacular result. And he got out a third balloon.

No. This was too much. This was torture. But there was nothing he could do. He had to stay in his seat, in the second row. Terrified.

The balloon, the meter stick, the match. And Jesus shrank into his chair, powerless. No one would save him. No one would protect him. It was just him and his fingers in his ears, but of course that wasn't enough.

And the balloon exploded.

It felt like the entire world exploded.

The sound overwhelmed him and drowned out everything else. It filled the whole room, his whole mind, his whole body. In that moment, he couldn't think- the explosion had completely overtaken and destroyed the place where his thoughts were supposed to be. His body reacted the way it always did, the way he had been trained, through years and years of enduring this trauma alone, while other people seemed completely unaware. Head down, fingers pushing so hard into his ears, all his muscles attempting to curl his body as small as possible.

At the same time, a giant fireball swept from the front to the back of the classroom. He felt the heat and the air whooshing by. But the sound was what caused him incredible pain.

And just as suddenly as it had come, it was over. The other students were chattering excitedly, seemingly delighted by what had just happened. Jesus finally let out a huge breath, as he decided it was okay to relax now. It wouldn't happen again. It was over.

The other students started to file out of the classroom. Emmanuel, God With Us, followed them, his long hair hiding his tears. He would go to his next class now, and just move on with life, internalizing the message that had been forced on him every time this happened: that he was the weird one for having such a strong reaction to sound, that it was totally fine for other people not to notice or care about his pain, and everything would be better if he would just learn not to care about it either. If he could force himself not to "overreact." And "be normal."

With his hair still covering his face, Jesus wiped away his tears, and felt so alone.

Honest Lent: "Seek First God's Kingdom" Doesn't Work If You Have Autism

Mushroom cloud. Image source.

For Honest Lent, let's look at Luke 12:22-34.

In this passage, Jesus teaches his disciples "do not worry." Specifically, do not worry about food or clothes. He says God will take care of you because look at how God provides for the ravens and flowers, and obviously you're so much more valuable. I won't get into the fact that food insecurity and malnutrition are real things that exist in the world- which proves that no, God does NOT always take care of people's basic needs. (Jesus makes a promise here which is NOT TRUE.) What I really want to talk about is verse 31: "But seek his kingdom, and these things [your needs] will be given to you as well."

This is what I was taught in church. Seek God first. Don't focus on your own needs. Follow God, put others before yourself, and then God will make sure your needs are met too.

Let me tell you something: This doesn't work if you have autism.

As it turns out, I have different needs than other people. And I've only realized this in the past few years; I wasn't diagnosed with autism until I was in my early 20's.

For me, the biggest example of this "different needs" thing is related to sound. As it turns out, other people are hearing sounds not nearly as loud as I hear them. For most of my life, I had no idea. I had lived 20+ years baffled over how other people can tolerate such awful awful unbearably loud sounds. Finally I found this explanation: My sensory system is such that sounds are much louder for me than for other people. For me, those loud sounds literally are unbearable. They are literally painful.

So that means I have needs. Like the need to not go see a fireworks display. But nobody ever told me "you know your own needs better than anyone else, and those needs are real things that other people need to take seriously." I believed I was being unreasonable if I asked for something that was different from everyone else. I believed that it was just me being weird and if I went to therapy and tried hard enough I could become "normal", so my sensitivity to sound was my own fault and not something that other people need to take seriously.

I can't blame this all on the church. In society in general, there's so much ignorance about mental health and disabilities, and people aren't taught to take people at their word when they claim to have some invisible condition that requires special accomodation. But the church's teaching about "don't focus on your own needs, just obey God and help others and then your needs will magically be met too" certainly didn't help things.

So I thought it was wrong to ask for special treatment. I thought it was "selfish" to ask the adults if I was allowed to sit out of some activity that was going to be overwhelming for me in terms of sensory stimuli or social interaction. Actually, I didn't even know it was an option. We go see fireworks on the 4th of July because that's what we do on the 4th of July. I didn't understand that it was an activity that was intended to be enjoyable, and that other people actually enjoyed fireworks. I had no idea. And then one year my mom said I could stay home if I wanted, while the rest of the family went to the fireworks- like, YES! OF COURSE I want to stay home. But I wouldn't have thought to ask for that on my own because I didn't understand that my cowering in pain was completely different from how other people experience fireworks. I had no idea I had different needs. Real needs. Real pain. Not just "me being weird."

