Interesting post. I have been having to think a lot lately about some of these themes as they can apply to other relationships, with people having some kind of investment in thinking that they understand and must “help” when it’s more about fulfilling some of their own needs and dealing with some projected version of who/how they want to think you are. While remaining under their preferred illusions about their own motives, and how they are actually behaving. Abusive, especially when you’re inclined to assume that other people really are acting out of decent motives, and how can you object to help?–no matter the context–but the idea of professional-type people doing this really gives me the willies. (I have mostly managed to avoid interacting much with ones that gave off that particular “good with” vibe. But, I have been luckier in avoiding as much official “help” in general as you’ve experienced.)

I am not prone to triggers/automatic responses with movement-related stuff, and the idea of someone being able to control others that way makes me more than a little sick to my stomach and angry. Someone close to me has played my PTSD and overload responses similarly, though, to fulfill some of their own needs that they never acknowledged, while convincing themselves that they were behaving reasonably and in a totally non-manipulative manner. (Having to break out of more Stockholm Syndrome type stuff and recognize some emotional abuse for as serious it was, is one of the reasons I’ve also had trouble writing/responding lately, yeah. Funny how new aspects keep coming up when you may be even vaguely ready to deal with “ye gods, that really was messed-up too, and I’m still half-expecting to be treated that way!”)

Oh yeah-we had a high school club for disabled students and NTs to interact together. It was pretty terrible, everyone was just expected to gather in a group and freely talk about whatever they wanted. This is nice for people who know how to do that, but I lack this ability. Instead, all the students would talk about recent events in teen pop culture, which I’ve never followed or had any interest in. I guess the school staff thought we’d vouch for each other, but the club members-even the disabled kids-had formed various cliques.

I cannot remember a single name or face from this organization. All I got out of the experience was a noisy, confusing assortment of faces, voices and cliques I couldn’t remember, just like when I was in groups outside the club.

Oh, I used to want to work in the psych system because I thought I’d be better at it because of having been confined in it. I think it was a really screwed up stockholme syndrome type reaction and it would have gone pretty badly if I had actually tried to do it. I think this shows how anyone can come to identify with those sorts of power structures and how those power structures themselves are way more influential than the individual people inserted into them.

I can relate a bit to triggers/automatic responses. I don’t rely on them as much as you seem to, but I do rely on them in a lot of contexts and one reason I have trouble with stuff like cleaning is that I keep ending up doing something else, so it takes me forever to get done with a particular task. And sometimes people more or less consciously try to manipulate me into saying/doing things this way. I usually don’t realize what’s going on until afterwards, but at that point I can be pretty annoyed.

Edited to add:

I completely forgot this part of the post, and I don’t have any clue how I forgot it, because it’s important.

There are situations where people truly do have a heightened understanding of each other. For instance, people who are very much like me tend to be able to read me very well, and I tend to be able to read them very well. But it’s very rare in my experience for people to want status or recognition for this ability. (Although I’ve had people try to give me status and recognition for it, but that’s a whole different story.) I can really only think of one example where I’ve seen that happen. And that ability to understand each other so well can be a really wonderful thing in a world where so few people understand us.

On the other hand, I’ve seen people who assume that, for instance, because they’ve been in the psych system, then they’ll totally be able to work in it without any power issues coming up. One of the worst examples I’ve ever seen of that was a community project run by and for people who are in the psych system. It was just assumed that they’d do a better job. But when I went there myself, I experienced all kinds of creepy power plays going on. If I couldn’t express myself in words, people would try and “translate” for me — and get it totally wrong, sometimes offensively so. When I found out that they sometimes committed people to mental institutions straight from that building, I freaked out so much that I ran behind a big television and crouched on the floor shaking. What followed was a long discussion by everyone else about how “low functioning” I was and how “unsafe” I made them feel. Mind you — I was reacting to an actual lack of safety (things that happen in mental institutions can kill me more easily than they kill most people, for instance my reactions to the most common drugs used), and they were talking about “feeling unsafe” because rather than talk detachedly about my feelings, I had the audacity to actually go and show them in my body. And that’s just one of many awful experiences I had there that meant I’d never go back. Meanwhile, to be there you couldn’t just drop in, the name of your psychiatrist had to be registered with them, and if you didn’t have a psychiatrist you were out of luck. I noticed many times that the place resembled the dayroom of a mental institution more than it resembled anything freeing or good. But they honestly believed that because it was run by “consumers” then it was better than the psych system. It makes me shudder just to think about it.

I have had experiences, where I needed someone to interpret my behavior when I was unable to express myself in words. I tend to use people who are disabled themselves, who are similar enough to me to be able to understand my behavior at least fairly well, and who have known me long enough to be able to predict my thoughts. And I’ve rarely had that work out badly — but that’s because it’s been my choice and nobody ever went on an ego trip about it.

So I’m not saying that such understanding can’t happen. I’m just saying that it can go very badly when it’s used wrong, or when it’s mostly self-delusion on the part of the person doing it.

I know what you mean about people saying you’re wonderful just for working with disabled people. That seems to be a really common idea, that everyone who works with us is wonderful. And you’re right, it’s because people think there’s something especially awful or difficult about us.

There’s a really great article called My Contaminated Smile that’s about that whole mentality.

As a disabled person who sometimes is staff for other disabled people, and has a few friends who are disabled staff people, I’m really glad that you wrote this because it made me hyperaware of the danger of becoming someone like the woman you are describing. For a disabled staff person, disability is something that can make you feel isolated from non-disabled people or like they don’t see you as valuable, but feeling connected to the people you serve and having some stuff in common with them can be something that can make you feel like you’re better at your job, therefore giving you more status among non-disabled people.

Non-disabled people, whether they know I am disabled or not, will sometimes try to compliment me or tell me I’m “special” for working with disabled people. This isn’t because I really am special but just because disabled people are so stigmatized that working with them/us is seen as a really hard job. I feel upset when people tell me this, but I used to like it because I felt like other people saw me as lesser, and suddenly they were treating me as so heroic for wanting to be around people who it seemed pretty natural to want to be around.

I hope I’m not derailing your post by writing about this, but I thought of it because (without really putting it into words) this is how Fluttershy has always come across to me–as someone who has no confidence or feeling of status, except about one thing. Often “being good with animals” serves as an escape from everything else in her life, or a skill that is supposed to make up for the help she sometimes requires from her friends. Which is pretty scary because helping someone shouldn’t be about “skill,” it should be about respecting them.