Tag: you’re ok they’re mean

“Choosing to be disabled”

Real Social Skills

Ableists often believe that “choosing to be disabled” is a major social problem. They aggressively believe that most disabilities aren’t real, and that people could stop being disabled if they’d just make better choices. They think most disabled people are fakers who just stay disabled out of laziness.

They may see accessibility and accommodations as “enabling”, and try to get them taken away. Or, they may try to force people into treatment (whether or not safe and effective treatment actually exists.) Or they may just be mean and hostile towards disabled people they encounter. Or any number of other things. This hurts all disabled people badly.

People with disabilities often feel like they have to prove that they are not faking, and that their disability isn’t a choice. This can lead us to worry a lot about whether we’re somehow doing this on purpose. In this state of mind, it’s really easy to find things that feel like evidence that we’re fake.

Disability usually involves tradeoffs. We can’t choose to have all of the same abilities as nondisabled people, but we often can make some choices about which abilities to prioritize. This can superficially look like “choosing to be disabled” if you don’t understand how disability works.
For instance:

Medications:

  • All medications have side effects
  • Managing the condition and the side effects can involve complicated tradeoffs
  • There is usually more than one option
  • It can often be a choice of what abilities you prioritize most, and which impairments are most tolerable
  • You may be able to choose to make any particular impairment go away
  • That doesn’t mean you could choose to be unimpaired
  • Ableists will think you are faking no matter which choices you make. They are wrong.

Mobility equipment:

  • People with mobility impairments often have more than one option, and there can be complex tradeoffs.
  • Eg, which is more important to someone?
  • Being able to go further without fatigue (in a power chair) or being able to ride in a regular car (with a collapsable wheelchair)?
  • Being able to travel a mile on the sidewalk (in a wheelchair), or being able to use all of the subway stops (by walking)?
  • Being able to get into inaccessible buildings (by walking), or being able to go out without being in pain (in a wheelchair)?
  • Retaining the ability to walk (by spending a lot of time doing physical therapy) or being able to take a full course load in college (by spending that time on studying and losing the ability to walk)?
  • No matter which choice you make, ableists who don’t understand disability will see it as “choosing to be disabled”. They are wrong.

There are any number of other examples, for every type of disability. This affects every kind of disability, including physical, sensory, cognitive, psychiatric, chronic illness, and the categories I forgot to mention.

Short version: We all have to make choices about how to manage our disabilities, and there are often complicated tradeoffs. No matter which choices we make, ableists will think we’re making the wrong ones. No matter which choices we make, ableists will think that we are faking.

In the face of this kind of hostility, it is easy to start doubting ourselves and believing that we’re fake and terrible. It helps to remember that the ableists don’t know what they are talking about (even if they are disabled themselves). Making choices about how to manage disability is just part of life. The ableists are not experts in how you should be living you life; they are wrong and they are mean.

Not everyone is mean

Real Social Skills

Mean people take up a lot of space.

Mean people often make their voices heard the loudest.

If you are around a loud mean person, it can be hard to remember that kind people exist.

It can feel like the world is all mean people, and that they’re all yelling at you.

But, not everyone is mean. A lot of people are kind and caring.

When you notice the kind people, and make an effort to listen to them, it’s much harder for the mean people to drown out their voices.

“Don’t let people get to you”

Real Social Skills

I don’t know about you, but I’ve experienced this a lot:

  • I’ll talk about someone being mean or bigoted towards me.
  • And someone will say something like “Don’t let them get to you”, or
  • “Don’t ever let people get under your skin like that, they’re not worth it”

And in my experience, that always makes me feel worse. This is what I eventually figured out about it:

Things hurt.

It’s not your fault that it hurts when people are awful to you.

It’s not your fault you care what people think of you sometimes. (Everyone does.)

Having connections to others matters. And when people we’re connected to are mean, it hurts.

Self esteem talk can end up being yet another stick to beat you with, and that’s not right either.

Being hurt by mean people doesn’t mean you’re failing. It’s not possible to be completely invulnerable at all times. When someone’s shooting arrows at you, it’s not your fault for failing to make armor fast enough to stop them.

You’re ok. They’re mean.