If you're neurotypical and not disabled, then maybe the concept of "don't advocate for your own needs, they will naturally get met when you focus on God and helping others" might work. Because your needs are obvious things that your loved ones can relate to. It will be easy for others to see when your needs are not being met, and they will step in and help you.

But that doesn't work for me. If I don't say anything, then people don't *get* that loud sounds are unbearably painful for me. For most of my life, I didn't even *get* that. And even people who cared about me and wanted to help didn't know how, and treated me in ways that actually turned out to be harmful. I wonder how things could have been different if someone had told me I am an expert on my own needs and I have a right to advocate for myself, to tell others what my needs are and insist on it even if they try to ignore me. I wonder if that's even a realistic thing to imagine- even if I did get a diagnosis as a child, would any adult actually give a child the authority to act as an expert on their own needs and choose for themself whether they were able to participate in various activities?

I used to act uncertain when I tried to communicate about the loud-sounds problem. I didn't have the language I needed back then- I didn't know it was about needs and pain; I thought it was me being weak and unreasonable and selfishly asking for special treatment. I used to ask instead of tell. My tone of voice showed that I believed it was an unreasonable request, and so people didn't take it seriously- or they made suggestions based on their total ignorance of the problem, and I treated those suggestions as more important than my "silly" sensory issues (which, I thought, are my own fault because I could choose to go to therapy and become "normal"). I used to end those conversations with "I don't know if I'll be okay with that or not, but ... okay."

But now I've learned to say it this way: "Loud sounds are extremely painful for me, so if there are balloons at the party, I will not be able to go." Like it's just a fact of the universe, just a simple cause-and-effect, and I'm not going to entertain any suggestions about how I should "get over it" and "it's not that bad." I'm very much "leaning on my own understanding" here- nobody told me "it's perfectly reasonable for you to avoid things that make loud sounds, because they cause pain to you in a way that's completely different from what most people are experiencing." I figured that out on my own, and it's not like I can ask other people to confirm it- they don't know what I'm feeling, and I don't know what they're feeling. I've decided I don't need anyone's permission to advocate for myself. If I say this is what I need, then I have the right to tell people and expect to be taken seriously.

I used to "seek first God's kingdom," but God did not take care of my other needs. The only way to make sure those unique needs are met is if I stand up for myself, if I communicate to other people that this is a real thing that needs to be taken seriously. Any hesitation, any "humility", any "putting others first" on my part, when coupled with the fact that other people can't relate to what I'm feeling, gets interpreted as an indication that what I'm asking for isn't a real need that other people should care about.

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Related:
Globophobia part 2: God Didn't Help

Boundaries in Dating: Disrespect

A man and woman arguing in a car. Image source.

Chapter 15 of Boundaries in Dating: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Relationships is called "Say No to Disrespect." It starts off with the story of Cindy and Craig. The writers tell us that Craig often "flirted" with other women while he was on dates with Cindy, and Cindy was really upset by it. They call it "flirting" but... I think it's worse than that. Look at this example:

[Craig takes Cindy out to a fancy restaurant]
Then the cocktail waitress, a striking blonde, appeared, and asked if they wanted drinks or appetizers. Craig's face took on a seductive look, and he said, "No thanks, unless you're on the menu." The waitress smiled awkwardly and left. Cindy was shocked and hurt. "You really humiliated me with that comment!" she told Craig. He held up his hands and said, "What are you talking about? I was just making a joke. Stop overreacting."

Yeah, that's not "flirting." That's harassment. The waitress is just doing her job, and she's not really in a position where she can stand up to him and say "no, it's not okay to talk to me like that" because she needs customers to be happy with her and tip well.

