Tw: forced eye contact, restraint & other abusive 'treatment' descriptions
I can remember the last few times I made true eye contact, as clear as a snapshot.
-I was too distressed to make words happen and no one around knew sign. Eyes wildly snapped from person to person, looking for someone who could read my mind.
-I was in the ER getting stitches on my finger, which I had accidentally locked in a car door. I told them to not tell me when they were sticking me with the needles. They told me. Eyes flew to those of the person with me.
-One of those folks who thinks boundaries don't apply to him was getting too close and too cozy on the bus. Again, probing for someone who could recognize my distress.
-Someone was threatening violence in my direction at a thing I used to do, and I was meeting with one of the folks who had authority. His words on the experience are "please stop trying to set me on fire with your mind."
The elements of these scenarios are the same. Something is happening. I do not like it. I do not like it at all, and want it to stop immediately. Yelling and swearing has not worked. I can't hit it or kick it or pretend it doesn't exist. Those strategies have failed or have a 99.9999% chance of failing based on pattern data from years of experiences.
But eye contact makes them stop doing the unpleasant thing.
This doesn't make sense, does it? You've heard that eye contact is about sharing and social referencing and subtle messages and cues being sent among communicative partners. That's not what this is at all! This is the sledgehammer. This is the safeword, if you will, the "this stops now it has to it has to it has to make it stop nownownownownow no matter what".
Where did I get this idea? Therapy. That's where.
When I was a very small little child, the first thing they tried to get me to do was "look at me". Now, if I was a small child now they'd be still coercing looking at them. The new and improved way of forcing eye contact is to hold a desirable item between the adult's eyes and then give it to the small child when they look at it. This is still gross.
Back in my day, however, it was all out war. They would grab your face, they'd hold your hands down, they'd pretty much sit on you. It was a full out wrestling match until you submitted and looked them in the eye. Then, they immediately stopped. They immediately let go of your face or your hands or stopped sitting on your or stopped holding your shoulders so hard that the bones ground or what have you.
I was small. Hitting didn't work (I tried). Kicking was a no. Headbutting only worked once, biting was iffy. Covering my face got my hands dragged into my lap and held there. Dumping the chair and running was only a few seconds reprieve and led to the least comfortable hold ever. They had no compunctions about prying my eyes open when I squeezed them shut as tight as I could. No boundary violations were out of bounds. The only way to make the awful stop was to look in their eyes.
Reality land does not, in fact work that way. Eye contact is not the way to make things stop. People who know me understand that it means "something that is happening needs to not be happening right. now." Most people don't know that. People who only sort of know me can grasp that it's bad (see: "stop trying to set me on fire with your mind") but they don't know what it means. Strangers take eye contact to mean the opposite of what it does.
My brain knows that for most people a straight in the eyes stare is not the signal for "something needs to stop right. now." but it isn't that easy. One of the deepest conditioned things I have is "eye contact is giving in. If you do that, the bad will stop." This is irrational and untrue and the world doesn't work that way. It's deep, though, as the first and most consistent of the wrestling matches I had with adults as a small child.
This isn't what they thought they were teaching me. They claimed to be teaching me all sorts of things about eye contact. They didn't though. They wrestled me to the ground over and over to grind a lie into my head.
Showing posts with label abuse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label abuse. Show all posts
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Awareness kills.
Yesterday they released the news of another child killed because of the ableism that the rhetoric of tragedy fosters.
Daniel Corby, age 4, was drowned by his mother in San Diego. Already people, including the media, are leaping to say that autism is so hard, no wonder she went over the edge. No. No. No. You don't say that. There is no excuse to kill people.
And this is what awareness does. The dominant narrative is that of hopelessness. The dominant narrative is of isolation and despair. The dominant narrative is that we are perpetual burdens, never to grow or be anything but 100% dependent. The dominant narrative is of tragically unhappy lives.
Awareness is wrong. We are, on the whole, not unhappy. We do not need the terror around how many of us there are. We do not benefit in any way from information that makes us sound like scary, alien beings. And we do not benefit from being seen as less than human, as things to be endured rather than people to be embrace.
Daniel could have had any of a number of futures. Now he has none of them. This is unacceptable.
Stop killing us.
