Nothing in this world hurts more than being called "cringe"

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In my day... (growing up as a kid in the late 90s..yeah i'm gettin old.) On the playground if you were anything but "normal", showed the slightest bit of weakness/awkwardness, nerdyness etc, you were a pariah who was merciless mocked. Have kids really changed? are they not just as brutal? we're still virtually indistinguishable from our cro-magnon ancestors. 20 years is nothing compared to 20, 000.

Unfortunately, that "firm hand," if sufficient for the most disturbed, will thoroughly traumatize far more innocents. Life is never without risk. We can manage it, but not eliminate it. Educators have found that if playgrounds are too safe, children do not learn to manage risk. They are best if the kids can hurt themselves, but not badly. Instead of a standard climbing structure, they should get to build their own adventure courses from scraps.
A few years ago, I was at a music festival, and a girl about 10 years old was by herself. I saw her get a splinter in her hand, so I offered her the carpenter's tweezers I always carry on my keychain. She was deathly afraid to talk to a "strange" man, but I pointed out the first aid tent, followed her there, and loaned the staff my tweezers. She was still highly suspicious, and she wasn't the only one feeling traumatized due to "safety" rules.

In the UK there was a weird trend when I was growing up/in my teens of daytime TV shows with ugly people with nothing else going for them except they all needed paternity tests to see who the father was or who was cheating on who

I never got it. None of them looked attractive enough or even like they had regular baths. My mum told me it was because if you're that ugly etc, you lower your standards But nobody in my life had a problem of 'who's the daddy' - at least they didn't broadcast it even across friendship groups if they did have those problems. And we're better looking than the TV people (I'm not saying my entire friendship group/family friendship group is gorgeous but we're not ugly either) so you'd imagine more temptation etc...

Harm is not just physical. There are many kinds of harm. sometimes they do not realise they are harmful. Sometimes they think they doing you a favor by their actions! those are always the most dangerous.

The advocates of the firm hand approach comes in various guises. the rationale is always the same. the end justifies the means. innocents be damned. that's just collateral damage. or unintended consequences. there's always the issue of balancing personal liberty with social justice. I see so many people rationalize their interference, lobbying and modification of the social ground rules a citizen is expected to hold, under the guise of righteous moral principles that they personally hold, and wish to apply to all. That is how fundamentalism mindset is born. Zealots. the word literally derived from a 1st century "aggressive political party" --contemporaries of a very influential bunch, the Essenes (a.k.a jesus orginal crew). The more things change the more they stay the same. I reiterate, Human nature is no different today than it was back 200,00 years ago. People need to know their history. It all mostly lies anyway. That's another thing that doesn't change. But it doesnt hurt to be informed.

The difference between my day (90s-00s) and mum's (70s-80s) was I was allowed to be at home. Esp as a teenager/junior school kid that was the difference.

I was allowed to cycle round the block. I was allowed to hang out with friends in the local field. I was allowed to go to the local shop. I was allowed round the back streets. I was allowed to go to friends houses. I was allowed in the local, overgrown graveyard even lol.

But I was also allowed to go to friends' houses. Or go home.

Mum wasn't allowed to be at home.

She and my auntie were shifted out of the door along with the other kids. Esp in summer.

I feel like I had greater freedom cos I was allowed a choice between the two.

Mum was a 'weird kid' but not aspie (she's been tested). Nobody could understand her cos her verbal dyspraxia (unknown in those days) and dyslexia had no help at all. So she'd mostly be on her own or being teased by the other kids. My auntie would hang out with her mates and my mum would wander off on her own...

I think the idea was that a housewife was a wife first and foremost, or maybe a home maker, not a mother. Or if she was a mother it was to the little ones. So mum wasn't to get under grandma's feet when grandma was trying to have a coffee morning or do the vaccing or cook for granddad...

Whereas mum actually pretty much loved my company so wanted to spend time with me & she also knew I was 'different' and accepted that so knew I thrived on 'alone time' in my room. She's a teacher but sees her job mostly as being a mother.

My point is don't demonise people with mental illnesses.

Not all mental illnesses are outward signs of harming others. Some are inward self-hatred and telling such people they need a 'firm hand' is the last thing they need. Believe me, we who have such minds are giving ourselves firm hands more than society ever could.

