"Sometimes people use “respect” to mean “treating someone like a person” and sometimes they use “respect” to mean “treating someone like an authority”
and sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say “if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you” and they mean “if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person”
and they think they’re being fair but they aren’t, and it’s not okay."
-a 15yo autistic girl experiencing ABA therapy
A quote from a book that I’m currently enjoying: “Do you mean ‘respect’ or ‘obedience’?”
Are you enjoying He Who Fights With Monsters?
Best webnovels ever!
Agreed!
Yeah, great series!
Maybe “obsequious.”
Ohey, familiar. Lately getting that particular bit of equivocation from my own abusive “family” who’ve been threatening everything from having me jailed to having me “institutionalized,” calling the cops on me to evict me without notice, physical intimidation… Turns out “no” is a grievous offense to such people. The whole “children as property” thing is vile, absurd that some clearly think giving birth yields the ultimate entitlement, to an entire person and their life. I wonder if not getting diagnosed is a ‘blessing in disguise’ :| Tried for a decade or two to tell BioMom I thought I was ‘on the spectrum’ but always just got bullied out of ever seeing a doc. “There is NOTHING wrong with you!!” she’d say, every time. So now I’m a wreck 'cause two people screwed and entitled themselves to getting by with this crap (and more besides). I hope that person manages better.
…Could really use help escaping before I become a data point, actually :-\
I’d try to avoid getting an official diagnosis until you are free - Autism CAN be used as a way to deem a person incompentent and unable to handle their own living situation, causing a guardian to be assigned power of attourney and control over finances
Source: I have Autism and thankfully am lucky my mother isn’t insane as she has effective power of attourney
I wish you luck! Shit’s hard, especially in the US.
I mean, this is dicey, being online, being (presumably) a young woman. So it might be tough finding support online. But check local anarchist groups in your area. If you’re seriously in that kind of trouble, it might be worth getting out, maybe even with a friends’ family you trust. But if things are dire…do what you can to find a safer place to be.
Ugh that’s terrible.
I’m tryna think what could be helpful here. Without knowing your situation better, I am not sure which of these apply.
If there is DV going on, National domestic violence hotline - https://www.thehotline.org/
Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, or connect to emergency community services by calling 211.
The Autism Society’s National Helpline to learn about resources and services in your area - https://autismsociety.org/contact-us/
I hope something here helps. Really sorry you’re going through this. :(
How old are you? Are you over 18, but lack funds to leave the house? What’s the current active barrier to getting out?
I’m 34, so part of the problem getting help is that I’m old enough I’m supposed to “have my shit together” but… problems. So I’m too young for “later life” help and too old for “youth” help. I’m also trans and (likely) AuADHD and have a physically sickening fear of thresholds (phone calls, leaving), can barely stand confrontations (and even that’s thanks to meds they’re not gonna be letting me get, despite their lies about worrying about my health) and stuck in Oklahoma, so difficulties everywhere. As for blockers to getting out:
- I’m actively afraid to unlock my room’s door, ever. BioDad is verbally abusive and acts like he’s going to beat me every time he thinks he can get by with it. I’m terrified of even being seen any more. I eat/drink/bathe rarely and only when I’m quite sure they’re both asleep or out of the house.
- I’m overwhelmed trying to figure out what to even do. Temporary housing seems unavailable outside of getting a hotel room, and that won’t last long. As long as it does last, it’s quickly burning up my ability to do anything more permanent. Do I try to find a cheap, shit apartment or roommate arrangement here? Do I move to one of a dozen or so bluer, safer states? Places like MN Transplant offer lots of resources that may help but a list of resources isn’t a plan, it’s a pile of stuff I don’t even know whether to focus on let alone have a clear idea what to do with.
I’ve been given only a week to get out. This is better than their original idea, which was to call the cops on me to kill me, throw me into jail, “institutionalize” me, or at least throw me directly out with nothing, but not as good as the thirty days’ notice required by law. I guess the cop with the Punisher tat didn’t mention that when he was explaining that they can’t just have the cops throw me out to die miles from the nearest town. Anyway, I feel backed into a corner and it’s hard to even think. I have some credit, and some money in the (joint-ownership!) bank that I’m trying to get into my PayPal (not great, but it’s what I have) account, but that transfer takes time and every day I delay wrecks my mental state a bit more. If I manage to get myself a hotel room, every day also burns a bunch of money. So I spend each day totally screwed up struggling to survive everyone in the house including myself, and I’m not even sure I can. I’m not even sure I should. I’m even afraid of getting myself into a position where “living” is the only option.
Idunno if it’s normal, or being a pampered ass, or some kinda autism thing but hard to imagine getting out of here unless one of:
- I’ve got a clear idea that I can move forward, and how. Someone to cling to, at least. Maybe a solid idea of where I can or should go, where I can get enough income to survive and a reasonably safe place to live. I feel horribly lost and alone and I’d rather be poor with someone good than… I don’t even know. Thrash about desperately hoping a life appears?
- Someone brings a “me-sized” bag.