It sounds to me like Craig's problem isn't "flirting" but just generally being a creep. And I'm kind of uncomfortable with the fact that the writers of "Boundaries in Dating" don't seem to see it that way- they talk in terms of how Craig's behavior upset Cindy, and Craig should have cared about Cindy's feelings, but he didn't, he disrespected her. (Seriously. When they talk about Craig's disrespectful behavior, they mean how he is disrespectful to Cindy. No mention at all of his disrespect to the women he "flirts" with.) So then, if Craig were single, would it be totally fine for him to harass waitresses? Ugh.

But this bit is REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT:

The worst part of it all was Craig's disregard for her discomfort with his flirting [sic]. He did not seem to care or understand how difficult it was for her, even if it were true that it was one hundred percent her reaction. Had he shown some concern for her feelings, she would have been less bothered by the flirting [sic] itself. And, as she kept observing, Craig's disregard for her feelings did not limit itself to the flirting issue. Over time, he became more and more insistent on his way and opinions, and less caring about hers. Whenever she would bring up the disregard, Craig's answer was always to minimize her viewpoint and protest his innocence.

And this, later in the chapter:

People in dating situations need to know that their feelings, needs, and freedom are respected. When someone is uncomfortable in a sexual situation, or is hurt by a sarcastic remark, or becomes angry with a broken promise, that is a signal that something is going on. The other person needs to take those feelings seriously. The couple needs to talk about what triggered this, and solve the problem.

It's not about whether some objective, absolute rule says your behavior is right or wrong. If other people are hurt by it, that matters and you need to care about them.

I've had problems with this. Maybe because of Asperger's, maybe because of evangelicalism's insistence that "absolute truth" is all that matters and emotions shouldn't sway us. There have been times when I believed I had a better way of doing something, and I tried to force other people to do it my way, and I really believed I was right, I had the truth, I had logical reasons why clearly my way was better. But I was wrong to treat people that way- they have the right to make their own choices, and if they like their way better, however nonsensical it seems to me, well that's all that really matters. They like it better. Their feelings matter. Even if I can present a logical argument that "no no no, you shouldn't feel that way, you shouldn't like that better", they still DO feel that way, and that matters. (I'm talking about things that aren't actually objective moral issues- like what order to do a project in, or what name to call something. Things where other people have a right to be involved in the decision-making, despite the fact that they are wrong. Yeah so... maybe it's Asperger's.)

Or, here's another example. There was this guy I had a crush on, long ago. But he would sometimes post on Facebook about how he wanted beer or how he liked drinking and getting "tipsy", and it made me uncomfortable. My parents don't drink so I never really had any experience with it or understanding of what's a normal, healthy amount and what's too much. But I didn't believe it was a sin, in small amounts. So I would hear this guy talk about how he liked drinking, and I didn't like that but I thought, well it's not a sin, it's okay to drink sometimes, so I have to learn to be okay with it and he is still a potential boyfriend.

I was still in purity culture so I was doing all that "praying about whether he's my God-ordained future husband" stuff. And then I realized- or God told me, though I don't know if I believe in that anymore- that the fact that I was uncomfortable with it mattered. That was reason enough to decide he wasn't "God's best" for me. If he's not technically sinning, okay, fine, but that doesn't mean I have to force myself to be okay with it.

It's kind of surprising to me that I came to that epiphany- that my emotions mattered even if he wasn't breaking any of "God's laws"- while I was still a good evangelical and good purity culture girl. Well, it was more along the lines of "God wouldn't want me to be this uncomfortable with a guy's character, therefore God must have a better plan for my future husband" rather than "my own desires and emotions are intrinsically important" but hey, I'll take it.

Anyway, the point is, if you don't like something, that's a good enough reason to justify your choice to not do it. You don't have to explain why you don't like it and then allow other people to judge whether your reasons are logical or not. When it's a decision about your own personal life, your boundaries, your body, etc, your emotions and opinions matter more than anything else. (This idea definitely has a lot of applications in the area of dating. If your boyfriend wants to come to your house, and you say no, and he asks why- well, it's fine to ask why, people want to understand the reasons and get to know each other. But if you tell him why and then he explains to you why that's not a good enough reason to justify your decision, wow, that's a red flag. It's not up for debate. You're not required to present an argument that a jury of your peers would judge to be reasonable- no, it's your home, your body, your life. Your choice. If somebody doesn't agree, TOO BAD, it's not their decision.)

