Blogaround

The last blog post of the year~ Happy new year everyone!

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. My favorite Christmas song: Casting Crowns - I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day Live 

2. The NIMBY Christmas cinematic universe (December 23) "Particularly frustrating is the argument that economic growth, development, and newcomers — the very things that ailing small towns desperately need — are actually the root of their problems."

3. Firewood Banks Aren’t Inspiring. They’re a Sign of Collapse. (December 9, via) "You don’t start a wood bank in a country with functioning institutions. You start one when heating assistance programs can’t keep up, when the grid flickers every time the wind shifts, when propane and heating oil costs swing so hard that families can’t budget more than a week out. You start a wood bank when seniors stop turning on their heat because they’re scared of the bill. You also start one when the country pretends energy insecurity doesn’t exist because acknowledging it would mean admitting that entire regions were left behind on purpose."

4. Collections: Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy ‘Gold’ (January 3, 2025, via) "So a denarius or a drachma isn’t a unit so big that no normal person would ever use it, but it is a big enough unit that one is hardly going to use it casually"

5. Israel says it will bar aid groups, including Doctors Without Borders, from Gaza (December 30)

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Is It Too Late? (December 9, via) "The full-on hijacking of the 14th Amendment has not been challenged with commensurate concerted outrage and political clarity. That is because far too many white Americans associate the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of birthright citizenship and equality, as provisions that only protect Black people, migrants, Latino people, and other marginalized groups, rather than as core democracy infrastructure of our Constitution."

2. What We Can Learn from the Right’s Attack On “Toxic Empathy” (December 11, via) "But by trying to get inside Chauvin’s head and heart, by insisting that he should be the focal point of identification, Stuckey can move away from what actually happened, and can instead present herself as the truly thoughtful and empathetic voice, feeling along with the right, white, and supposedly Godly person."

3. The return of the r-word (December 23) "But it turns out that banishing the slur from public discourse was, in fact, important. Because now it’s back and it turns out that it does matter when subtext becomes actual text, when terrible people enable open hatred and bigotry, encouraging others to emulate them, degrading us all."

4. Conservatives Want the Antebellum Constitution Back (December 21) "What this means in practice is that if you are not white, you cannot go certain places without the risk of being kidnapped by federal agents. That is not “common sense”; it is the nullification of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal rights under the law."

Blogaround

1. You're single and pregnant? Now you can claim maternity benefits (August 19) An article from China, saying that now unmarried women can get maternity pay when they give birth.

On the one hand, this is great news! On the other hand, WTF, why on earth was being married a requirement for getting maternity pay??? WTF????

China: we want to encourage people to have more children
Also China: *sets up legal hurdles to make life difficult for single moms and children born "out of wedlock"*

2. Woman with disabilities nears medically assisted death after futile bid for affordable housing (April 30) and Are Canadians being driven to assisted suicide by poverty or healthcare crisis? (May 11) [content note: euthanasia, eugenics, ableism] Oh wow this is bad.

3. Doctor Reacts To Marvel Medical Scenes (MCU) (2021) "WHOA, WE DON'T DO IT LIKE THAT, BRO!"

4. Making A Murder... Scene (July 31) 1-hour-22-minute sudoku solve video.

5. The Manipulations of Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" (August 12) 1-hour-10-minute video from Jessie Gender.

Jessie's videos are very good, very in-depth, but also I totally understand if you do not want to spend 1 hour and 10 minutes of your time thinking about Matt Walsh. If you are unfortunate enough to know who Matt Walsh is, then I'm sure you can already guess what his "What is a Woman?" documentary is about, and you'd be exactly right: it's not a sincere attempt to investigate the question "what is a woman"; it's all about mocking liberals/ trans people for saying that the definitions of concepts like gender and sex are complex and there's not one simple answer.

Jessie's video examines the ways Matt treats his interviewees disrespectfully if they don't agree with him- refusing to listen to their answers, editing the video to make them look bad, asking bad-faith questions. And also, it turns out that Matt's team lied about the purpose of the documentary in order to deceive trans people/ allies into participating in the interviews.

But yeah, if you know who Matt Walsh is, none of this is surprising.

