quixylvre asked realsocialskills:
…In trying to explain to my mother what “anti-skills” are, she wants me to provide a list of examples. Could you, in a single post, provide a list of anti-skills that autistic people are routinely taught, perhaps also an addendum with anti-skills that are merely occasionally taught instead of consistently?
Some anti-skills I can think of off the top of my head, with some relevant links:
- Inability to say no
- Figuring out what people in power want, and doing it automatically
- Appearing enthusiastic and happy about doing so
- Suppressing and hiding all negative emotions; maintaining an happy affect at all costs
- Holding still in order to appear more neurotypical, even when it makes it impossible to understand things or communicate
- Denying that you’re disabled; lacking awareness of your own disability or impairment
- Hostility towards adaptive equipment and disability-related coping strategies
- Contempt for the body language and other discernibly autistic traits in others
- Inability to tell who is a friend and who has another agenda (this can lead to destructive involvement with ideological groups)
- Pushing yourself really hard to speak when other forms of communication would be more effective and less draining
- Becoming convinced that you don’t really care about other people and aren’t able to understand or relate to them, and so you have to rely on rigidly following rules instead
- Becoming convinced that you don’t have any body language
- Becoming convinced that you’re good at things that autistic people are stereotypically supposed to be good at, at the expense of spending time on things you’re actually good at
I also talked about some anti-skills in this post I wrote for someone considering working as an aide for an autistic kid.
These are some of the anti-skills I know about, what are some others y’all know about?
-Reflexive obedience to or attempting to please authority.
-Becoming convinced that you lack emotion or empathy.
-Becoming convinced of an innate, across-the-board inability to understand social situations, rather than understanding that you have certain perceptual barriers in certain social contexts.
-Reflexive acceptance of the priorities of others for you as your own.
-Falling under pressure to believe that other people’s perceptions of you and your abilities are more reliable than your own instincts and intuition.
-Basically all kinds of pressure to make you believe that your own perceptions are wrong and not reliable, and that paying attention to them, or taking proper care of yourself in atypical ways, is morally wrong.
- Becoming convinced that you can only get a job related to your special interest because you won’t be able to do anything else well
- Becoming convinced that you can only make friends if you behave as rigidly normal as possible, and that you are not entitled to feel comfortable around your “friends”
quixylvre asked realsocialskills:
…In trying to explain to my mother what “anti-skills” are, she wants me to provide a list of examples. Could you, in a single post, provide a list of anti-skills that autistic people are routinely taught, perhaps also an addendum with anti-skills that are merely occasionally taught instead of consistently?
Some anti-skills I can think of off the top of my head, with some relevant links:
- Inability to say no
- Figuring out what people in power want, and doing it automatically
- Appearing enthusiastic and happy about doing so
- Suppressing and hiding all negative emotions; maintaining an happy affect at all costs
- Holding still in order to appear more neurotypical, even when it makes it impossible to understand things or communicate
- Denying that you’re disabled; lacking awareness of your own disability or impairment
- Hostility towards adaptive equipment and disability-related coping strategies
- Contempt for the body language and other discernibly autistic traits in others
- Inability to tell who is a friend and who has another agenda (this can lead to destructive involvement with ideological groups)
- Pushing yourself really hard to speak when other forms of communication would be more effective and less draining
- Becoming convinced that you don’t really care about other people and aren’t able to understand or relate to them, and so you have to rely on rigidly following rules instead
- Becoming convinced that you don’t have any body language
- Becoming convinced that you’re good at things that autistic people are stereotypically supposed to be good at, at the expense of spending time on things you’re actually good at
I also talked about some anti-skills in this post I wrote for someone considering working as an aide for an autistic kid.
These are some of the anti-skills I know about, what are some others y’all know about?
-Reflexive obedience to or attempting to please authority.
-Becoming convinced that you lack emotion or empathy.
-Becoming convinced of an innate, across-the-board inability to understand social situations, rather than understanding that you have certain perceptual barriers in certain social contexts.
-Reflexive acceptance of the priorities of others for you as your own.
