Tag: actuallyautistic

Nonviolent Communication can hurt people

Real Social Skills

People who struggle interpersonally, who seem unhappy, or who get into a lot of conflicts are often advised to adopt the approach of Nonviolent Communication. 

This is often not a good idea. Nonviolent Communication is an approach based on refraining from seeming to judge others, and instead expressing everything in terms of your own feelings. For instance, instead of “Don’t be such an inconsiderate jerk about leaving your clothes around”, you’d say “When you leave your clothing around, I feel disrespected.”. That approach is useful in situations in which people basically want to treat each other well but have trouble doing so because they don’t understand one another’s needs and feelings. In every other type of situation, the ideology and methodology of Nonviolent Communication can make things much worse.

Nonviolent Communication can be particularly harmful to marginalized people or abuse survivors. It can also teach powerful people to abuse their power more than they had previously, and to feel good about doing so. Non-Violent Communication has strategies that can be helpful in some situations, but it also teaches a lot of anti-skills that can undermine the ability to survive and fight injustice and abuse.

For marginalized or abused people, being judgmental is a necessary survival skill. Sometimes it’s not enough to say “when you call me slurs, I feel humiliated” – particularly if the other person doesn’t care about hurting you or actually wants to hurt you. Sometimes you have to say “The word you called me is a slur. It’s not ok to call me slurs. Stop.” Or “If you call me that again, I’m leaving.” Sometimes you have to say to yourself “I’m ok, they’re mean.” All of those things are judgments, and it’s important to be judgmental in those ways.

You can’t protect yourself from people who mean you harm without judging them. Nonviolent Communication works when people are hurting each other by accident; it only works when everyone means well. It doesn’t have responses that work when people are hurting others on purpose or without caring about damage they do. Which, if you’re marginalized or abused, happens several times a day. NVC does not have a framework for acknowledging this or responding to it.

In order to protect yourself from people who mean you harm, you have to see yourself as having the right to judge that someone is hurting you. You also have to be able to unilaterally set boundaries, even when your boundaries are upsetting to other people. Nonviolent Communication culture can teach you that whenever others are upset with you, you’re doing something wrong and should change what you do in order to meet the needs of others better. That’s a major anti-skill. People need to be able to decide things for themselves even when others are upset.

Further, NVC places a dangerous degree of emphasis on using a very specific kind of language and tone. NVC culture often judges people less on the content of what they’re saying than how they are saying it. Abusers and cluelessly powerful people are usually much better at using NVC language than people who are actively being hurt. When you’re just messing with someone’s head or protecting your own right to mess with their head, it’s easy to phrase things correctly. When someone is abusing you and you’re trying to explain what’s wrong, and you’re actively terrified, it’s much, much harder to phrase things in I-statements that take an acceptable tone.

Further, there is *always* a way to take issue with the way someone phrased something. It’s really easy to make something that’s really about shutting someone up look like a concern about the way they’re using language, or advice on how to communicate better. Every group I’ve seen that valued this type of language highly ended up nitpicking the language of the least popular person in the group as a way of shutting them up.

Short version: Be careful with Nonviolent Communication. I-statements have their uses in some contexts, but NVC is not the complete solution to conflict or communication that it presents itself as. NVC can be particularly dangerous for people with communication disabilities, and for people who have trouble setting boundaries.

When parents ask invasive questions

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
 
Hi. My parents are always asking me why I do things like rock back and forth or become unable to talk. When I say “I don’t know” they press me until I throw wordsoup at them. If I answer “I was overloaded” or whatever “Why were you overloaded?” “The lights.” “Why did the lights bug you today and not yesterday?” “I didn’t sleep well.” “Why didn’t you sleep well?” They go farther and farther until I say I don’t know, then press me until I make up reasons. I hate it. Help?
 
realsocialskills said:
 
That’s hard. There are no universal strategies that work for everyone in this case, and you might not be able to get them to stop, particularly if you are still living with them. That said, here are some possibilities:
 