6. This tweet about student loan forgiveness:

what’s next? casting down the mighty from their thrones?? lifting up the lowly?? filling the hungry with good things?? sending the rich away empty?? slippery slope

— Erin Jean Warde (she/her) (@erinjeanwarde) August 25, 2022

(If you don't get it)

7. Google’s Revolution in Historical Research (August 18) "If I had been doing this book 25 years ago, say, in the era of BG, Before Google, there is literally no way I could have found it, not if I was a multi-millionaire antiquarian of Bruce Wayne proportions commanding legions of research assistants."

8. Because of Texas abortion law, her wanted pregnancy became a medical nightmare (July 26) [content note: pregnancy loss] "It's just really unimaginable to be in a position of having to think: How close to death am I before somebody is going to take action and help me?"

9. Atheist to send Texas schools ‘In God We Trust’ signs written in Arabic (August 22) Sort of interesting how conservatives' racism/ cultural ignorance/ anti-Muslim hatred is kind of taken for granted here and not questioned... Like I agree with the point that this atheist is trying to make, but I'm not comfortable with how he builds his point on a foundation of conservatives' hatred towards Muslims, without calling it out.

10. ‘In memory of water’: The Zone Rouge and the stupidity of war (August 22) [content note: war] "The grievances that motivated World War I have faded into irrelevance, but people are still living with the consequences."

Related: Collections: No Man’s Land, Part I: The Trench Stalemate (2021) About common misconceptions about trench warfare in WWI.

Blogaround

Baby giraffe. Image source.

1. All My Life, People Have Told Me I'm "An Inspiration." Here's Why It's So Harmful (posted April 5) "From outside the disabled community, my accomplishments are rarely seen on the basis of their own merit. Instead, they’re often viewed as the cute hobbies and inconsequential actions of a disabled girl, seen as merely 'inspiring.'"

2. How Can We Teach Consent If We Don’t Teach About Pleasure? (posted 2018) "The thing about bad, one-sided sex is that you can be sexually active for years and not realize how bad or one-sided it is — that you’re missing out on a wide array of joy and pleasure."

3. If ‘we’ didn’t know, now ‘we’ know (posted February 10) "But who exactly is this 'we' who didn’t know before the arrival of the '#MeToo Era'?"

4. If Only He Knew: This’ll Be On the Quiz (posted April 2) "He replied, 'I think he’s largely full of [cow byproduct]. I’m only doing this because it entertains you for some reason.'" That's real love. <3

Blogaround

1. The “Good News” Starts with Bad News (posted March 27) "Look around and see if you can find a guide to sharing the gospel that doesn’t start with bad news. I don’t think it exists." She's absolutely right, which is why I reject that "gospel."

2. The Violence of the Cross and Children: Thoughts Before Holy Week (posted 2018) "Under no other circumstance would we give five year olds a coloring page with a man whipping another man."

3. I Use A Wheelchair & Dating Involves Way More Planning Than It Should (posted March 29) "I’ve called ahead to ask a restaurant if it’s wheelchair accessible only to find that when they said “Yes,” what they actually meant was, “Yes, except for a couple steps and the close-together tables that actually make it very much not wheelchair accessible.”"

4. More Evidence that Young Earth Creationism Is Literally Unfalsifiable (posted April 1) "Take a moment to notice the question Chaffey is asking: Could Noah’s ark as described in Genesis have successfully remained afloat, or did it take a miracle? Now consider the question Chaffey is not asking: Could Noah’s ark as described in Genesis have successfully remained afloat, or is the story impossible?"

Blogaround

1. On Disability and on Facebook? Uncle Sam Wants to Watch What You Post (posted March 10) "But advocates for people with disabilities say the use of social media in this way would be dangerous because photos posted there do not always provide reliable evidence of a person’s current condition." Ooh this is bad.

2. Andy Stanley's Church is NOT the "Safest Place in the World" for My Gay Teen (posted March 12) [content note: churchy homomisia] "She posted a beautiful “love letter” to the gay community and for the first time publicly declared that she is gay. It was part of a campaign for PRIDE month and I couldn’t be prouder of the words she wrote. The comments she received were so positive and uplifting. She received no negative feedback until she attended church the next weekend, where she was told she could no longer lead at North Point Ministries."