-Falling under pressure to believe that other people’s perceptions of you and your abilities are more reliable than your own instincts and intuition.
-Basically all kinds of pressure to make you believe that your own perceptions are wrong and not reliable, and that paying attention to them, or taking proper care of yourself in atypical ways, is morally wrong.
This. Especially the parts about not trusting your own judgement.
quixylvre asked realsocialskills:
…In trying to explain to my mother what “anti-skills” are, she wants me to provide a list of examples. Could you, in a single post, provide a list of anti-skills that autistic people are routinely taught, perhaps also an addendum with anti-skills that are merely occasionally taught instead of consistently?
Some anti-skills I can think of off the top of my head, with some relevant links:
- Inability to say no
- Figuring out what people in power want, and doing it automatically
- Appearing enthusiastic and happy about doing so
- Suppressing and hiding all negative emotions; maintaining an happy affect at all costs
- Holding still in order to appear more neurotypical, even when it makes it impossible to understand things or communicate
- Denying that you’re disabled; lacking awareness of your own disability or impairment
- Hostility towards adaptive equipment and disability-related coping strategies
- Contempt for the body language and other discernibly autistic traits in others
- Inability to tell who is a friend and who has another agenda (this can lead to destructive involvement with ideological groups)
- Pushing yourself really hard to speak when other forms of communication would be more effective and less draining
- Becoming convinced that you don’t really care about other people and aren’t able to understand or relate to them, and so you have to rely on rigidly following rules instead
- Becoming convinced that you don’t have any body language
- Becoming convinced that you’re good at things that autistic people are stereotypically supposed to be good at, at the expense of spending time on things you’re actually good at
I also talked about some anti-skills in this post I wrote for someone considering working as an aide for an autistic kid.
These are some of the anti-skills I know about, what are some others y’all know about?
I’m not sure if this is an “anti-skill” exactly, but as a socially impaired person I have at various times become obsessed with seeming socially “normal,” which at one time included not having any “drama” in my life.
It turns out that trying not to have drama can have unexpected consequences. Like, you can’t talk to your friends about the things they do that hurt you, because you have to avoid drama. Or you have keep silent about bad things their friends do to you, because you have to avoid drama. You can’t get mad, because it would cause drama, so you leave, which causes drama anyway because then people get mad because you leave. You wind up having to keep silent about things and inadvertently protect people who hurt you, so as to avoid drama.Turns out avoiding drama isn’t really worth it. Maybe it’s good for people who are really excellent at holding in their feelings or who don’t have strong feelings in the first place, but it seems like trying to avoid drama can cause drama a surprising amount of the time.
I think this counts. And it reminds me of how at some point I figured out that if I let people have their way all the time, then I wouldn’t have to have fights anymore. And then realized that meant I never got to do what I wanted or eat what I wanted.
quixylvre asked realsocialskills:
…In trying to explain to my mother what “anti-skills” are, she wants me to provide a list of examples. Could you, in a single post, provide a list of anti-skills that autistic people are routinely taught, perhaps also an addendum with anti-skills that are merely occasionally taught instead of consistently?
Some anti-skills I can think of off the top of my head, with some relevant links:
- Inability to say no
- Figuring out what people in power want, and doing it automatically
- Appearing enthusiastic and happy about doing so
- Suppressing and hiding all negative emotions; maintaining an happy affect at all costs
- Holding still in order to appear more neurotypical, even when it makes it impossible to understand things or communicate
- Denying that you’re disabled; lacking awareness of your own disability or impairment
- Hostility towards adaptive equipment and disability-related coping strategies
- Contempt for the body language and other discernibly autistic traits in others
- Inability to tell who is a friend and who has another agenda (this can lead to destructive involvement with ideological groups)
- Pushing yourself really hard to speak when other forms of communication would be more effective and less draining
- Becoming convinced that you don’t really care about other people and aren’t able to understand or relate to them, and so you have to rely on rigidly following rules instead
- Becoming convinced that you don’t have any body language
- Becoming convinced that you’re good at things that autistic people are stereotypically supposed to be good at, at the expense of spending time on things you’re actually good at
I also talked about some anti-skills in this post I wrote for someone considering working as an aide for an autistic kid.
