Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. That "Pending PayPal Charge" Email Is a Scam — Even Though It Really Came From PayPal (April 28, via) "Don't call the number. Don't reply."

2. The hard problem of AI therapy (February 26, via) "Suppose you’re a high-functioning person with anxiety who discovers that the chatbot can always soothe you on the spot. You ask one question—Do you think I handled that email wrong?—and feel relief. Ten minutes later: But what if she’s actually mad? Then: Can you rewrite my follow-up? Then: List ten reasons I’m not a bad person for sending it."

3. How China’s Deaf Delivery Riders Find a New Life in Gig Work (April 20) "By contrast, most deaf interviewees described becoming delivery riders as turning a new page, one of less discrimination and greater autonomy. Delivery platforms offer features that make interacting with restaurants and customers easier, such as voice-to-text conversion, pre-written messages, and digital badges that will alert users that the rider is deaf."

Also from Sixth Tone: Nine Months After Cloning Its First Yak, China Has 10 More (April 30) "To date, the team has generated over 200 cloned Tibetan yak embryos. By the end of 2028, they aim to build a core herd of over 100 cloned yaks, develop a new high-altitude yak breed, and establish standard breeding protocols."

4. 1 Corinthians 13 in the news (April 27) "Read the Beatitudes from Luke’s Gospel you cowards!"

Also from the Slacktivist: The literary puzzle of Isaiah 1 (April 29) "The current form of our Bibles tricks us into reading Isaiah 1 and Amos 5 as critiques of the religious observance prescribed in the Books of Moses, but actually what we have is the Books of Moses configuring their religious commandments, in part, as a response to and a defense against those critiques in Isaiah and Amos."

5. Soniferous Aether (April 27) From xkcd.

6. Women Have Agency: You Don’t Have to Obey Churches or Husbands Who Want to Control You (April 29) Posting this here because it's important to get the word out about this: If you are a woman who has decided to divorce your abusive husband, and now your church leaders are requiring you to come to a meeting so they can decide if you're allowed to do that, you can just not go. !!! Yes, really! You can just not go! Say no! They can't do anything to you! Even if you signed a "church covenant"- those things are not legally binding. It will not hold up in court. You can say no!

A lot of us spend our whole lives with the mindset "I need to be a good girl" which means when some authority figure says "you have to" do something, then you have to do it. We might not even realize there's another option: NOT doing it.

I'm so glad I learned about boundaries- I really had no idea about any of this before I learned about boundaries.

7. This week in "what Chinese songs is my toddler listening to": 蹦蹦跳跳 沒煩惱 李昕融 舞蹈完整版 簡單舞蹈 律動 廣場舞 洗腦歌 幼兒律動 幼兒舞蹈 兒童舞蹈 兒童律動 抖音舞蹈 動態歌詞 TIKTOK KidsDance【#波波星球泡泡哥哥bobopopo】

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump’s cruel plan for Afghan refugees, briefly explained (April 23, via) "Many of the 1,100 Afghans now stuck in limbo in Qatar aided the US over nearly two decades of war as interpreters working with US troops or served as members of the Afghan special forces. Some, the Times reports, are family members of American soldiers, and more than 400 are children."

2. Texas Tech Issues Ban On Students Writing On LGBTQ+ Topics (April 24) "The implications are profound—and at times border on absurd. In core and lower-level courses, there are no exceptions at all. A history professor course could not allocate instructional time to the Stonewall riots or the gay rights movement. If a U.S. history textbook includes a chapter on the AIDS crisis, the professor must skip it."

3. White House posted photo of Trump, King Charles III with 'TWO KINGS' caption (April 29)

4. James Comey posted a picture of seashells by the seashore. Trump's DOJ indicted him for it. (April 29) "The most embarrassing 24 hours (yet) of the Justice Department in President Donald Trump’s second administration continued apace on Tuesday, when Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced another indictment of James Comey, the former FBI director. This time, Comey — targeted by President Donald Trump as a political enemy — was indicted in North Carolina in connection with his since-deleted Instagram post showing a photo of seashells laid out in the shape of the numbers '8647.'"

Also from Law Dork: SCOTUS guts what remained of the Voting Rights Act before taking on TPS termination case (April 30) "The decision in Louisiana v. Callais upended the pivotal civil rights era voting law that Congress initially passed in 1965 and reauthorized several times since, leaving the section at issue “all but a dead letter,” as Justice Elena Kagan said with a somber voice, nearly stone faced, as she announced the dissent from the bench."

