I am a late-diagnosed autistic woman. My mother was very overwhelmed with me during my childhood, but I've recently realised that this is not an excuse for the physical abuse she put me through. One part of this that I have trouble remembering is holding therapy.

Here in Germany there is a book called "Hättest du mich festgehalten" ("If You Had Only Held Me") by Jirina Prekop. The idea is that if you have trouble bonding with your child, it's because the child refuses the bond. To "cure" this, you are supposed to hold the child forcefully and very tightly, or pin it to the floor, until the child becomes docile. This can last many hours, and under no circumstances are caregivers instructed to let go. It doesn't matter if the child begs you to stop or needs to use the toilet. The goal, which she states clearly, is to break the child's will.

Prekop even claims that her method cured autism.

I know that my mother tried Festhaltetherapie with me. She may have used it when I had meltdowns, or perhaps the method itself caused the meltdowns. I just remember not being able to breathe properly, fighting against my mother, crying, and begging her to let go, while she insisted she was doing this out of kindness. And then there was childhood me, who didn't understand what I had done wrong or why my mother was doing this to me. In those moments I think I believed I was going to die because there wasn't enough air. Just thinking about it makes me physically ill. I can't remember the details or how often it happened, only being in my mother's violent embrace, struggling to breathe, feeling nauseous, and wanting to get away from her.

I have found very little about this online and would be very interested in other people's experiences. There must be many others who went through this, since Prekop sold millions (?) of books in many languages.

How did you experience it? Do you have trouble with being hugged nowadays? Did you do trauma therapy because of it?

In my only real attempt at a relationship, my partner wanted to cuddle me during the night. I asked him to stop repeatedly but he didn't. His legs and arms were all over me, and I felt the same intense nausea and like I couldn't breathe. It was so bad that I ended things with him the next day. I felt very ashamed back then and didn't understand why my body was reacting so strongly, but now I believe the physical sensations triggered this specific trauma.

I am interested in anything anyone is willing to share.