Depending on your relationship with them, it might help to talk to them about it when you’re all calm. If they care about how you feel, it might help to tell them that it’s hurting you, possibly along the lines of:
  • Mom, when I am rocking back and forth or unable to speak, the last thing I want to do is talk about it. It really hurts my feelings when you press me for answers. There’s always a reason, but I don’t always know it, and it’s not something I want to talk about when I’m in that state of mind. When I’m rocking or unable to speak, I’d prefer that you leave me be.
  • or:
  • Dad, I get the sense that when I rock or can’t speak, it makes you very worried and you want to find out exactly what’s going on. I know you mean well, but that doesn’t help. Rocking and losing speech sometimes is actually fairly normal for autistic people, and it hurts my feelings when you act like it’s a problem to be solved. When I rock or can’t talk, that’s ok, and I’d prefer that you let me be and stop trying to investigate.
  • This only works if your parents care about your feelings and are likely to believe you. I don’t know you or your family, so I can’t tell you whether or not you have that kind of relationship.

Also depending on your relationship with them, you might be able to unilaterally refuse to talk about these things. This depends on how much power you have and how they are likely to react, but it’s a possibility worth considering:

  • If you refuse explicitly and say “I do not want to talk about that”, they will probably get angry
  • But it’s hard for them to argue with, particularly if you adopt a broken record approach and don’t answer questions like “why not?”, or answer them in closed ways like “That’s private.”
  • Whether this is a good idea depends on what your parents are likely to do if they get angry, and whether you consider that consequence bearable.
  • If all they’re likely to do is get angry or yell at you, it’s probably in your interest to develop a tolerance for yelling and anger
  • This is a good post by Dave Hingsburger about a man with a developmental disability learning to tolerate parental anger

Another possible broken-record approach:

  • When they’re asking, it might help to say “because I’m autistic”, and “because that’s what autistic people do” in response to all of their questions
  • Or something lighter like shrugging and saying “My brain works in mysterious ways”, if you can pull off a light tone with that.
  • This might work better than outright refusing or saying “I don’t know”, since it’s an answer, but it doesn’t get into details

Another possibility: infodump and bore them:

  • If they want to ask you about rocking or losing speech, you might try telling them every single thing you can think of about rocking and losing speech, in as verbose a manner as you can manage
  • And answer every followup question with another longwinded monologue
  • Infodumping can be a superpower of self defense. As Laura Hershey put it about wheelchair users blocking inaccessible doors, such power should not be wasted
  • If you’re infodumping and answering the question you want to answer rather than the one they want you to answer, that gives you power

Another possibility: lie

  • It might help to make up something that sounds plausible and just answer that every time they ask
  • Lying can be easier than trying to tell the truth
  • Particularly if you practice the lie and refine it to become an answer they find satisfying
  • “Why were you rocking?” “Because I was overloaded.” “Why?” “Because of the lights.” “Why did the lights bother you today and not yesterday?” “Today the lights were different. I think the bulbs are burning out.”
  • It is ok to lie when people are harassing you about things that are none of their business, even if they love you, even if they are your parents

Another possibility: Aggressively change the subject when they ask questions you don’t want to answer;

  • This is particularly effective if they have things they are particularly interested in
  • Eg “Why were you rocking?” “So, are you looking forward to the big game tonight?”
  • This doesn’t work on everyone, but it can be very effective with some people

Another possibility: Talk about the things they’re objecting to in positive terms:

  • “Why were you rocking?” “Because rocking is awesome!”
  • “Why weren’t you talking?” “Because words are overrated and the space outside of words is beautiful”
  • This can be disarming, in part because it’s rude to argue with people about things they like
  • They might follow up with: “But other people think it looks weird”, which you can answer “That’s their problem.” or “That’s ok.”
  • They might also say “That’s inappropriate”. I don’t know a great rhetorical response to that one, but people who say that are in fact wrong.