[rant?] Also I’m not even sure these monsters want me gone. I think they want me to cry and beg for them to let me stay. Why else take my car keys? Why call the cops to evict me instantly, knowing (she managed an apartment place!) how the eviction process actually works? She threw me out once before and before I was even gone she was pulling her usual (life-long) exploiting-my-mental-issues BS trying to get me to stay, then just begging me to stay. When I failed to grow a life and ended up back here, she swore she’d never throw me out again. … Yeah sure, anyway I’m not sure whether she specifically wants me dead or not but I’m afraid neither one is actually willing to let me leave. He’ll do whatever she says and the worst he thinks he can get by with other than that. [/rant]
tl;dr: My mental state and status are fucked and getting fuckeder and I guess I need hand-holding 🤷 I’m afraid to even leave my room and feel like I’ve got only one shot but there’s no clear shot to take so I’m lost and confused and overwhelmed and afraid of everything, and that’s when I’m not just curled up crying and thinking of dying.
Apartments in Chicago are often $1100-1300, minimum wage is $15/hour, Illinois is one of the most liberal states I can think of. Colorado/Denver is also a good choice, and maybe Pennsylvania (Pittsburg/Philadelphia) or Baltimore if you don’t mind getting paid in pocket lint. Massachussetts as a whole is a very blue state, but since it’s an extremely attractive place to a lot of people it can also be really expensive…
What’s ABA theory? But anyway, spot on.
From a quick search, it’s basically a therapy where, instead of figuring out why the patient is upset, you train them like a dog. And not even the training where you do gentle redirection from bad behaviours. The kind where you whap the “patient” (ie victim) for being “abnormal” so they effectively become a nervous wreck who does as you please to avoid being hurt
Sounds like every conservative’s wet dream.
In a conservative and nothing about this sounds appealing to me.
Do you know any conservatives in real life or do you just have a notion of who they are from memes?
Well, I know the policies they’ve been advocating for. You know like, taking away women’s bodily autonomy. Denying them reproductive healthcare. Taking away the rights and dehumanising anybody who doesn’t conform to their very narrow (and utterly unscientific) ideas of gender identity. Making healthcare unaffordable to the point where live expectancy in the richest country on earth is falling. Letting any idiot buy an assault rifle, leading to countless deaths and a population living in fear. An inhumane and deeply racist prison system. Letting police get away with open blatant murder. I could go on. So pardon me if I think that a “conservative” is a person who simply likes to make other people suffer.
So, I like everything in your post. I also sorta like guns, I also fully believe that something has to change as I’m tired of all the shootings, and of my 26 years alive, we’ve done nothing and there are only more shootings. But, you cannot buy an assault rifle in America. Legally anyway. For the average person. That’s already illegal. If you’re referring to the AR-15, that stands for armalite. The company that makes them.
But other than that, spot on. Especially when it comes to guns though, the people in that community refuse to take anyone talking like that seriously, so if we’re going to have change, in my opinion, you have to do so from another angle. The gun community in America is also massive, shockingly diverse, and only growing. Why do these people feel that they need to take safety into their own hands? I feel like that’s largely the question that needs to be answered there.
Also, I’ll finish this by saying, I own one shotgun, that I’ve had since I was 12 and I’ve never shot it. I’m not a crazy gun enthusiast, but, it is something many people I know take seriously. Oh, and I guess my general politics are reformed conservative? I was raised in the Midwest by conservative parents but every day I wake up more left leaning.
you know how liberals fall anywhere from “regulations are good to” to “i think communism should be our mode of function”
Similar thing with conservatives. You can thank politics for lumping you in with the crazies.
I know conservatives that believe this would be a good idea. I grew up with my parents arguing with family about taking me to ABA, but thankfully my parents had sense and didn’t. All of the family members that thought it would be a good idea are very conservative.
I see three possibilities:
One, you have a different definition of conservative than what is currently the general definition of that label in the US.
Two, you’re lying.
Three, you’re in a country other than the United States and therefore ‘conservative’ doesn’t mean the same thing in general to you.
Quick test: if you agree with or vote for any US Republican politician, you’re just lying. In any other case, there may be a misunderstanding.
Why the down votes?
Note that even what we pejoratively call “training like a dog” is so obsolete that I’ve seen/read more than one dog trainer get a bit offended for comparing their profession to ABA. Ultimately, the problem with ABA is that it assumes that the object to be worked with isn’t a subject worthy of being considered sentient, or of being capable of accurately expressing their needs or preferences, or that their mental processes are either too obscure or too wrong to even begin to take them into consideration, but rather that it’s just a very simple organism that you have to punish or reward until it learns to pretend to appear “human enough” in your eyes.
You’d think we would have shelved it already when we already know a lot in the differences in the mental processes of autistic people.
That sounds more like the reason why a person would need a therapist to begin with, rather than any kind of actual treatment.