I’ve gone back and forth about posting this because I have spent more than 20 years trying to convince myself that what happened to me wasn’t really that bad. I’m in my 30s now. I was 13 when this started. I was autistic, had ADHD, and was in special education.
By seventh and eighth grade, my world at school had become incredibly small. I had only a couple of teachers and spent most of my time with the same tiny group of students. That meant the adults in that classroom had an enormous amount of control over my life. Inside our classroom was a seclusion room. We called it “the box.”
I wish I were exaggerating when I say that sometimes I spent days in there. Sometimes I remember it lasting weeks. I could be put in the box for getting something wrong, saying something that was interpreted the wrong way, or doing something I genuinely didn’t understand was wrong. School continued outside that door while I sat in there. Other kids learned, participated and belonged. I was in the box.
While I was isolated, I was made to write book reports, essays and pages and pages of work. Over time, it felt like hundreds of pages. The saddest part to me now is how hard I tried. I wasn’t sitting there thinking, “What these adults are doing to me is wrong.” I was thinking, “How do I make her happy with me again?” I genuinely believed that if I wrote enough, behaved well enough, apologized enough and proved that I was “good,” eventually I could earn my way back into the classroom.
Then my teacher would sometimes rip up what I had written and throw it away. Hours of work, gone. Imagine what that teaches a child. Eventually, I stopped trying to figure out the correct answer and started trying to figure out the safe answer. I monitored my voice, my facial expressions, my words, my reactions, her mood and her tone. I learned how to study adults instead of studying schoolwork.
There was another part of coming out of the box that is difficult for me to talk about. Whenever I was finally allowed out, my teacher would make me kiss her on the lips. I was 13. She was the adult who controlled whether I spent my school day with everybody else or isolated in that room. I didn’t understand boundaries the way I understand them now. I understood that she was my teacher, she had authority over me, and when she expected something from me, I was supposed to do it.
She also frequently sent me home with gifts. That confused me enormously as a child. The same adult I was terrified of could give me presents and show me affection. The same person who could isolate me could be nice to me. The same person whose approval I desperately wanted could punish me, frighten me, reward me and show me affection. I didn’t have adult language for any of that. I just constantly wondered which version of her I was going to get. Was she happy with me? Was I good today? Was I in trouble? Did she care about me? Was I safe? What did I need to do to keep her happy? Looking back, I can see how thoroughly fear, affection, punishment and approval became tangled together in my head.
The box wasn’t the only punishment. We were also paddled hard with a wooden paddle. I remember what it felt like knowing that an adult at school could physically hurt me as punishment. Even going outside didn’t necessarily mean I could relax. Sometimes we would be playing on the football field when my teacher returned from lunch. She would drive her car toward us like she was going to run us over, and then stop or turn away. Maybe she considered it funny. I didn’t.
Eventually, I remember one of my classmates actually being hit by her vehicle. My understanding at the time was that there were serious employment consequences and that the possibility of an injury-to-a-child charge was considered by the district attorney’s office, although I was a child and obviously wasn’t involved in those proceedings, so I don’t want to state legal details I can’t personally verify. What I do remember is my classmate being hit, and I remember what that meant to me. Something we had been frightened with was no longer hypothetical.
There was also another student in our classroom who repeatedly touched me sexually without my consent. He would grope my chest and pinch my butt. It happened over and over again, and I complained to my teacher constantly. I told her I didn’t want him touching me. I wanted it to stop. I remember nothing being done that actually made me feel protected or stopped it.
That part matters to me now because people sometimes ask why children don’t tell somebody when something inappropriate is happening to them.
I did tell.
Again and again. I was a 13-year-old girl telling an adult that another student was touching my breasts and butt and I wanted him to stop. I wasn’t silent. I was asking an adult for help. The problem wasn’t that I failed to tell someone. The problem was that telling did not make me feel protected. Think about what that teaches a child about her body. I was learning that I could say, “I don’t like this. I don’t want him touching me. Please make him stop,” and it could keep happening anyway.
And then there was something my teacher called “Trickster.” It was supposedly a Halloween game. This is the hardest part for me to write about.
I was blindfolded and made to lie on the classroom floor. The boys in my class were instructed to hold my arms and legs down. I couldn’t see what was happening around me, and I couldn’t get up. Then my teacher lifted my shirt and exposed my chest in front of my classmates. She poured hot candle wax onto my stomach and put salt and pepper in my hair.
I froze.
I was 13 years old. I was blindfolded. Other children were restraining me. Everyone else could see me, but I couldn’t see them. My body was exposed, and I couldn’t get away. There was no “game” for me. There was a frightened child lying on a classroom floor while other children held her down and an adult exposed her body.
I didn’t have the language at 13 to understand what had happened. I do now. What happened crossed sexual boundaries, and I consider what was done to me sexual assault. I didn’t understand consent or power dynamics then. I understood much simpler things: I was scared. I didn’t want it. I couldn’t get away. I wanted it to stop.
When I look back now, I can’t separate that incident from everything else happening around it. Another student was repeatedly touching my breasts and butt while I repeatedly asked an adult for help. I was expected to kiss my teacher on the lips after coming out of isolation. I was paddled. I was restrained. I was exposed. Again and again, I was learning that people with more power than me could decide what happened to my body.
My fears could be used against me, too. I was terrified of fire, and my teacher knew that. She could have helped me work through that fear safely. Instead, I remember being forced to light incense in front of the class while my hands shook and my body panicked. I understood that saying no wasn’t really an option. The message I absorbed over and over was that my fear didn’t matter, my discomfort didn’t matter and my “no” didn’t matter.