“As a last resort”

Real Social Skills

Content warning: This is a graphic post about brutality towards people with disabilities. ABA and justifications for abuse are discussed. Proceed with caution.

People do a lot of brutal things to people with disabilities, including children.

Some examples: pinning them to the floor, punishing them with electric shocks, medicating them into immobility, putting them in 10-40 hours a week of repetitive behavioral therapy, taking away everything they care about and making them earn it by complying with therapy, taking away their food, and confining them in small places.

These things are now somewhat politically unpopular. We identify, as a culture, as having got past that point. We think of this kind of brutality as something that happened in the past, even though it is still common.

What this means in practice is that whenever people do brutal things to someone with a disability, it will be called the last resort. People doing the brutal things will claim that they minimize them, that there are protections in place, and that they only do them when necessary.

For example, this is an excerpt from the (as of this post) current ethical standards for BCBAs (certified ABA experts):

“4.05 Reinforcement/Punishment.

The behavior analyst recommends reinforcement rather than punishment whenever possible. If punishment procedures are necessary, the behavior analyst always includes reinforcement procedures for alternative behavior in the program.

4.06 Avoiding Harmful Reinforcers. RBT

The behavior analyst minimizes the use of items as potential reinforcers that maybe harmful to the long-term health of the client or participant (e.g., cigarettes, sugar or fat-laden food), or that may require undesirably marked deprivation procedures as motivating operations.”

In other words, the current standards of ethics for ABA practices explicitly allow punishment, harmful reinforcers, and “undesirably marked deprivation procedures”. But, they claim to “minimize” it, and only do it when they consider it necessary in some way.

This is an empty claim. Everyone who has ever used harmful reinforcers and brutal punishments has claimed that they are only used when they are necessary. Even the people who deprived children of food and made them live and study on electrified floors (graphic link, proceed with caution.) Even the electric shocks and food deprivation used by the Judge Rotenburg Center do not violate the BCBA ethical guidelines, because they claim that they are necessary and only used in extreme cases (even though they shock people for things like standing up from chairs without permission.) 

Whenever any of this is done to someone, it will be justified as “a last resort”. Even if it’s an explicit part of their plan. Even if it’s done regularly with no attempt to transition to another approach. Even if nothing else has ever been tried. Someone who is treated brutally will be assumed to have deserved it.

People call things last resorts to justify doing them. They choose to do brutal things to a vulnerable person, but they think of it as inevitable because it is “the last resort”. Calling something “the last resort” means “it’s that person’s fault I’m doing this; I could not possibly do otherwise.”

Treating someone in your care brutally and then blaming them for your choices is inexcusable. 

To those treated brutally and told it was a last resort: I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m even more sorry if it’s still happening. It’s not your fault. It’s not because of anything you did, and it’s not because there’s anything wrong with your mind. You were abused because others chose to abuse you.

A question about bullying and being an adult who kids ask for help

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
 
This ask is about bullying and being an adult who kids ask for help:
 
I know from experience that it’s important not to teach bullied kids that the way to defend themselves is to mentally place themselves as superior to the bullies, because that can crush the kid’s self-esteem later, & can so easily turn them into someone who bullies a different kid to feel better.
 
But what should you say to support kids instead?
 
yrs, a past bullying victim, now older & trying to support kids thru the same thing
 
realsocialskills said:
 
I think, before considerations about teaching kids who come to you for help self defense, it’s important to consider what you might be able to do to protect them. You are likely in a position to offer them material protection as well as self-defense advice. This is a situation in which actions speak louder than words.
For instance:
 
Can you offer bullied kids a refuge?
  • If you’re a teacher in a school, can you start a lunch club or recess club where kids can eat and hang out in your classroom instead of going to the playground?
  • If neighborhood kids are coming to you for help, can you make your house or yard a safe space for them to hang out in away from bullies?