I don't really understand this Voting Rights Act case- all the articles I've read say it's so terrible that the Supreme Court has ruled this way, because it allows states to draw districts in a way that racial minority voters are always grouped together with a population of white voters which outnumbers them, and therefore the racial minority voters don't have any meaningful representation. This is confusing to me- it seems to rely on the assumptions that all people of color vote the same way, all white people vote the same way, and white people wouldn't vote for a candidate who would take minorities' needs seriously. Probably this is me being naive about how racism works, and missing some key facts about the history of racist voter suppression. If anyone has an article that explains this, post it in the comment section~

5. U.S. to issue commemorative passports with Trump's picture for America's 250th birthday (April 29) Fortunately it's only the Washington DC office that's doing this, and if you apply for a passport at any other location, you will just get a regular one without the mark of the beast.

6. The Trump team is quietly eliminating U.S. support for birth control abroad (April 29) This makes me so mad. Having penis-in-vagina sex is really common, and for women who are doing that, they *need* to have some kind of birth control, otherwise their lives will be completely dominated by the huge burdens of pregnancy and caring for babies. Those MAGAs claim they are "helping women" by being mean to trans people, while ending the programs that *actually* help women.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Journal Club: Global Asexual Solidarity (September 30) "Chen says this argument goes too far. They criticize it for relying on an Orientalist fantasy of a pre-existing “authentic” sexuality, and ignoring the agency of local activists."

2. The War on Science (September 23, 4-hour-2-minute video from Shaun) "This book is a collection of tired, irrelevant, right-wing, culture-war nitpicks being released at the most ridiculous possible time. These complaints have never been less relevant to reality, which makes the entire book read like one big joke."

Wow, turns out a lot of the essays in this book are some professor writing "I got fired because of some little mundane thing that THE WOKE MOB got angry about" and then Shaun digs up what actually happened and it turns out the professor in question was sexually harassing students/ had a long-term pattern of extremely racist behavior/ etc.

3. Jane Goodall, renowned chimpanzee researcher and animal advocate, dies at 91 (October 2, via) "He said Goodall was among the first researchers to make close observations of chimpanzees as individuals with personalities and quirks, at a time when other scientists were not trained to observe such specific details."

4. People Mountain, People Sea: Golden Week in Pictures (October 3) This week is China's "Golden Week" (the week we have off work for the October 1 National Day 国庆节 holiday). Usually it's 7 days off work, but this year it's 8 days because Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节 happens to fall during this week too. This article has a bunch of photos showing the crowds of vacationers all around China.

Also, the phrase "people mountain, people sea" is a direct translation of the Chinese idiom 人山人海. It means it's very crowded. Like you look at a crowd and it looks like a mountain of people or a sea of people.

5. Israeli forces board Gaza flotilla, detain Greta Thunberg, other activists (October 1, via) "At least three ships from the Global Sumud Flotilla, made up of 44 vessels and some 500 activists, were intercepted approximately 70 nautical miles (130km) from the coast of Gaza, according to organisers."

And more updates on this:

Greta Thunberg ‘beaten and forced to kiss Israeli flag’, activists say (October 5, via) 

Greta Thunberg is among flotilla activists deported from Israel. Others remain in prison (October 7)

6. Multi-generational vulture nests hold 700 years of human artifacts (October 3, via) Cool!

7. This Is What Happens When Therapists Don’t Understand Asexuality (September/October issue, via) "As I scribbled darkly with a dark pen, my therapist talked with us about how I could move forward toward having penetrative sex a certain amount of times per month."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. There will be No Kings protests on October 18. Join if you can!

2. UN says Fox News host apologized after calling for world body to be bombed (September 27) "'What we need to do is either leave the U.N. or we need to bomb it,' Watters said. 'Maybe gas it ... we need to destroy it.'"

3. Trump revives family separations amid drive to deport millions: ‘A tactic to punish’ (October 2) "Among Mukherjee’s clients are a two-year-old and a seven-year-old. 'An Ice officer has threatened to separate each of these children from each other and from their mother and their father, detain them in separate facilities, and put them on four different deportation flights,' she said. 'This is unnecessarily cruel.'"

4. Massive immigration raid on Chicago apartment building leaves residents reeling: 'I feel defeated' (October 2, via) "Armed federal agents in military fatigues busted down their doors overnight, pulling men, women and children from their apartments, some of them naked, residents and witnesses said. Agents approached or entered nearly every apartment in the five-story building, and U.S. citizens were among those detained for hours."