Daniel Corby, age 4, was drowned by his mother in San Diego. Already people, including the media, are leaping to say that autism is so hard, no wonder she went over the edge. No. No. No. You don't say that. There is no excuse to kill people.
And this is what awareness does. The dominant narrative is that of hopelessness. The dominant narrative is of isolation and despair. The dominant narrative is that we are perpetual burdens, never to grow or be anything but 100% dependent. The dominant narrative is of tragically unhappy lives.
Awareness is wrong. We are, on the whole, not unhappy. We do not need the terror around how many of us there are. We do not benefit in any way from information that makes us sound like scary, alien beings. And we do not benefit from being seen as less than human, as things to be endured rather than people to be embrace.
Daniel could have had any of a number of futures. Now he has none of them. This is unacceptable.
Stop killing us.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Autism & Child Abuse: Both for April. Oh IRONY.
[Trigger warning: fairly graphic description of physical, emotional, sexual abuse.]
April is "let's make autistics hate themselves!" month. It's also child abuse awareness month, though you don't hear much about that. They talk all about the devastation wreaked by autism, but you barely hear anything at all about child abuse. That's fucked up, in case you were wondering.
There have been a couple murders of disabled people recently, murders by family, and the general caregiver reaction seems to be to pull into little self congratulatory circles and say that it can't be true, it must be an aberration, they and no one they know would do that. Parents of autistic kids are fucking saints.
Let me tell you, that is not the case. My parents are not saints, and my story is middle of the road based on what a lot of autistic people I know have said to me. Parents of autistic kids want us to shut up and not say this, they want to erase our stories, but that does no one any good. Trying to erase our experiences helps no one, even if it does make parents feel better for a few days. Don't dare step that close to abuse apologism, it is not acceptable.
Now I am going to tell you about some of the things my parents did when I was growing up. And yes, if you empathize with them I absolutely believe you are a horrible person.
So let's start with a brief description of my family structure, because it's kind of effed up: I have a mother, and my half-siblings' dad is on my birth certificate. They got divorced, I have a stepmom via my not-really-dad, and am on my second or third stepdad on my dad's side. Annnnd I have a biological father. Annnnnd a lot of siblings. Got all that?
We'll start by talking about when I was young. Both my mom and not-really-dad were spankers, by which I mean "kid, you have pissed me off and I am going to vent my spleen on your bony little ass," and, in my mom's case "also your face because your ass is really fucking bony." Offenses that got me hit until their hands hurt include such awful things as flapping, not being able to stop giggling, zoning out (both of which can be manifestations of seizure activity), arguing, and not understanding a statement or direction. That's right, these people were hitting a kid with language comprehension delays for not comprehending language. And I do mean hitting. Hard. Bruise leaving. I got a black eye and a cut across my cheek once from my mom; I was about 6 or so. The offense? Freaking out because shampoo got in my eye.
As things got more stressful and they divorced, these people got worse. My mother would absolutely lose her shit and hit me for no reason. She would scream and scream and scream at me, usually while I was stuck in the car with her. Then when I covered my ears or cried, she'd hit me and pull my hair. She did this once and then chased me around with a camera to try to get pictures of the ensuing meltdown, threatening to send them to everyone in school.
Go read that again. That's emotional abuse on top of physical. Contrary to what Autism Speaks thinks is a fucking awesome idea, triggering meltdowns intentionally to document it to show people is fucking emotional abuse.
But this was a thing she did frequently. She'd be pissed off about one thing or another, looking for a fight, and I wasn't exactly in tune enough to avoid her. Unlike my siblings I didn't have friends whose houses I could vanish to for days at a time, so I was stuck with her. She'd want a fight and she'd pick and pick, she'd file her nails in my ears-this is not a sound I can tolerate on the same bus as me, much less right next to my ears-and she'd start calling me disrespectful and yelling and demanding an explanation when I covered my ears. No explanation was ever ok, and she'd keep yelling and yelling until I lost my shit, then she'd keep yelling. Or she'd touch me and it'd startle me and that'd be the most offensive thing in the world, again with the yelling. Or she'd try to have a conversation, but it'd be about why I didn't have friends or couldn't be normal or wasn't girlier or whatever. Then no matter what my answer had a "tone" or my face had a "snotty expression." Nothing I could do was right.
