On ZOEgirl and saying how you really feel

Album cover for "Different Kind of Free." Image source.

ZOEgirl was a Christian band that was active in the early 2000's, around the time I was in high school. It was one of my favorite bands; my favorite song was Different Kind of Free.

Take my life, my liberty

It's all but a breath in the grand scheme of things

Oh I have found eternity

It's a different kind of free

And they can't take it from me

Big words about one's commitment to God, how it's so much bigger and more important than anything else, how it's worth dedicating your life to. 

Anyway, what are the members of ZOEgirl up to now? 

Well, Alisa Childers is an author, publishing books like Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity and Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed. She's all about responding to progressive Christianity and telling everyone why it's bad and we need to stand firm on the truths that conservative/evangelical Christianity taught us. Uh, as a queer ex-evangelical Christian I don't really agree with her on that.

(no idea what the other 2 members of ZOEgirl are doing now- I'm just writing about this because Childers came to my attention recently)

Anyway. Apparently Childers recently made a podcast discussing Sheila Wray Gregoire's book "The Great Sex Rescue" (which I reviewed here). Gregoire wrote a blog post in response: Alisa Childers Owes Evangelical Women an Apology for Dismissing Their Pain. "The Great Sex Rescue" calls out the conservative Christian teaching that wives are required to have sex with their husbands on demand, because men need it, and the wife is obligated to do all the work to make it a good experience for the husband, and nobody cares about women's orgasms, etc. It's very good that "The Great Sex Rescue" is responding to this teaching; it's extremely messed-up that the typical marriage advice from conservative Christians says things like that. But anyway, apparently on her podcast, Childers said no one's actually teaching this "obligation sex" message, no one's telling women they need to prioritize their husbands' "sexual needs" even when they haven't even healed from childbirth, etc. (Fact check: They ARE teaching that!) And apparently the podcast also spent a lot of time wondering if it's even okay to talk about sex and orgasms.

I don't know why this bothers me so much. I sang her songs expressing my feelings about my devotion to God, and 20 years later she has bad opinions about Christian teaching on sex and marriage... Why does this bother me so much? People are allowed to have bad opinions on things; it's not like this is some kind of massive betrayal of me personally because I was a fan of her music when I was in high school.

I guess it makes me realize that... the music, and the experience of enjoying the music, was a different thing than I thought it was. Singing those worship songs, I was fooled into thinking it was an environment where I can be completely honest about my deepest emotional, intimate feelings about God. When I sang those songs, that was real; those were my real feelings. And now, 20 years later, she's the sort of Christian who would condemn me for being a queer Christian- it's not emotionally safe to tell her my feelings about God.

I don't want to show my most real and raw feelings about how I love Jesus, in front of Christians who will judge me and say I don't really love Jesus because I don't hold the "right" beliefs. I don't hold the "right" beliefs about so many things, spanning the whole range of evangelical Christianity, but we can make it simple by just saying I'm queer.

Again, this isn't really something that Childers is doing wrong- as if our favorite singers owe it to us to agree with us about all the big important things in our lives, just because we find their music to be emotionally meaningful. It's more about... like... me wanting an environment where I can express how I really feel, with complete trust that the people seeing it would accept me for who I am, falsely believing that ZOEgirl's music was that environment, and now realizing it wasn't. Realizing I should have my guard up a little more. That I always have to think about who sees me and what they think of me, and filter my expression accordingly.

Praying Non-Literally

The tortoise and the hare. Image source.

In my post The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray, I said that instead of viewing prayer as talking to God, "What if prayer is a ritualized way to express our hopes and our understanding of our place in the world?" And I want to flesh that out a little more.

Maybe "ritualized" isn't the right word- but what I want to say is, a mode of communication where we format the words into a certain structure/genre, but the actual meaning of it isn't the surface-level statements of that structure. The actual meaning is something more abstract and deeper, and the structure is just a vehicle for communicating those deeper ideas.

Some examples:

1. Satire

Satire is a style of writing where you take some bit of truth and then present it in an exaggerated way in order to show how ridiculous it is. So at the surface level, the statements in the satire are not true. But their purpose is to make a point.

For example, The Onion is a satire news site. The articles say things that are not true- but there's a purpose to it, and sometimes they make really insightful points. Here's an Onion link:

Experts: Ebola Vaccine At Least 50 White People Away - This one's from 2014, and it says that medical experts have publicly discussed a timeline for an ebola vaccine in terms of how many white people are affected. Okay, that's not true, no one said that. But the point it is making is that ebola is a deadly disease which the world should take seriously- but the world is not taking it seriously because mostly it's African people who are being affected by it. The point of the article is to call out the implicit racism in what kinds of issues get treated as important.

But if you just take it at face value, as if it's describing something that really happened, you will think that health experts really did say that ebola only really matters if it affects white people, and that everyone just nodded along and this is fine. No- the point of it is not to read it and accept that it's true; the point is to expose the racism in how the world was reacting to ebola.

2. Fables

A fable is a little story which is supposed to teach some kind of life lesson. Sometimes they have talking animals or magic- things that are not real. 

For example, "The Tortoise and the Hare" is an old fable where the tortoise and hare are having a race, and the hare runs fast initially but then gets distracted and doesn't finish, while the tortoise keeps plugging along and eventually crosses the finish line. And we are supposed to learn that "slow and steady wins the race."

This is not a true story, and if you think it's a true story, you'll get bogged down in all kinds of details. How did the tortoise and hare communicate with each other in order to agree on the rules for the race? Do animals understand the concept of a race? Do animals understand the concept of a finish line? If you ask all these questions, you're missing the point, because it's not a true story. But the point is to teach a lesson which is useful and true, in some sense.

3. Job interviews

On the surface, a job interview consists of an interviewer asking questions, and a candidate answering the questions. But the point is not "here is a question, now I will correctly answer the question." That's not the point at all. As a candidate, the important thing is not to answer the questions correctly; the important thing is to communicate a deeper message that says "I am the kind of person you would want to hire for this job." (And a secondary purpose is to find out information about the job, so you can decide for yourself if you would even want to work there or not.)

So for example, the interviewer asks, "What's your biggest strength?" You're not supposed to say what your actual biggest strength is, by some absolute objective measure. Maybe you're really good at making animal sounds, or pouring milk into cereal in exactly the right proportions, or making babies laugh... perhaps you're in the top 1% of people in some weird little niche ability, such that it would make sense to say that's your biggest strength. No! Don't tell the interviewer that!

The answer you actually need to give to this question is not "what's your biggest strength" but "talk about a strength you have, that is related to this job, that will make the interviewer believe that you are a person they should hire."

Or, maybe the interviewer says, "Tell me about a problem you had in your previous job, and how you solved it." You don't have to take this super literally. Maybe you can't think of an example from your previous job, but you have a good example from the job you worked at before that. That's fine! Talk about that! It's not about the literal words of the interviewers' questions; it's about communicating a deeper message about what kind of person you are, and that you are a competent person they would want to hire.

Don't *lie* in a job interview, obviously, but it's okay to not directly answer the question but instead talk about something along the lines of the general idea of the question, with the primary goal being presenting yourself as a good job candidate, rather than literally answering the question.

The surface-level statements all need to be true, but the actual *meaning* of the job interview is not in the surface-level statements.

4. Sharing links to news stories

Let's say you have a website, and you post links to news articles. And a lot of these links are about some topic, like, immigrants committing crimes, or something. Each individual story is true on its own- statistically, there must be immigrants who commit crimes; any large population will inevitably have some members who commit crimes. It's certainly possible to collect the facts about specific cases where this happens, and write true news articles.

