my body deciding what’s gonna hurt for no reason the minute i lay in bed
Just reminded with that reblog about when the proverbial Missing Stair gets tolerated inside the family.
My own family has enough problems with ways it’s apparently OK to treat people, but luckily that wasn’t one of them that I ever knew about. Another thing which really shouldn’t involve luck. The idea is totally appalling, especially where it involves kids getting shoved to the bottom of the collective family priority bucket to the point of being actively placed in danger.
That didn’t mean that there weren’t several other people in the community with bad enough reputations and/or creepy enough behavior that I got warned to stay well away from them as a kid.
One of those lived right up the street from us for several years, and I played with his kids who were around the same age. But I was forbidden to ever go inside their house or be alone with the guy. He came across that wrong to my mother, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d also heard some things because smallish communities.
There were a few people like that, but that particular guy was the closest and the hardest to totally avoid. It didn’t even really strike me at the time just how messed up the whole situation was, especially for the children who were just not in a position to avoid these people. Including their own, too often 😦
Anyway, after a few years we moved, and I was honestly pretty glad to be away from Alicia’s Creepy Dad hanging around. (And that’s in a culture where dads are expected to pay more attention and spend more time with kids. Just…not like that.)
My family’s involvement with ACD wasn’t totally over, though! Because he owned a garage, and would pass basically anything not super blatantly dangerous on state car inspections for an extra $20.
Dude may have been creepy enough to warn your kid away, but that deal apparently looked like a tempting enough offer when inspection time rolled around and there wasn’t money for proper repairs. My mom didn’t even like to go there, and would get my dad to take the cars in for ACD’s special inspection deal so she didn’t have to deal with him. But, they still gave him money.
Anyway, I eventually got old enough to drive, and a while after that my $500 car came due for inspection.
($500 in like 1992, but still. The thing was a year younger than I was and mechanically sound, to the point that my dad was still driving it some when I left 10+ years later. But, it had a few quirks. Let’s put it that way.)
You can maybe see where this is going. For some reason, both of my parents were busy, and my mom turned pissy when I protested, insisting that I eventually needed to learn to handle these things on my own. Which happened a lot, tbqh. And of course in this case that involved going for the ACD Special Inspection Deal.
By myself, dealing with somebody who creeped me out and that she had explicitly told me never to be alone with. Maybe 17 was too old for him to act Like That, but I was just not willing to find out. I explained why I didn’t want to do that, and that got treated as ridiculous.
So yeah, I set up an inspection at a different garage. And it was all my fault when the car failed on a busted defroster and a missing California-only ‘70s vintage exhaust device. And it had to go back to the same garage to be reinspected.
I got to take back roads as much as possible and try to dodge cops for probably 6 months after that, especially trying to get to and from school in the next town. Until my dad could track down a junkyard smog pump for shipping (pre-modern Internet) and we could get the defroster reconnected enough to pass.
My mother would send me out to run errands in the no sticker car, and yell about it being all my own fault if I said a word. I did get a ticket at one point, not surprisingly. (And yelled at over that added expense, of course.) Mostly surprised it did only happen once. I got pretty good at avoiding places you often saw cops.
The whole thing was about as stressful as you might expect, especially for someone who’d only had a license for about a year at that point. I still think my mother’s behavior was inexcusable, but yeah she wasn’t ever about to admit she was wrong to begin with. If you could ask her now, I’m sure it would still be all my fault 25+ years later.
And I really was not in the wrong for being unwilling to deal with Neighborhood Missing Stair that I had been warned about, by myself, when I was 17 years old. And was offered no reasonable alternatives by people who should have known better.
Hadn’t thought about that experience for years, very possibly because I didn’t want to. But, reminded of it today. And I evidently needed to rant some.
my adhd ass when someone says something and expects me to be able to comprehend it the first time
“not adhd but-”
One not-so-funny thing about that ridiculous little spill earlier. (Well, besides ending up in rather a lot of pain, which probably isn’t helping the rest.)
When I suddenly came down almost on top of him, Mr. C’s immediate impulse was to throw his arms around me. Which probably wouldn’t be a bad impulse at all, dealing with most people.
I, however, yelled at him to get his arms off me.
(Then did manage to add that I knew he was trying to help, but everything was overwhelming right then. Trouble talking or no.)
I apologized and explained more as soon as possible. He seemed reasonably OK about it. But, I did lose it and yell when I shouldn’t have.
So, now I can’t stop doing the good old Scrupulosity Shuffle. Yell at somebody you care about when you don’t have good control, and wind up triggering yourself 😱
But yeah, if it had been my mom? That would have been enough to leave her seriously pissed at me and prone to explosions for at least the rest of the day. If not longer. With the potential to turn into some very ugly scenes. (But, that’s different, whatever she did. I was the one who created the entire situation, when she was Only Trying To Help 😵)
Let’s just say that my stressed autistic person behavior and her unaddressed borderline tendencies did not always mesh well. (Which tended to turn into a problem when I was sick/in pain in general, for that extra bit of PTSD background dread for a good while now.)
Anyway, I don’t think he’s liable to respond like that. Especially understanding (and, frankly, caring) why that happened–with apologies. We’ve known each other in person for over 15 years now, and he has yet to behave that way.
A lot like with the sudden spate of meltdowns a while back, though? I can’t stop feeling like maybe I have seriously fucked up, however unintentionally, and waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Besides going off into more “maybe I really am a terrible person who doesn’t care about anyone else and just keeps hurting the people around me” garbage, naturally.
