as small as a world and as large as alone

7:25pm September 1, 2014

lichgem:

That reminds me that mental health programs tend to assume that if you’re alone it’s your fault. That you’re ‘self-isolating’ or ‘need help being integrated in the community.’

I’d be able to ‘integrate with the community’ if it wasn’t ableist as hell and completely inaccessible to me.

I’ve also told my workers that I’m alone because of bullying and abuse and they wrote down in my file ‘has issues getting along with others.’ Thanks a lot, shitheads.

I was first sent to counseling because I was being bullied in school.  That was the first reason I ever saw a shrink.  I was seven years old.  We were all treated as if we were there for various social problems.  (It was both group therapy and individual therapy, with an MFCC who did both.  My parents told me that because the counselor was very fat, she would understand being bullied.  She didn’t seem to understand much of anything really, but I don’t really think you can expect an MFCC in 1987 to understand autism, either.  She decided I was different because I’d fallen into a duck pond as a little kid, then she made me draw it over and over.)  We were all treated as if bullying was part of our problem, rather than a problem on the part of the bully.  It was really weird.  You never saw the bullies getting made to see a counselor.

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