So, each individual story is true, but the effect of sharing so many of them is that it creates the impression that this is really common. That's the "deeper meaning" being communicated. And this might be unintentional in a lot of cases- maybe you consume a lot of content related to some certain topic, and it makes you subconsciously believe that whatever you're reading about is more common and normal than it is in reality.

You can even get cases where something happens, and we feel like we shouldn't talk about it because it plays into some harmful political narrative. I really hate this, this tendency to want to cover up true facts about specific real events just because we know that people will not take those facts as simply describing the literal events that happened, but will draw sweeping conclusions. 

5. "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

People are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. I recently realized, when kids answer this question, it's not about what job they're actually going to have when they grow up. It's a way of expressing their interests and their sense of identity. So it's not literally true, but it's still communicating something meaningful.

When I was a kid, I had this book where every page was one of the grades from kindergarten to 12th grade, and every year you were supposed to glue a picture of yourself onto the corresponding page, and write some stuff about what your life was like that year- and each page had the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" along with some checkboxes with potential jobs. For the earlier pages, like for kindergarten kids, the choices were like, "doctor", "firefighter", "policeman", and then you flip ahead to the high school pages and they're like "engineer", "salesperson." Middle-school-Perfect-Number was like, wow this really exposes how fake the whole "what do you want to be when you grow up" thing is. 5-year-old kid checks the box that says "firefighter" but then they grow up a little bit and we don't even offer that checkbox any more, nobody actually believes you when you're 5 years old and you say you're going to be a firefighter.

But! It turns out, it *was* useful and meaningful, even though it has no actual connection to the job the kid will have, decades into the future. It's not actually about that. It's about how the kid understands their own identity, and what they imagine their ideal life to be.

6. Prayer

So now we come back to prayer. Full disclosure, I don't pray, because of all the, uh, unfortunate implications when you really take seriously the belief that God takes action in response to prayer. God's gonna help me with whatever first-world problem is bothering me, while not taking action to help other people with much bigger problems? God's going to choose to take action to answer prayers of people who believe the correct things and pray with the correct attitude... and therefore if some horrible tragedy happens to you, it must be your own fault for not praying correctly?

I just don't want to be a part of that at all. It makes sense that *I* prioritize myself, and I put in more effort to solve my "first-world problems" than I do to help victims of human-rights violations on the other side of the world, but God is supposed to be objective and love everyone equally- it is quite ****ed up if They are actively intervening to help me, when there are wars and atrocities happening to other people.

But here's an idea I'm starting to explore: Prayer isn't *literally* talking to God. God does not hear our prayers and then take action in response to them. Instead, prayer is about using the literary structure of "here's a message we want to tell God" in order to communicate deeper ideas about how we view ourselves and what kind of world we want.

For example: In my 2016 post, Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk, I looked up statistics about the leading causes of death in the US- the top causes are heart disease and cancer. But people aren't constantly praying "God, protect us from heart disease." Instead, people pray for safety from violence, plane crashes, terrorism, etc- things that statistically have a very small chance of affecting you personally. I pointed out that people pray about the things that they are worried about, rather than the things that truly pose a danger to them. And that if Christians truly believe that God acts powerfully in response to our prayers, we should harness that power by identifying the biggest actual threats- using statistics, not whatever fearful thoughts pass through our heads after reading the news- and targeting our prayers toward those threats.

But in that post, I also said this is a terrible idea because then we would have to think about heart disease and cancer constantly, and stress ourselves out, in order to pray most effectively. That's a terrible way to live, and I just cannot believe in a God who chooses to give protection to people according to the amount of worrying they do over heart disease and car accidents which are most likely to occur within 10 miles of their home.

But get this: What if prayer *isn't* a process by which we convince God to intervene in our lives and help us? What if it's *not* true that by naming a specific scenario in your prayers, you tweak the probability of that specific scenario occurring in real life? What if it's not about affecting God at all, but it's about our own feelings and how we view ourselves? If viewed that way, it does make sense that the things people pray about are the things they're worried about, and it doesn't make sense to come up with additional worries to pray about in order to get additional protection from God.

Okay, here's a question: Maybe Christians already *do* view prayer non-literally, and it's just me who misunderstood it and thought God was really gonna do something? Well, no. Christians talk about how they went through medical troubles or financial troubles, and God helped them through it *because* they prayed. "Prayer works!" So people really do believe that God acts in response to prayer.

Still, though, Christians don't actually act in accordance with that belief. They don't treat prayer as something so urgent and powerful, with the Almighty God of the universe standing by to listen to whatever thoughts and requests we have. In practice it's more like... kinda boring and feels like it's not accomplishing anything.

Another thing: Back when I was evangelical and I prayed a lot, I used to wonder why we're supposed to pray over and over for the same thing. I would spend lots of time begging and begging God, over and over, the same things over and over. But, why isn't it enough to just tell God 1 time? Why do They need to be reminded over and over? Are They just really bad at staying on task, and They'll forget to do it if you don't keep reminding Them? Do They need some kind of to-do list app? Jesus said, "your Father knows what you need before you ask him", so why do we even need to pray at all, let alone praying multiple times for the same thing?

(I would say that part of the answer, from an evangelical perspective, is that God only answers prayers if we truly mean it and we ask with the right attitude. If you just pray 1 time and assume God will do it, then you're not taking it seriously enough, and you're acting like you're entitled to God doing things for you. You have to pray over and over to show God you're really serious and humble. Yeah- in this blog post, I'm specifically focusing on the "asking God to do things" aspect of prayer, but evangelicals would tell you that prayer is much more than that.)

Also, I'm not saying "If you look at how prayer is talked about in the bible, and how Christians talk about it, it makes sense in this 'non-literal' interpretation rather than viewing it as 'talking to God.'" No, it's not that simple- I think there are some *aspects* that line up more with the non-literal interpretation, but at the same time, there are plenty of bible verses that definitely talk about prayer like it's literally going to affect God's actions and cause things to happen in the real world.

And I'm not saying, "Well, Christians say prayer is 'talking to God' but that's not literal, it's just a symbol that points to a deeper meaning, so it's fine that people are describing it as 'talking to God'" - no, the implications of "talking to God" are very different from this "it's about how we understand ourselves and what kind of world we want to live in" that I'm describing. If you really go all in on "I'm talking to God" and try to live according to the implications of that, it's bad. So let's not say it's "talking to God" if it's not.

Anyway, this is just an idea I'm exploring. Not sure if I really believe it or not. For a long time, I've been very firm about "I don't pray" because of these issues when it's understood as "talking to God" but maybe I would be interested in it if we viewed it a different way.

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Related

The Prayer That Jesus Taught Us To Pray

Prayer Rates Don't Correlate With Actual Risk

On believing that "prayer works"

What Does God Do When You Pray For An Anonymized Patient By Bed Number?

I Figured Out What The 1-10 Pain Scale Is Actually About

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. The cookies that fueled votes for women (December 14) "Cookies, cakes, pies and treats like these little kiss cakes were sold at bake sales around Salt Lake City and all over the West. The proceeds helped suffragists crisscross the country to make their case for women's rights."

2. To 'graduate' from poverty, they can borrow to build a business. So why aren't they? (December 13) "'What we're seeing clearly is that it's deeper than you need money to make money,' he says. 'You also need to be able to take on risk to make money. And that's a double whammy for someone who's poor.'"