Regardless of the method she used, the result was always a meltdown that would.not.end. She wouldn't back off no matter how I asked, & I wasn't big enough or strong enough to shut the door & keep it closed until I was about 14. She'd keep yelling and poking and trying to argue until I was completely nonverbal, biting myself, and too exhausted to keep crying. Then she'd try to hug me and all I wanted was for her to go. away. but she wouldn't. And she'd tell me it was love and she just wanted to "help me".
A favorite technique during the meltdown provocation procedure was to throw absolutely terrifying threats on top of the sensory poking and the demanding the impossible. The first time she threatened to have me put in foster care I was 7 years old. I believe it was over leaving the room because she was smoking and filing her nails (which she told me she loved more than me when I was 13), but that could be inaccurate. So many minor offenses got this treatment. As I got older she started threatening to have me locked up in a mental ward. I am deathly, deathly terrified of confinement and always have been. My mental images of both foster care and mental hospitals come from a combination of my mother's words and Lifetime television, which did not help the abject terror-and abject terror is not exactly conducive to calming down. My mother later leveraged this fear by instigating meltdowns intentionally-she always did love that game-and then calling police saying she was afraid of me. Now is a possibly relevant time to mention that when I last saw her, she had 4 inches and at least 50 pounds on me. Physically imposing, I am not, and lashing out at people who are not directly touching me is not a thing I ever did.
Ok, so now an interlude to talk about my not-really-dad and his new wife. I still went to visitation over there because we have the same last name and, to his credit, he was pretty awesome until he got remarried. His new wife resented the hell out me though-I still don't know why, really; it's not my fault the guy signed the birth certificate knowing damn well I'm not his.
My not-exactly-stepmom has really delicate little feelings. I have never been the most tactful of souls, and frankly, a grown woman allowing an 11 year old to upset her enough to storm upstairs until said 11 year old apologizes is not the most mature of things. The unpredictability & unreasonably high standards for knowing what would set her off were one thing.
The not allowing me to eat and dragging me antiquing is quite another. I'm not talking "not allowing junky snacks". I'm talking "over 24 hours without food." I'm talking "if you were that hungry you would have apologized for hurting Diane's feelings." It does not work that way. Trying to starve an apology out of a 12 year old is unacceptable. I had a seizure in the antique store-one of very few tonic clonics I've had aside from The Year Of The Seizure. I woke up to being yelled at for being an attention seeking little hobag. Again, I was TWELVE.
Shortly after that her son stuck spitballs on my bedroom door and he blamed me (which makes no sense) so I had to sit in the living room an entire weekend, except breaks every 6 hours to go to the bathroom. Not long after that I hurt her feelings again and she threw a corncob and a glass of wine at me. Another few weeks, and her son was spreading awful shit about me around the neighborhood, he denied it, and then I was again relegated to a chair in the livingroom for...I don't even know what the offense was. Just that apparently there was one.
The last time I went over there I was 14 years old. Stepmonster's sister and nephews were in town. A stepbrother, a nephew, a sister and I were down in the basement by the computer. My stepbrother told my stepcousin (well, semistep people but whatever) that it was really fun to see how far my arm would twist behind my back-this is nothing that I ever let anyone do, ever. So my semistepcousin twisted it, I said nonostopstop, and my semistepbrother told him to twist it further. My arm popped out of my socket.
All the way out of the socket.
Like any child who thinks their parents aren't utter sacks of shit would do, I ran upstairs, arm flopping, totally screaming-I have a high pain threshold, but dislocations that don't immediately reduce hurt like hell. My semistepmother and her sister started yelling at me for being a big baby and making a scene.
My arm was hanging entirely out of its socket. A scene was utterly appropriate.
I begged my not really dad to take me to the hospital to get it fixed. He refused. I begged him to take me home. Again, he refused. I walked 15 miles from his house to my mom's house, in the rain, on the highway, with my dominant arm out of socket.
My mother couldn't take me to the doctor until the next day because she was already drunk. To this day it has some laxity beyond what my other Ehlers-Danlosy joints have.
