Content note: This is a post about ABA, and not being believed about the harm ABA does.
A reader asked:
People don’t believe me when I say I was a victim to ABA abuse, not even my parents.
I was misgendered routinely, I could not drink water even though this was harmless and was often asked to write my name even though this was effectively pointless.
How should I convince people I was really abused?
Am I just whining and should I “get over it” because that’s not “real abuse” and I’m not autistic?
realsocialskills said:
It’s not your fault that therapists hurt you. It’s not your fault that people don’t believe you. What people did to you matters, even if no one believes you.
ABA is degrading on a level that it can be very hard to recover from or even describe. The basic methodology of ABA is finding out what you care about most and using it to get compliance with arbitrary demands.
I’ve written some here and here and here about the kind of damage that does, and that’s only scratching the surface.
Increasingly, one of the things behavior therapists demand is that you pretend that they’re not controlling you. They often go so far as to demand that you act like you like what’s happening and believe that it’s both necessary and enjoyable. And they do that even as they make you do obviously pointless things (like writing your name over and over), and even as they do obviously awful things to you (like denying you water and misgendering you).
That kind of thing can mess with your mind really badly, especially when you’re surrounded by people who don’t believe you.
It’s not your fault that people don’t believe you. They can refuse to acknowledge what people did to you; you can’t make it go away. It matters even if no one around you cares.
You will probably always have to deal with people who don’t believe you. Most people are reluctant to believe that therapists ever hurt people in ways that matter, and ABA has a particularly effective publicity machine. Some people will say that you’re whining, that you’re lying, and that the things you’ve described don’t happen. They’re wrong. It matters that people hurt you in the name of helping you. It’s horrible that people who you should be able to trust don’t believe you.
Some of them may eventually come to understand. Sometimes people come around, in the long term. But you don’t have to wait for that in order to be ok, you don’t have to explain it to them if you don’t want to, and what happened to you matters whether or not people believe you.
Also… You are not alone. What happened to you shouldn’t happen to anyone. There is a community of people who know that it’s wrong to treat people that way. Making connections with people who believe you might help a lot.
It’s much easier to hold on to your perspective if you’re not doing it alone. This is hard. It’s also possible. You’re ok.
Short version: Abuse matters even if no one believes you. That said, making connections with people who believe you can help a lot. You are not alone, even if really important people in your life don’t believe you.