These are some of the anti-skills I know about, what are some others y’all know about?
I don’t know if the new version will be crashier or less crashy than the last version. But it’s got some really cool new features.
Particularly, certain voices have had the voice actors record a number of new words. Some of them include swearing. Such that when you type the words (or sounds, like #aargh3 or something, or certain words with exclamation points after) they either make certain sounds, or else say the word with feeling. The best voice actor I’ve heard so far is the Lisa voice, which is female adult Australian English. So I’m using that one, because it has all the swear words available. And yes it will now say things like Fuck off! And, Piss off! And, Arsehole! With actual feeling. Which I love. Some of the voice actors are better than others. Some of them will say angry things while simply sounding vaguely generally emotional.
You can get a list of all the voice effects by creating a button, then at the side of the first line, there’s a little speech bubble you click on. Then you can listen to samples of all of them, or add them in. There are also macros, so that you can get it to say things like the current date.
I’m really going to enjoy this. Time to reprogram my swear words page, for instance, to include a lot of the more emotional renderings of the words. I’m glad they finally recognized that AAC users swear. Although there’s a lot of variation between the voices on what is available. Some will only say damn while others will say fuck, arsehole, bloody hell, piss off, etc. And I love this acknowledgement that AAC users actually need to be able to cuss, when so many people are hell bent on making sure we can be nothing but polite and passive.
Technology is amazing.
It means that we don’t all have to be subsistence farmers. And that we can live in places with deadly cold climates. And that we have safe water. And that we can go places quickly that used to take days of walking. And that we can communicate with people on the other side of the world.
These are all good things. And they’re all things that we can take for granted, because depending on technology makes it possible.
And yet - when a person with a disability uses technology which most people don’t use, people say many versions of this:
- Well, I used to use PECS with him, but he can say a few words if he really tries, and I didn’t want him to become dependent
- She can walk. I’ve seen her. Why is she using a wheelchair?
No matter what you use, as a disabled person, someone is likely to say that you shouldn’t be using it and should be trying harder not to depend on technology.
It isn’t reasonable. And bearing that in mind makes life easier.
Here’s a thing that happens:
A kid has a disability. Or is otherwise substantially atypical.
And the adults in their life don’t want them to feel different and suffer for it, so they don’t talk to them about being disabled.
And then they grow up without basic information about their body (or brain).
And then every description of how people work is different from what the kid experiences. And it’s confusing and isolating, and hard to even realize how things are wrong.
Because fish in water don’t know they are wet. It’s hard to know that the descriptions are wrong when you don’t know it’s possible for them to be right.
And then, sometimes, people who grow up that way eventually find out that they actually are different. That there is a word for the way their body and mind works. That there are other people like them, and that the world makes much more sense than they ever realized.
That’s something that awareness should mean. Kids need to know how their minds and bodies work; atypical kids need accurate information just as much as other kids do. They just don’t usually get it.
In some groups, people are taught to follow rules. And told that, if they follow the rules, things will be good. And that following the rules is the only way things can be good.
And then… the consequences of the rules aren’t actually what people say they should be. People get hurt. And then, people who get hurt are pressured to think that nothing is wrong. And that’s bad.
Because you matter. Everyone matters. And if the rules are hurting people, there’s a problem with the rules. Magical thinking won’t make the rules work better, but it will prevent people from fixing them.
Some examples:
Religion:
- If you’re in a religious group that has rules and,
- Following the rules as your community requires is causing you serious problems, and…
- …everyone tells you that if you just keep following all the rules, pray harder, and have more faith, everything will be ok…
- …something is seriously wrong.
