2:00pm July 28, 2013

➸ Social skills for autonomous people: Anonymous asked realsocialskills: I used to cry (I mean weep, sob,...

Anonymous asked realsocialskills:

I used to cry (I mean weep, sob, have tears in eyes) sometimes when someone said something that made me feel understood. I used to often cry in therapy sessions. I liked crying in these cases; I felt I was working through things. I can see how…

Wow it seems like every red flag is something I’ve experienced.

I once had this staff person who THOUGHT she was my therapist. And she would basically emotionally manipulate me until I cried and then hug me and tell me we were “working through issues” and “making progress”.

Also there was this awful woman who used to hang around the autistic community. She actually wrote a book on how to communicate with autistic people. And she got a lot of ego out of believing she had a special gift with us.

In reality she could not communicate with an autistic person even the slightest. Like… she was on the phone with my friend. My friend said “I have no more money for this call, I have to go, NOW." And this woman, who saw hidden meanings in every possible word you said, kept trying to talk to her, thinking she meant something else. My friend had to hang up on her.

The hidden meanings thing meant she was so NONAUTISTIC that she was more in her own little world than any autism stereotype I’ve ever seen. She went through life interacting with imaginary people and thinking it was us. One time I tried to tell her "your writing about my friend’s life is inaccurate”. My friend had spent a few months in institutions here and there, gotten out a long long time ago, and later figured out she was autistic. Then got professionally diagnosed. This woman wrote that my friend spent her shot life in institutions and got out because a psychiatrist diagnosed her with autism and saved her.

So I told her this wasn’t true. She then told me I was jealous of my friend. I told her no WTF I’m just trying to correct an inaccuracy. She proceeded to have a fight with nth about my supposed jealousy (on the contrary I felt bad for my friend being misrepresented in such a way). Then she corrected it…. to say my friend had spent her entire life homeless until she was rescued by a shrink who diagnosed her with autism. I felt like slamming my head on a wall.

My friend also said something offhand about her desire for accuracy, and this woman treated it like it was an amazing insight into the mysterious and strange souls of autistic people.

Anyway. One time I described this woman in the vaguest terms. As “so nonautistic that she lives in her own world”. And autistic people immediately knew exactly who I meant and told me more stories about their interactions with her.

And basically, she had a habit if manipulating autistic people if she met them in person. She’d basically manipulate them into meltdowns. Including people who never ordinarily have meltdowns.

And then she would hug them and cry with them and tell them I’d do wonderful that they were “getting somewhere” and “making progress revealing their true emotions” and all sorts of other bullshit.

And she could manipulate autistic people into agreeing that this was progress. Only once they got away from her would they stop saying things like “she sees into my soul…”

Anyway she was notorious for awhile among autistic people as this horribly overloading person who was impossible to communicate with. And yet… she believes to this day that she had a special gift in communicating with us.

Horrible.

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