3. Questions of accuracy arise as Washington Post uses AI to create personalized podcasts (December 13) "In a statement, the Washington Post Guild — which represents newsroom employees and other staff — tells NPR, 'We are concerned about this new product and its rollout,' alleging that it undermines the Post's mission and its journalists' work." This sounds like a bad idea.

4. LET’S PLAY: ‘Text With Jesus’ (December 1) "That’s a nice dodging of the actual question. But real talk here: The chatbot can’t actually answer this question because no Christian can."

And Captain Cassidy's other posts on "Text With Jesus": AI meets Christianity in ‘Text with Jesus’ and Text With Jesus: Why an AI Satan scares some Christians 

So apparently there's this "Text With Jesus" app which uses Chat GPT to create chatbots of bible personalities, like Jesus. Okay, so, the first thought I had was, wouldn't it be something, to be able to pray and then get an actual response back? Whomst among us has not had the experience of desperately praying, asking God why, and never receiving any answer? But a chatbot- it *has* to reply. Wow, prayer would be a totally different thing if it came with a guarantee like that.

But as Captain Cassidy's investigation shows, the answers that "Jesus"/the other bible characters give are very boilerplate, Christian cliche answers. This is all stuff you can hear at church. Nothing new. Nothing real. And, I mean, of course it can't be anything new, it's just a chatbot. It's not real. 

(And apparently you can choose options about which denomination of Christianity you are in, and the chatbots will answer according to the beliefs of that denomination. I feel like that kinda breaks the illusion. Here, choose the set of things you already believe, and then this chatbot will regurgitate them back at you, in a quirky bible-character voice.)

If I had the real Jesus captive and required to answer me, I would ask extremely pointed and emotional questions about the problem of evil. I kinda wanted to try that on this chatbot, but you have to download it first, and that's too much trouble, also, it's just silly for me to treat this as if there's a possibility of actually getting new truths from it- it's a chatbot.

I wonder what kind of person uses this app and views it as helpful for their spiritual life. Are there people actually texting all their prayers into this app, and it feels better than just praying the normal way and "listening to God"? That seems... bad because it's fake. Like instead of experiencing the actual struggle of trying to "listen to God", looking for answers and getting nothing, overanalyzing your thoughts and "signs" you might have seen, you just get this easy-to-read AI response. 

But also, this seems quite limited in how much enjoyment you can get out of its responses. It's all very boilerplate, nice-sounding churchy language. Don't know how long one can stand to listen to that, when one wants *real* answers.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump administration's 'worst of the worst' includes pregnant, postpartum women (December 12) "In one Louisiana facility, according to a Senate report, at least 14 pregnant women were visible during the staff’s visit."

2. WHO expert group’s new analysis reaffirms there is no link between vaccines and autism (December 11, via) Can't believe we really have to keep talking about this.

3. The Trump administration's authoritarian house of cards is starting to fall down (December 12) "Kilmar Abrego Garcia is '[o]n his way home.' Another grand jury rejected DOJ's effort to indict Letitia James. And, Indiana Republicans said no to Trump's redistricting pressure."

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Mark Zuckerberg Demos New Facebook AI And It Couldn’t Have Gone Worse (September 18, via) "You’ve already combined the base ingredients, so now grate a pear to add to the sauce."

And here's another one about AI: California issues historic fine over lawyer’s ChatGPT fabrications (September 22) "The fine appears to be the largest issued over AI fabrications by a California court and came with a blistering opinion stating that 21 of 23 quotes from cases cited in the attorney’s opening brief were made up."

2. Giving people money helped less than I thought it would (August 19) "Many of the studies are still ongoing, but, at this point, the results aren’t “uncertain.” They’re pretty consistent and very weird."

3. Your Review: Participation in Phase I Clinical Pharmaceutical Research (September 5) "This phrase, 'better safe than sorry,' overwhelmingly characterizes the protocols of research clinics at every level, except the level where they start to ask whether participants might become more likely to pass through their filters by lying than meeting all their criteria."

4. Groundbreaking Analysis Upends Our Understanding of Psychiatric Holds (July 23) "Why would an intervention intended to help end up doing harm? The researchers offer and investigate several plausible explanations. Involuntary hospitalization can be a deeply disruptive experience. Patients are often forcibly taken by police, held for days, and sometimes medicated without consent. Such experiences might isolate individuals from their support networks, including family and existing mental health providers. Furthermore, hospitalizations can disrupt employment and increase homelessness, causing a spiral of instability that exacerbates rather than alleviates mental distress."

5. Did Amazon trick people into paying for Prime? Federal case goes to trial (September 23) "One example regulators offered showed a large yellow button 'Get FREE Two-Day Shipping' as a swift way to sign up without much detail about recurring membership costs, while a small blue hyperlink 'No thanks, I do not want fast, free shipping' would avoid signing up for Prime."

Yeah, that aspect of the Amazon checkout process is one of the best examples of a company being dishonest and trying to trick you into signing up for something. You literally have to click "I do not want fast, free shipping" to get past that page.

And an update on that: Amazon to pay $2.5 billion to settle U.S. lawsuit that it 'tricked' people into Prime (September 25)

6. Beastly Christianity (September 24) "It was a powerful, compelling argument and it prevailed in the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. This was theology from “the global south” contributing to and reforming the dominant theology from Europe and America. It changed the way white Reformed Christians around the world understood a key passage from the book of Romans, an epistle that is one of the most-studied texts in all of the Bible for Reformed Christians."

7. China’s ‘Worst Handwriting Group in History’ Rewrites Grief (September 25) "The turning point came in October, when one user shared her father’s nearly illegible scrawl from an ICU bed."

Oh man, I am so bad at reading Chinese handwriting. Yes, I can read Chinese- by which I mean, on a computer screen. In a book. On a sign. Printed on a label. You know, Chinese in a standard font. But people's handwriting, that's totally different. You see, each Chinese character, if written correctly, has certain strokes that go in certain places- but when people are writing by hand, they often collapse a bunch of strokes into some kind of scribble, in order to write faster. I very much do not have the skill of figuring out what strokes a scribble was originally supposed to be.

8. On Thought Experiments (September 24) "Everywhere I go people are proposing thought experiments that involve people-seeds landing on the carpet or filling the observable universe with tightly packed shrimps or something wacky about pills and then getting very angry at each other about the results."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Jimmy Kimmel's show is returning to ABC on Tuesday, but not all stations will air it (September 23, via) 

Jimmy Kimmel is Back! (September 24) 

"Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can't take a joke."

2. 3 thoughts from an autism researcher on Trump's acetaminophen and vaccine claims (September 23) That felon is out here saying that pregnant people shouldn't take Tylenol, or their baby will end up autistic. (And no, this is very much NOT what the scientific evidence says.)

This annoys me so much, because even though it's not true, it's going to get added to "the pregnancy rules." Yeah, when you're pregnant, random people feel entitled to judge you for what you're eating/doing/etc, and tell you that you are harming your baby. And there are SO MANY pregnancy rules. Don't eat deli meat. Don't eat pre-cut fruit. Don't eat sushi. Don't eat fish that are high in mercury. Everyone is so paranoid- including the pregnant people themselves- and there's this huge burden placed on pregnant people, all these things you're not allowed to do. And you have to follow these rules because you'd do anything for your baby, right? You wouldn't want to be selfish and put your baby at risk, right?