Don't act like depression, anxiety, self harm etc don't exist. When you paint mental illness with a broad brush, that's how it comes across.

Absolutely! My own therapist, of all people, acted like my depression didn't exist, and treated it as whining. (Maybe she "knew" depression exists only in adults; I was a minor.) So, every time I talked about things that troubled me, like being emotionally abused by my family, she either mocked me or pretended not to know what I'm talking about. That squarely fits the definition of a "firm hand", but that definitely wasn't what I needed. After I realized that my therapist had no intention of ever helping me and possibly enjoyed seeing me miserable, I found my own "help" in sneaking my parents' whiskey and huffing car paint.

Now, I'm no bleeding heart. There are situations where a firm hand is warranted. But for most aspies, it's not the case.

I don't even thing it's an aspie thing, I think it's a depression/anxiety thing. And common sense tbh.

Someone wants to harm themselves and thinks they're the worse person ever etc... Last thing they need is unkindness

I didn't need that unkindness cos I was piling it onto myself. I needed reminding 'everyone's human, you're not meant to be perfect, it's ok to just be you, not everyone hates you' etc.

Now my dad's illness makes him act in a negative external way, untreated he will hurt other people... So I'm glad he has to take a vaccine and that his doctor does that every month in order to manage his symptoms and his doctor will make him stay in hospital if he refuses. But I'm also glad it's not the 19th century and he's not in a strait jacket/it's not the middle ages and he's not in a dungeon: he deserves to live without being dehumanised & tortured, he just needs to be made safe.

I think you interpreted my post backwards. I wasn't "self-harming" with alcohol and car paint as self-punishment because I hated myself. I was miserable and hated my life, and was using them to help myself feel better, as stand-ins for the antidepressants I wanted but couldn't legally get. And the therapist I was seeing was against psych medication of any kind, so asking her for them was a lost cause. In the end, a shot of whiskey helped me more than a month of therapy.

Speaking of ugly/creepy/cringeworthy (to get back on topic somewhat), I did tell my therapist how I felt ugly. Instead of figuring out what caused it---like girls rejecting me, duh!---she just brushed off anything I said, and told me it was all in my head. Another lesson learned: don't talk about my looks with her, drink my parents' whiskey instead (which I did).

I suppose, objectively, i might have benefited from a "firm hand" but then again, nah, it would have just made me more intractable than i already am. Either way, it's a jungle out there, It makes me wonder how I keep from going under. Don't let the bstards get you down. So called broken people, criminals, dysfunctional, neuro-diverse, are a product of their environment. I think principles in Cybernetics might back me up on that notion. society itself is inherently dehumanizing and corrupt. It's built into the sytem as a feature. So don't put too much blame on yourself for your problems.

Last edited by theprisoner on 01 Feb 2021, 8:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

No.

Mental illness is a problem of environment maybe. Mental illness is a problem, certainly.

Neurodiversity is neither a problem nor created by environment.

People are born autistic. Autistic people are not necessarily ill. We're neuro diverse.

Also I didn't say that so don't quote within quotes to make it like someone said something they didn't, that's disingenuous.

When someone's hurting themselves or hates themselves, that is someone who needs a gentle hand, not a firm one.

With myself, I hated myself. I felt useless. I felt like a waste of space. Getting gently guided onto medicine fixed a lot of that problem.

Autism is considered a genetic disorder. But epigenetics shows that genes mutate and interact dynamically with environmental conditions. So to rule out the role of environmental causal factors in the development and manifestation might be premature.

Anyway real Mental illness most likely has real biological basis. The distinction between mental illness/neurodiverse is not clear cut. They're just labels. The science is far from clear , conclusive and definitive at this point in time. I believe every psychological dysfunction has underlying physiological processes that brings them about. A mixture of partly inherited, partly environment.

All I know is I'm happy being me/high funcitioning autistic.

And I'm miserable having anxiety. Acquired it in my 20s.

Not going down this road again with the self hating autistic bunch on here

Same here, except most of my anxieties originated in my childhood.

I have to wonder why anyone would hate themselves -- why assume the same perspective as one's enemies?

projection.