The World Is Broken, And It Breaks Us

Call me cynical, call me jaded, even call me broken. And you’d no doubt be right. I’m tired of the world, I admit. Sixty-some years of a not-particularly-easy life have worn me out. Yet more and more I can’t escape the conclusion that it’s not just me, that this world is a extremely messed-up place. It’s broken, and it breaks people. You only have to look around you to see this. The world is seriously imbalanced, and seriously unwell, so much so that I’m not sure I even have the words to describe this deep malaise.

The list of things that have been wrong with the world ‘forever’ is long - war, genocide, grinding oppressions, colonialism, corruption, power trips, the structural and person-to-person ‘isms’, abuse of so many kinds, mistreatment and neglect of children, rape and sexual exploitation, all kinds of interpersonal violence, systemic failures which result in trauma to individuals, violence towards animals or treating them as commodities only worthy of existence if they bring some benefit to humans, the destruction of the environment because the natural world is seen as ‘good’ only if it can be exploited… This list is not a comprehensive one by any means.

All of these things wreak havoc. People die, or their lives are ruined. Animals die, species become extinct, and landscapes disappear or are changed forever, usually for the worse. And this environmental damage, despite some seeming to believe that it’s all the fault of us baby boomers, is actually (at least) two hundred years’ worth of pigeons coming home to roost. We’ve ruined our planet, and now we’re living with the consequences.

Much of this is (surprise surprise) due to people’s egos running rampant, especially those of many so-called ‘leaders’ (pretty much all of them male, but then until recently women couldn’t be ‘leaders’). They gather around them cohorts of similar-minded or at least sycophantic followers who aid them in damaging everything and everyone they can, in service of that ego. We need look no further than a recent American president to see that, but he’s only the most recent, and loudest, example.

Amazingly, these ‘leaders’ will have many faithful followers. Even when they blatantly break their wild promises and prove themselves to be liars, bullies, blowhards, narcissists, and megalomaniacs of the worst kind, some people, incredibly, will still worship them. It defies rational belief, but it’s true. You have to wonder what’s wrong with the followers, that they remain so deluded, or why they would follow such a person in the first place.

There are also so many day-to-day ugly things that people do to each other - workplace politics, insults, name-calling and put-downs, vicious online fights, dysfunctional family dynamics, public rudeness, snobbery, manipulative mind-games, and on and on, all the ‘minor’ nastinesses. These take their toll too.

Even if people don’t actually die from any of these things, they can be left with emotional and physical scars, and all sorts of ongoing problems. All too often, people don’t receive the care or support they need - because, sadly, many of those in power don’t seem to view them as a priority (if you’re Not A Productive Citizen, you’re nobody in their eyes). The rates of mental health problems alone are an indicator of the state of the world. Depression, reported loneliness and isolation, anxiety disorders, PTSD, suicidal ideation, personality disorders, and other serious mental health issues seem to be increasingly common. Maybe they’re growing, maybe they have always been high, when so many have ‘flown under the radar’, and it used to be social death to have a mental health problem, and often still is, who can tell? But either way, it’s not an indication of a healthy world. (Though it sometimes seems to me that being so-called ‘insane’ is actually the only sane response to such a screwed-up world.)

And then of course there’s capitalism, which is much to blame for the state of the world. Its late-stage version encourages rampant greed, materialism, arrogance, cruelty, selfishness and the cult of individualism, with an elite increasingly hoarding obscene proportions of the world’s wealth, while the rest of us struggle and get poorer. Ironically, capitalism had its roots in breaking out of the oppressions of feudalism, and now it’s become an oppressive system itself. I sometimes wonder what those first ‘capitalists’ would think of the world today. Any student of history knows, however, that all political/economic systems have their drawbacks. And as much as I would love to see an end to capitalism, if we don’t address the core problem – that it’s a HUMAN-CREATED system, with all of its failings being due to the failings of human nature, then we’re doomed to create something that will turn out just as badly somewhere in the future.