5. ‘Could have been an email’: Officials balk at Hegseth's generals meeting (September 30) "'It‘s a waste of time for a lot of people who emphatically had better things they could and should be doing,' said a former senior defense official. 'It’s also an inexcusable strategic risk to concentrate so many leaders in the operational chain of command in the same publicly known time and place, to convey an inane message of little merit.'"

6. The federal government is shut down. Here's what that means across the country (October 6)

Democrats united in effort to stop Trump's 'lawless activity,' says Sen. Van Hollen (October 6)

7. Trump Promotes Magical Conspiracy Beds (October 2) "In a serious country with democratic norms still in place, a circumstance like this would lead directly to journalists forcing Donald Trump to explain whether or not he posted the video, and as a follow-up they would force him to elaborate on whether or not he understands reality. Like, does he know he never said this? Does he know that magical beds don’t exist?"

8. A federal judge blocked Trump from sending the National Guard to Oregon — again. Here’s what we know (October 6)

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?

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Related:

Is Therapy About Becoming "Normal"?

“Easy” Jobs and “Hard” Jobs 

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

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"

Blogaround

Links not related to that felon:

1. Fan.tasia (2016, via) Wow, this is incredible. It's a mashup of scenes from Disney cartoons, mostly Disney Renaissance, and the way they're all cut together is extremely well-done. Amazing.

2. Will Market Shake Up Smooth the Road for Takeout Couriers? (April 30) "At the same time, JD announced plans to recruit 100,000 full-time couriers and provide them with social insurance, a potentially major shift in an industry that currently relies on a freelance, uninsured workforce."

Also from Sixth Tone: Starting Today, Rules Against Prepaid Rip-Offs Take Effect in China (May 1) I hear about this kind of thing all the time in China. People join a gym and pay for a yearlong membership, and then suddenly the gym closes, and it's impossible to get in contact with anyone to get a refund. Or people buy a package of 50 classes for their kid to do some kind of sport or extracurricular activity, and suddenly, without any notice at all, the place closes and there's no way to get your money back. So what you have to do is, first of all, DON'T prepay for things like that, and second, try to only buy classes/memberships from companies that have existed for a long time and are unlikely to suddenly disappear.

So I'm glad to see that China is making laws to protect customers in these kinds of cases.

3. Debate and Switch - The Trope That Ruins Stories (March 28, via) 33-minute video. It's about stories which set up a really interesting moral conflict, where the villain points out some problem, or presents some idea which could potentially be a good idea, and it could be a really cool story if that conflict was explored. But nope, it doesn't get explored, it gets totally ignored because then the villain randomly kills a bunch of people, or something, and so we all see that the villain is bad and must be defeated, and nobody ever comes back to the insightful points the villain had brought up in the beginning.

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Links related to that felon:

As always, you don't have to read all the news if it's too stressful. Instead, DO SOMETHING. Protest. Contact your congress people. Donate money. Check on the immigrants in your life and see if they need help.

You don't have to be up-to-date on everything! Better to find 1 issue you care about a lot, and fight for that. Better to do that than just be paralyzed and overwhelmed.

1. Mohsen Mahdawi — the Columbia student arrested at his citizenship appointment — speaks (April 29) "I see the risk, I see the opportunity, and I want the American people to see this, too. To see this level of injustice. That I am doing everything legally, that I have prepared and studied for the Constitution and that I went willingly and respected the law, did everything the way how it's supposed to be done."

2. Trump is jailing immigrant families again. A mother, father and teen tell of ‘anguish on a daily basis’ (April 24) "Gabriela and Jason struggled to find the words to help their daughter. 'Imagine seeing your child sad because they can’t go to school. And you can’t even say, ‘Let’s go to the corner. Let’s go get ice cream. Or some chips,’' Gabriela said. 'How do you explain any of this to a child? Your mom can’t do anything for you, your dad can’t do anything.'"

3. RFK Jr. to require placebo-controlled studies for new vaccines (May 1) Well this is a bad idea.

4. Education Department stops $1 billion in funding for school mental health (May 1) "To be able to provide those [mental health] services and then have it ripped away for something that is completely out of our control, it's horrible,' Fialkiewicz says. 'I feel for our students more than anything because they're not gonna get the services that they need.'"

5. Trump-appointed federal judge blocks use of Alien Enemies Act for Venezuelans in South Texas (May 1) "Other courts have sought to block the Trump administration from deporting anyone under the act. But this is the first time a judge has ruled that the act cannot be used against people who are alleged gang members invading the United States."