Now we're back to mom's house. As you may recall, my mom was a hitter. Most people who hit their kids stop when their children get big, strong, and/or bold enough to hit back. But not my mother!
The first time I fought back, I was maybe 12. I didn't even do anything that violent back; she was going to slap me for something and I caught her arm. This is the day I got my first dent in my skull. She was so enraged that I caught her arm that she threw me at my bed-at that point there was nearly a 100 pound weight difference-and jumped on top of me. She banged my head into the metal bedframe multiple times and punched me repeatedly. This is the first time I feared for my life at the hands of my mother.
About that time my stepdad started sexually abusing me as well. He had always been a yeller, which terrified me, but there is no terror like a giant coming to the night to try to make you respect him by using his penis as a weapon. I still have the knife I used to defend myself under my pillow, & carry three physical scars...one for screaming, one for fighting, one for biting.
He wasn't above physical intimidation in broad daylight either. On my 16th birthday I had to jump out the window to get to school because he had his 250 pounds planted against my door, keeping me inside, because I wouldn't bring up my laundry before school started. That was the day I knew my mom knew he was sexually abusing me-she said she did not want to hear anything bad about him unless he was stark naked about to rape me. And then I knew she knew.
But back to my mother. As I got older, and stronger, she wanted me weak. She had always given my siblings lunch money, but I had to earn mine through babysitting. Rarely did I eat school lunch from about 13 on; the option of taking a lunch doesn't work when there's nothing to take. My gymnastics coaches and some teachers took to feeding me, because I drop weight very quickly indeed. By this point most of my siblings were living with their dad or in their own places, so they didn't suffer the no-food-but-Hot-Pockets years.
My mother continued to pick fights, and continued to get physical. She learned restraint for work and thought it was a great idea to pick a fight with me to practice. Let me tell you first hand, it is impossible to breathe. Those are not safe techniques. They are completely not conducive to calming the fuck down. Putting your teenage daughter in a baskethold and dislocating both her shoulders in the process is abuse. Pulling handfuls of her hair out is abuse. Digging a knee into her back is abuse. I feared for my life from the time I was 12 on because of how unpredictable and how physical my mother was willing to be, and over things like sensory issues.
They terrorized me physically, emotionally, and sexually, all while telling me they loved me. They used systems, including the medical and law enforcement systems, to keep me in a state of constant terror. There are other things that aren't on here, there are details I cannot deal with writing out.
Do not dare tell me that parents cannot be monsters. I lived with monsters. I am not a monster for making you think about it. They are monsters for doing it, and anyone who tries to excuse it is as well.
Do not erase my story. Don't fucking dare say this shit doesn't happen. It happens every day.
April is "let's make autistics hate themselves!" month. It's also child abuse awareness month, though you don't hear much about that. They talk all about the devastation wreaked by autism, but you barely hear anything at all about child abuse. That's fucked up, in case you were wondering.
There have been a couple murders of disabled people recently, murders by family, and the general caregiver reaction seems to be to pull into little self congratulatory circles and say that it can't be true, it must be an aberration, they and no one they know would do that. Parents of autistic kids are fucking saints.
Let me tell you, that is not the case. My parents are not saints, and my story is middle of the road based on what a lot of autistic people I know have said to me. Parents of autistic kids want us to shut up and not say this, they want to erase our stories, but that does no one any good. Trying to erase our experiences helps no one, even if it does make parents feel better for a few days. Don't dare step that close to abuse apologism, it is not acceptable.
Now I am going to tell you about some of the things my parents did when I was growing up. And yes, if you empathize with them I absolutely believe you are a horrible person.
So let's start with a brief description of my family structure, because it's kind of effed up: I have a mother, and my half-siblings' dad is on my birth certificate. They got divorced, I have a stepmom via my not-really-dad, and am on my second or third stepdad on my dad's side. Annnnd I have a biological father. Annnnnd a lot of siblings. Got all that?
We'll start by talking about when I was young. Both my mom and not-really-dad were spankers, by which I mean "kid, you have pissed me off and I am going to vent my spleen on your bony little ass," and, in my mom's case "also your face because your ass is really fucking bony." Offenses that got me hit until their hands hurt include such awful things as flapping, not being able to stop giggling, zoning out (both of which can be manifestations of seizure activity), arguing, and not understanding a statement or direction. That's right, these people were hitting a kid with language comprehension delays for not comprehending language. And I do mean hitting. Hard. Bruise leaving. I got a black eye and a cut across my cheek once from my mom; I was about 6 or so. The offense? Freaking out because shampoo got in my eye.