And then of course we come to our present situation. You’d think a pandemic would be a time for people to pull together, and truly some have. But then there are the rest. The ‘all rights, no responsibility’ types who insist on their ‘free-dumb’, at any cost. The lockdown protestors who think their right to a haircut is more important than people’s lives. The anti-vaxxers who can’t see further than the end of their own ignorant noses. Science deniers and conspiracy theorists in general, who are irrationally convinced the ‘gubmint is out ta get them’. Flaunting their views on the toxic parts of social media, their ‘movements’ often strangely married to groups like fascists or flat-earthers. What is wrong with all these people? Did they leave their brains behind somewhere? The selfishness and foolishness of all of them blows my mind.

If everyone had knuckled down last year when Covid first appeared, it would almost certainly be all over by now. There would have been no Delta variant, and we really would have our lives back. New Zealand licked it, and we’ll hopefully do so again, even Delta. We’re not better than anyone else, just simply lucky enough to have good leadership. Some other countries’ leaders, however…. Well. There go those egos again, and rampant selfishness and greed (‘We must preserve the economy’ ie Big Business profits, including theirs), refusal to listen to scientific experts, blah blah blah. And too many following their lead.

All this is bad enough. There are glaring predicaments everywhere, damaged people and damaged systems and damaged countries, wherever you look. So much damage, so many walking wounded. The world is so chaotic, if it was a person I’d say it needed a personality transplant. As it is, I can’t help a sneaking sympathy for those who want to tear it all down and start again.

But there are so many ways in which autistics become extra-damaged by all of this. People take their anger, or pain, or egotism, or their craving for power, or simply their demand for something – anything - to fill up the emptiness within, and put it Out There. They will dump it onto whoever is nearest that looks like a possible target, and sometimes that’s us. Because we’re too obviously ‘different’, too ‘weird’, too ‘not like them’, we ‘behave too badly’, and are, all too often, too unprotected from anyone seeking to harm us.  

The world fails us. We find the world confusing and often overwhelming as it is. We’re often more sensitive to ‘bad vibes’, and don’t understand others’ bad behaviour. But add in all the crap we get from NTs as well, simply for the ‘crime’ of being autistic, and it’s no wonder we are especially traumatised by it all. I’ve said it before, and it’s been said by others too, that I don’t think there is an untraumatized autistic in the world, unless they are very young and/or very protected. The very shape of how autism is perceived by the world is shaped by our trauma. Yet there’s something deeply ironic about a world that demonises us when it can’t even properly face its own demons.

The only two things that give me any hope are, firstly, the number of good people in the world, trying to make it at least a little better, including so many of my friends. If more of them were in power, maybe the world wouldn’t be in such a mess. The second thing is young people. Their passion and energy, their concern for the environment, their determination, the way they have Big Goals but are also clear-headed about the shape of the world, lifts my spirits. I feel a little less gloomy about the future when I see them in action.

But otherwise, all I can see is that the world is broken, and it breaks us, even more than others. The world needs healing, and so do we.

Tell me I’m wrong. But I think I’m not.

The Public Image Of Autism Is All Wrong

The public image of autism is all wrong.

Well, duh, most autistics are probably thinking about now. But I want to dive deeper into how it’s wrong, and how thoroughly distorted that image is.

It seems to me that there is an entire tangle of intertwined fallacies about autism in the public domain. Some are just assumptions based on meeting an autistic child, or hearing about one, or seeing one on TV. Some are based on beliefs about ‘normality’ or ‘good behaviour’ or ‘spoilt brats’. Yet others are spread by those who make money out of anxious parents or bewildered schools, but have become part of ‘public knowledge’ about autistics. And some are, or have been in the past, solemnly pontificated by ‘experts’ (who are rarely if ever autistic themselves), whenever autism crops up in the media.

The more you look, the more you realise that there are so many of these fallacies, but I’ll try to isolate out the big ones, which, I believe, lie behind most of that tangle.

1) That there are different types of autistic. It doesn’t matter whether you label them low/high functioning (labels which are deeply problematic in themselves), or Asperger’s vs classic autism, or group them into levels, or whatever. The separation in people’s minds persists. So people will hear ‘autism’, and think, at one extreme, of the stereotypical non-verbal young boy, probably white, who sits in the corner either screaming or rocking or spinning objects, possibly soiling himself. These kids are often seen as the ‘real’ autistics.

And at the other extreme, they’ll maybe have an image of a highly intelligent but socially inept teenager/young adult (again, usually a white male), possibly with personal hygiene issues, who’s a hacker/maths/science geek. Either way, the picture is both inaccurate and unflattering, not to mention making any autistic who doesn’t look like either of these pictures virtually invisible.