6. DOJ Proposes Giving Legal Advice to Immigrants in Cases It Oversees (May 1) "'[Families are] being asked to trust the government that harmed them to tell them how to move forward in the best way for them,' said Sara Van Hofwegen, managing director of legal access programs at Acacia Center for Justice, which has provided the services for the past year. 'The government hasn’t shown them that they have their interests in mind.'" Yeah this is extremely suspicious.

Blogaround

1. Every Source for The Chosen's "Anointing the Passover Lamb" Goes Back to the Same Person (July 8) The most bonkers part of this is the possibility that this really is a historical tradition, but it was lost to time and nobody wrote it down, and then some time around 2010 we find out about it because Jesus himself reveals it to some pastor. Which, if you're evangelical and you have a "personal relationship with God" then that is totally a real thing that could happen. But also, if it did, what on earth would we- other Christians who didn't hear from Jesus personally- do with it? There's not really any reasonable mechanism by which Jesus could reveal this true information, out of the blue in the year 2010, and have it recognized as real. Or, I guess maybe if Jesus revealed the exact same thing to a whole bunch of people at the same time? Maybe?

2. HSDD was not the beginning nor the end (July 18) "It was an obscure diagnosis, and in all my years I have not heard even a single anecdote of an ace getting diagnosed. And that’s not to say that aces didn’t have issues with psychologists. Ace-competent mental health care is a broader issue that extends beyond a single diagnosis, and continues to be a problem long after DSM 5."

3. Beam of Light (July 15) From xkcd.

4. Baidu’s Robotaxi Stirs Up Controversy (July 22) 3-minute video about Baidu's driverless taxi, in China.

5. East Vs. West (July 21) "We can’t see that from here, but from over there — from, say, some airport in Beijing — we’d have the perspective to view that connectedness and kinship as an indisputable and wonderful fact. We’re not strangers — we share the same continent." As an immigrant in China, I can 100% confirm this.

6. Wednesday Was 'Mass Deportation Now!' Night At The RNC, Everything Totally Excellent For Sure (July 18) What on EARTH. As an immigrant, this is what scares me the most about the Republican party platform right now. I mean, I'm an immigrant in China so it doesn't affect me, but I understand what it's like to work so hard to build a life for yourself in a foreign country, and how traumatic it would be if that country suddenly decided you were bad and needed to be deported.

Support all immigrants.

7. I Want A Popsicle!: A Story about Dealing With Anger (July 23) "A bilingual children's book for AAPI families written by a psychologist that teaches children how to manage their emotions." This sounds really cool!

8. Women athletes are being abused, and the helpful media aren't helping. (June 5) "This trend punishes those who are skilled, who are excellent, who are fast, who are strong. This trend punishes those who gain notice, gain visibility, within a small community or on a national stage."

9. Would you pay to be able to quit TikTok and Instagram? You’d be surprised how many would (July 23, via) "The finding is a measure of the extent to which many, many users hate TikTok and Instagram — even though they feel compelled to use them. To make clear the bizarre nature of his finding, Bursztyn drew the the conference’s attention to another product, a refrigerator. Could you imagine, he asked, 60% of refrigerator owners saying they wished fridges didn’t exist?"

10. When Modesty Rules Make Drowning More Likely (July 24) "I did not do this personally, but it was normal in my fundy circles for girls to swim in ankle length denim skirts."

Blogaround

1. Paleontologists discover a 240-million-year-old 'dragon' fossil in full (February 23, via) "It's a fitting discovery in the Year of the Dragon: A team of scientists has uncovered a complete fossil of an aquatic reptile that resembles a 'Chinese dragon' because of its snake-like appearance and elongated neck." Cool!

2. NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has flown its last flight after suffering rotor damage (January 26, via) "The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper was tasked with demonstrating that powered flight is indeed possible on Mars despite the planet's thin atmosphere — it promptly did so during a five-flight campaign that spring."

3. I didn’t fancy men or women. Then I had a baby (February 13, via) Article about an asexual woman who decided to get pregnant using a sperm donor.

