Shout Out To The Disabled People With Emotional Dysregulation Particularly In Regards To Anger. People

Needs to be said, probably controversial, but "bad" people deserve support for their mental health issues as well. "Bad" people should not be dehumanized and berated for their mental health issues. I dont care what they've done

Sia’s overwhelmingly offensive movie, loads of comedians raising money for an organisation that wants to find a ‘cure’ for autism and now Elon Musk presenting himself as representative of people with ‘Aspergers’- this is really the year of celebrities deciding gang together to fuck over autistic people huh?

wish for smart autism people to STOP saying things like "most autism people actually smart ! ". is not true! is just so erase big part of autism community ! of people like Pixie, and intellectual disability autism people !

STOP say , is not okay ! people like Pixie, people with intellectual disability , are BIG part of autism community ! we deserve be part of own community !

STOP try push out of community, is ableism !

Do you have any advice for dealing with Kleptomania? I'm realizing I might be...uh...that, and it's one of those things people stigmatize to hell and back, but not one of those things I've seen or heard a lot about.

I'm not dumb enough to think it's just "uwu help I'm so quirky I stole stuff" disease and it's probably not like...completely uncontrollable, but I tend to experience worse symptoms when I'm stressed and feel out of control, so any advice would help a ton.

First of all, I am so sorry you deal with this as well. I absolutely understand how stressful and overwhelming it can be, especially when you're first realizing it.

My biggest piece of advice is try and find ways to reroute it..kinda like creating loopholes for it so that the urge to steal can still be satisfied in non dangerous ways (e.g ways that won't result in prison time or legal trouble)

This is how I've managed to cope with it and the symptoms have become much less stressful. My number 1 loopholes are:

Taking things that aren't owned by anyone and allowing my brain to view it as stealing. (Pennies on the ground, rocks outside of restaurants, free pens or candies from businesses etc.)

"Borrowing" things from my friends and partners, especially those who know about my kleptomania and make a big deal of pretending to really be concerned about what I've taken.

Advice that doesn't relate to actually giving in (somewhat) to the urges are:

Keeping my hands busy while in stores or other locations that trigger the impulses. I like to use subtle stim toys, but things like a phone can help too.

Wearing clothing that would make it super hard to steal (bright clothing, no pockets, very small bags etc) Knowing that I wouldn't be able to get away with it tends to keep me from giving in.

Listening to music or journaling helps with the anxiety that comes along with it.

I've only recently been actively working on this, but as I discover more things I'll share them here. And if you have any other questions, please feel free to ask!! I hope this helps 💜💜

poke hornet nest

my stance on ABA

(my stance on ABA)

as someone with (some) lived experience

most of it is shit.

for long time in past and even now, ABA only service available for a lot autistic people & family.

most of it (< ABA*) still is shit. (*this disclaimer applies to rest of repetition)

heard of more than enough cases of. insurance/school system/etc give pathetic number of hours/sessions for speech, OT, etc for autism but many more hours of ABA. or only cover ABA.

most of it still shit.

some speech & OT & other so called “alternatives to ABA” use behavioral & ABA tactics.

most of it still shit.

for many family, especially those with autistic person diagnosed as “severe” or level 3 and or have extreme behavioral issues etc. their option isn’t “ABA or no ABA.” often, option is “ABA or be labeled as abusive neglectful by government” or “ABA or have child taken away” “you ‘willingly’ enroll in ABA or we take and put them in ABA anyway” or “ABA or lose job.”

most of it still shit.

“ABA or lose job” because school not able or not willing help (because autistic person’s needs “that much”), you keep getting called to pick them up from school, from day care. other people not know how “deal with” your autistic family member, you know how help them a little more but also you sure as hell don’t and are just as lost. so you keep miss work to go pick them up from places that kick them out and you exhausted and you not get sleep because autistic family member needs pretty constant supervision and you not have respite and you not know how help and eventually your job fires you because you keep miss work. and oh did ever mention caring for disabled person extremely expensive? but oh btw there ABA agency you can send autistic family member to for up to 40 hour/week so maybe you can keep job and thus keep roof over head and can still put food on table for family for your autistic family member. oh they also say they may able help with autistic family member behavior so maybe they don’t get kicked out of every necessary service.

most of it still shit.