A central feature of this fallacy is that only children are autistic, and that we somehow grow out of it. The almost complete absence of adult autistics in the media imagery furthers this notion. People also believe that the ‘more autistic’ you are, the more you ‘suffer from’ autism. So if you’re at the ‘high-functioning’ end, then you don’t have any ‘real’ problems, and should just shut up and get on with your life. It also sometimes leads people to say silly things like “we’re all a little bit autistic”.

The issues caused by this division of autistics goes deep. Those thrown into the ‘low functioning’ category routinely have their intelligence denied, their attempts at communication ignored, and/or get subjected to harsh ‘therapy’, or the kind of abuse that tends to get dished out to those who can’t complain. Meanwhile those deemed ‘high functioning’ have their very real difficulties overlooked, and go unsupported and often completely alone with their struggles. And heaven help you if they can’t slot you neatly into either category, you fall completely between the cracks.

The truth however is that THERE IS ONLY ONE TYPE OF AUTISM. You’re either autistic, or you’re not. End of. You’re either autistic or you’re not. Whatever our ‘functioning label’, etc, we all share an autistic mind. How this manifests in each individual is what creates the differing presentations of autism, NOT autism itself. Which brings me to my second fallacy.

2) That co-occurring conditions are ‘autism symptoms’. This is an important point. Many of those slotted into the ‘low-functioning’ category actually have other conditions, such as ataxia, apraxia, etc, which I believe are at the core of their inability to verbalise their thoughts and understandings. And because they can’t talk, people assume they have nothing to say, that they’re unintelligent, an ‘empty house’, and certainly not considered worthy of the same rights as others (this may not be conscious on most people’s part, but it’s definitely there). That this approach doesn’t actually help is ignored or not seen as important. It’s the person, or rather their autism, who’s the issue, in their eyes, not their treatment. A circular thinking is thus created – the person is ‘beyond help’, and therefore you shouldn’t try to help them.

Even for the so-called ‘high functioning’, many of our problems are co-occurring conditions too, whether inborn ones such as sensory processing disorder, or acquired ones like anxiety disorders. We may also struggle with communication or movement disorders, even though we’re not supposed to have them, and so evidence of them is ignored or suppressed. We’re considered ‘close enough to normal’ to ‘pass’, and so it’s demanded that we do, at whatever cost.

But the core problem here is that NONE OF THESE CO-OCCURRING CONDITIONS ARE ACTUALLY AUTISM ITSELF. They also occur in non-autistics. They may be more severe in autistics, or more common amongst us, but they’re still not exclusive to us, and are not central to being autistic.

And until these conditions are disentangled, correctly diagnosed and dealt with, there will be no improvement in the lives of most autistics. It’s not enough to say ‘this person is non-verbal, therefore non-intelligent, so nothing can be done with them’, or ‘this person is anxious due to their autism, therefore nothing can be done for them’, etc, etc. An entirely different approach is desperately needed.

3) That autism can be removed or ‘cured’. At the core of this concept, is the idea that autism is a sort of detachable layer, or that young autistics are somehow malleable enough to stop being autistic, with the right treatment. So much effort is put into making us “indistinguishable from our peers”. Yet so much of this effort is not only pointless, but unnecessary, if you simply accept autistics as they are (yes, even the ‘low functioning’ ones. They need acceptance most of all.)

But even if being autistic is grudgingly accepted as inherent in the individual, many still think it worthwhile to make us seem as non-autistic as possible. There are two unquestioned assumptions to this – firstly, that being, or at least appearing, neurotypical is superior to being autistic. Secondly, that this will magically make our lives easier. Our social lives will improve, we’ll get jobs, be happier, find partners, merge into the general population, blah blah blah.

The big problem with this fallacy is that IT. JUST. DOESN’T. WORK. You can give an autistic kid all the ‘social skills’ in the book, but the other kids in the playground will still pick them out as ‘weird’, and pick on them, bully them or reject them. Adult autistics have similar experiences. Teaching us to hide our autism won’t save us. It could even be argued that it makes things worse, because, whether others know we’re autistic or not, they still see what we are as somehow ‘bad’.