4. What TV Shows Get Wrong (and Right!) About Therapy (November 15) 27-minute video from Cinema Therapy.

5. A ‘Reading Rainbow’ Documentary Is Coming Next Month (February 28) Cool!

6. When Star Trek Confronted Racism Head-On (February 28) 23-minute video about a "Deep Space Nine" episode

7. If Elisabeth Elliot's Marriage Advice was Supposed to Ruin Your Life, This is the First I've Heard It (February 12) "The book is a frankly overheated and occasionally goofy account of two people who, like all young people, have very intense and primarily interior problems that don’t make sense to anyone over twenty-five. Passion and Purity, though, is told through the perspective of a much older woman who actually does seem to agree that these problems are very serious, and that the tortured process of wondering if you’re touching your boyfriend too much or if he loves you too much is actually part of preparation for marriage. How do we make sense of this?"

Blogaround

1. AI-generated Valentine's Cards (posted February 4) "You're the snail's poise!"

2. Reliable sources and blogger ethics panels (posted February 2) "I know a lot of you have been asking yourselves, 'Why doesn’t LGM have more Fred Bonine content? Is one 2000-word post every 18 years really enough?'"

3. Washington selects Commanders as new NFL team name after two-season process (posted February 2) Awesome!

4. Former Dolphins head coach Brian Flores sues NFL, three teams alleging racist hiring practices (posted February 1) "The lawsuit alleges that one team, the New York Giants, engaged in a 'sham interview' process with Flores for their vacancy. The suit alleges that Patriots head coach Bill Belichick 'mistakenly disclosed' to Flores in a text message exchange on Jan. 24 -- three days before Flores was set to interview with the Giants -- that the organization intended to hire Bills offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, who is white."

5. Discovery of what ailed Dolly the dinosaur is a first, researchers say (posted February 10) "About 150 million years ago, a young long-necked dinosaur fell ill, likely coughing and suffering from a fever as it wandered what is now southwest Montana."

6. What happened to the nonbelief channel at Patheos? (posted January 4) "Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stopped writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focused on how to live a good life within their own worldview."

I know I mask, I don't know when - #TakeTheMaskOff

A person wearing a fluffy black mask. Image source.

During the months of July, August, and September, autistic bloggers are writing and tweeting about masking, with the hashtag #TakeTheMaskOff. This campaign was started by The Autistic Advocate, Neurodivergent Rebel, Agony Autie, and Do I Look Austistic Yet?

What is masking? Basically it's when autistic people pretend to not be autistic, in order to fit in. So in a sense it's necessary, we need to do it for survival, because if people notice we are autistic they might exclude/mistreat/abuse/bully us. But masking isn't really *good*- it means we're hiding our true selves, and it's exhausting to keep doing that all the time.

Here are some of the articles people have posted about #TakeTheMaskOff:

An Autistic Perspective - What is Autistic Masking? #TakeTheMaskOff

Autistic Burnout, “Regression,” and Identity Crisis – #TaketheMaskOff Week 4

#TakeTheMaskOff Week 1: What Is Masking?

When Masking Leads to Mental Health Misdiagnoses. #TakeTheMaskOff

So... I'm autistic, and I mask... Or rather, I know that I mask, but it's hard to think of examples, or estimate the extent of it, because it's just a thing I do subconsciously, I guess. I was diagnosed in my early 20's so I already had a whole 20 years of acting like a "normal person" and not knowing I was autistic. When I read about the concept of masking, intuitively it sounds like something I can very much relate to, but I'm not really able to specify exactly how.

So I'll go ahead and share a bunch of anecdotes from my life, which may or may not be examples of autistic masking. I don't know.

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From a young age, I was aware that the things my family talked about at home were "weird" and I couldn't talk like that to kids at school, or play with kids at school the same way I played with my sister. For example, one time when I was in elementary school, my sister and I cut open an empty cereal box so it was one big flat piece of cardboard, and drew a map on it. Then we pretended we were traveling around the different places on the map. I remember there was a mountain and some other different kinds of geography.

My parents said it was so great how creative we were, and I should take the map to school for show-and-tell. But I didn't want to; I thought the other kids would think it was "weird." Like that's not a "normal" game that kids play. But I did end up taking it to show-and-tell, and it went fine.

Another time in elementary school, our class did a "secret Santa", where we each were assigned a random classmate and at some point we had to secretly sneak a gift into their desk. Then at the end of the week, we had to make a card that revealed our identity to our secret gift recipient. My parents were like "you're so creative! you should make a card with a puzzle in it" because I actually did use to make cards with puzzles for my cousins or other family members- people I felt safe sharing my "weirdness" with. But I didn't want to bring a puzzle card to school- the other kids would think it was weird.