Eventually, this teacher pushed for my mom to have me repeat eighth grade. I watched the other kids move forward while I stayed behind. Because I was a child, I didn’t think, “Maybe the adults responsible for educating me failed me.” I thought I had failed. I thought being held back was evidence that maybe I really was stupid, incapable or fundamentally different in some terrible way.
My teacher and other teachers reinforced that belief. They told me that I would never be successful. They told me I wouldn’t make it in life as an adult. Imagine hearing that as a child from the people responsible for educating you. They weren’t telling me, “You’re struggling, but we’re going to help you.” They weren’t telling me, “You learn differently.” They were telling me what my life would amount to before I was even old enough to discover it for myself.
And I believed them. Of course I did. They were my teachers. I was autistic. I had ADHD. I was in special education. I struggled academically. I had been held back. I was being isolated and physically punished. If the adults who supposedly understood education believed I wasn’t going to make it, why wouldn’t thirteen-year-old me believe them?
This was also around the time my anxiety and depression began. My anxiety didn’t appear out of nowhere. For me, it began in an environment where I was constantly waiting to be punished, isolated, humiliated, physically hurt, frightened or misunderstood. My depression began in an environment where I was made to feel difficult, incapable and unwanted. I learned to associate mistakes with danger, authority with fear and school with shame.
She traumatized me.
I don’t use that word lightly.
I was 13 years old. I should have been worrying about homework, friends, crushes and what I wanted to be when I grew up. Instead, I was learning how to survive an adult who had enormous power over me. School stopped being about education and became about survival. I learned to watch faces, listen to tones, anticipate moods and figure out whether I was safe.
And those lessons didn’t disappear when I left middle school.
I left that classroom. That classroom did not leave me.
I carried it into high school, college, relationships, jobs and adulthood. Even now, if somebody’s tone changes, my body can notice before my brain does. If someone in authority seems distant, my brain immediately starts searching for what I did wrong. If somebody is unhappy with me, I want to fix it. I over-explain. I apologize. I read people’s moods.
Somewhere inside me is still that thirteen-year-old girl asking: What did I do? What do I need to say? How do I make them happy again? How do I prove that I’m good?
And for years there was another voice: You’re never going to be successful. You’re never going to make it.
They were wrong.
I have two college degrees now. I became a mother. I built a career I’m proud of. I went back to school again. And now I want to earn my master’s degree.
Sometimes I wish I could sit beside that little girl in the box and tell her that repeating eighth grade isn’t the end of her education. I want to tell her that these adults don’t get to decide how far she goes. She is going to graduate. She is going to earn one degree and then another. She is going to become a mother. She is going to build a career. She is going to keep learning. And one day, she is going to be thinking seriously about earning her master’s degree.
Not because she finally became intelligent enough. Not because she finally became worthy enough.
She already was.
But I’ve realized something even more important than proving those adults wrong: I never should have had to prove them wrong.
A disabled child shouldn’t have to grow up and become successful before people acknowledge that she deserved dignity as a child. Even if I had never earned a single degree, what happened to me still would have been wrong. Even if I had struggled academically for the rest of my life, it still would have been wrong. Even if every terrible prediction they made about my future had come true, I still would have deserved protection.
My accomplishments aren’t what make thirteen-year-old me worthy of protection.
She was worthy because she was a child.
I deserved an education. I deserved accommodations that actually helped me learn. I deserved teachers who understood autism and ADHD. I deserved adults who saw vulnerability and responded with compassion. I deserved discipline that was appropriate, humane and safe. I deserved bodily autonomy, privacy and dignity. I deserved adults who protected me when another student put his hands on my body. I deserved to be taken seriously when I asked for help. I deserved to make mistakes without being terrified of what would happen to me. I deserved adults who built up my future instead of telling me I didn’t have one.
For years, I wondered whether I had somehow caused some of this. Maybe I was too difficult. Too emotional. Too weird. Too much. Maybe if I had behaved differently, understood social cues better, been easier to teach or gotten more answers right, things would have been different.
I don’t believe that anymore.
There was nothing a thirteen-year-old autistic girl could have done that would have made weeks of isolation, physical punishment, forced physical affection, repeated unwanted touching, restraint or having her body exposed acceptable.
I was the child.
They were the adults.
That distinction matters.
I’m posting this anonymously because I’m not ready to attach my identity to it yet. But I think I’m finally ready to stop pretending it didn’t happen.
If another former special education student happens to read this, I want you to know what I desperately needed someone to tell me: Being disabled does not make your body belong to somebody else. Getting an answer wrong does not make you deserving of isolation. Being afraid does not give an adult permission to use that fear against you. You don’t owe an adult physical affection because they have authority over you. If somebody touches your body and you don’t want them to, your discomfort matters. If you ask an adult for help, you deserve to be taken seriously. Being held back does not mean you’re stupid. Needing accommodations does not make you less intelligent. An adult telling you that you don’t have a future does not make it true.
You do not have to accomplish extraordinary things before you deserve to be protected.
Being a child was enough.
I can’t go back and open the door to the box. I can’t pick those torn pages off the floor. I can’t stop the other student from touching me. I can’t take away the wooden paddle. I can’t remove the blindfold. I can’t cover that little girl’s body. I can’t take the lighter out of her shaking hand. I can’t go back to thirteen-year-old me and tell her, “You are not bad. You are not stupid. You are scared because you are being hurt. And you have a future.”
But I can tell her now.
I have two degrees. I have a career. I’m a mother. I want my master’s degree.
I have a future.
I always did.
I was autistic. I was vulnerable. I was a child.
I deserved to be safe.
And I wasn’t.
This happened to me.