As things got more stressful and they divorced, these people got worse. My mother would absolutely lose her shit and hit me for no reason. She would scream and scream and scream at me, usually while I was stuck in the car with her. Then when I covered my ears or cried, she'd hit me and pull my hair. She did this once and then chased me around with a camera to try to get pictures of the ensuing meltdown, threatening to send them to everyone in school.
Go read that again. That's emotional abuse on top of physical. Contrary to what Autism Speaks thinks is a fucking awesome idea, triggering meltdowns intentionally to document it to show people is fucking emotional abuse.
But this was a thing she did frequently. She'd be pissed off about one thing or another, looking for a fight, and I wasn't exactly in tune enough to avoid her. Unlike my siblings I didn't have friends whose houses I could vanish to for days at a time, so I was stuck with her. She'd want a fight and she'd pick and pick, she'd file her nails in my ears-this is not a sound I can tolerate on the same bus as me, much less right next to my ears-and she'd start calling me disrespectful and yelling and demanding an explanation when I covered my ears. No explanation was ever ok, and she'd keep yelling and yelling until I lost my shit, then she'd keep yelling. Or she'd touch me and it'd startle me and that'd be the most offensive thing in the world, again with the yelling. Or she'd try to have a conversation, but it'd be about why I didn't have friends or couldn't be normal or wasn't girlier or whatever. Then no matter what my answer had a "tone" or my face had a "snotty expression." Nothing I could do was right.
Regardless of the method she used, the result was always a meltdown that would.not.end. She wouldn't back off no matter how I asked, & I wasn't big enough or strong enough to shut the door & keep it closed until I was about 14. She'd keep yelling and poking and trying to argue until I was completely nonverbal, biting myself, and too exhausted to keep crying. Then she'd try to hug me and all I wanted was for her to go. away. but she wouldn't. And she'd tell me it was love and she just wanted to "help me".
A favorite technique during the meltdown provocation procedure was to throw absolutely terrifying threats on top of the sensory poking and the demanding the impossible. The first time she threatened to have me put in foster care I was 7 years old. I believe it was over leaving the room because she was smoking and filing her nails (which she told me she loved more than me when I was 13), but that could be inaccurate. So many minor offenses got this treatment. As I got older she started threatening to have me locked up in a mental ward. I am deathly, deathly terrified of confinement and always have been. My mental images of both foster care and mental hospitals come from a combination of my mother's words and Lifetime television, which did not help the abject terror-and abject terror is not exactly conducive to calming down. My mother later leveraged this fear by instigating meltdowns intentionally-she always did love that game-and then calling police saying she was afraid of me. Now is a possibly relevant time to mention that when I last saw her, she had 4 inches and at least 50 pounds on me. Physically imposing, I am not, and lashing out at people who are not directly touching me is not a thing I ever did.
Ok, so now an interlude to talk about my not-really-dad and his new wife. I still went to visitation over there because we have the same last name and, to his credit, he was pretty awesome until he got remarried. His new wife resented the hell out me though-I still don't know why, really; it's not my fault the guy signed the birth certificate knowing damn well I'm not his.
My not-exactly-stepmom has really delicate little feelings. I have never been the most tactful of souls, and frankly, a grown woman allowing an 11 year old to upset her enough to storm upstairs until said 11 year old apologizes is not the most mature of things. The unpredictability & unreasonably high standards for knowing what would set her off were one thing.
The not allowing me to eat and dragging me antiquing is quite another. I'm not talking "not allowing junky snacks". I'm talking "over 24 hours without food." I'm talking "if you were that hungry you would have apologized for hurting Diane's feelings." It does not work that way. Trying to starve an apology out of a 12 year old is unacceptable. I had a seizure in the antique store-one of very few tonic clonics I've had aside from The Year Of The Seizure. I woke up to being yelled at for being an attention seeking little hobag. Again, I was TWELVE.