3. I'm not saying I'm Captain Marvel, but... (posted March 15) [content note: spoilers for "Captain Marvel"] "She was told that her power came from an invisible supreme intelligence and could be taken away as easily as it was given; her entire purpose was to serve at the will of this being. I was told that any good deeds or accomplishments I achieve in life are all due to an invisible deity; my entire life purpose was to serve at the will of God."

4. Selma Blair Became A Disabled Icon Overnight. Here's Why We Need More Stories Like Hers (posted March 7?)

Blogaround

A baby wearing a dinosaur costume. Image source.

1. A 70% Marginal Rate on Top Incomes Is A Good Start, But It Doesn’t Go Far Enough (posted January 5) "In truth, not only is Ocasio-Cortez’ proposal not radical at all, it would have been boring and normative policy for most of the 20th century in western democracies. It would have been seen as moderate and unremarkable–even conservative!–during the 1960s in America before the civil rights era."

2. A man named Paul would like to tell you the difference between a vulva and vagina. (posted February 12) lololol

3. Raped, Abused, and Ignored: Disabled Women Are Invisible Victims (posted January 31) [content note: rape]

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This week's blogaround is a little sparse ~ you can also check out last week's blogaround, which for some reason had a whopping 13 links.

Have a good week everyone!

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.

How Are Autistics Supposed To Know Which of Our Pain is Socially Acceptable To Express?

Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger, from the movie "Inside Out." Image source.

I recently found an article from 2015 called Unseen agony: Dismantling autism's house of pain. It says that autistic people are often perceived as being less sensitive to pain (and in some cases, truly are less sensitive to pain) but on the other hand, they also often experience pain from sensory stimuli that others might not even notice.

First there's a story from a man named Noah, who recalls his experiences of pain caused by the sound of a vacuum cleaner on wood floors:

“At first I would scream and yell for her to stop [the vacuum sound], but she had no concept that what she was doing was irritating,” Noah says. “And I had no idea that what I was feeling was not what everyone else felt.”

Noah eventually came to accept that the noise of the vacuum, like many other sensory experiences, was something he just had to suffer through. As a result, “I was very numbed off,” he says. “I could handle really intense cold or even pain and not do anything, not feel too much.”

This is so real. So, for me, I've only recently realized that other people are literally experiencing sensory input (sound, in particular) differently than I am. I've figured out that "pain" is the word to use to describe my experiences. And I've discovered the answer to the mystery that has baffled me for my entire life: Why does everyone else seem to not notice or react to overwhelming, unbearable sounds? The answer is that they literally experience sound differently than I do. I feel it as pain, and others don't.

Poor little Noah. "Noah eventually came to accept that the noise of the vacuum, like many other sensory experiences, was something he just had to suffer through." And that was my life too, as a child. That was my normal. Sometimes I suffer pain, and nobody else understands, and that's just the way it is.

The article comes back to Noah later on:

When he was working at a summer camp for children with autism, Noah says, he once heard one boy respond to another boy’s annoying, singsong repetition of “to-MAY-to, to-MAH-to” with: “Stop saying that. It feels like you’re pricking me with a thousand needles.”

Despite that sharp visual, Noah says this kind of description is only a metaphor: His sensory sensitivities don’t feel like the physical reality of a cut or bruise.

“My response will be very similar to someone who’s in pain, but it comes from a different place,” he says. “It’s just that it’s an all-encompassing, irritating process that envelops your whole brain.”

I find it interesting that they're explicitly pointing out that sensory pain doesn't feel the same as physical pain. To me, that distinction seems like something only autistic people need to know. Like, for autistic people this information is really helpful- I never thought to use the word "pain" to describe how sound felt to me until I met a therapist who used it. Because yes, it's not the same feeling as getting hit or something. But at the same time, when I tell people "loud sounds are painful for me," I don't explain that the pain is not like physical pain- because then they might think my pain isn't really real and they don't have to take it seriously. (Side note: It is a BIG DEAL that I'm able to tell people "loud sounds are painful for me." Because I've discovered that avoiding loud sounds is literally a real need I have and it is 100% valid to tell people and expect them to act accordingly. Before, I always felt like I was asking for something unreasonable and I was being pathetic and other people didn't have to take it seriously.)

