Treatment for Its Own Sake

Sometimes, I get the impression that the treatment we get in a psychiatric institution is done for its own sake only. Like, yesterday I was irritable. I tried to communicate that I wanted the radio to be turned off. No-one was in the room except for a nurse, who went like: "Have you discussed with your therapist how you can cope with this?" She meant coping with overloading noise. I went totally defensive and defiant and told her I wasn't going to cope with the freaking radio if no-one was there listening to it. She told me the other clients were coming soon so the radio was on in case someone wanted to listen. Well, WTF? This whole thing gave me the impression that the only reason the radio was on was to teach me distress tolerance.

Let me tell you one thing, the real world isn't there to teach people distress tolerance. If you want me to be prepared for the real world, then don't create these fake situations that have no meaning outside of the hospital. The nurse meant to tell me to communicate my wisht o have the radio turned off differently, but then tell me so and don't go like: "In the real world you'll have to live with others who want to listen to the radio."

I know that the psychiatric institution is not like the real world. No-one beyond college age in the Netherlands lives with ten people on a hallway with just their own room. In the real world, you have to negotiate radio-listening time sometimes, but not with a nurse whose ultimate goal is to annoy you so you can learn distress toleance - unless you've got a two-year-old or a teenager, maybe. More importantly, real-world dynamics are not reflected in the psychiatric system, so don't pretend that they are. Stop pretending to prepare patients for the real world when you aren't. Institutional dynamics are the first thing that need to go if you want to prepare people for the real world. Since these are not going out the window anytime soon, let's just stop assuming you're preparing us for anything other than institutionalized life even if it means institutionalized in the community.

"Use Your Words."

Last Friday, Neurodivergetn K wrote a post on the phrase "Use your words.". I only read it today and, partly because I got triggered by this post, I am going to blow off some steam about this phrase. A lot may seem like a repetition of what Neurodivergent already said, but well, tthere can't be too many autistics speaking up against NTs putting their own arbitrary standards of normalcy ahead of our needs.

As readers who're familiar with me and my blog will know, I reside in a psychiatric institution. Its aim is rehabilitation. I've been on a ward that had an even more open rehabilitation-focused vision at least on paper, but staff there were much more willing to bend the rehab paradigm a bit to accommodate me than the staff on this ward are. Note that rehabilitation has two meanings in psychiatry, one in which the client is as much in charge of their care as possible, and the other where the client is trained to become (or appear) as normal as possible. I'm talking about the second meaning here, as I have absolutely no problem with the first.

"Use your words." As I wrote in a comment on Neurodivegent's post, this phrase is often accompanied by "You're intelligent" or "I know you can do it" or some variation on this theme. Let me address these follow-up phrases too.

"You're intellignet." And now what? Firstly intelligence is not the same as speaking ability. Second, what if I weren't intelligent? Would I be cut some slack then, or would my needs just not matter as much? A variation on this theme which I've come to hate almsot as much is "You're an adult". It has its own implications in light of my multiplicity, discounting part of me that actually isn't an adult. If I act like a child, maybe it's because at that particular point I am a child? I know the staff aren't going to buy into that since they've thrown out my DID diagnosis, but it's not like I'm any less or more multiple now that we call it BPD.

On a related note, telling me that my abilities are incongruent, isn't going to help me. I know they are. I know I'm sometimes able to do things that I can't do at other times. I know I'm able to do seemingly complex tasks but not simple ones sometimes. I know I can have quite spontaneous-looking, appropriate conversations sometimes and barely make any sense of my words at other times. Telling me this is not possible is denying the obvious. Telling me this is not appropriate is like telling a blind person to look harder because they can hear fine or telling a person who is night blind that they should be able to see in the dark because they could see fine during the day. (I know many night blind people are also partially sighted, but I'm simplifying the situatioon a bit.) It's not like developmetal disabilities like autism are any less real than visual impairment just because they're more difficult to understand and seemingly easier to overcome through behavior modification.

Let me talk about that now: behavior modification. I was going to write a separte post on that, and maybe I will write one more. Here's the thing: telling me to "use my words" will most likely get me to pull out a script. You didn't know I had them, clueless neurotypical who knows me just enough to see my non-autistic appearance but not well enoguh to truly listen? I may have somewhat more elaborate scritpts than the example Neurodivergent gave, but I do have them. This is why, when I'm interrupted or distracted while executing the script for telling the staff I'm distressed and need help, I often end up having a meltdown. And this script gets interrupted a lot of the time, oftentiems even by staff. They want exact explanations of what I want or need from them, even if they know pretty well what I need. I've sometiems gotten to ask for my PRN when that's not what I needed just because it was the shortest script in that part of my brain I could access. Asking for some quiet time with a staff member, which is what mostly helps me, is a much harder script to execute. Please know: "Can I say somethign/ I'm distressed," is not okay. It's got to be: "Can I please speak to you in a quiet place for a bit when you've got the time? I'm distressed." Sometimes I think it's NTs who are literal-minded.