Or, in the specific case of Cindy and Craig, Cindy was really upset by Craig's, uh, "flirting" [being creepy to other women, right in front of her], and Craig told her she was overreacting and he was just joking. Ugh. I hate when people say that. Really he's saying her feelings are wrong and her feelings don't matter. He doesn't care about her, he only cares about presenting reasons why his behavior should or shouldn't be interpreted in a certain way. He only cares about proving that he wasn't trying to do anything bad. That's not okay. Your romantic partner should care about how you feel.

So what happened with Cindy and Craig?

Cindy began not only confronting Craig's inappropriateness, but she also began taking action. When he would flirt in her presence, she would quietly pick up her purse and go home, leaving him to explain why she had left. She told him, "I won't be there to experience your immaturity and my humiliation, even if you don't think that is what's going on." This finally broke them up. Cindy was heartbroken, as she really liked Craig. But she couldn't see being married to someone who was great when they agreed, but ran over her feelings when they didn't.

Good for you, Cindy! And because this isn't a purity-culture book, it doesn't say one word about how Cindy lost purity by dating him or how the failed relationship decreased her future potential to find love. Nope. Nothing like that here.

Next, there's a section where the authors talk about the importance of respect and empathy in a romantic relationship:

Respect is a necessary element for any couple to grow in love. Each person needs to feel that they are respected by the person they are getting to know. This involves having esteem or regard for all aspects of the other. Respect is different from empathy, though any relationship needs both to be hand-in-hand. Empathy is the ability to feel another's experience, especially painful ones. Respect is the ability to value another's experience.

Notice anything weird about that excerpt? Specifically, when a Christian dating book talks about the importance of respect and love in the relationship, usually they talk about something else that's suspiciously missing from "Boundaries in Dating"...

Any guesses?

I'm sure some of you know what it is...

What is it? GENDER ROLES!!! Typically, the "Christian" advice I've heard on respect and love in a dating or marriage relationship is "men need respect, women need love." The man has to be the leader and his wife respects him and obeys his decisions- although this "obeying" was never very clearly-defined for me when I believed in complementarianism. And the woman, oh you know, she's more weak and emotional, she needs to know her husband loves her. Men need respect more than anything, women need love more than anything.

Of course, that's total BS. Both partners need both respect and love. So I'm really glad to see "Boundaries in Dating" doesn't say anything about gender when they talk about respect and empathy in a relationship. Actually, there hasn't been any advice in this entire book which is gendered. Not a single sentence about "if you're a woman, you should do this, which is different from what a man should do in that situation." So I'm really happy about that. (Unfortunately, "Boundaries in Dating" assumes that everyone is straight. Grr.)

So they had that really good bit about respect and love, but then why they tried to give an example, it didn't go so well...

For example, a guy may restrain himself from pushing his girlfriend sexually for either reason. He may feel deep compassion for the dilemma he is putting her in. Or he may restrain himself because he respects her right to make her own moral decisions.

Umm.

Uhh, yes, a guy should have both empathy and respect for his girlfriend. And if he has those things, then he won't pressure her into doing sexual stuff she doesn't want. But... you don't really need impressive amounts of respect and empathy, you just need to NOT BE A RAPIST. This is bare-minimum-of-human-decency level stuff. This is a really really weird example to give if you want to illustrate how to respect and care about each other in a relationship. As if it's normal and expected for guys to try to pressure their girlfriends into sex, but the ones who are great role models of respect won't do that. Oh come on. We're talking bare-minimum-of-human-decency here.

(Ai yo, this book. It alternates between "wow this is really really good advice that goes against everything I learned in church and I'm so glad someone is saying it" and "wait, I have a huge problem with what they're saying in this bit.")

Next, the book gives examples of how disrespect can manifest in a relationship. But I'm a little confused- the examples they give aren't all uniform in terms of one party being in the right or in the wrong. (Is it reasonable or not for one partner to expect the other to do certain things? Maybe there's no "absolute truth" on this, the two partners need to talk to each other and decide what their expectations are?) And are these examples consistent with their other advice about boundaries? Here's one:

For example, a woman might want to go out with the girls on a night that her boyfriend wants to be with her. While he doesn't complain, he also doesn't call or talk to her for a while. He is showing her that he doesn't respect her freedom.