I figured out I should use the word "pain" to talk about how sound feels by doing thought experiments like the following: Which would be worse- getting slapped hard or suddenly hearing fireworks? Of course they don't feel the same, but I find myself unable to choose which is worse. And that means it's valid to say hearing fireworks is painful for me.

(And I'd like to quibble with the language about "sensory sensitivities" being contrasted with "the physical reality of a cut or bruise." Sensory pain is reality too.)

The article gives some examples of autistic people who (in my opinion) really do seem to be less bothered by things that would be painful for other people. It mentions girls with Rett syndrome, who sometimes fracture bones and don't seem to feel pain from it. So yes, in some cases, autistics really do feel less pain.

But I believe a lot of this being-perceived-like-we're-not-in-pain is because of how other people don't take our sensory pain seriously, so we are taught to not express it when we feel pain. A child with autism might tell their parent that the tag in their shirt is bothering them, and the adult says it's fine, it's not a big deal, stop complaining. Of course the child is going to internalize the idea "it's wrong for me to express it when I feel pain."

Take a look at this excerpt from the article:

In a 2009 study, researchers found that the hearts of children with autism pounded faster while they had their blood drawn than did those of typical children. But the children with autism made fewer facial expressions, such as grimaces, that indicate pain, perhaps because they have a smaller repertoire of expressive behaviors in general.

“The challenge with autism is that we’re dealing with a population that has altered social behavior,” Moore says. “And pain behavior is a fundamentally social thing.”

All right. I have some things to say about this.

Let's say you're a child, and your sock is irritating you. It's like all itchy and touching your skin all wrong and you just can't stand it. So you tell you mom, and she says no, your sock is fine, it's not a big deal. So you are forced to keep wearing the socks and just endure the pain.

Let's say you go to McDonald's, and the smell of the soap in the bathroom is just unbearable. And you can't stand touching the tables, they feel a bit greasy and nasty. You keep your arms close to your body so you don't have to touch anything. You hold your breath so you don't have to smell the soap. And your parents tell you to stop it. It's not that bad, they say. Come over here and eat your food. It's FINE. The food is a little bit cold and a little bit too soft and feels nasty in your mouth. But this is the way of the world. This is your lot in life. You suffer and you just have to deal with it. You tear off the edges and eat the parts that aren't nasty, until you just can't stand to eat any more.

Then you're at school and you're in the gym with a bunch of kids, everyone's running around and it's so loud. It takes all of your energy just to withstand the sound. You just want to find a corner where you can keep to yourself and look at the floor and not make eye contact with anyone, because you're exhausted from the sensory overload. But the gym teacher tells you to stop that. You have to come and play with the other kids.

And then you go to the doctor and get blood drawn. It's scary and painful, but every day your life is scary and painful. It's just one more item on the list of things you have to endure as a normal part of living your life.

And then the adults are like "wow she is not grimacing, maybe it's not painful for her."

Or maybe it's because time after time, you told me to hide my pain. Stop making that face. Stop whining. It's fine. It's not that bad. It's not a big deal. It doesn't hurt.

How am I supposed to know that suddenly I have happened upon a situation where adults expect me to express that I'm feeling pain?

How am I supposed to know that, even though they expected me to go the whole damn day with my sock scratching me and I'm supposed to pretend I'm fine, now they're going to think something is wrong with me if I don't whine while getting blood drawn with a needle?

How are we supposed to know when adults want us to hide our pain and when they want us to show it?

During our childhoods, we're constantly told that our pain isn't real and we just need to learn to be okay with it and act like everybody else. The adults don't know that we're truly experiencing pain. And we don't know that other people aren't experiencing the same thing. We internalize the idea "when I'm in pain, I should just try to be okay with it and not bother other people." OF COURSE this has an effect on our reaction when we're experiencing something that other people believe "counts" as real pain.

And here's a wild idea: Could this constant gaslighting- where people tell us our pain isn't real- also explain other autistic behavior?