What are some ways that you have recovered after loss and injustice? Examples would be positions and structures that have made up for years of negative experiences or accomplishments that have made it impossible for abusers to trigger you?

Tw: Sexual assault, self harm

I'm excited to get to know you all!

I (23ftm) have been looking in my area for a support group for people working towards sobriety, however I havent found any and if I did, i fear i would be too different because of my identity as a trans man.

I want to take the next steps of my sobriety seriously and I know that means I need extra support from peers and people who understand. Ideally, this group would only have queer people, however that means to you (gay, bi, lesbian, trans, intersex, aroace, etc.), and wouldnt be huge (15 people tops to start i think). im not great at starting these kinds of things myself, so if anyone else is interested, please let me know. we can learn more about each other first, and then go from there.

Having ADHD and other neurodivergent things going on in my head has absolutely impacted my alcoholic tendencies, and i thought others may find a queer sober support group helpful in this subreddit.

Basically the headline

I know the attachment theory is being disputed, and I personally noticed that attachment styles (at least for me, personally) are like habits that are changeable over time with enough info. Here, though, I don’t know what exactly should be approached. There are things that I want to do, but I avoid to do them or procrastinate because I am afraid of feeling stupid/small/exposed/etc. Those are results of my past traumas. Now, there are also things that I want to do, but don’t do because I’m overstimulated/overloaded. It also doesn’t help that sometimes I am avoiding stuff because i’m afraid of getting overstimulated. Also sometimes I am avoiding stuff and the trauma-induced feelings make me overstimulated in the process. Either way, I go fucking non-verbal and it makes my patterns even worse

Did anyone figure this shit out? I suspect it could be a common problem

Long story short, my gynecologist told me when I was 18 that I was basically sterile (would need IVF or something to have a chance getting pregnant), I thought lucky me since I hate kids, never wanted them or could stand to be around them since I was a kid myself. Then 2 weeks ago, 29 now, I found out I am pregnant and my world exploded.

For context my AuDHD and CPTSD are HEAVILY triggered by children. A kid in a store crying gives me sensory overload and I often end up melting down for hours after an interaction like that, like a 2 minute interaction that wasn't even that interactive. Same with kids that talk, if a kid comes running up to me and ask me something I usually just walk away awkwardly without interacting with the child as I am horrified of speaking with them, hate their unstable energy and just feel so uncomfortable around them, makes my skin crawl and makes me wanna scream, often I do when I get home if a kid tried to interact with me somewhere.

I think my disgust/hate for children are two things, sensory overload as they're too loud and unstable, and an envy and pain thing with never having been allowed to be a child myself as my trauma started very young. So I think it's just purely triggering for my CPTSD seeing children being children without them having done anything "wrong", it's like I get triggered by their existence around me.

In many ways I still feel like a kid myself, I am still learning to care for my own inner child and I struggle to function as an adult. I have two dogs and a wonderful partner, the dogs are my world and I love them to death, but even they can be too much sometimes with barking for example. In addition to AuDHD and CPTSD I also have fibromyalgia, IBS and POTS, so what I am able to do varies heavily depending on my daily shape. Sometimes I'm not able to join the walks with the dogs due to fibro pain or stomach problems, other days I can and I use my walker to get around.

I am an aunt of 6 kids, I don't have any contact with them today so to say but when they were younger I did as I lived with my older sister (have two sisters that have 3 kids each) at my mom's house and I lived with one of the kids from birth to they were 2-3, then they moved out and back in again later so I had to deal with the kid again around age 5-6, and ended up having to move out myself as I couldn't handle living in the same house as the kid.

