So I was chewing on this idea of being autistic (ASD) for a hot minute.

Not in the sense that it really matters if I’m seen as an autistic human being (although the overwhelming number of clinicians who proposed this might say otherwise). Rather, in the sense of how being autistic shaped my experiences within religion and socializing.

When I was growing up, church culture was that sex, drugs, and partying were all efforts of the devil (or demonic actions) to pull you from Christ. My family never really ascribed to this, and I never really cared much anyway. My family often said, “Those aren’t demonic. Those are just maybe not as productive of a way to advance through life.” Still harsh, maybe, but at least it isn’t condemning you to Hell for a choice of your teenage youth.

But as an autistic person, that shaped my worldview.

While many churchgoers were furious about teenagers (!!!) going to parties (an abnormal happenstance, I’m certain…), I was kind of just… unfazed. People would be having (lots of) premarital sex (!!!) with their partners (which I’ve later come to be very in favor of) and it kind of still… unfazed me. I somehow respected autonomy and choice over blind obedience to G-d?

To me, wasn’t the beauty of G-d that He doesn’t ask you to be anyone but yourself?

Wasn’t the beauty that there’s a divine being more powerful than we understand?

With my mom, she often reacted to my expressions of trauma from religious abuse as signs that I (somehow) have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. After looking at the rationale for her saying this, and realizing that it was couched in religious and spiritual abuse, I find (and create) further commentary that religion is not for autistic people.

Highly religious people critique people who aren’t like them, perhaps offend them, or perhaps won’t blindly accept their hollow arguments. As an autistic person, my innate sense of justice said that this was dumb. People said the golden rule was to treat people as you wanted to be treated. Which to me was to be nonjudgemental and kind.

Sometimes we conflate the traits of religiousness with autism. I dated a guy whose staunch views on religion often made me confused about why my mom liked him when he didn’t seem to be good enough in other aspects. I remember he told everyone else in my life that he was autistic. But he never once threw that fit to my parents. Go figure.

I don’t have the bandwidth to explain that one.

But I do have the bandwidth to explain that harshly religious people and I don’t get along but that I often can respect them. It makes for some really WILD conversations.

When I was chewing on this idea, though, I realized something else about being an ASD human hoe qween.

There’s this vibing thing called PDA – which is “pathological demand avoidance” – or a fancy way to suggest “I will not do what I am forced to do; the active resistance is chaos“.

ASD and PDA go hand in hand (many times, anyway).

I will loop back to my ongoing soapbox about COT (court mandated treatment & psychoeducation), and its harm on victims. PDA profiles (while not the majority of DV – domesitc violence – victims, do compromise a fair section of them) do in fact overlap heavily with what I’d expect a severely traumatized person with alexitymia (loss of speech for emotions/thoughts) to present like. COT misses the point completely.

PDA made me so mad that they wanted to “psychoeducate me” out of DV victimization that I screamed at them about their lack of ethics, knowledge, and competencies, until they would listen that I read their damn paperwork and was not the normal victim.

I really was a clinical counselor! (I never did say I was independently licensed, but did point out time and time again that I had robust clinical training in therapy service delivery methods – namely DBT, unlike their Reality Therapy…)

The level at which I performed services was a full-time staff member receiving highly ethical and comprehensive supervision and support from fully licensed staff. I happened to work with SMI and disabled populations, due to the area I was living in.

It is highly offensive to suggest to a former clinical intern that case management is the same thing in any sense at all to clinical therapy services, as those are markedly different and require noticably different skillsets than one another (and both are highly needed!).

When I pointed out to the COT director and site owner my markedly vocal complaint, they realized I was not playing. They changed their minds real quick and did a 180 degree flip!

My ASD meant I went first to the point that they were bad providers (which was kind of a fair point, for what it was worth), without trying to play the COT site’s game of “no, you need to hear us out first”. Sometimes I stand firm in awe at myself.

Other times, looking at my ASD side and the PDA side is hilarious.

I don’t like this idea of being forced into being told what I need to hear.

But also, I need space to talk about things and process them well and kindly with someone who I can trust. COT is part of the PIC (prison industrial complex), a system where my day job skills (in contract specialist work) are a little more intense to them than expected from a self-proclaimed “advocate”.

I can’t help that I’m really smart and work in a day job with highly classified information, wherein legal and technical language is hardly anything unforeseen to me. I work for a day job as a business analyst, where part of my job is recruiting healthcare SMEs and other professionals to help perfect healthcare-related QA/QC.

The level of annoyance I had as someone who not only hires these professionals all day (at much different standards), but who also learned from differently trained professionals in the field to deliver the work at a higher quality? It was off the charts.

My issue with the PIC as an ASD girlie is how COT is structured.

I have worked in COT facilities before (it did not last long!) and I have worked in highly clinical settings before (I thrived!). My issue with COT is that it’s an HMO type plan, meaning that we as clinical staff are not allowed to override what the referring doctor says, unless we ourselves can unrefer the person. (In not so confusing words: HMO plans say the only people who can give a second opinion are someone the diagnostician says is allowed to give one. With COT, they don’t allow anyone to override their claim on what the person has. In a complaint, I called this “civil containment,” a contracting piece of language not many people could understand.)

Civil containment, if anyone read my earlier posted complaint, is the process by which, instead of giving someone who is no danger to themselves or others free will to get help, they are forcibly arrested and dragged through the court-mandated system of therapy. Most places know doing this outright is illegal, and so they will force a bogus charge modifier on it to prove a point to the court and prosecutor.

I took a class way back, where I learned SAMHSA’s guidelines on this.

What’s important about being an ASD girlie who is a contractor?

Well, SAMHSA is a government contractor… meaning that when they release guidelines and statements, those are federally-mandated guidelines on ethical processes. When those are broken, responsible courts and systems have to fix it, or else face severe legal consequences for breaching contractual obligations.

The best part about my job is that it enables me to know who the “HR department” is within each government agency and system.

When the courts are being discriminatory and won’t talk to you, and the departments themselves throw a fit, the DOJ is their oversight. I can’t give all the ins and outs, but due to my day job, I know how to appeal a contract made in error.

Advocacy within the courts is often meaning that we have to speak the language of someone who doesn’t look toward listening to us.

I won my court battle – it is signed, sealed, and delivered – with the charge designation removed, last time I checked what it looked like on there.

Advocacy is not always clear and simple.

Be loud. Be bold. Be you.

XOXO,

Dorothy B