Another possibility: Turn the questions back on them:

  • “Why were you rocking?” “Why do you ask?”
  • This can be surprisingly effective with a lot of people, particularly if you can manage to sound curious or therapeutic.
  • Having a snarky/offended tone isn’t quite as effective, but it can sometimes work too, because it implies “that was not an appropriate question”. That tone will get some people to back off; it will cause others to argue

These are some of the strategies I know. Captain Awkward also talks about parents and boundaries a lot. You might want to take a look through her archives. (That said, take her advice about therapy with a grain of salt. What she says is true for a lot of people, but it isn’t necessarily going to be good advice for people with disabilities, particularly teenagers).

Beyond that, in any case, I think it’s important to keep in mind that this isn’t your fault, and that your parents should not be doing this. They may not intend any harm, they may well think they’re helping you, but they’re being mean. The problem is not caused by autism. The problem is caused by them being wrong about how to treat you.

These three posts about dealing with people being mean to you might help: “You’re ok, they’re mean.”, Learning self respect, and When people you love are mean.

I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. It’s an awful situation to be in. I hope that some of this helped.

Age-appropriate interaction with autistic people

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
 
Hello, I am a teacher. I wanted to say thank you for your posts. I work with one student who is autistic and not quite non-verbal, but speaks very little.
 
I found myself talking to her as if she were much younger than she is because I had no way of telling if she was understanding. Your posts have helped me to understand that even though she doesn’t speak, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t understand, and even if she doesn’t, I should still treat her like the 12-year-old she is
 
On Wednesday I spoke to her to let her know that I was wrong to have spoken to her like a little kid, and that I would now be speaking to her like a twelve-year-old. She seemed pleased. I have ASD traits myself, but I’ve never been non-verbal (even when I couldn’t speak, I still signed), so I didn’t really understand that non-verbal doesn’t mean not understanding necessarily. Thank you.
 
realsocialskills said:
 
Oh wow. That is heartening to hear. It’s wonderful that you realized that it was wrong to talk to her like a young child, and that you apologized. That is such an important sign of respect for her. Thank you for taking this seriously, and thank you for telling me about this.
 
I want to add that, in addition to talking to her like a 12 year old, you probably need to develop better skills at listening to her like a 12 year old.
 
Probably most of the people you’ve known in your life who had a small expressive vocabulary or spoke only sometimes were very young children. Her speech is not like that. She is thinking much more complex things than a young child is capable of. If you’re not used to listening to nonverbal or minimally verbal folks who are not babies, you probably don’t yet know how to do so in an age-appropriate way.
 
So it’s not just the way you initiate talking to her that needs to change, it’s also the way you respond to what she says. She has a lot to say. Possibly through her words; possibly mostly through her actions; possibly mostly through body language. But, in any case, she is 12 years old, and she has a lot of 12 year old things to say.
 
You can learn how to listen to her better. It’s a matter of respect, practice, and skills you can develop.
 
For instance:
  • You can get a lot of mileage out of asking yes or no questions. (For some people, it helps to prompt with “yes or no” if it seems like answering yes/no questions isn’t a skill they have all the time) Eg: “Did you bring a lunch today – yes or no?”)
  • You can also use other kinds of two-option questions. Eg: If you know that she wants a book but she can’t tell you which book she wants, you can put your hand in the middle of the shelf and say “Up or down?” “Left or right?” “This one?”.
  • You can get even more out of asking a question with an open ended and closed response. Someone who can’t give you a meaningful answer to “What do you want to do?” may well be able to answer “Do you want to draw, or do something else?” Or “Is the answer England, or something else?”
 
You can also listen to what she says, make guesses about what she means, tell her what your guess is, and ask if you are right. For instance “You just said juice several times. I think that might be because you want to drink juice. Do you want juice, or do you mean something else?” Or “You just said “We’re all friends here!” and you sounded angry. Are you upset about something?“ Or “You just said “Separate but equal!”. Are you talking about discrimination?“
 
I’ve written about listening to atypical communication here, and here, and I wrote a more general post about how to provide respectful support to an autistic student here.
 
