Category: reader questions

High school graduation when high school was awful

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
My daughter graduates from high school in a month. She has Aspergers and had many challenges but managed to do well academically. However, she didn’t feel that the school dealt well with her. She is happy to close the door on that part of her life and wants to do it without ceremony. I get it. My husband and I would like to see her walk at graduation but are willing to accept her not attending the ceremony. However, she has said she will go if we ask her to. Should we ask or leave it alone?
realsocialskills said:
I think that the graduation ceremony probably has a very different symbolic meaning for you than it does for your daughter.
I think that, for you, it is probably like this:
  • As her parents, you are very proud of her accomplishment in doing well in high school in a difficult situation
  • You want to celebrate that
  • For you, seeing her walk at graduation is a profound symbol of what she has accomplished and how proud you are of her

I think for her, it is probably like this:

  • High school was a bad experience for her
  • Going to graduation feels like a celebration of the school and her relationship with the school
  • She doesn’t feel that the school treated her well, so she doesn’t want to celebrate with the school

If I’m reading the situation and the symbolic meanings it’s taking for all of you correctly, I don’t think that it is a good idea to ask your daughter to go to the ceremony for your sake. I don’t think that it’s good to push her into something that, for her, feels like celebrating people treating her badly.

But, deciding not to go to the graduation ceremony doesn’t mean that you can’t celebrate your daughter’s accomplishments. You can likely find a form of celebration that would suit all of you, for instance:

  • Having a graduation party for your daughter and her friends
  • Having a family dinner at a restaurant your daughter likes
  • Buying a symbolic present (eg: something related to your daughter’s interests, or something she will use in the next phase of her life)
  • Taking a trip together
  • Baking a cake
  • Writing a story or a poem
  • Or however else your family celebrates milestones

Real situations are complicated

Real Social Skills
Anonymous asked realsocialskills:
I don’t think allies /ever/ need more support than the marginalized group? Yes, allies need support sometimes. But not as much as the people actually dealing with the oppression.
realsocialskills said:
In a general sense, I agree with you. As a group, marginalized people need more support, and justice efforts should be centered around them.
But real situations aren’t just made of groups. They’re also made of people.
For instance, a particular specific ally who just got fired over their activism might need more support in that particular moment than a particular member of a marginalized group who is having a good week and just got a promotion.
If all you know about a situation is which group people are in, you don’t really know what’s going on.

Why I say that all autistic people are disabled

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
I get where you’re coming from saying all autistic people are disabled, but I’m autistic and don’t consider myself disabled, because I move through the world with no external accommodations. I feel uncomfortable claiming the word disabled and I feel more uncomfortable when people apply it to me without my consent.
realsocialskills said:
Here’s what I mean by saying all autistic people are disabled:
Autistic people, *all* autistic people, have things that they can’t do that almost all neurotypical people can do.
That’s a significant fact. And it doesn’t go away because you’ve arranged your life in a way that works for you. And losing site of that can cause a lot of problems.
To use a personal example:
I have a terrible sense of direction. I absolutely need my iPhone to be able to go anywhere new by myself without allowing an extra hour to get lost. That’s true no matter how simple the route is.
I have, at many points, forgotten that I am disabled in this particular way. In my day-to-day life, I normally stay within a small range of a few very familiar city blocks. So I don’t experience my disability, I don’t notice I am disabled. I even, sometimes, forget that I am impaired in that way. I used to get myself into a lot of trouble assuming that I’d gotten over it.
Similar things happen with executive functioning. I need a lot of cognitive cues to be in place to be able to do things. If they’re there, then I can forget that I have problems doing stuff. Which can cause serious problems if what I need to do shifts and my existing cues don’t work anymore.
Understanding that I haven’t gotten over disability and I’m not going to get over it helps me to function better. Because whether I notice my disability or not, it’s always there. When I remember and acknowledge that I am disabled it, I can plan to accommodate my disability.
I think this is true of all autistic people, whether or not they identify as disabled.

Comfort in a new flat

Real Social Skills

A reader asked:

This may be a strange question and isn’t really related to social skills, so I apologize if it’s a wrong place to ask. I’m autistic and recently I moved flats. I lived in the old one for 15 years. No matter how much I try, I don’t feel at home in my new flat. I can’t relax, it doesn’t feel like my safe place. I feel alien and it makes me stressed and tired. Do you (or your followers) have any idea what I can try to do to get used to it? It’s a new place, new furniture, and nothing feels right.

realsocialskills said:

It might be a matter of time. If you wait long enough, things might start seeming more familiar.