When a neurotypical child gets hurt, and an autistic child doesn't respond with the "correct" show of empathy: How are we supposed to know that we come across as uncaring and heartless if we don't make the proper facial expressions and say the proper comforting words? That's not what adults have modeled to us. Sure, they show empathy at first, until they determine that we are just complaining about "nothing" and we need to shut up about it. But we make the mistake of saying "it's not that bad" to someone who's experiencing pain that society recognizes as painful, and then suddenly everybody thinks "autistic people don't have empathy." (The question of who, in this scenario, "doesn't have empathy" will be left as an exercise for the reader.)

A lot of autistic people have trouble recognizing their own emotions, or don't show emotion in their facial expressions the way neurotypical people expect: Could this be because, from our earliest childhood moments, people have told us that our pain is not real pain? They cut off our ability to express the most basic, primal emotion. We internalize the idea that we're not actually suffering real problems, we're just pathetic and need to get over it. Adults take us to crowded, loud public places with overwhelming sensory stimuli and tell us "this is fun"- and we try to believe we are having fun, try to ignore how nervous we feel. No wonder it takes so long to even figure out what our emotions are.

And how about the autistic focus on black-and-white rules? Maybe this originated with our search for the rules governing when we're allowed to express pain and when we're not. Seems to be based on some arbitrary, absolute criteria that everyone except us understands. We can't trust our own feelings; there is some set of rules higher than us, and we mustn't break them. (As it turns out, the common thread running through all the situations where adults expect us to express pain is this: neurotypical people experience pain in those situations. Yeah. Imagine that. So simple, and yet there is NO WAY I could have figured that out as a child. How am I supposed to know when neurotypical people do or do not experience pain?)

Probably it's a stretch to say that these other autistic traits can be totally explained by gaslighting related to sensory pain. But I know that in my own life, there have been extensive, long-term consequences. I deeply internalized the idea that if I'm in pain, I should just endure it and try not to bother anyone else about it. (Yes, my parents did care about me and help me- but it always felt like "she's just a scared little kid and she's too weak to deal with these things, but we can't let her avoid them forever- she has to learn to live in the real world and 'be normal.'") I believed it would be bad to ask for accomodations related to sensory stimuli- for example, to say "I have to leave now because it's too loud in here"- that would mean I'm weak and pathetic, and I should be ashamed. I need to try to be "normal." (I still feel a lot of anxiety- my body gets shaky and my heart beats fast- when I ask for accomodations. Because I grew up believing that I should hide my pain and "stop complaining.")

So don't believe anyone who tells you autistic people experience less pain. Most of us experience more pain that others, and then on top of that, the psychological stress of being told we're doing something wrong when we express it.

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Related:
Autistic at Disneyland
Autistic at the Aquarium
The Sound

How About We Let Disabled People Tell Us What to Think About Jesus' Healings

Blind man walking with a cane and dog.

Let's look at Matthew 20:29-34. In this story, two blind men call out to Jesus and ask him to give them their sight, and he does.

In my experience, when Christians read biblical accounts of Jesus' healings, we discuss and interpret them from a certain set of assumptions about disabilities. These are assumptions which seem, to abled people, to be so obviously true, we never even question them or realize it's possible to think in a different way. Specifically, I'm talking about beliefs like:

1. The #1 thing a disabled person needs most is to become not-disabled.
2. After Jesus heals them, everything is good, and they can immediately go ahead and "be a normal person."

However, I have now learned that society's beliefs about disabled people are often wrong and harmful. In particular, many disabled writers talk about how they want people to listen to them instead of spreading ignorant stereotypes, and they want society to be accessible so disabled people are not barred from participating in everyday activities that abled people take for granted. They say that it's not the disability that limits them, it's people's stereotypes and ignorance and how society is basically designed with the assumption that disabled people don't exist or aren't important. To imagine that they just need to be "healed" and then everything would be better just perpetuates the idea that there's nothing wrong with society and it's totally fine that we constantly exclude disabled people.

In my own case, loud sounds are painful for me (because of sensory reasons related to autism). If Jesus "healed" me so loud sounds weren't painful, that would be great, but it also wouldn't mean the whole loud-sounds problem is solved and done and it's all good. I have an entire lifetime of experience of people not taking me seriously when I was upset by a sound, people laughing at me, people saying my pain isn't real and "it's not that bad." I have all this emotional trauma that I'm working through now, trying to make sense of my childhood and what was really going on all those times adults told me to "be brave" and stop being so "sensitive"- and it takes years. (Blogging is cheaper than therapy...)

