Aspies For Freedom

How you manage your own health is nobody's business but yours and your doctor's... ordering someone one knows through a social group or a religious group off for therapy is totally overstepping the mark.

*Adds to mental list of witty comebacks I'd like to use but will probably never have the guts.*

Okay. First, yes, absolutely, they were way overstepping.

Here's the game they were playing:

1. There will be two of us (A&J), so that two-thirds of the people there will be in agreement. You will support my views and I will support yours. Nobody will support hers. (notice she didn't set it up so that the three would be bardwolf, husband and A...)

2. We will be The Good People and you will be the poor troubled thing. Those will be the fundamental assumptions: you are sick and we are here to help you. That way, if we tear you down, it's in order to help you, and is you resist or assert your own feelings it's because -- poor thing! -- you're sick.

3. We will get what we want (no Meltdowns from you, missy!) while pretending we're trying to give you what you need: help. So there is no conflict -- it's just two good and innocent people trying to help a poor sick girl who won't accept the help she needs.

Yes, it's all NT as hell, at its worst. And it totally disempowers you, because no matter how you try to assert yourself -- or tell the truth about this bullsh1t situation -- you are a BAD GIRL and should be grateful, not resistant.

Ugly.

And, I'm sorry, but in NT-ese, "she wanted me to return once I 'got better' " probably means "don't come back."

There is one place where I totally agree with them, and that's when they said "you can do better."

It's true. You can do better than THEM. Much better.

This is why I'm always very up-front about pretty much everything about myself.  When I meet someone new, within the third conversation they have with me they usually have heard me talk about some of the problems I have with various things (sensory, social, etc) and my attitudes about various other things (autism, politics, religion, etc), and by that point they either decide they no longer like me very much and leave me alone or they accept those things about me.  A couple of people have tried to pull a "you need to do x to get better" thing on me, but I make it very clear that I have no interest in doing x, and they either give it up or forfeit the right to be my friend.

Bardwolf, I'm so sorry.  You tried to join in with a community that any rational person would think would accept you because of your similarities, but they didn't.  You don't deserve that sort of shenanighans.

It's happened to me, too.  In fact, I've spent the last three months trying to get a damn psychologist to LISTEN when I tell him this is what happened, and that it's why I'm reluctant to try again.  Sometimes, hard as it is, it can be better to be alone than around people who think you're some sort of DIY project.

Wish I'd said that. Except "blow fake kisses" Can one blow real kisses? lol

I really admire your staying so calm. I might have attacked them--verbally, at the least--or ended up crying. Probably the latter, which is very embarrassing when you are an adult; if you can keep your head when you are attacked like that, it can be very satisfying to knock down their arguments like a three-year-old's block tower...

Do you want help for controlling meltdowns? You don't really have to go to a psychiatrist for that; he'll probably just try to prescribe something... in my experience, most of the time you don't need medication at all. I mean, a lot of us on here have experience; you could pick our brains. I don't agree with the idea that you should never have meltdowns, ever, because I don't think that's possible. Even NTs have them sometimes, and they don't get called "sick" for it.

I'd like to kidnap your friends and force them to sit through a remedial course on autism... they evidently know very little about it.

I am also Pagan, and have been excluded from groups, and metaphysical businesses, without being allowed to tell my side of the story or told what the problem was and being given a chance to fix it. The more recent ones were a group that changed some things in their services that meant there was an hour of people talking about their problems and sometimes getting emotional to the point of crying, this was hitting some of my raw nerves and reminding me of some things I didn't want to think about. The woman who runs the group called me and told me I was no longer welcome, appearently without thinking whether it meant anything that i had been coming for years with no problem and i was suddenly acting "wrong". another time someone who works out of a local store came to my house to give me a reading, was not prepared to tell me anything about the things I had told her I wanted to know about, was rude, and told me not to see a psychiatrist, which is not ethical, according to people who do this, because she was giving me medical advice without medical qualifications. after leaving my house, she called the store owner and said i had treated her badly and appearently said  that i had done some things which i did not do. The owner took her story as true and told me never to come to that store again. the most recent one involved another local store where the Pagan owners made a big deal about it was intended to have a healing atmosphere and be a sanctuary and a safe place. it was that.i was told not to come back, did not know why, and found out later that there was a "no violence" rule, which i had violated by slapping my own face two different times. The owner ,when she finally told me what I'd done wrong, was very patronizing, made a big deal out of how I'd done something wrong twice, and she was soooo sorry but they couldn't let me come back, and offed to send me good energy. She didn't care that i was and am going thru a very difficult and stressful time, with losing my drivers license because a cop lied and the DMV making up reasons not to give it back, my physical health getting a lot worse, and more. i tried to tell her my side, and she said"that's not how it happened". So there's a place right down the street where I could be getting spiritual comfort, prctical help, and religous supplies, but i can't go there because the owner needs to be a victim or something. I guess i'm just not entitled to or don't need compassion,  or even ethics, from others, but I have to be perfect and coddle and spoil everybody or i can't play.

I think some pagan-ish shops also double as agents and/or reading rooms for psychics, healers or readers and the like, meeting places and sometimes even headquarters for pagan groups, have noticeboards for advertising related groups/services/products and maybe host stuff like yoga classes.  It would be totally overstepping the mark to describe it as a community centre, but I think that's the idea, a sort of pagan go-to place.  

My own experiences with the organised pagan/new ageish movement have been pretty mixed.  Individually, I know some lovely pagan people.  The nicest, most grounded, accepting bods you could wish to meet.  But, whenever I've got mixed up in organised groups, I've come across people who were in it for a quick buck, some who were very competitive - my aura's purpler than yours, nyer nyer nyer! - and some who were just plain creepy.

Hi Micgrace. Pagan culture is a large and somewhat complex subject. Are you wondering about something in particular, like how groups are organized, or the role of bookstores and businesses? The businesses that kicked me out did so because I wasn't "nice" or someone disliked me, or for breaking the rules because I didn't know what the rules were.

But why should she have to do ANYTHING on their say- so? They were acting like jerks and obviously have far worse problems - only they are in complete denial about them.

Shouldn't you be trying to squelch their bullying behaviour? Bullying is ugly, no matter who is doing it.

Yeah, they aren't worth it. They really seem to be quite clueless.

I'll bet their victims wouldn't share that opinion. Since you know what it's like to be bullied yourself, I can't see why you wouldn't insist in the very strongest terms possible that what they are doing just isn't on.

That sounds like a plan. I seem to have this problem whereby if a friend treats me like those people did Bardwolf, I suddenly don't feel like being friends with them anymore. It's as if a switch is tripped and I don't want to ever see them again. The only problem with that is the issues don't really get resolved. Talking about emotions just seems too threatening though.