ABA agencies frequently kick out people deemed too severe or “cannot be helped” or too violent or too many behavioral issues or cause too much harm.

most of it still shit.

in world where may & very often do kill you for seeing you as different thus “threat,” ability mask life saving survival tactic. am talking about POC. am specifically especially talking about Black people. is teaching how mask greater evil than dead killed hatecrimed? sure, no one should have to choose between these two options, but world not care about your morals n your “should”s n your envisioned better future you may or may not be actively help build right now, these people need survive in real world here and now.

most of it still shit.

there (some. a few.) ABA survivors who went thru ABA in past and now who think ABA helped. helped them gain skill. help them prevent harm. some of them don’t see self as abused in ABA or traumatized by ABA. some see it as both abused and helped and grateful for help and hate abuse. some see as both abused and helped and don’t see amount of helped as ever worth abuse.

most of it still shit. (so many were & are abused. n abuse is abuse)

many newer ABA agencies realize ABA heavily criticized n labeled abusive & say they change methods & no longer practice old school ABA & now no longer abusive.

most of it still shit. (many of these agencies still do coercive abusive stuff even if call themselves changed)

some of them maybe truly changed. getting rid of abusive practices, focusing on skill building & adaptive functioning, child-led, instead of drills and forced masking.

most of it still shit.

talk a lot with people who so adamant about “all ABA abuse” “all parents who put child into ABA abused deserve get child taken away” who never was in personal proximity of ABA who. when ask to describe what ABA is in own words, not able to. or give generic response like “abuse & force mask”, but when ask to describe specific methods they do that, not able to. when ask them what discrete trial training and prompting is and what goals may look like and how they write behavioral analysis, never heard of any of them. say listen to ABA survivors, but not able name any individual names. just “oh listen to them online, if you actually listen like me you would know & i wouldn’t need say more so it really your ignorance.” but more often, just get reactionary shut down whole conversation be seen as ableist threat if even be asked first question. how you help advocate for ABA survivors if don’t even know what ABA is? or who ABA survivors? if cannot even talk about ABA? how even fight against your enemy if don’t even know what enemy look like, not able pick out enemy from crowd unless spoon fed?

most of it still shit.

found that. when am talking about ABA. from add nuance to encourage thought provoking questions to even rhetorically ask people to describe ABA. have to repeat emphasize that am not saying ABA all not abusive. even if it first thing i lead with. even if it super clear that am indeed criticizing ABA, just with more grey area and nuances than people used to. lot people will block me from this post just within some paragraphs. lot will block me over saying “most of it still shit” instead of denounce all ABA, when it clear that use of word “most” is deliberate choice n reason of said choice is in every corner of this post. others will finish reading (if even that) and all get out of is repeating “most of it still shit.” made similar posts year(s) ago. and still, find people vague post or explicitly post about me or my post, paint me as evil ABA apologist. whenever come across people who talk about “post where talk about ABA good,” stop and wonder, are they talking about me?

don’t want to talk about ABA because of this. tired, not worth it, often is bad starting point is turn off for people who never seen my posts when have other posts much easier entry point, n start off at bad start may cause them to not listen to me and maybe even other higher support needs and or nonverbal nonspeaking autistics in foreseeable future or ever.

you know, this post started off as “… so you all know i don’t think kindly of ABA right”

throughout write this post, don’t know which part am emphasizing more. the “most of it still shit” part or parts in between.

still. most of it still shit.

If you is look at AAC screen whilr AAC user is type. Please. Just stop please.

Is not cool. Not help. Is not thoughtful.

You is only make us anxious, or upset, or feel bad overall.

We need type process what is going say :(

wheelchair users deserve a minimum of three wheelchairs to meet different needs. like, bare minimum of indoor chair, outdoor chair, and off road chair. chairs that meet different needs for transport, activity, positioning needs, energy levels, etc.

there is not "one chair" that can meet every need. wheelchair users deserve to have multiple chairs that meet specific needs, no matter how complex their seating/positioning needs. we deserve to at least have a backup if our chair breaks that is just as suited to our needs.

I would probably have way less diagnoses if the doctors had explained to my parents and properly documented things when I was a baby.

Like, I have some unspecified hip condition, I was born with it. That's all my mom knows. I figure it's bilateral, and that might be why my gait is weird and gods know how many of the other problems I have with my legs, like how one's longer than the other. The TBI I got as a baby was, according to my mom, complicated. All the doctor really bothered with was saying I'd be fine, he didn't tell her a lot of details. Again, gods know how many of my things that could have caused. There was whatever happened when I was five, when a severe allergic reaction (to something I had only been slightly allergic to before and have only been slightly allergic to after) and asthma we hadn't known I had put me in the PICU for days and the hospital for two weeks, then a nebulizer for months and an inhaler for year but never an Epi Pen, which I have questions about now. Apparently I also have something up with my heart.

And we don't have any of this information because the doctors weren't explaining it.

Yeah, Cass is a completely different issue. Young Justice seems to have a racism issue (and a quarter billion other issues,) and how they changed Cassandra's storyline is a good example of that. Excellent points

(Cass will also get her own post, by the way)

I love the Young Justice Barbara Gordon

[Plain text: I love the Young Justice Barbara Gordon.]