It would be just THE WORST if Jesus "healed" me and then other people thought, "ugh FINALLY she got over it and quit complaining"- as if my "healing" justified all the times that they wished I would just shut up and act normal. Like they did nothing wrong, all their attempts to shove a square peg in a round hole, because I finally became a round peg and gained the ability to act like they always wanted me to act. Why does "healing" mean a person becomes not-disabled, rather than abled people learning how to stop excluding and stereotyping disabled people?

So anyway, my point is, when I read this story about Jesus healing two blind men, I wanted to know what blind people think about it. And in general, what do disabled people think about Jesus' healings in the bible? I've gathered some articles here, and I would like to know if my readers have any other good resources about it or book recommendations.

Here are the links I've found:

Out of the Darkness: Examining the Rhetoric of Blindness in the Gospel of John

[In the gospel of John, p]hysical blindness may provide the necessary ground for faith to grow and emerge, but the person cannot remain physically blind. There are biblical scholars and disability activists alike who note that there are no blind disciples. Grant (Eiesland & Saliers, eds., 1998) writes, for example, "It is true that at one level the healing stories are stories of inclusion in that Jesus heals and welcomes all sorts of people into God's reign. However, the very fact that they are physically healed by Jesus suggests that physical restoration is a necessary component of their entry into the community" (p. 77). Grant also cites Donald Senior, Frederick Tiffany, and Sharon Ringe, all who have made similar points. From her perspective working with people with disabilities and government agencies in Australia, Elizabeth Hastings writes:

...with all the respect due to the ten lepers, the various possessed, and the sundry blind, lame, and deaf faithful of scripture, I reckon people who have disabilities may have been better off for the last two thousand years if Our Lord had not created quite so many miraculous cures but occasionally said, "your life is perfect as it is given to you – go ye and find its purpose and meaning," and to onlookers, "this disability is an ordinary part of human being, go ye and create the miracle of a world free of discrimination" (quoted in Calder, 2004, p. 12).

John Hull (2001) in his recent reflection on reading the Bible from his own blind perspective tries to conceive of blind men and women following Jesus through the Galilee—he cannot. Blind disciples would have been an affront to Jesus' power.

Although physical infirmity is not connected to sin in the example of the man born blind, it is, in this case, connected to ignorance of truth. In John 9, the physical condition of blindness always also connotes metaphorical blindness as a mental or spiritual condition, or ignorance. Both the literal and metaphorical meanings of blindness are always present every time the words "blind" and "to see" are used in the story. The literal and metaphorical meanings of blindness have the potential of contaminating each other in any context. There is a danger of at least implicitly, if not explicitly, associating physically blind people with mental and spiritual incapacity, and associating Jewish people, whether blind or not, with the same shortcomings.

In Search of a More Robust Theology of Disability

The idea that sight=good and blind=bad is so deeply ingrained in our culture that most of us are not even aware of its existence. I can't begin to cover all of the ways that this idea manifests itself, from sighted people giving pity to finding inspiration in how we "cope" with our "suffering" to fearing us, to assuming we have substandard lives, to fervently thanking God they are not us, to rushing up to us on the street and laying hands on us to receive healing, when we are trying to run to the grocery store before an appointment. We are constantly told in numerous subtle ways that we are "broken" or "damaged" and then in the same breath told that we are "brave" and "inspirational" when in reality to us it feels about as important as being tall or short. It is merely a physical attribute and life goes on. For a blind person, being able or willing to return the gaze of a sighted person is not an accurate measure of his dignity or self-worth. By the same token, to the blind person, the sighted person he is talking to seems undignified as a result of the noxious body odor or the grating, gravelly voice and repulsive manner of speaking even though he is meeting the other's gaze. I realize the above was used metaphorically, and thus am I also using it. Consider the actual source of dignity!

The disclaimer that "real blind people don't count" doesn't hold any water at all, because to talk about an attribute of our lives is to talk about us. You cannot propose a theology of dark skin without involving people who have dark skin, or a theology of Asian people without involving people who live in or come from Asia. You cannot talk about how God treats women in the abstract without it affecting real women and how people think about us and treat us and the ways we as people empower or disempower other people to live as Christians, or how apt we are to reject Christianity because it simply does not work as a realistic worldview.