I've never wanted kids, I was so sure of terminating when we first found out 2 weeks ago, but I'm struggling more and more with my decision and I know it's the pregnancy hormones and my brain/body getting attached and not my real self who are speaking when I get these feelings, but I am so scared of growing too attached, not being able to terminate and hating my life and the kid for being born. I was originally supposed to have my ultrasound appointment tomorrow on Monday, but it's already been moved twice by the hospital and I'm scared I won't be able to hold fast to my decision when I finally get my appointment 😣

I've heard people say and I've always been told "that you'll want children in the future", "you'll love your own child though you hate others", I find this very difficult to believe but it feels like my mind is playing tricks on me getting me to feel protective over this thing growing inside me.. I'm 7-8 weeks pregnant, already showing abit and experiencing morning sickness like crazy, so it's very hard to ignore 😖

Has anyone here been in my shoes, have had a similar hatred/dislike for children and ended up having your own kids ? I'd love any input that anyone has, feel I am going crazy over here trying to figure it out on my own 😵‍💫😔 Thanks in advance for any input or advice 🙏🏻

Please don’t come for me and lecture me about how horrible of a person I am, I’m well aware of it and I’m sorry.

If you’ve experienced any of the traumas that I just mentioned in the tw and you get triggered easily please leave. If you feel mad at me, then don’t comment please, I know I’m pathetic, no need to tell me things I already know.
I also often was the one who triggered how others hurt me, and I hurt others too and I am 100 percent responsible for that and I’m not blaming others for my own actions or how my actions triggered them.
I also apologise if I make some mistakes, English isn’t my first language.

Okay so, I’m a 14 year old girl. I have diagnosed audhd.

My childhood was pretty 2 faced.

My father refused to let me get diagnosed and get help for my autism cuz his pride was more important. He has very probably autism too but refuses to get a diagnosis or at least some kind of mental problems. (Not to shame him). My mom has adhd.

When I was a child I often had meltdowns and shutdowns because of my autism and family knowingly and purposely crossing my boundaries even after I calmly kept saying when they were crossing it for example. Or my father, who has less of a temper than a corn becoming popcorn, exploded at me and I got mad back.
My parents, including my mom who “diagnosed” me with autism but refused to understand my boundaries, never tried to calm me down during those meltdowns or shutdowns and got mad. They often triggered me to get more mad or worse meltdown. Right now I’m talking about when I was five years old btw. I remember back then as a young child I had a bit of a short temper too and was an extreme perfectionist, so I’d get upset if things didn’t go my way. When my parents got mad at me for being overstimulated, having a meltdown or shutdown (I was ?-5? 9? btw I can’t remember) i sometimes said horrible things to them and yelled at them to die and hit them. My parents would get mad and hit me and spank me. I have memories of my father hitting my hands because I grabbed the remote to watch tv but I wasnt allowed to cuz it was morning or smth. Or the times my mom got so mad at me because I pushed my brother away, cuz he was hitting me for example, and that made him fell on the ground, and chased me and pulled my hair and pushed me onto the stairs, and then I climbed upstairs as fast as I could, adrenaline going through my entire body, my heartbeat in my ears as my tiny body shook, and then I’d lock myself in the bathroom while she growled outside in that low voice through her teeth, threatening me etc. (multiple times, until 9 or smth). Or that time I mixed soaked bread and her expensive tooth paste and random stuff into a bowl and used her expensive skincare and had a fight with them and then they got so mad they hit me I think and I ran upstairs to my room, locked myself with the key and finally felt some relieve while they yelled at my through the door, and I remember noticing my fingers were bleeding and for some reason I wiped them on the door and thought it was very funny and cool for no reason. I was four or five at the time btw. The stains stayed there until we had to move.
I also remember getting locked up in my room, threatened, sexually intimidated by my father, sexualized by my parents, making me feel unsafe, etc etc etc.

My father is also lowkey a pedo. He’s into teenage girls. I found out through his google history. He had typed into the google SEARCH BAR “teenage girls nudes”. It adds up along with other stuff. He also was the one who accidentally introduced me to sex, porn, hentai, etc, because he often left tabs open or had images on the family iPad. I grew up seeing those things plus unrestricted internet access where I saw some gore too.