(Keep in mind that I am not paraplegic, just a nerd)

I was never the biggest fan of the original Killing Joke storyline (and I will fight people on this,) but I think Young Justice managed to turn it into a plot that wasn't actually bad. In fact, they did a lot of things really well.

The original storyline, The Killing Joke, gave Barbara Gordon waist-down paralysis after the Joker shot her. The problem with that is that he shot her in the stomach at an extremely close range, the muzzle of the gun literally pressed to the middle of her stomach. At that close a range, depending on the gun and bullet, he probably shattered half of her spinal cord, if not more. The thing about shatter injuries to the spinal cord is that they cause more complications in upper-body mobility than other spinal injuries. If a significant portion of her spinal cord was shattered, Barbara wouldn't be as good as she is at fighting. The damage would cause problems in the rest of her body. And then, of course, everyone is grieving for her and so sad that she'll never walk again and have to retire and I'm pretty sure Batman does something drastic? And that's... really not a plot non-disabled writers should go for.

However, in Young Justice, it's completely different. Barbara saw Cassandra Cain, who was unidentifiable but very small so obviously a young child, going after Joker with a sword, so she chose to get between the child and her target to prevent Cass from doing something that could never be taken back. She took the slash, which hit her lower back, just above her tailbone, so that it didn't go to Joker's neck. And the other characters handled it well. Nightwing was a bit panicked, of course, but that's because Barabara had a severe injury that was life-threatening. Batman, knowing that Nightwing had called for a medical evacuation and that he was handling first aid, took the sword from a terrified Cassandra ever so gently, and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. Cassandra was horrified, of course, but it was because she'd just hurt someone who wasn't her target severely, not because Barbara was now disabled. And then Barbara tells her that she didn't do it to save Joker, she did it to save Cass. And Cass is horrified and probably hates herself in the moment, sure, but that memory later becomes something that strengthens her. Cass gets kidnapped in that episode and remembering that during her captivity helps her. It's a memory of the woman who would later become her older sister and one of her best friends. She knows that Barbara, the woman who has done so much for her, will help her. She won't rest until Cassandra is safe, even if it means coming after her herself.

I also really like how the plot handled this. Number one, we don't know off the bat why Barb is paralyzed, it doesn't come up until it's relevant, she's just paralyzed. And when it does come up, it's not a tragedy, it's Barbara risking her life to save the soul of a child who didn't understand the moral consequences of what she was about to do. She chose to do that and she would do it again. That's a really interesting way of subverting the exhausted "disabled by an accident" trope, because yes, it was an accident on Cass's part, but Barbara knew she was probably going to get badly hurt. It's similar to a character running into a burning building to save someone else. They accept the potential consequences because they couldn't live with themselves if they didn't help. She took the risk, she knew what could happen, which is so much better than her having no choice and being shot. It's far less tired an idea and a very interesting spin that I quite like.

Going back to the injury, let's get in-depth about that. I mentioned how a shatter would impact her upper body, too. But the way she was injured in Young Justice, which was probably severing the connection between two very low vertebrae or possibly cutting a vertebra itself if Cass put enough force behind it, makes sense. It wouldn't have as much a major impact on her upper body, so it makes sense that she can throw the person who snuck up on her like it's easy. Barbara can be an excellent hand-to-hand fighter and it's not unexplainable. We don't see her exercising in her chair, likely because she has the wrong chair for both exercising and her disability (she has a hospital-type wheelchair instead of a lightweight chair, which is, I think, just poor research,) but she clearly still does because she's still extremely good.

Also, I like how there's no cure plot. The show might still be ongoing so I don't know if that'll last, but for now, she hasn't been cured and shows no desire to be. The comics would occasionally have her paralysis cured and thank the gods they didn't go with that, even with a character (we won't get into the absolute disaster of Violet Harper here) who could, in theory, heal her, and I love that. For some reason writers are afraid of keeping their disabled characters disabled, so I'm surprised and glad they didn't take the easy out.

Finally, I love that Oracle is still able to do field work with special equipment. Does she go onto the actual field herself? No, not really. But she uses small drones and other things to help out, such as the tiny drone that gave Cass a lock pick or her hacking into systems to protect her allies from security measures. Babs doesn't need to stop being a superhero because she's disabled but also doesn't suddenly use a mech or something, she just finds ways to work with her new circumstances to keep doing what she wants to do, just in a different way. She's still a massive threat to her enemies, just in a different way, utilizing talents she already had (Barbara is extremely intelligent and very creative) to continue to help people.

TL;DR, I really, really like how Young Justice handled Barbara Gordon. If we must have more characters disabled in accidents, this is a very good way to do that.

Why do doctors seem to think you only have 1 problem per appointment? I've stacked up, like, twenty problems over the years that I still need to talk to my doctor about because she only gives me time to bring up one per session