An example of this is a discussion I read recently on social media between a group of mixed blind non-Christians and blind Christians who have experienced sighted Christians approaching them on the street and asking to lay hands on them so that Jesus can heal their blindness. The non-Christians in particular were incredibly repulsed by this experience, which unfortunately stems directly from the theology as put forth in the quoted post above.

Biblically, blind people are beggars, like Blind Bartimaeus, who come to Jesus asking to be healed, to be redeemed, to be given social standing and allowed re-entry into society. Blind people in ancient times were cursed; there is no denying that. They could not navigate or work at meaningful labor. They could not participate in civil government and were hardly better than lepers.

In third-world countries, blindness is the same today. Blind people are not offered an education and usually do not marry or have children. They are taught menial tasks such as basket weaving and are often a lifelong burden on their families or communities. They are poor, pitiful, in short, everything we assume blindness to be. My daughter, adopted from Ethiopia was "rescued" (cringe) from just such a life.

Contrast this with a blind person living in the Western developed world. Here, a blind person in ideal circumstances is taught to read and write using alternative methods. This blind person (we'll use the male pronoun for convenience and brevity) is taught to navigate using a white cane or guide dog (for example), and is allowed access to all public facilities and places of business. He can travel anywhere he wants to go by himself, and can hold a job is nearly any field. He can work meaningfully, marry and support a family, have hobbies, own and maintain a house, contribute to society, have honest dealings with other members of society and have a comparable quality of life to a person with perfect sight.

‘Lord I was deaf’. Images of Disability in the Hymnbooks

Before we began to refer to the metaphor of sight and blindness we had arrived at a discriminating criterion. This was to ask ourselves if the metaphor suggested a disparaging comparison with groups of disabled people. I would now like to suggest a more searching rationale for this. If sighted and hearing people use the imagery of light and sound to express their experiences in the world they inhabit that is natural and inevitable. However, if able bodied people make disparaging allusions to people who have very different experiences this may not only betray ignorance of those ways of life and is discourteous, but may reinforce a prejudice against disabled people that will in turn give credibility to the view that Christian faith does not offer answers to the search for equal opportunities: it may actually be part of the problem. In other words, when we consider the sliding scale of metaphors from those that refer explicitly to various impaired states through to those which merely use the various ideas of light and sound, sight and speech, we should distinguish between those that speak to our own world, the one we know and experience, and those that refer negatively to other peoples worlds of which we have no first-hand experience.

In saying this, I do not overlook the fact that there may be hymn writers who are themselves blind yet continue to use disparaging metaphors of their own condition. This is to be explained by the combination of a piety which does not adopt a critical stance towards the tradition, and immersion in the assumptions of a society in which the inferiority and the marginalisation of disabled people were simply taken for granted.

In the light of our new principle it is possible to comment on the situation of people with other impairments such as those who use wheelchairs for mobility. Biblical precedent such as the eschatological hope expressed in Isaiah 35.5 and some of the miracles in the gospels do encourage the hymn writers to refer to lame people. Lameness can be used as a disparaging metaphor for sin. Such expressions are as unacceptable as the explicitly pejorative references to blind and deaf people. Merely referring to standing up, however, comes into the category of speaking of the body’s symbolism which is natural to those who have legs and can use them. A wheelchair user should no more object to ‘stand up and bless the Lord, ye people of His choice’ than I as a blind person have any right to object to ‘the Lord is my light, my strength and my salvation’. True, the Lord is not my light, because I have no light sensation, and wheelchair users cannot respond to the invitation to stand up in the presence of the Lord. However, just as able bodied people should not thrust the demands of their experience upon others, so people with impairments should not demand that able-bodied worlds should conform to theirs. The principle is to rejoice in your own world without making disparaging remarks or setting unreasonable limits upon the natural life-worlds of others.