Even more importantly though, is that even if we can completely ‘pass’, the cost of it is extremely high, because WE ARE ESSENTIALLY PRETENDING TO BE SOMETHING WE’RE NOT. I don’t think I can emphasise that enough. Low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, poor mental and physical health, self-harm, and even suicide attempts (some successful) are almost inevitable results of spending almost our entire time acting. It’s rather like someone gay in the closet back in the days before gay liberation, not only concealing their sexuality but actively pretending to be heterosexual. As someone who has spent years in both types of ‘closet’, I can confirm that it takes a ginormous toll.

4) That autism is a ‘disease’ or ‘epidemic’. This is based on the rising rates of diagnosis, and on that core belief that simply being autistic is a Bad Thing. Those who hold this belief (or profess to, for financial gain) will talk solemnly of the ‘burden’ on society, families and schools that we present. They’ll pathologise all our behaviours, even the harmless ones, insist on various therapies, milk anxious parents or compliant educational authorities, and generally try to lock us into boxes that actually separate us from those peers they’re supposedly wanting us to become more like.

When the actual truth is that AUTISM IS SIMPLY A DIFFERENT WAY OF BEING. A different way of seeing, interpreting, thinking, processing and reacting to the world and the people in it. We often say ‘it’s not a software glitch, but a different operating system’. But when we try to tell people this, too many slam back with stories about autistics soiling themselves (why are they so hung up on poo?), or ‘my child will never be able to care for themselves’, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum. Non-autistics have NO IDEA how tired we all are of ableist ‘autism mommies and daddies’.

Another, related truth is that WE’VE ALWAYS BEEN HERE. If you doubt me, read Silberman’s Neurotribes. Read any account of ‘changeling’ children, or children ‘possessed by devils’ in medieval times. Read about past generations committed to mental hospitals or asylums, locked in attics, or simply killed because they were ‘not right in the head’. If anyone wants to know ‘where were the autistics in past generations’, that’s where. The ones who could ‘pass’ became rich eccentrics, steady workers, faithful husbands and wives, lonely shepherds or quiet nuns, visionaries and prophets, and just day-to-day people who went unnoticed in a quieter, slower, more family-orientated world.

Some may ask, so what? What does all the above matter? Why is it important if people have the wrong ideas about us? It matters because IT IS HURTING US. It is hurting us so bad, and so much.

It hurts us when our intelligence is demeaned, or our problems are ignored.

It hurts us when we have to act like NTs just to get even a modicum of respect.

It hurts us when we’re put through horrific so-called therapies like ABA, and get PTSD as a result.

It hurts us when even the way we move and the things we love are pathologised, and they force us to stop doing them.

It hurts us when we blunder through our lives without help, constantly confused and overloaded, feeling like we’ve stumbled into a swamp with no idea how to get out.

It hurts us when we’re misunderstood, our words twisted and our motives doubted.

It hurts us when we’re ridiculed, rejected, beaten up, manipulated, abused or even murdered for the ‘crime’ of being autistic.

It hurts ALL autistics when some of us are told that we’re ‘not really’ autistic, and that we shouldn’t worry about how ‘those other autistics’ are treated, because ‘they’re not like you’. When we know that they’re actually our brothers and sisters, and our next generation.

It hurts us. All of it hurts us. And it’s got to stop. These misconceptions need to be dismantled, thrown out as the rubbish they are, and a new vision of autism and autistics take their place. Because we’ve suffered enough, and it’s time for it all to stop.

Because it hurts.

It hurts.

So please.

Just…

Stop.

Now.

What It Feels Like To Be Emotionally Abused

I don’t normally watch the TV ‘soapies’, but a storyline on one of them caught my eye recently. It’s about an older woman who’s been emotionally and verbally abused by her husband to the point where she breaks and lashes out at him with a wine bottle. At the point of writing this, she’s in jail, awaiting trial for attempted murder – and viewing herself as a ‘bad’ person who deserves punishment. The other characters on the soapie have mostly turned against her, as even before the wine bottle incident, he had quite expertly cast himself as the ‘victim’, and her as various bad things. Even the police don’t pick up on the clues.

As a survivor of emotional abuse myself, I find it too painful to watch, though of course I’m hoping the truth will eventually emerge. But I don’t have much hope of it, as it can be really hard for anyone who hasn’t been through this to understand what it’s like. While my situation never got as far as wine bottles, it nonetheless nearly destroyed me. So I want to explain something of what it feels like to be the recipient of emotional and verbal abuse.