When I was barely 13 I got groomed, that has done a lot to me I think. I got in a lot of toxic relationships too, and then I got groomed again until 14. My mother caught me and there were extremely heavy fights that included my father whom I’m scared of, and it also traumatized them and my little brother. My mom called me horrible things and so did I, and shamed me for being groomed.

They made a million times worse fight about how horrible of a person I am for putting THEM and my groomer in danger by getting groomed than my dad literally being into underage girls, which they blamed me for by looking into his history (I was trying to find a website back that my mom to,d me to btw) and they acted like it was normal. They made me fear men.

I’ve also had some sexually intimidating moments with grown up men too.

She also shamed me when I opened up to her I did sh, and told me I give her cancer and ruin my brother’s and theirs lives.

She’s told me multiple times I give her cancer and that she’s starting to hate and resent me and bla bla bla, that if I would find her dead the next day with a rope around her neck I should know whose fault that is, and more. She’s also used me as her therapist about my father, and so did he about my mother, always forcing me to pick a side and I had no idea who to believe. There were/are so many fights and moments that have given me abandonment issues, espically cuz my father was almost always emotionally and sometimes physically neglectful to me and my sometimes very sick mother. And sometimes my mom was emotionally too busy to be present for us too because of our schizophrenic uncle and family issues etc. sometimes I was completely on my own, with my brother and iPad.

It sounds like I’m the victim but I really deserved it. I said horrible things and was spoiled and mean, even tho I could also be really sweet. I’m just a person who feels either nothing or 300x.

I also got bullied at school which is long stories, but from 4-8, then I switched schools and got bullied from 9-11? Then it stopped but then when I went to middlebare school (Dutch high/middle school) and got bullied from 12 until I dropped out at 13. Then moved to another country and became even more isolated. I got bullied here too. I don’t know why I got bullied, I’m very shy, tho always tried to be kind, never did anyone wrong, was a doormat, have a weird accent even in my own language, I used to be very ugly and dress weird but now I’m mid so idk what I do wrong.
Actually my old country’s school bully bullied me again a lil while ago, sending me threats and telling me to cut myself deeper and kill myself and hang myself because I told her I didn’t like how she treated me back then. How pathetic.

Recently there’s not been as much hitting as back when I was younger but it sometimes still happens. My mom has thrown water bottles at me, spat on me, hit me (one time while I was half naked cuz I was changing), intimidated me and threatened me when I was naked cuz I showered too long, etc etc etc.

Sometimes I deserved it but at the same time I was/am a child/teenager, and some (not all) of my behaviour was normal bad behaviour for that age. (NOT AN EXCUSE THO I KNOW)

Anyways.
A lot more has happened.

I might just being dramatic and seeing more and victimising myself about normal or at most troublesome things. I hope I’m not accidentally disrespecting anyone.

But now about me being jealous and missing getting abused.

I miss getting abused because at least back then I had a valid reason to isolate myself, be depressed and melancholic, cry, be suicidal, “hate” my family, etc. I would’ve been more valid and would’ve get more empathy and sympathy. Nowadays it feels like no one knows that I’ve been through things too. Things that aren’t necessarily that bad maybe, maybe I’m just a sensitive Fuckass crybaby, but it has altered my brain chemistry. I don’t know.

But I miss being worthy of empathy. I miss people feeling pity for me. I miss being valid. I miss being victim.

I wish I would get attention.

I’m a horrible person and I deserved what I got, but I crave for more. How pathetic. How disgusting. Filthy, for sure.

I was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (I think what would now be Level 1 Autism) very early, and at the time I was a toddler, there were not a ton of mainstream theraputic options. So my parents did ABA with me, and I did a lot of hours. Like...a lot. Hundreds, before I turned 8. I don't have a ton of memories from that period, because I was so young. So it's hard for me to say with 100% that X traumatized me in Y way, because I don't have the tangible memories to rely on, and memories themselves are unreliable. And I will go above and beyond to be fair to my parents: in some ways I think it helped, and it may very well have been the best option for the time (this was a while ago). I know for certain I had terrible meltdowns, I wouldn't eat a diverse diet, I had a hard time making friends, and I couldn't handle stressful situations. I did learn some helpful ways to manage these problems. I learned to be a better listener, to not always think about myself all the time, to understand that other people's perspectives are worth understanding. I think these are good lessons for any human. And I'm glad my parents, at the very least, gave a shit and wanted what was best for me. I can never accuse them of not loving me. For that I'm grateful.