(I wrote about "the pregnancy rules" here: "Expecting Better": Asking the Right Questions About Pregnancy)

Any kind of medicine at all, pregnant people are already paranoid about taking it, and feel like they should just tough it out and take no medicine because it might put their baby at risk. Any kind of medicine, regardless of what evidence there is about its safety. This is not logical- there's also a risk to the unborn baby if the pregnant person has an actual medical problem and it goes untreated. Why isn't anybody talking about that? Anyway, now Tylenol is gonna be one of those things that brings random busybodies into pregnant people's lives. One of those things which feels so emotionally high-stakes when you're pregnant because "how could you put your baby at risk????" but the evidence doesn't say that at all.

And another link: Trump admin 'seems to care very little about autistic people,' says advocate (September 24) "But it also just continues to ratchet up the stigma. They talk about autistic people, like our existence is some sort of plague."

3. Georgia senators demand answers on more than a dozen deaths in immigration detention (September 23)

4. Trans Patients File Groundbreaking Legal Complaint Against UPMC For Capitulation To Trump (September 24) "Now, plaintiffs are seeking reimbursement for medical expenses associated with the termination of care, emotional distress, and attorneys’ fees and costs; urging the Human Relations Commission to investigate UPMC for discriminatory practices; and pursuing immediate injunctive relief, so that all trans people and families devastated by the care stoppage can once again access evidence-based, life-saving treatment for gender dysphoria."

5. Deadly shooting at Dallas ICE detention facility may have been politically motivated (September 24)

Despite fear, migrants show up for ICE appointments in Dallas and are turned away (September 25) "Marcos, who asked to use his first name because he has a pending immigration case, says he is worried that ICE will not excuse his missed appointment, even though the building is closed and still an active crime scene."

6. A statue of Trump and Epstein holding hands in D.C. is removed as fast as it appeared (September 24) You guys have to see this statue, it's amazing.

Who Gives Permission to Autistic Adults?

Stamp that says "Approved." Image source.

If you don't like something, can you just not do it?

Some things, yes, I can avoid without needing to think about it, and without anyone thinking I'm weird for it. I don't wear skinny jeans, because they're so tight, the fabric is touching me, I can't have fabric touching me like that, I just can't. But nobody cares whether or not I wear skinny jeans. Nobody tries to make me wear them. I avoid skinny jeans because of autistic reasons, but this behavior is invisible to everyone. And for myself, it wasn't like I agonized over it, like "am I allowed to not buy skinny jeans?" For clothes, I just buy whatever I want, obviously.

For a lot of other things, though, I want to know "am I allowed to not do this?"

Am I allowed to go to an amusement park and not ride roller coasters? Am I allowed to not watch a fireworks show?

Am I allowed to choose to work in a job where I don't have to interact with tons of people? Am I allowed to take sensory issues into consideration when choosing a job? For these questions, I literally had never even thought about that, until I read the book "Asperger's on the Job" which I reviewed on the blog in 2017. It was so shocking to me, how the book asked readers to think through their specific autistic needs- about social interaction, need for structured routines, sensory stuff, etc- and take that into account when choosing a job. Really? Take that into account? Is that allowed? I had always thought... if you just can't work in some certain kind of environment, well that is just a silly thing you have to get over. Just get over it and be a normal person about it. Don't treat it as an actual real need that should be treated seriously and accommodated.

When you're an undiagnosed autistic child, you get forced into lots of stuff that you're not comfortable with. The adults say you have to learn to get used to it, you can't avoid it forever. The adults look into the future and imagine how limiting, how embarrassing it would be, if you lived your whole life, into adulthood, so immature that you can't tolerate some normal thing that everyone else is fine with. No no no, they won't let you grow into someone so pathetic. You have to get used to these things, as a child. Get used to them, and become a normal person, seeing your future of normalcy and non-wimpiness laid out before you. See, that's the future you want, right?

Am I allowed? Am I allowed to treat my sensory pain as a real thing, and take real steps to avoid stimuli that cause it? No, you're not allowed- if you do that, you're going down the path to being the wimp. No, get on the path to being a normal person instead.

At some point, as an adult, I had this wild idea that maybe I *could* just avoid things that cause me sensory pain. Could I? Who would give me permission? This is something I have discussed with 2 different therapists before, maybe because I was working off a model of therapy that says the therapist is the person who can give this kind of permission. (But now I no longer think this is a correct view of what therapy is.) 

When I told them about it, I was coming from a framework of "Common thinking is that I should try as hard as I can to be normal, and it's not okay that I have these sensory issues. But I just thought of this groundbreaking new idea, it sounds totally wild but hear me out, what if I avoid these things, and (if necessary) politely explain to people that I just can't- I know this idea is so strange and unheard-of, but I've really thought through it and here are my reasons, do you think it's okay?" I didn't say all that, obviously- those were background assumptions that I had, that I didn't even realize it was possible to have different beliefs on.

And they didn't really give me the response I wanted- they treated it as pretty unremarkable that I could take care of myself in this way. They didn't take it like some huge controversial thing that I would need permission for. Okay...

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Sometimes on the internet, I happen across articles that people have written which explain the habits they use to help them get things done/ think more clearly/ be healthy/ etc. Sometimes this is in the context of ADHD (or similar), like "I've always had trouble focusing and getting things done- but here is the system I came up with that works for me." And sometimes they don't mention any kind of neurodiverse reason that they needed to come up with such a complicated system- but umm honestly, the kind of person who develops a whole quirky system to manage their daily life, and then writes a long article about it... I mean, I have my suspicions about whether that's a neurotypical thing to do.

I think it's great that people find their own unique system that works for them, and great that they write about it, to show readers an example. I don't think I've seen any such articles that had suggestions that were directly useful to me personally, but I love the idea of structuring your life in a way that's extremely weird, just because that's what's helpful for you. A lifetime of experience living as yourself will teach you what common "productivity tips" don't work for you, and will make you the most qualified person to find the ones that *will* work for you.

I love the idea of finding what works for you, and doing it, without needing permission.

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Is it okay to not try to be "normal"? Is it okay to know myself and my own needs, and take deliberate action that doesn't fit with society's opinion about how people "should" act? How do I know if it's okay? Who can give this permission?

---

Related:

Is Therapy About Becoming "Normal"?

“Easy” Jobs and “Hard” Jobs 

"Color Taste Texture" (a cookbook for autistics/ anyone with food aversions)

"God Is Always With Me (Psalm 139)" (kids' book review)

Book cover for "God is Always with Me"

I got this board book for my little daughter: God Is Always with Me: Psalm 139, by Dandi Daley Mackall. Here's my review of it.

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Overview

This book is based on Psalm 139, where the psalmist talks about how God is with him wherever he goes, how God knows him completely, and God loves and protects him. This book is NOT just the text of the psalm- it's more like, the same theme as the psalm, but with examples that kids will be able to relate to. And it rhymes.

For example:

If I climb, climb, climb up the tallest tree,

Even way up high, God is watching me.

If I swim down, down in the ocean blue,

Deep as I can go, God is down there too.

The book mentions things kids might be worried bout, like a thunderstorm, or falling off their bike, or going to a new school, and says God is with them through all of it.

Also, it's a board book, which is great for my daughter because she is a clever little thing and she tears books. This one, she has not managed to tear it.

Also, this book uses he/him pronouns for God. 

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I love this

So, my overall opinion on this book is, it's great. I love Psalm 139, and I want to share it with my kids. I'm really into the concept of incarnation- God is with us. Incarnation feels real and powerful to me, and it's one of the most important aspects of the Christianity I believe in.

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But also, I have some concerns about how this is presented to kids

There's one thing I'm not quite comfortable about... People tell kids "don't worry, God is with you" in the context of normal childhood fears and anxieties that don't actually pose any danger. Your kid is afraid of monsters under the bed, your kid is nervous about going to a new school, that sort of thing. There's no actual danger, it's just a matter of managing your feelings. Normal emotional development phases.