- (Common examples: gay men being told to pray harder and date women, women being told to pray harder and accept that they shouldn’t have as much power as men because God gave them a different role)
In social justice space:
- If you don’t feel safe in a Safe Space
- Or you have reason to *think* you’re not safe in a Safe Space
- And everyone is telling you that the space is definitely safe and that you’re just imagining the problem…
- …something is seriously wrong, and you’re allowed to care that it’s wrong and seek to fix the problem (whether within the space or by finding somewhere else to be)
When someone is using your triggers to disorient and confuse you, it’s confusing. It can take a long time to figure out what’s going on.
Here are some things I think are red flags:
If someone seems to like you more when you’re triggered than when you’re in control, something is seriously wrong
- For instance, if a therapist only listens to you when you’re sobbing and otherwise acts as though you couldn’t possibly understand anything about yourself
- Or when a friend suddenly finds you fascinating when you’re triggered and they’re supporting you through it, but they half-ignore you most of the rest of the time
If someone feels entitled to discuss triggering subjects with you (absent an immediate practical reason to), something is seriously wrong:
- For instance, if you say that you’d rather not discuss dogs right now because it’s triggering and you’re close to the edge already, and they say “but I thought we were friends! How can you shut me out like that?”
- Or if a therapist tells you that you’ll never get better unless you are willing to discuss once again, in graphic terms, the ways people abused you - and they refuse to say, help you figure out whether the medication you are taking is working, or whether the side effects are dangerous, unless you do this over and over
If you end up triggered every time you try to reject personal advice, something is seriously wrong:
- For instance, if someone regularly wants to tell you how to dress, and every time you try to wear something different, they push you until you end up sobbing and apologizing, something is wrong
- This is particularly the case if they’re always bringing triggering things into a conversation that didn’t need to have anything to do with them
- Your desire to wear a red hat rather than the blue on they want you to wear is probably because you want to wear a red hat
- It’s very unlikely that it’s because you have no perspective on clothes because your abusers damaged you
- And even if that was the reason, it would still be ok for you to prefer a red hat, and wrong for someone to try to force you to wear a blue one by triggering you
Also, if this is going on, it’s okay to just cut the person out of your life and leave. It doesn’t matter why it’s happening; it just matters that it is happening. This is true even if it’s unintentional and even if the person has a reason for behaving that way. There is nothing that makes someone obligated to put up with abuse.
(Adding this here in particular because I’m pretty sure this is one of the situations where it’s particularly likely an abuser will try to convince someone that they’re obligated to stick around, as opposed to, say, trying to convince them that leaving would make things even worse for them.)
This. That is a really common way that plays out.
When someone is using your triggers to disorient and confuse you, it’s confusing. It can take a long time to figure out what’s going on.
Here are some things I think are red flags:
If someone seems to like you more when you’re triggered than when you’re in control, something is seriously wrong
- For instance, if a therapist only listens to you when you’re sobbing and otherwise acts as though you couldn’t possibly understand anything about yourself
- Or when a friend suddenly finds you fascinating when you’re triggered and they’re supporting you through it, but they half-ignore you most of the rest of the time
If someone feels entitled to discuss triggering subjects with you (absent an immediate practical reason to), something is seriously wrong:
- For instance, if you say that you’d rather not discuss dogs right now because it’s triggering and you’re close to the edge already, and they say “but I thought we were friends! How can you shut me out like that?”
- Or if a therapist tells you that you’ll never get better unless you are willing to discuss once again, in graphic terms, the ways people abused you - and they refuse to say, help you figure out whether the medication you are taking is working, or whether the side effects are dangerous, unless you do this over and over
If you end up triggered every time you try to reject personal advice, something is seriously wrong:
- For instance, if someone regularly wants to tell you how to dress, and every time you try to wear something different, they push you until you end up sobbing and apologizing, something is wrong
- This is particularly the case if they’re always bringing triggering things into a conversation that didn’t need to have anything to do with them
- Your desire to wear a red hat rather than the blue on they want you to wear is probably because you want to wear a red hat
- It’s very unlikely that it’s because you have no perspective on clothes because your abusers damaged you
- And even if that was the reason, it would still be ok for you to prefer a red hat, and wrong for someone to try to force you to wear a blue one by triggering you