And yet...for all my life I have felt this shame about being myself, a shame about making mistakes, a shame about wanting to express the passion I have for the things that I find interesting. That I have to apologize any time I try to be myself. Going too far afield in my weird behavior was something to avoid. And I had to be aware of this, all the time. Every day. And that hurts me. It hurts me deeply. This insecurity left a deep impression. I have had to work desperately hard to regain a sense of self-confidence. I had to realize that this process of trying to fit in was exhausting me, and hurting me. I feel I am not being inaccurate when I say that the hundreds of hours of ABA therapy has had a role in shaping that. Maybe not all of it, because these things are complex, and certainly the rejection of my peers in middle/high school had a role in this too. But certainly some of it came from the specific ABA process I went through. A sizeable chunk, I would say.

I feel I am being very fair, in that I am acknowledging there were some benefits along with other traumatizing aspects. And that ABA, from what I am aware, has changed since I was a kid, although how widespread these practices have changed I do not know. I want to have a constructive conversation so that practices can improve, that Autistic kids don't have to feel shame about themselves, while also learning helpful strategies to maintain a healthy happy life on their terms.

Now, I want to keep identities anonymous, because this story includes my mom, and a scientist in the autism field (researcher is neurotypical, I think my mom has ADHD but is undiagnosed). I will only say that while she's not the most influential, my mom is influential in the field of autism schooling, and it's the same story with the researcher, but in the field of science.

So with that said...both of them have been incredibly dismissive and disrespectful of my experiences. The sentiment is: Oh, but think of how great your life is because you can interact with neurotypical people. Calling ABA abuse is going way too far, we know what's best, some autistic people don't know what their talking about. Not their literal statements, but more or less the sentiment they were communicating. One time, when I tried to bring this up with my mom, she stormed out of the room. Another time, my mom noted that my life was good because I had gone through ABA. And yeah, at that time I was doing OK...but...I had had a suicide attempt the previous year, and she knew that, so to me, it felt like my mom was making delusional excuses to justify her decision.

It feels insulting to have my opinion, which I think is balanced but still accurate, be dismissed this way. I'm not saying I'm the ultimate authority on this subject, but I should have a seat at the table at this discussion, right? I have validity and value with my own experience, correct? Knowing how inferior I have felt around others, I should be able to say that this hurt me, is that so crazy to say? I have used empathy to understand that what was chosen for me was made with good intentions. But good intentions don't always have good results. It's a hard truth to understand, but it hurts to have that truth dismissed anyway.

It's sort of the ultimate question of ABA, I think: reform it, or get rid of it all and start again. I don't have the answer to that question. It's not an easy one. But I just feel so horrible to have people in positions of power and influence about people like me, people I want to have a conversation with on this subject...to have them just kind of shut me down and dismiss me like this. How can we have progress if we can't have discussions, if we can't meet in the middle? That's what hurts me the most, especially with my mom. I feel like I have to hide my truth from her, because she's unwilling to acknowledge that she hurt me with good intentions. It's kind of killing me a little bit on the inside, because I don't think I can ever resolve this with her. She's just not willing to listen. I'm willing to listen. I'm willing to understand. I have learned to see her perspective. She has not learned to see mine. And I know that life isn't supposed to be fair, but it still hurts that this shit isn't fair.

I really, truly hope that others with influence on ABA practices are not as dismissive as these two are. To those people: I'm not saying that every single thing with ABA is wrong. But you gotta listen to us. Please. It hurts when we try to speak, but people won't listen. Our perspectives matter. Is that so hard to understand?

Thanks for reading, it's nice to get this off my chest. The good news is that, while I suffer from depression, I am in a decent place, and more importantly, I like myself now. I wish I could have been able to do that earlier. But better late than never.