Is this a problem, though? We're saying "God is with you" and we actually mean "get over it, you're fine." Or, if I wanted to be a little more cynical, an imaginary protector for an imaginary problem.

What if there's an actual danger, that a kid is facing? They've been told "God is with you" as if it means "don't worry, God won't let anything bad happen to you," but that's just not true.

And I'm autistic, and there were many times, as a child, when I was scared or nervous about something, and adults didn't see the problem and thought I needed to just get over it, maybe even told me "God is with you" as a way of telling me to get over it- but actually I *was* having an actual problem. Sensory pain that truly is unbearable. And later, as an adult, anxiety and depression which required therapy and possibly drugs. Mental health is a real thing- you don't fix those problems just by saying "God is with you."

Here's how I put it in my post Perfect Number Watches VeggieTales "Where's God When I'm Scared?" (1993), "As I said, being a kid w undiagnosed autism, having my very reasonable reactions to overwhelming sensory stimuli being read as 'fear', & being told 'don't be afraid' like that would fix it"

As I said, I'm really into the concept of incarnation, and I'm really into the belief that God is with us. But I don't think God actually takes actions in this world. (Maybe occasionally, rarely. But the vast majority of the time, no, They don't. When I say "rarely" I mean not even once in a lifetime.) They don't protect us. They don't stop bad things from happening to us. The idea of incarnation is very meaningful to me because They feel what we feel, all of it- but at the same time, I can see how it might come across as really weak and useless- what's the point, if God doesn't actually *do* anything to help us?

So what do I want my kids to get from this book? Part of me is like "well the book is fine if they don't take it that seriously- taking it too seriously would give them the message 'God won't let bad things happen to you' and 'just trust God instead of stepping up and solving your problems yourself'," and then part of me is like "this is the Incarnation we're talking about here, this is one of the most profound and exciting aspects of Christianity, why on earth would I want them to 'not take it too seriously'???"

Do I want to tell them "God is always with you, yay, God understands you and feels what you feel, BUT ALSO They're not gonna do anything to help if you have a problem"? That seems, uh, not very reassuring?

But now I'm the one "taking it too seriously"- like, I just want to introduce my kids to the concept of incarnation, that's all, we don't have to get into all these details, right?

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Anyway, yeah, overall I think this book is great for my kids. I have a lot of thoughts on it myself- and maybe I'll discuss this more in-depth with my kids, when my daughter is old enough to stop tearing books and speculate about the nature of God instead.

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Related:

God Is With Us (a post about autism) 

I Don't Want My Baby To Be "Brave"

Reviews of Christian Children's Books 

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

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Cracker Barrel, Anglican Converts, and Tradition’s Aesthetic (August 25, via) "That draw into nostalgia—even or especially nostalgia for something we never experienced like the rural South of the 1930s or the high medieval English cathedral—can drive us to over-inflate continuities between ourselves and the past and to idealize rituals, expressions and—in the case of church and Cracker Barrel—aesthetics we think capture our imagined communities in their purest form."

Related to this is the idea that white people have a culture. I didn't get that when I was growing up- I thought the way I lived was just the regular way, and other people who ate weird food and celebrated weird holidays did so because it was their culture. The link talks about the misconception that the liturgical rituals in the Anglican church are the same as those from the very beginning of the church- the idea that these rituals are just neutral and normal and the way it always was- no, this is not true.

2. More Drowning Children (March 21) "God notices there is one extra spot in Heaven, and plans to give it to either you or your neighbor. He knows that you jump in the water and save one child per day, and your neighbor (if he were in the same situation) would save zero. He also knows that you are willing to pay 80% of the cost of a lifeguard, and your neighbor (who makes exactly the same amount of money as you) would pay 0%. However, in reality, the river and the drowning children are going by your house, not your neighbor’s house. Which of you should get the spot in Heaven?"

3. AI Companies’ Race for Engagement Has a Body Count (August 28, via) "Instead of providing meaningful safety measures, transparency, age assurance, and data privacy protections, Meta and others have chosen to build platforms that deliberately blur the line between human and machine."

The thing that really gets me about this is, I know that some people will respond by saying, well, that's just how an LLM is, you don't really know how it works internally or what it's going to do in every situation, so this is not anybody's fault, it's just the way it is. But I think this is the wrong way of looking at it- companies should be held accountable for making a product that will respond in unpredictable (and possibly dangerous) ways. There's no guarantee that this is safe, and yet they're selling it.

4. BREAKING: Eurgh, oh God, there’s a texture (August 29, via) "Even when you successfully manage to scrub away the last of the peanut butter, its memory will stain your hands, causing you to experience a level of anguish previously only felt by Lady Macbeth."

This is so real. This is exactly what it's like.

5. Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce Make Their First Public Appearance as an Engaged Couple—Just a Few Miles From NFL Star’s $6 Million Mansion (August 29) Aww that's great! (I am a Taylor Swift fan.)

6. Un-Reformed history (August 28) "Bai imagines that he’s positioning himself as a reasonable centrist and Serious Person because he’s rejecting “critical race theory,” but what he’s actually rejecting is total depravity and original sin."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Florida's 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention facility to be empty 'within a few days' (August 28) 

2. 2 firefighters arrested by Border Patrol at Washington’s Bear Gulch Fire (August 28) "In a statement Thursday, Sen. Patty Murray slammed the arrests as unnecessary, and demanded “immediate answers” as to why the men were arrested on the job, and what the immigration enforcement policy is during active wildfires."

3. Hundreds of unaccompanied Guatemalan children can stay in the U.S. for now, judge says (August 31) "'In the dead of night on a holiday weekend, the Trump administration ripped vulnerable, frightened children from their beds and attempted to return them to danger in Guatemala,' said Efrén Olivares, a lead attorney at the National Immigration Law Center. 'We are heartened the Court prevented this injustice from occurring before hundreds of children suffered irreparable harm.'"

Also: A high schooler stays back as his family, separated by deportation, returns to Guatemala (April 26) "Two weeks after federal officials arrested his father, Alex drove his mom and siblings to the airport for their flight to Guatemala. He's faced with finishing his senior year of high school without his mom or dad and finding a way to make it on his own with his older brother. Alex just turned 18."

4. Michigan AG Warns UM Hospitals Not To Capitulate Over Trump's Trans Ban, Calls Decision Likely "Illegal" (August 27) "'This administration draws most of its power from the willingness of its targets to capitulate without a fight, abandoning their own principles and interests, and throwing disfavored populations under the bus,' Nessel continued. 'Despite repeated successful legal challenges to actions by this administration, UM has chosen instead to sacrifice the health, well-being, and likely the very lives of Michigan children, to protect itself from the ire of an administration who, oftentimes, engages in unlawful actions itself.'"

5. Another major medical association breaks from CDC as ob/gyn group recommends Covid-19  vaccines during pregnancy (August 23) "'While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently removed its recommendation that pregnant and lactating individuals receive updated COVID-19 vaccines, ACOG’s recommendations have not changed,' according to the updated practice advisory. 'The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists continues to recommend the use of updated COVID-19 vaccines in individuals contemplating pregnancy and in pregnant, recently pregnant, and lactating individuals.'"

Is Therapy About Becoming "Normal"?

A parking pass sitting on a therapist's couch, saying, "I dunno, doc, I guess I'm just always waiting for someone else to validate me." Image source.

Trying to organize my thoughts about what exactly therapy *is*.