Never much fun to ride out, but as usual trying to argue with it is a bigger losing proposition.
Reblog if you believe phone call anxiety is real and it isn’t childish bad behavior.
Trying to prove a point to this job helper.
Phone calls can be harder on your anxiety bc you cant pick up on the other persons behavioral cues as you talk with them
^^^^
After 10+ years of psychotherapy, almost all of my social anxiety triggers are now at a manageable level—even academic public speaking, which was my #1 worst trigger for most of my life—except for my phone anxiety. It’s literally the one and only thing I’ve never been able to significantly improve.
I have to talk the whole conversation through with my friends beforehand.
I have to get explicit confirmation from my friends that “yes, you really need to ring that person right now”.
I have to write scripts.
I have to take anti-anxiety meds, or get drunk.
I only ever ring someone as the very last resort, when all other methods are unavailable.
I hyperventilate and cry afterwards.
I’m also a 28-year-old scientist with three degrees and a teaching position. I’m normally a logical (albeit emotional) person. But anxiety is not logical.
Anxiety is due to inability to correctly perceive threats—more specifically, due to both increased expectation and increased frequency of false recognition of threats in response to neutral stimuli (this is called “pessimistic bias”). Social anxiety simply means that this inability to correctly perceive threats is specific to social interactions, rather than generalised to all aspects of life. (For example, a resting facial expression or lack of verbal acknowledgement
is more likely to be perceived as anger, disgust or rejection by a
socially anxious person than a neurotypical person. But a socially anxious person is not particularly more likely to worry throughout the day that they’ve left their stove on.)
Therefore, socially anxious people learn to cope with this bias by becoming hypervigilant to social cues such as posture, hand gestures, nodding, eye contact, eyebrow position, mouth tightness, tone of voice, talking speed etc., and then using all the available information to attempt to be logical and “talk down the anxiety”. We also learn to be high self-monitors, which means that we closely observe our audience and constantly (subconsciously) monitor their responses in order to ensure that they accept us and deem us “appropriate”.
But non-verbal social cues aren’t available
during phone calls!
There isn’t any body language to read, or eyes to look into. You can’t monitor your audience for approval. They don’t follow the script you prepared. All you have is their voice, which is usually masked (everyone seems to have a “phone voice”, “customer service voice” or “professional voice”) and distorted by the phone and is therefore useless. All of a sudden you’re back to relying on a single neutral stimulus, and the pessimistic bias kicks in, and you start to panic because you’re not getting constant feedback.
It’s a Recognised Psychological Thing™.
Phone anxiety (actually, phone phobia) is one of the most common, most recognised and most treated phobias in the world. Social anxiety—of which phone phobia is an extremely prevalent trigger—is one of the most common, most recognised and most treated
anxiety disorders in the world.
It’s most definitely real, most definitely not “childish”, and you’re not alone.
also, if you have any degree of sensory processing disorder, difficulty processing language, or hearing problems – which aren’t limited to just ‘volume too quiet’ but also include things like being unable to pick out speech from background noise, or distinguish phonemes when someone has an accent or talks too fast – then voice calls are legitimately REALLY DIFFICULT.
it’s like trying to read semaphore in a snowstorm while having an allergy attack.
yes, that is hard.
no, it’s not just you.
no, you’re not making it up for attention, being a baby, or lazy.
voice calls are simply not as good as text.
the fact that most businesses will not communicate via text is a combination of inertia and ableism, not a sign that everyone but you loves voice calls and you’re a weirdo. frankly most people kinda hate them unless it’s a loved one whose voice you want to hear.
Sometimes it feels like people think that autistic people can just become neurotypical as if we have a switch, like “You’re right, this situation isn’t so bad, I’ll just stop having a shutdown now”
tbh i am disgusted that ariana grande had to actually disable her comments on twitter because so many people are blaming her for mac millers death from an overdose. like yes his death is immensely tragic and alcohol and drugs are a huge issue in society today but ariana was in no way obligated to stay with someone who was toxic for her health and well-being. and the people who are saying that it was her job to stay and “take care of him” and “save him” can fucking rot
Do they think shes not absolutley fucking shattered too????? Someone she once loved died and they want to attack her saying it’s her fault?????? What kind of actual fucking monsters???????
We know she’s just mad cause they have more melanin than she’s used to seeing
Lol I used to work at target and know for a fact that that’s literally one aisle sandwiched between several containing several an array of bland white dolls why would you fake a struggle like this?? It’s so flawed 😩😂
^^^^^^^
White girls are so pathetic
And…there’s absolutely no reason she couldn’t’ve bought one of those for her cousin, anyway? (I mean, no reason beyond “that cousin is probably being raised just like her and would do terrible things to the doll”)
i found this post on facebook this morning and went to My Generation to tally their dolls by skin color just to see how absolutely out of proportion the OP was blowing things.
they have 106 dolls total on target’s website. 87 of these dolls are white. 46 of those white dolls are blonde. counting all their total dolls of color, you get 19 (and that’s being generous and tallying any exceptionally tan ones). only one of these dolls resembles someone east asian.
so yeah, this lady only found 8 dolls (two of which are from seperate brands) and she’s still steamed when the brand she was looking at has 87 white dolls for her racist ass to choose from.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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