Shortly after that her son stuck spitballs on my bedroom door and he blamed me (which makes no sense) so I had to sit in the living room an entire weekend, except breaks every 6 hours to go to the bathroom. Not long after that I hurt her feelings again and she threw a corncob and a glass of wine at me. Another few weeks, and her son was spreading awful shit about me around the neighborhood, he denied it, and then I was again relegated to a chair in the livingroom for...I don't even know what the offense was. Just that apparently there was one.
The last time I went over there I was 14 years old. Stepmonster's sister and nephews were in town. A stepbrother, a nephew, a sister and I were down in the basement by the computer. My stepbrother told my stepcousin (well, semistep people but whatever) that it was really fun to see how far my arm would twist behind my back-this is nothing that I ever let anyone do, ever. So my semistepcousin twisted it, I said nonostopstop, and my semistepbrother told him to twist it further. My arm popped out of my socket.
All the way out of the socket.
Like any child who thinks their parents aren't utter sacks of shit would do, I ran upstairs, arm flopping, totally screaming-I have a high pain threshold, but dislocations that don't immediately reduce hurt like hell. My semistepmother and her sister started yelling at me for being a big baby and making a scene.
My arm was hanging entirely out of its socket. A scene was utterly appropriate.
I begged my not really dad to take me to the hospital to get it fixed. He refused. I begged him to take me home. Again, he refused. I walked 15 miles from his house to my mom's house, in the rain, on the highway, with my dominant arm out of socket.
My mother couldn't take me to the doctor until the next day because she was already drunk. To this day it has some laxity beyond what my other Ehlers-Danlosy joints have.
Now we're back to mom's house. As you may recall, my mom was a hitter. Most people who hit their kids stop when their children get big, strong, and/or bold enough to hit back. But not my mother!
The first time I fought back, I was maybe 12. I didn't even do anything that violent back; she was going to slap me for something and I caught her arm. This is the day I got my first dent in my skull. She was so enraged that I caught her arm that she threw me at my bed-at that point there was nearly a 100 pound weight difference-and jumped on top of me. She banged my head into the metal bedframe multiple times and punched me repeatedly. This is the first time I feared for my life at the hands of my mother.
About that time my stepdad started sexually abusing me as well. He had always been a yeller, which terrified me, but there is no terror like a giant coming to the night to try to make you respect him by using his penis as a weapon. I still have the knife I used to defend myself under my pillow, & carry three physical scars...one for screaming, one for fighting, one for biting.
He wasn't above physical intimidation in broad daylight either. On my 16th birthday I had to jump out the window to get to school because he had his 250 pounds planted against my door, keeping me inside, because I wouldn't bring up my laundry before school started. That was the day I knew my mom knew he was sexually abusing me-she said she did not want to hear anything bad about him unless he was stark naked about to rape me. And then I knew she knew.
But back to my mother. As I got older, and stronger, she wanted me weak. She had always given my siblings lunch money, but I had to earn mine through babysitting. Rarely did I eat school lunch from about 13 on; the option of taking a lunch doesn't work when there's nothing to take. My gymnastics coaches and some teachers took to feeding me, because I drop weight very quickly indeed. By this point most of my siblings were living with their dad or in their own places, so they didn't suffer the no-food-but-Hot-Pockets years.
My mother continued to pick fights, and continued to get physical. She learned restraint for work and thought it was a great idea to pick a fight with me to practice. Let me tell you first hand, it is impossible to breathe. Those are not safe techniques. They are completely not conducive to calming the fuck down. Putting your teenage daughter in a baskethold and dislocating both her shoulders in the process is abuse. Pulling handfuls of her hair out is abuse. Digging a knee into her back is abuse. I feared for my life from the time I was 12 on because of how unpredictable and how physical my mother was willing to be, and over things like sensory issues.
They terrorized me physically, emotionally, and sexually, all while telling me they loved me. They used systems, including the medical and law enforcement systems, to keep me in a state of constant terror. There are other things that aren't on here, there are details I cannot deal with writing out.
Do not dare tell me that parents cannot be monsters. I lived with monsters. I am not a monster for making you think about it. They are monsters for doing it, and anyone who tries to excuse it is as well.