But I did end up making a pop-up card with a puzzle in it. As I recall, there were several different flaps you could lift, and under one of them was my name, revealing my identity to my secret-Santa target. I assumed we would be secretly, anonymously giving the cards to our classmates, but instead the teacher had us hand them to them in person, so it didn't work like I expected- my target would know it was me because I handed him the card, instead of by solving the puzzle and lifting the flaps in the card. And also when I gave it to him, one of the flaps ended up folded in the wrong direction, so the front of the card wasn't facing outward, and so it wasn't clear to him how he was supposed to read the card, and I was trying to show him and everyone was looking at me and I tried to explain it really fast because I felt embarrassed, why couldn't I just make a boring card like a normal person.

Now I have the confidence to pull that off and not be flustered by little minor things not going according to plan. I could totally make a pop-up card now and give it to any of my friends and be so proud of how cool it was. But back then, at 9 years old, I worried so much about being good and following the rules, and I was so scared of people looking at me like they didn't know what I was talking about.

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I remember one time, probably in my early 20's, when I was talking to my family, I mentioned how "some things we're not allowed to do because they're too awesome." And somebody was like, wait wait wait what do you mean by that? But that's how I really felt, and I assumed other people felt the same way- as if there was some Law of the Universe that says we really shouldn't do things that are really really awesome.

Maybe because all my life I felt like I had to hide my obsessive nerdy interests. Maybe because there were a lot of times where I suggested some INCREDIBLY COOL idea and people responded with, uh, not the enthusiasm one would expect for such a cool idea... and I assumed they were hesitant over the fact that it would just be too much fun. Like, it was easier to believe there was a rule against things that are too awesome, than to believe people were actually legitimately not interested in my AWESOME suggestions.

At any rate, I learned that it's not socially acceptable for me to show that much enthusiasm for those things.

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In high school I made the decision to stop trying to be a "normal person" and identify as a nerd instead. This was a really really big important decision, and it was really good for me. Before this, I was trying to walk a fine line... feeling like I should wear makeup and shave my legs because that's what high school girls are supposed to do, even though it all seemed like a giant waste of time... showing off that I was the best in math class but feeling uncomfortable when my classmates looked at me like a genius freak... I decided I didn't have to do any of that any more, because there was a social category called "nerd" and I could be that and it would be acceptable.

It was really good for me, but at the same time, it put limits on how femme my gender expression could be. I thought nerd girls shouldn't look too feminine. If I wore pretty things, people would think I wasn't a nerd. (This is internalized sexism.)

In college I decided that since everybody knew I was an engineering major, I could dress more feminine without hurting my nerd cred. And a few years later, I quit believing in "modesty" so now I want to wear all sorts of "immodest" clothes to make up for lost time. Basically I'm now confident in my identity as a nerd and as a woman and I wear whatever I want.

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In middle school I bought orange pants. At the store I was so happy with them because I love bright colors. But then, at home, reality set in- I can't wear these to school. Because nobody else wears orange pants. Everyone is going to look at me and think I'm weird.

I think that happened to me several times- where I would pick out something so cool at the store, forgetting that I "couldn't" wear it to school because it was, ahem, too awesome.

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Normally, I have to filter what I say so it fits the format of what the person I'm talking to would expect to hear. But sometimes, when someone asks me a very open question about how I really feel about something... I fall for it. I tell them how I really feel, without first curating it into the kind of answer they were expecting. And they take it the wrong way.

Like the first year of middle school, when each of us students had to meet with the school guidance counselors so they could see how we're doing with the transition from elementary school to middle school. He asked me what I've noticed that's different from elementary school.

Such an open question, right? About how I feel. You'd think there's no "wrong answer." And actually, I did have an answer. See, in the first week of classes, I had noticed that every single one of my teachers said they don't accept late homework. Wow, interesting, right- every single one! Whereas in elementary school, the teachers generally had a policy about how if it's late 1 day you lose 10% of the grade, etc. What a fascinating pattern middle-school Perfect Number discovered! Let us speculate as to the reasons why this might be the case. Like, I can understand in general they want us to be more responsible in middle school, but would that really account for LITERALLY ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of my teachers saying they don't accept late work? Is there some other factor at play besides a vague sense of "kids are old enough to take responsibility for their homework"? What a cool thing to wonder about.

So I told the guidance counselor, "teachers here don't accept late work" and he was like ".................... do you .... usually hand in late work?" He took it completely the wrong way. Because, see here's the thing: He asked what is different about middle school and elementary school, but that's not what he actually wanted to know. He wanted to know what was different and affected my life. Ugh, but I thought since he asked such a broad open question about how I felt, I thought I could really tell him how I felt. I thought it meant he was willing to indulge with my esoteric wonderings about the reasons behind trends in homework policies, so that's what I answered. Instead of the usual filtering I do so it's an answer in the genre that the other person would expect to hear. I always fall for that.