*therapy. Sounds like some sort of “Autism cure” by christians. Which would be as effective and tortuous as “Gay convertion therapy”
No, it’s not that. It’s a form of therapy that is highly controversial, and mostly stems from the observation that autistic humans can be brought to “behave” like “normal people” if they are sufficiently conditioned to do that. Yet, it is not founded in religious BS, but rather a result of behavioral approaches to psychology that have been very popular, especially in the US and Canada at least since the 60s (like many addiction-therapies and such). Behavioral therapies aren’t bad outright, but have spawned some questionable offspring (like all approaches in medicine tend to do). “Conversion camps” are such offspring. Regarding ABA: While many studies indicate that ABA does, in fact, bring autistic people to behave more like non-autistic people, that in itself is not evidence that the therapy is working. If depressive people behave like I want them to and get out of bed to clean the house because I hold a gun to their head, they are not “cured”. The same goes for this kind of therapy. There are merits to the principles of the approaches bundled under the term “ABA”, but the line between “helping Autistic people” and “torturing autistic people” is razor-thin. Unfortunately, many approaches that call themselves “ABA” are crossing that line, as do many therapists who deny people breaks or meals, or worse.
You know? Humans are cruel dumpster fires of bullshit once they think what they do is right and “for the best”.
thanks for the clarification. Sounds like exactly what I suspected.
It’s only controversial because the way the therapy has been implemented in the past (and unfortunately in some places still today) is similar to what you describe. However, modern practices don’t try to train their clients to act like “normal people” and any serious technician or analyst will only use punishment (or threats of punishments) as a last resort in programs written to target the most imperative behaviors (like running into traffic). Instead, they focus on the use of reinforcement to teach their clients skills that help them to become self sufficient. Following your metaphor, it would be like offering a depressed person $10 for every chore they complete that day rather than holding a gun to their head. The goal is to establish a foundation for life outside of therapy, not to reduce the presentation of autism.
I’m going to disagree with the other comment and claim that you’ve made a very good observation. Even though conversion therapies and ABA may somewhat differ in their methods, the both of them are born from the basis of wanting to use operant conditioning on humans, and ignore everything else that we’ve learned about the psychology and neurology of humans that explain why it’s a dogshit idea.
Some people think it’s some kind of autism cure. It’s just understanding the reasons behind behaviors in order to increase behaviors that are desirable and decrease behaviors that are undesirable. Problems could arise from what ends up being defined as undesirable behavior and how that reinforcement is done but that’s true of basically anything with the goal of changing behaviors.
My wife is autistic and studied it herself because it helped her understand all the “social bullshit” as she called it.
Approaching it from the point of view of the autistic person trying to understand the traditional social interaction behaviors, to mimic them by choice for their own profit, sounds beneficial. Approaching it from a goal of forcing the autistic person to behave according to traditional social interactions for the benefit of others and the profit of the therapist, does not.
Pretty much yeah. That’s the problem and how it can become a very bad thing. Same as really any method that seeks to shape behaviors. Are you targeting this behavior because it actually causes distress and interferes with the autistic person’s enjoyment of life? Or are you just trying to breed conformity for the sake of conformity?
The others have pretty much answered about it, but specifically, it’s a very intense, very personal therapy, with some sessions lasting up to 8 hours. It’s typically one-on-one with the therapist, who will be observing every behavior and rewarding behaviors that are desired. I haven’t heard of any that do it around here, but I am sure some therapists ‘punish’ for behaviors that they do not want to see again.
As was noted in the other replies, it can be extremely demeaning to reduce a person to their behaviors alone, and a great abyss lies next to the feet of any therapist that easily conceals abusive or immoral practices… and those feet are on a slippery slope of scree.
Applied Behavior Analysis therapy.
That sounds like a euphemism for hitting people.
It does still allow for aversives, so… Kinda?
Edit: This response was for a different reply, little app goof going on.
so… like CBT, but you don’t enjoy the torture-part nearly as much?
It’s a branch of behaviorism but it is a distinct branch from CBT. CBT involves cognition and behavior analysts don’t work with thoughts, just behaviors. Like any therapy, it can be misused or it can be helpful, depending on your skill and sensitivity as a therapist. Behavior therapies are not about torture. They are therapies and aim to be helpful. Your mileage may vary though depending on what you want from therapy and how skillful your therapist is.
I think you got wooshed, cause I’m pretty sure the CBT being referred to is cock and ball torture.
Though maybe I got wooshed, I’m not 100% sure.
Sometimes you get wooshed I guess
I am surprised how well this played out.
Though maybe I got wooshed, I’m not 100% sure.
yes, I was aiming exactly for the ambiguity between the 2 meanings of CBT.
This puts into words something that always bothered me in early school.
“If you don’t respect the privileges I think I ought to have in my position in the social hierarchy, I won’t respect the rights I might be willing to grant to someone in your position in the social hierarchy.”
Tangential, but relevant I think.
“And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”
“It’s a lot more complicated than that—”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes—”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things…”
― Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
All too often, people who identify as an authority do so because they think of people as owned things. An ugly situation somewhat ameliorated by Celine’s Second Law “Effective communication is only possible among equals.”
Isn’t this nearly verbatim from an old tumblr post? Or is that the girl being quoted?
Yes, that tumblr is gone now. Someone linked to a quote of it in tumblr in the replies on mastodon
Her name? Albert Einstein
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