For some further perspective on this, I’d highly recommend reading the blog Emma’s Hope Book. It’s a blog written by the mother of a 12 year old autistic girl whose speech is unreliable (with some posts from her as well), and they have a lot of really important things to say about how to respect people whose communication is atypical. 
 
Short version: Your student has things to say, whether or not she has figured out how to say them. She is already saying some of them (in words or otherwise), whether or not you understand her communication. The more you assume that she is trying to communicate with you, and the more you assume that what she says is worthwhile, the more you will be able to understand her and teach her in age-appropriate ways. Scroll up for some examples.
 
 

Listening to folks whose speech is unusual

Real Social Skills

This happens a lot, especially for autistic folks with a particular cognitive configuration:

  • An autistic person says something in the most straightforward way they can think of
  • But it’s far from the way most people say it
  • And it doesn’t occur to other people that they’re being direct
  • It’s seen as either the autistic person not understanding something, being presumptuous, or being hilarious

For instance:

  • Alice and Nancy walk into a cafeteria, which is overflowing with different food options
  • Alice (wanting a particular kind of food and not knowing how to find it): Where’s the food?
  • Nancy: Umm, everywhere?

In this example, Nancy thought Alice was just being annoying or funny and didn’t understand what she was trying to communicate. This would have been better:

  • Alice: Where’s the food?
  • Nancy: Which food do you mean?
  • Alice: Food!
  • Nancy: Are you looking for something in particular?
  • Alice: Food!
  • Nancy: Your favorite food?
  • Alice: My favorite food! Chocolate pie! Burger?
  • Nancy: They have both of those things. We will see them when we go through the line.

Or:

  • Nathan is discussing politics with his son, Arthur
  • Nathan: What does the president do?
  • Arthur: Important stuff. Not like you do.
  • Nathan: You don’t think what I do is important?!
  • (Nathan, telling the story later, uses it as an example of how kids have no filter)
  • What Arthur actually meant was along the lines of “The president is a public figure with a lot of power, and everyone pays a lot of attention to what he says; that’s really different from how other people’s jobs work”.

This would have been better:

  • Arthur: Important stuff. Not like you do.
  • Nathan: What kind of important stuff?
  • Arthur: My fellow Americans…
  • Nathan: Important like speeches?
  • Arthur: Yes. Speeches on TV.
  • Nathan: I don’t make speeches on TV.
  • Arthur: You go to the office.
  • etc etc

Short version: When autistic people communicate things, sometimes it sounds strange or unusual in ways that are often misinterpreted. Be careful about assuming that they’re being dismissive, being cute, or joking; be careful to listen. Scroll up for some concrete examples.

People with disabilities learn and think

Real Social Skills

People with disabilities are capable of learning things on purpose, because they’re interested in what they’re learning. That’s true of people with all kinds and degrees of disability. Everyone cares about things, everyone thinks, any everyone learns.

And yet, education for people with disabilities often starts from the assumption that disabled folks have no intrinsic motivation to learn. That, before you can start to teach anything, you have to identify a reinforcer for the target behavior. And that it should be the same across subjects, and that it needn’t have any relation to what you’re trying to teach.

So, instead of starting by teaching reading, you might start by identifying an effective reinforcer, and using it to reinforce reading behavior. For example, stickers. Or giving a jellybean each time someone reads a page. Or high fives. 

In a technical sense, finding a book that someone enjoys is also, according to behaviorist theory, finding an effective reinforcer for reading behavior. But it’s not at all the same as using an unrelated reinforcer to teach reading.

Finding a book that interests a person you’re teaching to read communicates why reading is worthwhile. Using an unrelated reinforcer to get them to cooperate with reading lessons may work, but it doesn’t communicate the value of reading. In fact, it actively demonstrates that you’re assuming that they will not value reading and that it’s not worth trying to convince them that reading is worthwhile. 