For most of my life, I have conceptualized therapy like this: The purpose of therapy is to become normal. There are 2 types of people in the world: normal people and messed-up people. Very binary. If you find that your emotional difficulties are so bad that you start to think "maybe it's because I'm one of the messed-up people," you should get yourself to therapy real quick and get yourself fixed, to be normal. Better do it right away, before anyone notices that you're a messed-up person- because messed-up people deserve to be mocked by normal people.

(Don't take this as me being mean and judging other people- I'm talking about this because it's how I saw myself, when I was in middle school going to therapy for the first time.)

Basically, it was the idea that the world is fine just the way it is, and you should be fine with it. If you are having emotional difficulties with the state of the world, that's a *you* problem, and you need to get yourself straightened out behind closed doors so that your weirdness doesn't bother any normal people.

Sometimes I would hear people say "I used to have [some really bad psychological issue which was interfering with life]. But then I went to therapy, and now, well, I still [kind of have this problem to a lesser extent], it's not totally gone, but now it's manageable because I have learned how to [whatever they learned in therapy]." I interpreted this to mean that the goal of the therapy was that they would "become normal," ie, not have that problem at all any more, but that the therapy was only partly successful- perhaps because whatever variety of "messed-up" they are is incurable, perhaps because they didn't work hard enough in therapy to "get over it." I took it to mean that, even though the therapy didn't totally "work," they are trying to put a positive spin on it- at least they are able to handle life better than they used to, even though they're still not a "normal person."

And also, I thought therapists had inscrutable methods that clients weren't really supposed to understand- you just trust the therapist and go along with whatever they want you to do. I thought that if I knew the "big picture," if I knew the "strategy" that the therapist was using to address my issues, that would sort of "spoil" it. Like it wouldn't work if I had an understanding of the overall plan- I should simply experience it in the moment as it happens to me. 

These are the assumptions I had about what therapy is, what the purpose is- nobody ever really explicitly spelled it out like this, but that's what I thought it was.

But now I think, maybe it's more like this: There aren't "normal people" and "messed-up people." Everyone has difficulties in their life, everyone has feelings, everyone has healthy or unhealthy ways they deal with their problems and feelings. It's a spectrum, not a binary. And there could be a large variety of reasons why you might have more difficulty with something that other people do- related to your personality, experiences you've had in the past, etc- none of that means you're a "messed-up" person and you should be embarrassed- it just means that's how your own specific circumstances happened to overlap. For other people, they overlap differently. 

And therapy is about learning tools and strategies to be more emotionally healthy. Maybe other people- "normal" people- don't seem to need that, because the strategies they already have are working okay for their circumstances- but if you need more help, there's nothing wrong with that. 

It's not about becoming a "normal person." It's not about trying to get you back to this baseline of being like everybody else- NO ONE is like everyone else. It's about taking where you are as a starting point and working from there. What would be helpful to you, where you are right now? The goal is not to have the same emotional response as a "normal person" would. The goal is to manage your emotions such that you're able to live your life in a healthy way. What that looks like for you could be very different from how it looks for other people.

It's not about getting all your weirdnesses "fixed" behind closed doors so nobody ever realizes you're not "normal." It's about learning how to live in a reasonable and healthy way while still being a person who has/ had/ is susceptible to those "weirdnesses." (Because *everybody* has "weirdnesses" like that to some extent.) Maybe that means you avoid certain situations. Maybe it's about how you communicate your feelings and needs to other people. Maybe it's about being aware of your thought patterns. Etc. 

The way I see it now is, you are in charge of your own life, your own body, your own health. Therapy can be a useful tool to help you move your life in the direction that you want to go. It's not the therapist being in charge of you and telling you what to do and what's right for your life- it's you making the decisions, deciding what your own goals are, and choosing to use the therapist's services if you feel that would be helpful.

And about diagnoses- I don't think there's an "absolute truth" about whether you "have" or "don't have" various psychological conditions. Life is full of raw data, the experiences and feelings we have every day, and there's not one "correct" way to summarize that raw data into a useful model of how your brain works. But it can be helpful to put labels on this, in order to understand and communicate your feelings better, and to find useful information about what strategies have been helpful for other people. I'm thinking of labels like "autism" or "depression," based on my own experiences- but this idea that there's not an "absolute truth" and you are allowed to use a label if it's helpful for you, comes from my experiences in the queer community.

As for whether I should know the big picture, or if I'm just a helpless person that therapy happens to- well, if I see a therapist again in the future, I would definitely talk to them about their overall strategy. I want to understand how it's supposed to work, what the therapist thinks the goal is, etc. 

What do they teach in therapist school? I want to know.

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Related

I Figured Out What The 1-10 Pain Scale Is Actually About 

Doctors (part 3 of Autism & Teaching Kids to Protect Themselves)

When the Teacher Says, "Don't Look at Your Report Card"

On Being a Wimp

Fear, from the movie "Inside Out." Image source.

I blog about a lot of stuff related to my personal life. The thing that's hardest to write about, though, is being autistic. Sometimes I want to write, and sometimes I feel like I shouldn't, because... for me the main issue is sensory stuff, and if I write about that, aren't I just telling everyone that I'm a wimp?

So... yeah this post is about how, because of my sensory pain issues, because of my autism, which was undiagnosed until I was in my 20's, I've always had this worry that people are going to think I'm a wimp.

There are 2 sides to this:

First, there are the times when some sensory thing truly is overwhelming and painful for me, and people laugh at me. Feeling like I can't tell people that I'm having a problem, because then they'll think I'm a wimp. Feeling like I can't just communicate about what my needs are; I have to hide it and pretend everything's fine, otherwise people will think I'm a wimp. 

I always felt like... I wasn't allowed to have this problem. It's "childish", and I should be "mature" and "get over it." Thinking about it now, I'm like, "Being a mature adult means if you have a need/ disability/ food allergy/ other kind of restriction, you communicate about it and work together with other people to come up with a way that you can still participate. Or, if it doesn't work out, you politely tell them you're not able to participate, and you leave." But back then, before I figured out I'm autistic, I thought... "Being a mature adult means you 'get over it' and be a normal person." And so I tried to hide my problems and be a "normal person" as long as I could, all jumpy and nervous and on the edge of panic, until I "suddenly freak out." Can't tell anyone I'm having a problem until I'm absolutely forced to. I can't tell them, because they'll think I'm a wimp.

I remember one time, when I was in my 20's, and someone told me that if someone invites me somewhere and I have sensory problems there, they would want to know about it because they don't want it to be a bad experience for me. They would want to help me. And I was so shocked; that had never occurred to me before. I thought if someone invited me somewhere that had a bad sensory environment, that meant they wanted me to "be normal" and exist in that bad sensory environment, and they would judge me if I "freaked out" about it. And I shouldn't bother them by telling them about my problems; I should just hide it.

Second, there are times when there's not a painful sensory event going on, but people are concerned for me because they think something might be overwhelming for me. For example, someone says "maybe you want to leave the room, because I'm about to hammer something and it might be loud" and then it turns out to not be that loud, and I feel like... "you think I'm that much of a wimp, that I couldn't even handle that sound, which wasn't loud at all?" Feeling really offended, like people think I'm a wimp and that's why they want to help me avoid things that only a wimp would be scared of.

And, yeah in that situation, my reaction isn't right, because people are trying to help me. But it's because I have this fear that people will think I'm a wimp. This internalized belief that, if someone is "scared" of something which is not "actually" scary, that means they're a wimp and everyone is right to mock them. Wanting to avoid being judged by other people, and at the same time, judging hypothetical others who were more wimpy than me.