How is this "disrespectful" behavior different from the advice, elsewhere in "Boundaries in Dating", that if your partner doesn't treat you right, you "set a boundary" and don't see them for a while? I guess the most important difference is that if it's a "boundary", you communicate about it. You tell them clearly "I don't let people treat me this way, therefore I'm not willing to see you for 2 weeks." Whereas in the "disrespect" case, it's more about emotions and trying to "punish" the other person and make them feel bad.

But are the two situations different because in the "boundaries" case, the bad thing they did was definitely bad, but in the "disrespect" case, the girlfriend didn't do anything bad by going out with her friends? Ehhh, I'm not necessarily sure we can say that. People have different ideas about what's "normal" in a dating relationship- for example, how much time the partners should spend together- and there's not really a "right answer" about it. Certainly we can think of extreme examples which would definitely be NOT OKAY- like if one partner didn't want the other to ever talk to any other friends- but within the space of all healthy relationships, there is a huge range in how much time they spend together vs with other friends. Still, that doesn't mean that just because one point in the range may be good for one couple, it's by definition healthy/doable for all couples. What I'm saying is, if one partner has a certain expectation about how much time they should spend together, and it doesn't match the other's expectation, it's not the case that one person is being reasonable and the other is just wrong. They just need to communicate about it and compromise.

Are boundaries just for cases when someone is treating you in a way that's objectively immoral, or are they also for preferences? Can you set a boundary about something that's a perfectly fine component in other people's healthy relationships, but you personally don't like?

And another thing about preferences and compromising- yes, people need to compromise when they're in relationships. Both parties give and take, but no, that doesn't make everything equal. Both partners are coming into the relationship with certain ideas about what's "normal", which are, more than anything else, based on their own culture and backgrounds. They have certain assumptions about what's reasonable to ask of the other person and what kind of compromise they can negotiate to.

For example, Samantha Field has written about how, when she was in purity culture, she was very worried about "the wedding night", where she would be expected to have sex for the first time. What if it hurt? What if her body wasn't ready to go from 0 to vaginal penetration in one night? She hoped she would be able to talk about it with her hypothetical husband- her ideal situation would be for them to not have sex on the wedding night, to go slow instead- but purity culture says you have to have sex on the wedding night, that the wife owes it to the husband. So she doubted whether it would even be possible to find a man who would "compromise" on that. Her cultural background (also shared by the hypothetical husband) shaped her ideas of what's "reasonable" in marriage, and had her believe that she would be the one asking for something abnormal, by asking her husband if it would be possible to not have sex so soon.

Similarly, I've heard people say that it's totally not okay, in a dating relationship, for one partner to try to coerce the other into having sex- but that at the same time, one partner might see sex as really important, and they are well within their rights to end the relationship and go find someone who is willing to have sex. And honestly, back when I was in purity culture, this idea terrified me. I wanted people to say "no, it's wrong to expect to find a girlfriend who will have sex with you, that's just not reasonable"- I wanted that to be what society sees as "normal." Otherwise, there would be no guarantee that I could find a guy who would be willing to wait til marriage.

ANYWAY I've gotten way off-topic, but my point is, each person has their own ideas about the following three topics:

1. What's normal in a dating relationship
2. Their own preferences/ their idea of an ideal relationship
3. How far they can reasonably expect a partner to compromise away from "normal" and toward their own personal preferences

and all three of these are so so so completely rooted in and influenced by culture.

Yeah. This only vaguely relates to "Boundaries in Dating." (Oh dear.) Basically what I want to say is, in many of their examples of one person feeling wronged by the other and responding with disrespect, it's not clear-cut whether the first "wrong" was actually, objectively wrong. People have different ideas of what a relationship is supposed to look like, and they need to communicate about that. Instead of disrespecting each other.