But in the mean time:

I wonder if it would help to do some really familiar things?

  • Like, do you have a go-to TV show that you’ve watched over and over? Or a book you’ve read a zillion times?
  • Reading/watching that a whole bunch of times in your new place might help it to feel comfortable and familiar.
  •  Are there foods that smell or taste like comfort to you?
  • Like, do you like the smell of cookies baking? Did you bake in your old place? If so, baking here might help too.
  •  Or ordering a kind of food you ordered a lot.
  • Are there stim toys or blocks or anything that feel comforting and familiar to you? If so, using them might help.  (I never really feel at home in a new place until I’ve made a pattern with my pattern blocks.)
  •  Do you have the same blankets you used to have? If not, it might help to get some that are similar.

Also, it’s worth checking around your place to see whether something is actually bothering you. It might feel like unfamiliarity when it’s actually that you’re physically uncomfortable, for instance:

  • Are the lightbulbs in your new place bothering you? Some people find florescent bulbs intolerable. If your old place had incandescent bulbs and your new place has CFLs, changing the lights might help.
  • How is the temperature? If the air is uncomfortable, you won’t feel as good in a place. Turning the temperature up or down, or getting a fan, might help.
  • Are there noises that bother you? Or is it too quiet? If so, wearing headphones or turning on background noise that you like (music, white noise, TV, etc) might make you more comfortable

Anger is an emotion, not a moral blank cheque

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
Hello, I have a question. Do you know how to deal with someone who hurts and manipulates you and then makes you feel bad about it? Like, if they say mean things about/to you and justify it by saying ‘I was angry’ but if you are ever mean to them, they get really mad at you for it and say you’re a terrible person?
realsocialskills said:
I think in that situation, the best thing you can do is get distance so that person can’t keep hurting you like that.
Some people treat anger like a blank cheque that justifies anything they decide to do to you in their rage. Those people are abusers.
Anger is not a justification. Things that are wrong when you’re calm are still wrong when you are angry.
One thing that anger does is lower inhibitions against certain kinds of actions. That can be a good thing, if it makes it feel more ok to protect yourself. It can be a bad thing, it if makes it feel more ok to hurt people who don’t deserve it. It’s easier to make certain kinds of mistakes when you are angry and have lower inhibitions against doing things that might hurt others. We all make mistakes in anger, from time to time.
But those mistakes *count*; the anger doesn’t cancel out the actions. People who treat their rage as a justification for mistreating you are unlikely to ever start treating you better. If someone still thinks what they did was ok once they’ve calmed down, then they *actually think it was ok* and will do it again next time.
What people say when they’re angry counts. What people say when they’re drunk counts. What people say and think always counts. This is especially true if they are very distressed by the possibility that you’ll judge them for saying mean things, but not at all concerned about the possibility that they hurt you by saying mean things.
If someone calls you a terrible person on a regular basis, assume they mean it. Even if they say they don’t later. Even if they say it was just anger (or alcohol, or stress, or exhaustion.) And keep in mind that friends are people you like who like you, and people who dislike you aren’t friends.
People who regularly tell you that you are a terrible person are trying to make you feel unworthy of friendship so that you will put up with anything they decide to do to you. If they really thought you were a bad person, they’d be trying to get away from you, not trying to keep you close.
The best thing you can do is distance yourself from this person, and spend time with people who actually like and respect you.

About defining abuse

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
Hi, I saw your post about abuse. How can you tell if your partner is abusing you? I’ve been told by a few of my friends that what my boyfriend is doing is “abuse”, but I don’t think it’s that severe. I don’t know how to feel about the situation.
realsocialskills said:
I don’t know your situation, so I can’t tell you much about your relationship. What I can say is that friends can often see things going wrong from outside a relationship that are really hard to see from inside it. Whether or not you agree that what is going on is abuse, I think it’s important to listen to your friends, take their perspective seriously, and consider carefully whether they have a point.
If your friends whose judgement you respect think that you’re being treated poorly, it’s important to make sure that you understand why:
  • Your friends might be wrong, but I think you should hear them out
  • Let them completely explain what they mean
  • In the course of that conversation, don’t argue or defend your boyfriend
  • Listen, and make sure you completely understand what they are saying
  • Take some time to process and consider whether they have a point
  • What do they think is abusive about your relationship?
  • Do you think the things they’re talking about are actually happening?
  • If so (whether or not you’re comfortable using the word abuse) do you agree that those things are hurting you?
  • If so, do you think there is a way to get your boyfriend to stop doing those things? Is this something you and he can work out?
  • If he doesn’t stop, are you willing to tolerate those things long term, or are they dealbreaking?
  • If you’re having mixed feelings about this, it’s probably a good idea to go back and talk to your friends some more about what they’re seeing and what you’re seeing

If you consider what your friends are seeing and whether you think you’re being hurt, you’ll get a better answer than you’ll get by considering in the abstract which things are bad enough to count as abuse.