A limited range of disabilities are referred to in the hymnbooks. These are usually those that find a symbolic place within the vocabulary of the bible: blindness, deafness, being lame or having leprosy. We referred earlier to the hymn ‘Thine arm O, Lord in days of old’, quoting the line ‘the beggar with his sightless eyes’. This replaced the line, found in the older version, ‘the leper with his tainted life’ which has not reappeared in that particular hymn since about 1950. References to diseases such as AIDS and cancer are rarely if ever found in hymns, partly because they are contemporary conditions, and partly because they are not referred to in the bible.

Disability Theology

The most powerful discussion of God to arise from within disability studies comes from Nancy Eiesland's proposal of the Disabled God, in the book by the same title (Eiesland, 1994). Eiesland identifies herself as "a woman with disabilities, a sociologist of religion, and a professor at a seminary in the United States" (Eiesland, 1998a, p. 103). These three elements come together in her theology, which centers on what she calls "the mixed blessing of the body," especially as these relate to the lived experience of disability. From her sociological perspective, she is especially interested in theories and methods that empower and provide a foundation for political action. She uses the image of the Disabled God to support such political action, particularly through processes of resymbolization. She is also interested in deconstructing notions of normalcy. She writes: "My own body composed as it is of metal and plastic, as well as bone and flesh, is my starting point for talking about 'bones and braces bodies' as a norm of embodiment" (Eiesland, 1994, p. 22). Her proposal is a model of God that makes sense of her "normal" experience of embodiment, as well as one that supports and participates in the struggle for liberation of all people with disabilities.
Eiesland argues that traditional images of God, especially those that lead to views of disability as either a blessing or a curse, are inadequate. Within her own experience, she wondered whether such a God could even understand disability, let alone be meaningful to her. While working at a rehabilitation hospital, she asked the residents one day what they thought.
After a long silence, a young African-American man said, "If God was in a sip-puff, maybe He would understand." I was overwhelmed by this image: God in a sip-puff wheelchair, the kind used by many quadriplegics that enables them to maneuver the chair by blowing and sucking on a straw-like device. Not an omnipotent, self-sufficient God, but neither a pitiable, suffering servant. This was an image of God as a survivor, as one of those whom society would label "not feasible," "unemployable," with "questionable quality of life" (Eiesland, 2002, p. 13).

Eiesland made a connection between this image and the resurrection story in which Jesus appears to his followers and reveals his injured hands and feet (Luke 24:36-39). She notes "This wasn't exactly God in a sip-puff, but here was the resurrected Christ making good on the promise that God would be with us, embodied, as we are — disabled and divine. In this passage, I recognized a part of my hidden history as a Christian" (Eiesland, 2002, p. 14). Eiesland suggests that Jesus reveals the Disabled God, and shows that divinity (as well as humanity) is fully compatible with experiences of disability. The imago Dei includes pierced hands and feet and side. According to Eiesland, this Disabled God is part of the "hidden history" of Christianity, because seldom is the resurrected Christ recognized as a deity whose hands, feet, and side bear the marks of profound physical impairment. As Rebecca Chopp notes in the introduction to this work, "The most astonishing fact is, of course, that Christians do not have an able-bodied God as their primal image. Rather, the Disabled God promising grace through a broken body is at the center of piety, prayer, practice, and mission" (Eiesland, 1994, p. 11).

Strength in Weakness: The Bible, Disability, and the Church

From an able-bodied reading of the Bible, it is easy to assume God wants to heal every person with a disability. In the New Testament, every person who encounters Jesus blind, deaf, or lame is restored to health. But theologian Amos Yong wants the church to read the Bible differently, seeing good news for people with disabilities as they are, and not as God might change them.

Crooked Healing: Disability, Vocation and the Theology of the Cross

There are few things more potentially useful to the disabled experience than the idea of vocation. Vocation places disability in a wider spectrum of the sacred calling. It implies that disabled people and their able-bodied counterparts are on equal spiritual footing. More than that, it suggests that disabled people can be seen as conduits for God’s grace and service rather than it only images of a broken creation in need of “fixing.”

Christians who aren't disabled have a much too simplistic view of Jesus' healings in the bible. And even the biblical authors had some of the same prejudices, equating disability with sin or portraying it as incompatible with following Jesus. Just because the bible has a certain view doesn't mean it's right- it could be ableist (or anti-Semitic, or sexist, etc). We need to learn about disability by listening to actual disabled people.

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This post is part of a series on the gospel of Matthew.

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