One example of this was when I was in middle school and I was going to a therapist, and for some reason I mentioned to her that I was kind of bothered by elevators. (I don't know why I told her this; it wasn't related to the reason I was going to therapy.) Like, the little moment of acceleration in an elevator kind of weirded me out and I didn't like it. But it wasn't really that big of a deal- I kind of didn't like it, but it wasn't bad enough that I would avoid using an elevator because of it.

But she treated it like it was more of a big deal than it was. I seem to remember she brought it up a few times, when talking about what I can do in a situation where I'm uncomfortable, or something like that, and it just made me feel like... "you think I'm that much of a wimp, that I can't even ride in an elevator?"

The whole thing depends on the idea that it would be bad to be unable to tolerate something that most people see as "not a big deal." It would be bad, you should be embarrassed, people will mock you. And I certainly felt that embarrassment, when I was in a situation with sensory pain, and everyone else was acting like everything was fine... feeling embarrassed at being a "wimp", while at the same time so confused at how everyone else could be okay with whatever bad sensory stimulation was going on. Is there something wrong with me, for having a reaction to this, or is there something wrong with everyone else, for not having a reaction to something which is obviously overwhelming and painful?

But now I've found out, actually there's nothing wrong with being unable to tolerate certain stimuli. What I mean is, it doesn't mean 'you're a wimp and you should be embarrassed and other people should judge you.' It's just reality, that some people are built like that. Doesn't mean there's anything wrong with us.

I was so offended at being likened to a hypothetical person who couldn't ride an elevator- but there's no need to be offended at that, because it doesn't mean there's something wrong with them. If a person exists who hates the feeling of vertical acceleration so much that they always avoid elevators, that's fine. It's fine, in the sense that it doesn't mean they're weak or something's wrong with them. It could be a problem for them for very practical reasons, depending on whether or not the area where they live has a lot of tall buildings. If this is inconveniencing them a lot, they might make a personal choice to work on it and get themselves to a point where it doesn't bother them that much, and they can take an elevator sometimes. That's their decision, not something they're obligated to do in order to avoid mockery for being a wimp.

(By the way, I now live in one of the biggest cities in the world, there are lots of tall buildings, I take elevators every day and it doesn't bother me at all any more.)

And what I eventually realized, when I found out I'm autistic, is... It doesn't mean you're a wimp. It's really the opposite- you have had to endure things that most people don't have to. You are not "overreacting" to sensory stimuli- for you, they truly are that painful. You've been subjected to sensory pain, over and over and over, that's much worse than what the average person experiences. 

I remember when I realized that most people basically never find themselves in a situation where they know there could be horrible pain at any moment, and they're all jumpy and nervous, and everyone around them acts like everything is fine. I was so shocked, because that was my whole life when I was a child. Very very frequently found myself in situations like that. I very much did not believe... that I should feel safe.

For example, let's say you're in high school chemistry class, and the teacher says something about doing an experiment with explosions. But you don't know if he means he's actually going to do it, here in this class today, or he's just talking about it but not really doing it. You look at the clock, 33 minutes left in this class. 33 minutes is plenty of time to do such an experiment. You watch the clock- just have to make it to the end of the class period and you'll be safe. You watch the teacher, scrutinizing every little thing he says or does, to find evidence for whether or not he'll be showing an experiment in class today. You can't pay attention to anything else, just how nervous you are, how much time is left in the class. 15 minutes now. Maybe you'll be safe, maybe 15 minutes isn't long enough for the experiment, so if he really was going to do it, he would have started by now. Let's try to calculate how much time... at what point will you know you're safe because there's not enough time left in the class? 5 minutes, maybe? 10 minutes? (Maybe you can make up an excuse to leave early?)

Or, if it really does happen. If he really does do the chemistry experiment with explosions. You know it's coming but you don't know when. You wonder how many explosions there will be. You look at the amount of material the teacher has available, and try to calculate how bad it's going to be. You're just stuck there, waiting, waiting for this huge awful explosion.

That kind of thing happened to me a lot. I would be aware of the possibility of some bad sensory thing happening, and I would be forced to stay in that environment, and I would be so nervous, and I would just constantly think about how soon I'll be allowed to leave. Me, super super aware of whatever the sensory thing was, nervous, unable to focus on anything else, and everyone else acting like everything's fine. That was my normal life, when I was a child.

The amazing thing about being an adult is, you can just leave. Now that I'm an adult, I'm never in situations like that, because if I see that there's something that might cause me sensory pain, I just leave. (I mean, it's more complicated than that, because I have trauma about this, and I've internalized the idea that everyone is judging me and thinks I'm a wimp... but anyway, I just leave.)

In summary: People laugh at me for experiencing sensory pain. Made me feel like I'm a wimp, and I didn't want to be, so I always felt that I needed to hide it, and I can't just communicate about the support I need. At the same time, I would sometimes get angry at people who were trying to help me, because I felt like they were saying I needed help because I was such a wimp. As an adult, I've realized that if someone can't handle a certain sensory stimulus, and they "freak out" about it, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with them and they should be mocked- it's simply a facet of reality and doesn't mean anything bad. The only bad thing is if it causes practical problems for them- and it's their own choice what they want to do about that. And furthermore, people with sensory issues aren't wimps; we've had to endure much more extreme pain that most people do.

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Related:

Globophobia 

The Sound 

Autistic at Disneyland

Tickling, Consent, and The Way It Works 

How NOT To Write About Phobias

Blogaround

 Happy Easter!

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Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Pope Francis, voice for the poor who transformed the Catholic Church, dies on Easter Monday (April 21) 

2. How I developed a game (April 21) "If you’re just starting out as a hobbyist, your entry point is one or two tiers down from indie–a tier that you may have never played yourself."

3. Mississippi Supreme Court Allows Judge to Block Name Changes for Trans People Under 21 (April 23) "Name changes related to gender transition are singled out. Other name change requests—such as an 18-year-old woman who wants to take her husband’s last name—do not seem to be subjected to the same level of scrutiny."

4. ‘Chemistry Mahjong’ Aims to Make Science Fun (April 23) Cool!

5. Tennis Balls (April 23) From xkcd.

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Links related to the antichrist:

A lot of links today. As always, you don't have to read all of them. There's no benefit to making sure your anxiety is up-to-date on every single bad thing going on. What actually does matter is that you do something. Do something. Protest, help immigrants, check on your trans friends, donate money, contact your Congress people.

1. Judge Blocks Passport Ban For Plaintiffs, Citing Government Animus And Equal Protection (April 19) "The judge ruled the policy was “arbitrary and capricious,” likely in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, the Paperwork Reduction Act, and the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The judge also ruled that the decision was based in animus and discrimination towards transgender people. While the injunction currently applies only to the named plaintiffs, a broader ruling protecting all transgender Americans is expected in the coming weeks." This is very good news for trans people!

2. Hitchcock for Dummies (April 21) "Here you have the premise for a dozen different Hitchcock-style thrillers. How does your protagonist get tangled up in international conspiracies and espionage? Simple: They are mistakenly included on a group-chat amongst the conspirators."

3. Mahmoud Khalil misses son's birth after ICE official denies his request to be there (April 21)

4. Hegseth 2nd Signal chat cause for 'worry' about nation's security, says Rep. Jim Himes (April 21) "No, I can't imagine why his wife, his brother and his personal lawyer would need to know particular aircraft that are to be used in an upcoming attack."