Do not erase my story. Don't fucking dare say this shit doesn't happen. It happens every day.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Shaking the unshakeable
For some reason people think I'm a lot more confident than I am. I'm not. I live with a lot of anxiety and near crippling self doubt. However, I firmly believe that my fights are worth fighting.
Let me have that.
There's a systemic process that people use to break this kind of thing, to convince people that what they know and see and perceive and feel isn't real or accurate.
It's called gaslighting, and it's abuse.
Every time you tell someone that they are too sensitive, they are overreacting, they didn't mean it that way, you are gaslighting. And that is abuse.
Every time you tell someone with a disability that they aren't a really real disabled person, you are gaslighting, and that's abuse.
Every time you try to convince someone with a disability that they are too high functioning to talk accurately about that disability, you are gaslighting. That's abuse.
Every time you tell someone that enforcing their access needs is unreasonable, you are gaslighting. That's abuse.
Every time you tell someone that defending themselves against others hurting them is 'abusive', you are gaslighting. And that is abuse.
Every time you tell someone that they have to understand why someone did or said something hurtful, they didn't mean it about them, you are gaslighting. That's abuse.
When you tell someone on the receiving end of prejudice or injustice that they're imagining it, you are gaslighting. That is abuse.
You aren't the first person who thought to tell us that we're oversensitive or being unreasonable with our needs or that our perceptions are wrong or whatever. Gaslighting is common.
And it is abuse.
Trying to shake someone's sense that what they know, see, and think is true, trying to convince them they're just making shit up? Just so you don't have to listen to them? Just to break them down?
That is abuse. It is disgusting. It is an absolutely hateful thing to do to anyone. It's also a favorite tactic of all sorts of shitty people. And make no mistake, if you do this sort of thing you are a shitty person.
When you engage in this kind of thing, the planting and cultivating of self doubt, it'll work for a while. It won't get me to shut up though. It'll make me anxious as I try to figure out what is real and what is made up and who made it up and why and what I did wrong to make them think that was ok.
And I know the answer is it isn't ok. It is gaslighting. Gaslighting is abuse. But it is sneaky and it leaves marks, marks that no one can see.
Growing someone else's self doubt so that you don't have to change your thinking or your action?
That shit's abuse. You should know better. Stop doing it.
Let me have that.
There's a systemic process that people use to break this kind of thing, to convince people that what they know and see and perceive and feel isn't real or accurate.
It's called gaslighting, and it's abuse.
Every time you tell someone that they are too sensitive, they are overreacting, they didn't mean it that way, you are gaslighting. And that is abuse.
Every time you tell someone with a disability that they aren't a really real disabled person, you are gaslighting, and that's abuse.
Every time you try to convince someone with a disability that they are too high functioning to talk accurately about that disability, you are gaslighting. That's abuse.
Every time you tell someone that enforcing their access needs is unreasonable, you are gaslighting. That's abuse.
Every time you tell someone that defending themselves against others hurting them is 'abusive', you are gaslighting. And that is abuse.
Every time you tell someone that they have to understand why someone did or said something hurtful, they didn't mean it about them, you are gaslighting. That's abuse.
When you tell someone on the receiving end of prejudice or injustice that they're imagining it, you are gaslighting. That is abuse.
You aren't the first person who thought to tell us that we're oversensitive or being unreasonable with our needs or that our perceptions are wrong or whatever. Gaslighting is common.
And it is abuse.
Trying to shake someone's sense that what they know, see, and think is true, trying to convince them they're just making shit up? Just so you don't have to listen to them? Just to break them down?
That is abuse. It is disgusting. It is an absolutely hateful thing to do to anyone. It's also a favorite tactic of all sorts of shitty people. And make no mistake, if you do this sort of thing you are a shitty person.
When you engage in this kind of thing, the planting and cultivating of self doubt, it'll work for a while. It won't get me to shut up though. It'll make me anxious as I try to figure out what is real and what is made up and who made it up and why and what I did wrong to make them think that was ok.
And I know the answer is it isn't ok. It is gaslighting. Gaslighting is abuse. But it is sneaky and it leaves marks, marks that no one can see.
Growing someone else's self doubt so that you don't have to change your thinking or your action?
That shit's abuse. You should know better. Stop doing it.
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