Another time, I was at a job interview for a summer internship during college... yeah, interviewers always come across like they just want to get to know me, like they're so open and ready to listen to whatever I say- so I have fallen for this problem A LOT during job interviews. (It took me A LONG TIME to realize job interviews aren't about answering the questions correctly; they're about presenting myself as a person that one would want to offer a job to.)

Anyway, the interviewer asked me to tell about one of my strengths and, as it happened, I had recently been thinking about how I'm really really good at picking just the right word when I'm writing something. Like, uh, I don't even know how to describe this ability that I'm SO PROUD OF- it's not being good at communicating, it's more like, I have such a good grasp of English vocabulary and, like... using a word... I ... haha well it's quite funny how I'm not even able to really describe what I mean about my supposed ability to perfectly describe what I mean... uhhhh I'll just say it doesn't work 100% of the time... But anyway, you know how job interviewers look at you like they genuinely want to listen and understand you- it made me feel like I could really tell him whatever bizarre thing came to my mind. And there I am, trying to explain my uh, ability to choose the exact right English word... ugh yeah I wish somebody had told me that's not what you're supposed to do in a job interview. You're not supposed to just answer the questions; you're supposed to tell them why you are the kind of person they want for that particular job.

And another example: A few years ago I was seeing a psychologist for depression, and I later I ended up needing a copy of my medical records, so the psychologist sent me the notes he had taken during our appointments. And I read some of them, and ... a lot of things he wrote down were like, a slight misinterpretation of what I said. Like... you know, you're at a therapy appointment and it's all about you, the doctor just wants to ask you about how you feel and they're so open and ready to listen and, ugh, I fell for it. I told him how I really felt, unfiltered, and he misunderstood a bunch of things because I skipped the adaptation processes I usually do to get my thoughts into a format that other people will *get*.

The therapy was still really good and helped me get rid of depression; I don't think the slight misunderstandings led to any problems. But it made me realize, ah crap, in the future I'm gonna have to filter myself when I'm talking to doctors.

Gotta make sure I remind myself of that; otherwise I'll fall for it again.

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And, related to that, there have been times when I told someone something really deep and emotional, but when they didn't get it, I just passed it off as a joke. Usually related to sensory pain. Something along the lines of "isn't it terrible how people [something that causes me extreme sensory pain]?"

And then people tell me I have a great sense of humor. And I don't know what to do with that.

Well, back then I didn't know that other people experience sensory stimuli different from me, and what I'm feeling is ACTUAL PAIN and it's RIGHT for me to take steps to protect myself even if no one else is bothered.

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Back when I was in grad school, I got sick, and I ended up having surgery to have my gall bladder removed. Even though the surgery helped me feel a lot better, I still felt nauseous every day, and it was hard to find food I could eat that wouldn't make me feel sick.

Pretty soon after that, I was diagnosed with autism. And I remember back then, how my health problems made me feel so autistic, if that makes sense. Because suddenly, because of my stomach problems, I knew that "regular people" rules didn't apply to me and I would have to make my own decisions about what I needed, and I just had no idea how to do that. Like if I was out somewhere and felt really nauseous, I could make the decision to leave and go home and lay down- even if it wasn't really "socially acceptable", it was an okay thing to do because I was sick and wouldn't it be much more "socially unacceptable" to throw up in public. If people gave me food, I didn't have to eat it- even though the rules of politeness dictate that you must at least eat a little bit, if someone gives you food. But because I was having stomach problems, I was free to break those rules, and it was all my decision, nobody else is able to tell me how nauseous I feel.

Basically, I realized that my whole life I had always tried to do what other people do and trust that I would be okay, instead of actually paying attention to my needs. A lot of times, I didn't feel safe- like when I was in an environment with bad sensory stimuli. Or I didn't understand how to talk to people, so I just tried to learn the rules and fit in. But when I had stomach problems, I knew that I couldn't do that- couldn't just do what other people do and trust that I would be okay. I had to know my own needs and make my own decisions about what I could or couldn't handle. Maybe it was the first time I ever thought in those terms.