Okay, moving on. I really like this part, so I'll type it up for y'all to read:

Respecting someone doesn't mean that you agree with them. Nor does it mean that you will comply with what they want. It means that their feelings matter because those emotions belong to a person who matters. Listen to, understand, and try to help the situation.

Wow. Amen to all of that. "their feelings matter because those emotions belong to a person who matters."

Later in the chapter, there's a list of "things that will not cure a pattern of disrespect." One of them is compliance:

For example, suppose you are dating someone who has a hot temper. When he gets angry, he gets mean and critical with you, disrespecting your need for safety and security. You may comply with his rages, calming him down and taking responsibility for his anger. This may soothe him temporarily, but it will not cure the character problem with which he is struggling: "A hot-tempered man must pay the penalty; if you rescue him, you will have to do it again" (Proverbs 19:19). A good source for more information on compliance with disrespect is our book Boundaries.

Well, this is much much better than what I read last week about how if a woman's husband has "rage" problems, "the only way it will resolve is for her to figure out what she needs to change" [that is an exact quote from page 209] which sounded a lot like blaming an abuse victim, in my opinion. In this chapter, however, the advice seems to totally contradict that. The writers say compliance won't help anything. You have to stand up for yourself and let the other person know it's not okay to treat you that way.

Also, they say "complaining without consequences" will not help the problem, and this is a really important point. If you don't set limits and enforce them, the other person might just keep being awful and feeling like they can totally get away with it.

The next section is "what does cure disrespect." Basically, it's about confronting the problem early, communicating clearly about how it's not okay when your partner doesn't respect your feelings, standing up for yourself, and getting support from friends. Here's one part that I found very VERY interesting:

Get to Know Your Date in the Context of Other Relationships

Sometimes you may wonder if you are overreacting and being too sensitive. For example, your girlfriend may be inconsistent in when she says she will be somewhere, and you find yourself waiting around forever for her. Yet she may say you're being picky and controlling. This may be true. So get around her and her friends and family. Find out what those who know her say about her habits. They may say she's never been flaky. Then again, they may say she has no concept of time, and it drives them crazy too. This isn't spying. It is how people get to know someone. Dating should not be done in a vacuum.

First of all, this goes back to what I said earlier about culture and how people all have certain assumptions about what's "normal" and acceptable in a dating relationship. I'd like to point out that, even if her family and friends say there's nothing wrong with her behavior and you're overreacting, that doesn't mean they're right and you're wrong. It could be the case that you and your girlfriend are coming from different cultural backgrounds, with different ideas of what it means when you say you will be somewhere at a certain time. Neither of you are "right" or "wrong", but you need to communicate and understand each other or else you'll have problems. (Source: I'm getting married to a Chinese guy.)

But really, what I want to talk about is the concept of "get to know your date in the context of other relationships" as it relates to purity culture. Purity culture loves "group dates." Purity culture says dating one-on-one is bad, because it's an artificial environment, the person is on their best behavior, you can't see what they're really like in a real-life situation, the way a guy treats his mother is the way he's gonna treat you in the future, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, TEMPTATION. If we never let couples go off alone, then there's no opportunity for them to passionately be all over each other and lose their purity.

In other words, purity culture teaches that "group dates" are superior to regular one-on-one dates. In the most extreme forms of purity culture, the couple always has to have a "chaperone" and they're not allowed to ever be alone together until after the wedding. To anybody not in purity culture, the problems with this approach are BLATANTLY OBVIOUS. There's no privacy- how can you ever open up to someone and really get to know them if you always have a "chaperone" listening in? But purity culture advocates are so terrified of the possibility of someone becoming "impure" that that idea of marrying someone you barely know seems like a much smaller risk.

(To be clear, the purity culture I was in didn't actually enforce "group dating"- I heard people talk about how it's more healthy to do it that way, but at the same time, it was very normal to see Christian friends go on dates one-on-one. I did not believe in "let's have the parents control everything and then everybody's emotional and physical purity is completely untouched up until the wedding." My brand of purity culture was more like "in order to get the information I need for the marriage decision, I'm going to have to get close to the guy and therefore lose some of my purity. Emotional and physical purity is the currency I use to buy information. Every single transaction must be carefully calculated and prayed about and the risks must be weighed.")