5. A Chicago man was deported to an El Salvadoran prison, his family says (April 16) "Panicked, YD frantically searched online for more information on the whereabouts of her partner. That’s when she discovered a video, shared widely on social media, of U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem touring the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, a maximum security prison in El Salvador."

6. CDC's cruise ship inspectors laid off amid bad year for outbreaks (April 10, via) "At least a dozen outbreaks have been documented so far this year on cruise ships, mostly from norovirus. Some of those outbreaks have made headlines for sickening dozens or even hundreds of people."

7. New images could change cancer diagnostics, but ICE detained the Harvard scientist who analyzes them (April 22, via) "When asked how many people in his lab could do all of that, he said simply: 'That was only her. It was only her.'"

8. Inside Trump’s Upstate NY migrant hunt: Border Patrol’s meaner tactics snare workers and families (April 17, via) "They have been charged with no crimes other than illegally entering the U.S. They are brothers, spouses and parents. They replace roofs, make tamales, mulch suburban gardens and pack apples. They work the day shift and the night shift. They buy houses, pay rent and taxes."

9. The courage to be decent (April 23) "What matters is that acts we once took for granted as virtuous, routine, and safe — telling the truth, representing those oppressed by the state, providing legal aid to the powerless, volunteering to work at a polling site, basic journalism — now carry some risk. They now require some courage. Maybe the government won’t send you to prison. At least not yet. But it can make your life really difficult."

10. Elon Musk's baby mama drama matters (April 21) "Musk has over a dozen kids, but doesn't seem to have a family."

11. Did the Supreme Court Just Grow a Spine? (April 22) "Trump was attempting to make an end run around the Supreme Court’s authority, and not only did the court tell him “no,” it told him “no” in the middle of the night, without even letting his lawyers or his Manchurian justices (Thomas and Alito) spit out their objections."

12. Funding cut for landmark study of women's health (April 23) "The study, begun in the 1990s, has produced a series of groundbreaking results and was continuing to gather valuable data about women's health."

These MAGAs claim they're "protecting women" by searching high and low, possibly inspecting everyone's genitals, to find 1 middle-school trans girl trying to play sports, so they can ban her. And at the same time, things that actually do help women, like this scientific study, are getting cancelled. 

UPDATE: Good news, the funding has been un-cancelled: In a reversal, the Trump administration restores funding for women's health study (April 25)

13. NIH autism study will pull from private medical records (April 23) WTF!

14. How to find upcoming protests made EZ (April 21)

"Color Taste Texture" (a cookbook for autistics/ anyone with food aversions)

Book cover for "Color Taste Texture."

I very much enjoyed reading Color Taste Texture: Recipes for Picky Eaters, Those with Food Aversion, and Anyone Who's Ever Cringed at Food [affiliate link], by Matthew Broberg-Moffitt. The author is autistic, and according to their twitter, uses he/she/they pronouns. I'm also autistic, and I think this book is great from an autistic perspective, but it can benefit lots of people even beyond that. Anyone who is "picky" or has food aversions. (For example, the book mentions that it's common to have food aversions during pregnancy. TRUE FACTS.)

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I love the overall idea of this book

In the beginning pages of this book, Broberg-Moffitt says that there is lots of advice out there about how to "trick" picky eaters into eating things, but this is NOT their approach. No. Instead, their approach relies on thinking carefully about what specific aspects of the food you are averse to. For example, do you not like the taste of onions, or the texture? And then finding ways to work with those aversions/preferences so that you have food that you do like. 

It's fine to eat the same thing all the time, as long as you're getting enough nutrition and calories! Don't force people to try things they don't like!

I love this. I feel like I don't need the recipes in this book, but I'm really glad I read this because of its overall philosophy. Instead of feeling like you're supposed to "get over" your food aversions, or feeling like they're just silly things that you shouldn't expect other people to take seriously, this book advises that we should treat them as serious things and work with them. If you don't like to eat xyz, then let's find a way for you to eat a healthy diet which doesn't include xyz. This is great!

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Discussing individual tastes/colors/textures and how to cook food to attain these tastes/colors/textures

There is a chapter on tastes, which goes through the different tastes (sweet, bitter, etc) and gives tips for small ways you can modify your cooking process in order to give the food more of that kind of taste. 

Similarly, there is a chapter on color, which lists different colors and gives tips for how to change the food into that color without affecting the overall taste. (You could use food coloring if you want, but this book gives ideas which don't use food coloring.) For example, if your kid really wants to eat yellow food, you can add a little bit of turmeric.

Maybe it seems a little strange to care about the food's color- if the taste is the same, what does it matter? But, yeah, it matters. If the food tastes fine but it looks disgusting, then it totally makes sense that people would be too grossed out to enjoy it. Slight changes to the color can make a difference.

And there's a chapter on texture, and how to achieve certain textures when cooking. In particular, autistic people often prefer soft or smooth textures, because every bite is basically the same. You're not suddenly going to bite into something weird. *shudder*

Temperature is also important! Maybe you don't like cold food, maybe it just feels gross to you to eat cold food. That matters! Don't eat cold food then!

And the book discusses what to do if you can't stand the sound of people chewing. The book gives various suggestions- and one of the suggestions is to let the food-averse person eat alone. You might think that's not acceptable because the "ideal" is to have a nice family meal together- but if the food-averse person really really can't stand the sound of people chewing, so family meals are unpleasant for them, then you should consider the option of letting them eat alone.

In practical terms, in my own life, I don't feel I need to implement any of these suggestions. But I think the author's way of thinking is very valuable here. Instead of expecting autistic people and picky eaters to "get over it", they should think about what could make it better for them, and do that. Are there certain tastes/colors/textures you prefer? Well let's cook food that incorporates those, then.

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Recipes

About one third of this book is the discussion of practical tips to achieve certain tastes/textures/etc when cooking (as I described above), and the remaining two thirds is recipes. I just sorta skimmed the recipes; I personally don't feel that I need them. 

As I was reading this, I was thinking to myself "well, I don't really have food aversions" but actually I do. It's just that as an adult, being a "picky eater" is treated as less of a big deal, because *I* do the grocery shopping, and I just don't buy things that I don't like.

I really have "gotten over" a lot of my food aversions, though, compared to when I was a child. I don't really know how, I guess they just faded away. But, I don't like meat that has fat in it, and I don't like eating meat where you have to spit out the bones, or eating fruit where you have to spit out the seeds and skin. (Food that requires you to spit out bones/seeds is common in China. Blah. I avoid it as much as I can.)

I sometimes feel like I have to "protect" myself from food I'm eating, like kinda have to cringe away from it and not think about it as I eat it. Like there's an equilibrium between how hungry I am and how weirded out I am by the food. (Anybody else feel this way?) Eating just enough that hunger is not bothering me anymore, and then after that point I just can't. I mean, for foods I genuinely like, of course I don't have to do that, but sometimes I'm at some fast food place and there aren't any good options so I just eat a little, until I'm too repulsed to eat any more.

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Quotes

A few quotes I LOVED:

• "I'm a classically trained chef who has never worked in the food industry because some food is just gross." (p 1)
• "If your kid only eats chicken fingers and mashed potatoes and absolutely refuses anything else, make them the best chicken fingers and mashed potatoes. If they are getting adequate nutrition and calories, this cookbook isn't going to try to force anything else on them." (p 2)
• "Not wanting your food to touch is, frankly, logical." (p 45)

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Conclusion

This book is great because it's about how to actually work with food aversions and cook something that people will like, rather than forcing them to "get over it."

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Related:

“Easy” Jobs and “Hard” Jobs