Learning about other cultures sometimes means listening to survivors

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
I want to learn more about other cultures. I started bc i am a writer and realized my writing was inexcusably non-diverse, but found I wanted to keep on because I find it really interesting. There’s a problem though. I grew up in an abusive family. Seems like many of the cultures I’m learning about place more emphasis than mine on loyalty to family and respect for elders – something that, when I read about it, I find REALLY triggering. How can i learn when i keep getting panic attacks?
realsocialskills said:
I think the problem might be that you are reading the perspectives of people who aren’t talking about abuse, particularly if what you’re reading is apologetic narratives aimed at presenting a culture to those outside it. Those kinds of narratives don’t have a lot of space to acknowledge that abuse is common, wrong, and needs to be addressed. I suspect that you would find similar writing about your own culture equally triggering.
Maybe what’s triggering you is the feeling like there is no voice for survivors and no way to respond to abuse?
If that’s the problem, I think the solution is to seek out the voices of survivors within the culture you are trying to learn about. What do they say about their culture? How are they addressing abuse? How do their culture’s concepts of family play into that?
Whatever culture you are learning about, there will be people within it who are seeking responses to abuse within their own culture on the terms of their culture. I think that, for you, learning about other cultures probably needs to involve listening to those survivors.

Something my blog can’t do

Real Social Skills
stephani-d asked:
I have a sorta-friend who’s aspergers. My other friends and I try to be understanding about stuff (she wears earplugs so sometimes we have to remind her she’s getting loud) and has a few things she really likes, but she isn’t interested in talking about other stuff than what she likes, and interrupts a lot. I’ve been debating about showing her this blog for a while but I don’t know if that would offend her. I don’t know how to tell her she’s annoying because I’m bad at confrontation stuff.
realsocialskills said:
What would you be trying to do by showing your sorta-friend my blog?
I kind of get the sense that you’re thinking that, maybe if you showed it to her, she’d learn that the things that annoy you are bad and stop doing them. It doesn’t actually work that way, though. You can’t just point someone at instructions that will make them better. Friendship is something you work on together.
The point of friendship is that you figure out ways you like interacting, then do those things together. My blog posts can’t replace that.
If someone’s doing stuff you don’t like in a friendship, you have to work that out with them, either by talking it through or by redrawing the boundaries of the relationship so that it doesn’t cause you intolerable problems.
Some specific stuff: your friend is allowed to only want to talk about certain things. You’re allowed to want to limit how much you talk about those things. But this is a negotiating the boundaries of friendship thing, not a getting your friend to change so you’ll like her more.
Figure out what you like doing together, do that, and draw boundaries around the things you don’t want to do.