The same is true of communication lessons. Identifying a reinforcer and using it to reinforce speaking behavior can get someone to cooperate with rote speech lessons, but it can’t teach them what symbolic communication is. Figuring out what someone wants to say, and giving them a reliable way to say it, can. So can making sure that you listen to communication someone already has, and making it clear that you respect them. (If you refuse to learn their language, you’re teaching them that their communication doesn’t matter. Which is the opposite of helpful.) Behaviorist approaches something accomplish that, but only as a side effect. You can teach communication better if you teach it directly, rather than as a side effect of reinforcing speaking or pointing behavior. 

People with disabilities care about things, and want to learn. The assumption that we don’t is deeply degrading. 

Once the relief wears off

Real Social Skills

In Frozen, the main character accidentally injures her sister with her magic ice powers as a young child. In reaction, her parents teach her that she has to suppress and hide her powers at all costs in order to protect others. In a dramatic moment, she accidentally releases her powers in front of everyone. She gives up on concealing her powers, and makes dramatic and demonstrative use of of them. And, since it is a Disney movie, there is a song.

There’s a particular part of the song that I think is an important description of what it’s like to come to terms with difference:

It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me can’t get to me at all.
Up here in the cold thin air I finally can breathe.
I know I left a life behind but I’m too relieved to grieve. (quote ends here)

When you first start coming to terms with a stigmatized difference and talking about it in public and accepting yourself, as first it’s mostly a relief.

At first, you’re too relieved to grieve or to notice the price you’re paying for living in the world as an openly disabled (or whatever else) person. The price for trying to be normal was so, so high, and when you give up on that, the relief of not paying that price anymore is huge. 

But the relief wears off. Gradually, you start to notice the price you pay for standing your ground. You’ve realize that you’ve left a life behind in order to stand your ground and be who you are unapologetically. And that some aspects of that life were good, and that you can’t get them back.

You’ve lost a lot, and that can be hard to take once it sets in and the relief wears off. Some of the losses are direct, concrete things, like people who won’t trust you around children, hire you, or talk to you anymore. Others are more ephemeral – like, giving up the hope that you’d ever have the kind of respect that those who live without stigma enjoy. There are a lot of things, and what they are exactly differs for everyone. But there are a lot of them, and coming to terms with that kind of loss hurts.

It is ok to grieve the things you left behind in order to accept yourself, hold ground, and be who you are openly. Grieving over this loss doesn’t mean that you’re backsliding in self acceptance. It just the price you pay for holding your ground often sucks, and sometimes that can loom very large. This is not your fault. 

Honor your grief. You shouldn’t have had to lose the things you’ve lost. It should have been yours by right. You should have been able to be who you are openly without losing all of that. It’s horrible that you have to make this choice. You don’t have to have a sunny attitude all the time; you can have grief and regret and sadness and still be ok and on the right path.

The price is high, and you never really stop paying it, but it’s worth it. You’re worth it. We’re worth it. We can stand together and hold ground and support one another. Know that others have been through the stage where the relief wears off and the grief sets in, and found that the pain is bearable and that we can support one another through it.

Laura Hershey’s book of ADAPT poetry “In The Way” helps.

You can only speak for yourself

Real Social Skills

You are not your child’s voice. You are not the voice of the voiceless. You are not anyone’s voice, except your own.

You can advocate for others, but you can only speak for yourself.

You can translate. You can guess. You can do lots of things. You can advocate.

But you are you. You are not your child. Or your student. Or your sister. No matter how well you understand them. No matter how much you love them. You are not them. You are you.

They have a perspective of their own, and it is not the same as yours. Whether or not they can articulate it, whether or not anyone knows what it is, they have a perspective that is wholly their own.

When you speak, you are speaking from your own perspective; that is the only perspective you *can* speak from. You can never get inside another person’s head; you can never share their perspective; you can never be their voice.

Make sure that you keep in mind that the person you care about exists as a person separate from you, and that they disagree with you about some things; probably even some really important things. (No one 100% agrees with another person about everything.). Do not speak as though you and they are essentially the same person, or as though they automatically agree with everything you think. They are real, and their perspective matters.

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

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.