The first thing that needs to be understood is that it’s essentially a betrayal. I’m not talking about sexual betrayal here, but a betrayal of the very trust that should exist between partners. When you enter into a relationship, there’s a basic assumption that they will deal with you fairly and honestly, that they truly care for you and that anything they tell you is the truth. So when they start telling you that you’re this or that Bad Thing, that you’re no good at this or that, you believe them. They must be telling you this For Your Own Good, right? Or at least that’s what they tell you, and they love you, so it must be true, right? Overwhelmed by this flood of new ‘information’ about yourself, you lose all sense of who you were before in the struggle to correct your ‘faults’, to become what they’re telling you that you ‘should’ be.

It's especially easy for them if you already have low self-esteem and are inclined to believe the worst about yourself. (Abusers hone in on such vulnerable people, of course.) Add in being autistic (as in my case), even if you don’t know it at the time, but do know that you have trouble ‘reading between the lines’ and making good judgements about yourself and others, and you’re primed to believe that they are seeing something you can’t, even if it doesn’t ‘feel right’. Under a relentless barrage of criticism, you cave. They must be right, you must be bad, bad, bad. Having been reduced to a state of helpless abasement, you don’t find much to admire in yourself anyway.

Their attitude that they’re positively saintly for putting up with you, that nobody else would, means that over time, you come to believe that others must have seen these faults too, but been too polite to tell you. You become ashamed, not wanting to inflict your flawed self on anyone else, and will probably seem withdrawn and anti-social to others. Thus it’s easy for your partner to cast your actions or words in the worst light to others in turn, subtly running you down, and further isolating you. With no other opinions to compare your partner’s to, your judgement becomes skewed, and you continue to believe the worst. I eventually came to see myself as worthless, as a partner, as a mother, as a friend, and quite possibly even as a human being.

Many people seem to think that verbal and emotional abuse is ‘not as bad’ as physical abuse. “It’s just words.” Even the victim/survivor may think this, or be reluctant to reveal it, or even to see it as abuse. Those harsh words can actually often go hand-in-hand with physical violence, but even without a blow struck, they can be devastating. Without wanting to minimise the hurt from physical abuse at all, damage from a broken limb can heal faster than damage from a broken heart. Because that’s what abusers do to you. They break you. They shatter your heart, your psyche, your very sense of self, your will. I would say they reshape you to their liking – but you’re never to their liking. They’re never satisfied, there’s always more criticism. Nothing about you is sacred.

Even after you scrape up enough shreds of self-esteem to get out of the relationship, it can take a long, long, long time to realise what’s happened to you, and what you’ve lost. To give just one small example, my partner had me convinced that I was hopeless as a ‘home handywoman’. If I even started to do a job around the house, she’d sigh impatiently, and snatch the tool off me with a contemptuous “oh, give it here!” Afterwards, it took me more than two years to remember that before her, I’d actually been moderately competent at doing stuff. Not as expert as her maybe, but I’d known what to do with a screwdriver or hammer, I’d rewired electric plugs, swapped a faulty cord on an iron, and even done up old furniture. But under the onslaught of her contempt, I’d forgotten all that. I’d forgotten the very idea of being competent – at anything.

And it can be an even longer time healing. Even now, more than twenty years later, I still find myself squirreling out damaged parts of my psyche. For instance, I still have to remind myself that if I do something that’s not ‘how others (deep down, I mean ‘her’) would do it’, it’s okay. No-one’s watching me, about to pounce and tear me apart for it, I don’t have to constantly defend my actions or words anymore. But despite my best attempts to dismantle it, the kneejerk fear-reaction is still entrenched in me, not to mention the belief that the way I do things is ‘wrong’, even if it feels right to me. That’s how deep the damage can go. This is a battle I’m still fighting. Even writing this has stirred up old, painful memories.

My wish is that people will come to understand that emotional and verbal abuse is just as devastating, just as emotionally destructive, as physical abuse. That it can wreck people, wreck their lives, wreck their relationships with others, even wreck their physical health, and leave them feeling, afterwards, like a piece of wreckage washed up on a beach, no good to themselves or anyone else.

Never underestimate the power of ‘mere words’.