On being triggered by infodumping

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
I have a really odd question, and this probably wouldn’t of help to anyone else (I am the only person I’ve EVER heard of this happening to) but do you have any advice for NT people about how to deal with autistic infodumps? I’m really really sorry if this is the wrong place to ask, but you’re the only blog I’ve found that even remotely deals with this sort of thing. Trouble is, they trigger me sometimes.
I have an emotionally abusive father who I’m about 90% sure has aspergers and starting when I was really little, he would take me places in the car and just drive in circles for hours and talk at me. Sometimes about something he thought I’d did wrong, sometimes just about his interests. He’d never let me go home or let me join in the conversation; and I could never get him to quit. I literally could never get away and ended up feeling really trapped. Trouble is, I now have an autistic fiance who enjoys talking to me about his interests.
I know he’s doing it innocently and I don’t want to take away something he enjoys, but at times he can go on really long and I start panicking- and, I’m pretty sure; being triggered. How can I politely exit from a conversation like that without hurting his feelings? It isn’t my fiance’s fault, and I’m probably making too big a deal out of this, but IDK I thought you might have some useful suggestions.
realsocialskills said:
First of all, your needs matter. You are not making too big a deal about this. (And I actually think this is probably more common than you realize).
He might not be doing anything inherently wrong, but the situation is not ok for you, and you’re going to have to figure out together how to make it better.  I don’t think there’s a pre-existing way to politely exit from a conversation with him; I think that this is a problem that you and your partner will have to work out a solution to together.
You’re probably going to have to hurt his feelings, at least in the short term. Not because he is doing anything wrong, but because this is a touchy subject for autistic people. Most of us have been treated horribly for having focused interests and infodumping about them. Having other people express boundaries about infodumping can hurt a lot; it can even be triggering.
But people are still allowed to have boundaries about how much they are willing to listen to us go on about our interests, and we have to be able to negotiate that in close relationships. Even when it hurts to think about. Even though it’s triggering sometimes.
Telling your partner that his infodumping hurts you sometimes will probably be a very difficult conversation for both of you. It will probably be complicated figuring out how to negotiate boundaries that work for both of you.
But it’s an important conversation to have, and it probably won’t be the last issue in which you need to have a difficult conversation about something that is loaded for both of you. That’s part of the work of an intimate relationship, particularly when both partners have triggers.
Some things that I think might help:
Make it clear that you don’t see his interests as the problem:
  • A lot of autistic people have been subjected to a lot of pressure to give up our interests, or stop being so focused on them
  • If you’re asking to negotiate boundaries about discussing the interests, it’s really easy for that to feel like rejection or like you are disgusted by him liking things
  • So, if you don’t see it that way, *say so*
  • (If you do see his interests as the problem, that’s a different problem and I’m not sure what to suggest)
Think through what your needs are:
  • What do you need once you get triggered? A subject change? Being by yourself for awhile? Reassurance? Being explicitly reminded that your partner doesn’t see you as an infodump-recieving object? Food? Something else?
  • What would help you to avoid getting triggered? Being able to change the subject easily? Avoiding certain topics when you’re in the car? Something else?
Agree on a way to signal that you need to change the subject:
  • If you’re getting triggered, particularly if you have a compliance trigger, it’s important to figure out a way to communicate that you’re not ok
  • It might be good to have a rule about him checking in periodically about how you’re doing in a long conversation about something he’s really into
  • Or to try to identify explicitly what the signs are that you are being triggered (eg: when you’re not ok, do you go quiet? Do you start agreeing to everything? Does your body language change? Something else), and ask him to pay attention to whether you’re doing those things and check in with you if he sees them
  • It also might be good to agree on a specific thing you will say or a specific gesture you need to make if you need to change the subject.
Listen to what he has to say about this and what his needs are:
  • He’s going to have thoughts about this
  • Some of them might hurt to hear, or might be scary or triggering given your history
  • And this isn’t going to have a simple solution where you mentioning the problem makes it go away
  • It’s important to listen to his perspective and think through together what’s going to work for both of you

I think this is probably something you can work out if you both act in good faith. (Not guaranteed; some people aren’t compatible in this area through no fault of their own. But from what you’ve said it sounds possible to work out).

Computer games to teach boundaries?

Real Social Skills
sighsexual asked:
I love this blog so, so, so much and I am so happy it exists. I go to school for special education and game design and I have devoted a large portion of my life working with children with specific needs, helping them to learn new tricks to feel more included and comfortable in social spaces. I was eventually hoping to create a video game that would help to teach these very concepts, as well. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, if you wouldn’t mind sharing ^_^
realsocialskills said:
I don’t know huge amounts about game design, but I’ve wondered if there’s a way to use games to teach people about boundaries.
Maybe you could make a game about saying no?
And I’m not talking about “say no to drugs” or “resist peer pressure to do things adults think you shouldn’t” or any of that. I’m talking about figuring out what you want, and saying no when you don’t want that thing.
I think it might help to make a list of situations in which people might be pressured into making choices one way or the other. Like:
  • when adults want you to be friends with someone
  • when people want to play with you
  • when someone wants to borrow your toy
  • when someone wants your phone number
  • when someone wants to be your girlfriend/boyfriend
  • when someone wants a hug

And then make game situations involving those things? This would be hard to write, but I bet it could be done. (One reason it would be hard to write is that saying no doesn’t always work even when you have every right to say no, and it’s important not to teach kids that it’s their fault when they can’t make people stop hurting them.)

It’s really, really important for people to be able to assert boundaries. And people with disabilities are often taught from early childhood that they aren’t allowed to have any boundaries, dislike anything, or say no.