But I say "I felt so autistic" because without the "normal people rules" I had no idea how to act, and I felt so lost. I remember at one point I went to an amusement park with some friends and I didn't ride most of the rides, which is fine, except for that bit where I was just stuck there, just staring at a ride and totally unable to make a decision, just NO IDEA if it would make me feel sick or not, and feeling so lost and confused and anxious because I didn't know how to make a decision.

I didn't know how to take care of myself. My whole life I just copied other people, even when that meant I had to tolerate things that hurt me because I'm autistic.

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I'm white and I live in China now, and maybe that means I don't have to mask as much because if I come across as "weird", people will just assume it's a cultural difference.

Maybe it's been good for me to be in a situation where it's obvious that I'm learning a foreign culture, so people help me out when I'm confused and don't really judge me for it. Whereas, in the US, as an autistic person I was also "learning a foreign culture", in a sense- trying to figure out the social rules for how to interact with people. In my own country, I'm expected to just *get* it automatically, but here I'm not.

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Last week at work there was a loud sound- I think someone dropped a heavy box on the floor or something. And I didn't cover my ears, because the first thought that went through my mind was "I don't want them to know I'm autistic."

But there have been other times at work when I've communicated about my sensory needs related to sound (ie, loud sounds are painful for me so I need to avoid them). Fortunately it's not that much of an issue, sounds loud enough to be painful are pretty rare, but it is a big deal that I now believe I have the right to take care of my needs related to this, instead of just pretending to be "normal." I don't tell people I'm autistic; I only tell them whatever practical things they need to know about my sensory needs. That's all. The rest of my autistic traits they don't need to know.

But nowadays, I usually do cover my ears if I think there's going to be a loud sound. It makes a huge difference- if I cover my ears, I can still hear pretty much everything, but it won't be painful. And I reassure myself that I'm allowed to do that. Because when I was a little kid, adults told me I shouldn't cover my ears, that I was "overreacting" and the sound "isn't that bad." And I still feel guilt... I feel like I am being bad when I protect myself from sensory pain instead of pretending to be "normal."

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So. There you have it, a bunch of stories from my life that might be examples of autistic masking. Intuitively, I feel like masking is something I do all the time, but it's hard to know how much of an effect it has on me because this is just my normal life and I don't have any other standard to compare with.

I guess I am pretty good at masking and that's why I was undiagnosed for so long. But being good at masking didn't mean I was okay, even though to other people I might seem okay. Finding out I'm autistic and finding people putting words to these experiences has been really really good for me.

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

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.

Blogaround

Image source.

1. Religious Trauma Syndrome: How some organized religion leads to mental health problems (posted July 6) Yep.

2. No, Adam really, really doesn’t hate you... (posted July 6) "That’s what articles like this mean, when they say that they love gay people: it means that they love them so much that they simply can’t allow them to live out their life unharassed, without being told constantly how much they’re hurting themselves." THIS. This this this this this.

3. Here’s What The Lion King Trailer Would Look Like If It Was Made In 2015 (posted July 9) Nice.

4. ‘Ceremonial law’ folklore is no substitute for an actual hermeneutic (posted July 7) "'Because of Christ, the ceremonial law is repealed,' Tim Keller writes – a sentence that would have baffled Moses, Isaiah, Paul, Luke, and Jesus of Nazareth."

5. The Sequel to God’s Not Dead Happened in My Classroom, But In Reverse (posted July 10) "now that the word is out that I’m an atheist, no one is going to want to hire me."

6. Dear Dana: I’m Afraid I’m Going To Cheat On My Husband With My Co-Worker (posted July 10) "I’m not saying you shouldn’t have sex with this dude, but I am saying COME ON. You are a grown ass woman and, “I’m afraid I’m going to cheat on my husband,” is such bullshit. You gotta decide if you want to cheat on your husband or not. If you don’t want to cheat on your husband, then it’s pretty easy: Don’t."

7. Typhoon Chan-hom: Almost 1 million people evacuated in eastern China as powerful storm crosses coast (posted July 11)

8. I, Racist (posted July 6) "Ask any Black person and they’ll tell you the same thing. The reality of thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single White person might be complicit in a racist system."

9. Ray Comfort's Audacity: A Review and Discussion with the Film's Star Travis Owens (posted July 12) Friendly Atheist podcast episode about Ray Comfort's movie on "how to evangelize to homosexuals."

10. Why We Shouldn’t Say “Modest is Hottest” (posted July 10) "The fact that a teen or grown adult man could become sexually aroused by our uncovered knees and shoulders was viewed as normal."

11.  Logical Fallacy Ref