If you’re an adult with some kind of power over kids (eg: a teacher, a youth group leader, etc), you might be able to make some things better by supervising things more:

  • Can you pay close attention to what’s going on, and intervene when the wrong kid gets suspended?
  • (You know from being bullied that the kid who gets caught often isn’t the kid who started it.
  • If you pay enough attention, you might be in a position to protect the kid who is being unjustly punished.)
  • Can you pay attention to when harassment and bullying rules are being broken, and enforce them? Rules can actually make a difference when they are enforced consistently.
  • (For instance: if there’s a rule against touching people’s stuff without permission, can you pay attention to when kids take other people’s stuff and insist that they stop?)
If the bullies are taking or destroying the kid’s possessions in a place that’s hard to supervise, can you offer them a safe place to keep it?
  • Being able to store things in a place bullies can’t get to can make a huge difference
  • For instance, a kid whose science project keeps getting destroyed by bullies can complete it if teachers give her a secure space to store it and work on it
  • A kid whose dolls keep getting destroyed by his brothers will probably be much more ok if an adult gives him a safe place to keep his dolls.
If the bullies are preventing the kids from eating:
  • Can you provide a safe place for them to eat?
  • If bullies keep taking food away from the kids who are coming to you for help, can you give them food?
  • If kids need to break rules in order to eat safely, can you allow them to break the rules?
 
Has the kid been physically injured or threatened in a way the police might take seriously?
  • Sometimes the police might take things seriously even if the school does not
  • Calling the police is not always a good idea, but sometimes it is
  • If calling the police might be warranted, can you offer to sit with the kid while they call the police?
  • Or to call for them?
  • Or to go to the police station and make a report together?
  • Going to the police is a lot less scary if someone is helping you; and children are more likely to be believed if adults are backing them up
  • If they have to go to court, can you offer to go along for moral support? (It makes a difference. Testifying is often terrifying and horrible and it’s not something anyone should ever have to do without support)
What else can you do?
  • I don’t know you, so I don’t know what the kids coming to you need, or what you’re in a position to offer.
  • But there are almost certainly things you can do that I haven’t thought of
  • if you think it through, you can probably think of and do some things that materially help bullied kids.
  • Actions speak louder than words. If you help protect them, you send the message that they are worth protecting.
You can also be an adult who believes them:
  • Being believed about bullying is incredibly powerful
  • So is listening
  • Kids who are bullied often have everyone in their life try to downplay how awful it is
  • If you believe them about their experiences and listen, you send the message that it matters that others are treating them badly
  • And that it’s not their fault.
  • And that they’re ok and the bullies are mean.
There is an emotional self-defense technique that works better than the destructive one we were taught as children. It was developed by Dave Hingsburger, and he describes it in The Are Word (a book anyone working with people who are bullied for any reason need to read.)
 
I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago about how it works, and I will probably do so again in the future.

Learning self respect

Real Social Skills
A reader asked:
I’m twenty years old and I can’t help but think that everyone thinks I’m stupid. I stutter, I feel slow, I say dumb things, and I sometimes catch people giving me judging looks. No one’s ever said that to me except maybe once or twice when I was much younger, but I can’t help be bothered by it.
I feel like there’s something wrong with me mentally, but people don’t want to address it. I hate it. I’d rather be messed up and not aware of it than this. How do I learn to love and be okay with myself?
realsocialskills said:
The most helpful thing I know about this, I learned from Dave Hingsburger’s book _The Are Word_. And, in the simplest form, it’s this:
You’re ok. They’re mean.
If you stutter and think slowly and have cognitive problems and have trouble communicating, there probably are a lot of people in your life who think you are stupid.
They may think that, but it isn’t true.
You’re ok. They’re mean.
People who think that you are stupid are being mean. People who give you judging looks are being really mean.
You’re ok. They’re mean.
The way you talk doesn’t make them look down on you. The way you think doesn’t make them look down on you. Your voice is not the problem. Your brain is not the problem. They’re mean because they’re bigoted and mean.
You’re ok. They’re mean.
And, in the words of Laura Hershey: you get proud by practicing.
I know it hurts. It hurts terribly. It’s not your fault, and you won’t always feel this awful. It takes time. It takes practice. It’s slow, and incremental. Try not to be hard on yourself for struggling with this. We all do. It’s hard. That’s not your fault, either.
You’re ok. They’re mean. And as you practice understanding this, and as you practice getting proud, it will be easier to feel ok and harder for them to hurt you.