In contrast, "Boundaries in Dating" starts from the assumption that going on regular, one-on-one dates like a normal person is totally fine. But, they say, it's good to supplement that by also spending time with your partner's friends and family. So healthy, I love it.

And then there's this part...

[content note: victim-blaming]

Own Your Own Part

Remember that you might be making disrespect easier, and take the plank out of your own eye before removing your date's speck (Matthew 7:3-5). Your part may be several things:

• Not saying anything, which can imply consent
• Treating it lightly or as something cute or funny in your date
• Vacillating between doing nothing and having rage fits about it, which conveys a confusing message
• Making it all your fault and problem instead of your date's

Take ownership of the issue. Change what you need to change. But require that your date treat you respectfully. In our experience, when you do this, one of two things tends to happen: you get more respect from those who have it to give; and you get left by those who don't have it. Both results are good ones.

Uhh, yeah this sounds like victim-blaming. So as a feminist, I'm a little uneasy about that. But... I guess there could be some cases where one person really didn't know their behavior bothered the other; it was behavior that is totally fine in other settings and there was no way for them to know it would hurt this person. In that case, it's not their fault, so the hurt partner does have a resonsibility to explain what's wrong, if they want the relationsthip to continue. (They're also well within their rights to decide they don't want to be in the relationship.)

And in a practical sense, there may be things you can do to address the problems in the relationship, even though the problems aren't your fault. In a practical sense, people should know about these things so they can protect themselves and not end up in unhealthy relationships. But how do we make sure we're saying "here is healthy advice that people should be educated about" rather than "well there were things they could have done to avoid this problem, therefore they're not really a victim and no injustice has been committed here"?

Or maybe, we're just talking about disrespect here, nothing as serious as abuse, so maybe it's not the kind of thing where we label one person as "the victim" and aren't allowed to ask what they could have done differently? It's a pretty run-of-the-mill problem that comes up often in dating relationships and you should know how to respond and how to solve it, even though it's not your fault. Yes, but... Seems like an abuser might first test the waters by seeing how much disrespect they can get away with. When they move on to more evil things from there, you don't want people saying "well why didn't the victim confront and deal with the disrespect when it first started?"

Victim-blaming is a tricky thing. Society would be much better off if people were educated about what's healthy and what's not healthy in a relationship- then abusers would be much less able to get away with it. But in advocating for better awarness and education about relationships, we don't want to say the victim "should have known better" and should have gotten out earlier... In my opinion, the real reason behind this paradox is the fact that, in a strict, logical sense, it is true that there are things an abuse victim could have done to avoid/ get out of the situation. (But, sometimes that means the abuser just would have chosen a different victim. Which doesn't really help anything.) But when people talk about what the victim "could have" done, in the context of laws and police reports and justice, it implies that the abuser's actions weren't that bad, that no real crime has been committed, that the victim is mostly to blame, that they don't deserve any help. And that implication is NOT OKAY.

(Maybe the key question is, what is the goal? Are you trying to educate people so they know how to reduce their risk, repair a relationship, or advocate for justice for victims? Each of these goals requires completely different approaches.)

Yeah, but like I said, this section of "Boundaries in Dating" isn't about abuse. So maybe I'm wrong to be talking about it here. Still, though, I'm very bothered by the victim-blaming in that excerpt.

But I really really like that last line: "Both results are good ones." When you stand up to the person who disrespects you, in most cases they will either start respecting you, or break up with you. It is very very important to teach people that breaking up can be a very good thing. Purity culture, however, teaches that it's The Worst Thing Ever. That keeps peple in unhealthy relationships. That teaching is evil.

All right that's the end of the chapter. In general, I agree that to have a healthy relationship, it's very important that you know that you deserve to be treated with respect, and you deserve a partner who believes that your feelings matter. I cannot state enough how important that is, and how it's not something that I was explicitly taught by Christians when I was growing up. But at the same time, this chapter had a few exmples that seemed kind of rape-culture-y and victim-blame-y, so I'm a little creeped out by that.

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A blog series reviewing the book Boundaries in Dating: How Healthy Choices Grow Healthy Relationships (introduction post is here)

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