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6:35pm July 24, 2014
kelpforestdweller asked: On the topic of caregivers, do you have any tips you'd be willing to share about how to find good ones? Anything that might not be obvious about how to have good working relationships with them? Or do you know of any resources about this? Thank you.

One thing I have found is that I had to learn to stand my ground about not allowing in bad ones.  I used to think that I had to put up with anything and everything short of horrible abuse (and sometimes even put up with horrible abuse, including sexual abuse) in order to prove that I was a “good client” and not “one of those bad clients who sends their staff away”.  And I was encouraged in that direction by abusive case managers.  But the turning point for me with caregivers was actually when I filed a complaint against an abusive case manager and won.  And in general, a lot of turning points for me have involved standing up to people.

But you have to stand up to them in the right way.  If you stand up to them ineffectually, it’s just as bad or worse as not standing up to them at all.  I’ve met people who think that they’re assertive and the sort of person that nobody could possibly walk all over – while people walk all over them.  Usually they’re people who will sit there and rant at someone about how wrong what they are doing is, or threaten them with action, but there’s no follow-through in any way that actually uses power effectively and there’s often a lot of excess aggression thrown in.  (And abusive caregivers will simply let you burn all that excess aggression off which hurts you and doesn’t harm them or stop them in any way.)  And I’m not good at explaining the difference.  And there is not always a good way to stand up to them, and sometimes it is better not to stand up to them.

If that sounds contradictory it’s because it’s complicated, and maybe it’s not the kind of thing I’m capable of explaining well.

But I do know that being assertive – not wildly aggressive, and not meek – has almost always gotten me more respect from people than any other way of dealing with people.  Setting actual boundaries and keeping to them.  Things like that.  People actually respect you more when you set boundaries than when you let them through your boundaries.  Even fairly decent people will be somewhat less respectful if you don’t have clear boundaries.  Which is horrible, but it seems to be the truth.

As far as good working relationships go, one thing I learned from watching my mother interact with people is that she asks them a lot of questions and lets them talk about themselves and that seems to make people like her more.  And I’ve found in addition to that it’s good to acknowledge that they’re doing hard work for very little pay.  And in general to do little things that show you know they’re human and not a programmable robot or something.  A lot of which should be obvious but isn’t always, especially to people with social skills problems (whether those problems are innate or come from never having had the social experiences most people had growing up to practice those things, and for autistic people I think it’s a combination of both and more).