#the game deals w lost love and grief so ridiculously well

[mcdonaldsnumberone]

when ur in a “cannibalism as a metaphor for love” competition, and ur opponent is a mahoyakkie

[sweetandsavageautistic]

Hey, I found more. Get ready to lose some more brain cells:

I don't know if this is weird but I find teens and adults with autism are really cute.

Just make autism illegal. Simple. (This isn’t infantilization, but it’s ridiculous).

All the people with autism are so lovely 😊. They see the world around then in a different way. They areinnocent and kind in their heart ❣.

People with autism are so beautiful and adorable. They're parents are heroes

people don't talk about autism as much as they should. people with autism are fucking adorable okay like theye beautifulllllllll i fucking love how theyre so creative and nice and funny and can just light up a room i love them so much stop sleeping on them thanks.

Say hello to Jay. I had the privilege and honor to spend this afternoon with Jay. Jay is a 28-years old young adult with autism. Jay is almost non-verbal and speaks only in short phrases or sentences and is completely and totally dependent on others in his daily living. The look in his eyes and the smile on his face just lights up the whole room. Children and adults with autism display the highest levels of innocence and purity of mankind. They are truly exceptional in every aspect of their lives and they have exceptional parents too. Stay tuned for more news about an upcoming collaboration between Shift to Shine and Autism Sings. How many Hellos would Jay get? Please share, comment and like in order to support Jay and Autism Sings so we can create a better way of living for adults with autism.

Although our son is still a teen and has severe autism, I can imagine that this will be us too. Many children and adult children with disabilities (who I know) are very affectionate and have this innocent love.  ❤

That's freaking sad 😔 to do to ANYONE; especially w/ SPECIAL God GIVEN talents and skills grr; also known as Aspergers disorder 😔. They are very sweet, MOSTY INNOCENT 😇 kids and adults which I know some of them 😳 💥 fr!!

It is evident that you have never in your life interacted with a child or person with special needs, and for that I am sad for you- as you will never know the meaning of true innocence.

"LOVE this book! Captures the humor, personality, innocence, and essence of a character with autism, as well as the concerns of a family dealing with their own issues--grief, adult siblings, responsibilities, assumptions, etc.

Thought-provoking topics and awareness presented in novel form that is a fun read for anyone (not just autism parents). Full disclosure: I am a parent of a young man with autism. I have over 25 years of experience--reading fiction/nonfiction books, newsletters, articles, legislation and science reviews, and watching movies and television episodes depicting characters on the autism spectrum. This novel is, by far, my favorite depiction." --Renata Irving

The beauty in Cameron’s disability is that his innocence remains protected.

All the people with autism are so lovely 😊. They see the world around then in a different way. They areinnocent and kind in their heart ❣.

Honestly I believe children and adults with autism are actually normal because they are innocent and don't really know the craziness of the world they are just pure at heart ✌️

(I’ve shared this next one already, but fuck it. We’re gonna look at it again, cuz why the fuck not?)

Dear families I am begging you to listen to me. Over the last few years I have heard heart breaking stories of our young adults getting into trouble with the law in a variety of ways. The individuals with autism are usually innocent, entrapped or unaware of the situation unfolding. Several of these young adults have served time and families have lost huge amounts of money trying to protect their children from the system.

Here are my recommendations based on these families experiences.

Here is my plea: 1. Get guardianship. You can always give it up later. 2. Teach your child to reach out and use you as a resource. Teach them to ask for help even as adults. 3. Being a helicopter parent is important as we release our adults in the world. There will be a huge transition and we should be actively involved in double checking they are handling life okay and not being taken advantage of or bullied in any way. (NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO!) 4. Be brutally honest about your child’s strengths and weaknesses and put measures in place to help them build those weaknesses up. Set goals and really think about what tools they need and create them. Denial is not your child’s friend. 5. Understand all the technology your child uses and double check it. There are people including law enforcement on social media and playing games who may entrap your child without the child knowing they are doing anything wrong. According to Homeland Security Officer I talked to there is no privacy in any of the technology platforms and every thing is recorded. 6. Make sure to put your child thru the Be Safe Program. Be Safe helps our young adults interact safely with law enforcement. One of the issues discussed is understanding their right to remain silent and their right for an attorney. You have to understand this right to get this right and it needs to be explicitly taught.

We want our individuals with autism to be included in society but society does not always accommodate them and that is ESPECIALLY true of the legal system. I have tried for years to do trainings for courts, so far I have trained people who work within the system excluding the real people needing the training like judges and prosecutors and defense attorneys. Our Be Safe Program has made huge changes in our relationships with law enforcement but the legal system is still a train wreck. So we must be very vigilant and protect our kids!

Autistic people are so innocent and cute i just can't 

RIP Joe Clyde Daniels; It saddens us when you wake up to hear news like this. People with autism are so loving and we can learn a lot from them. Heaven has a new angel.

I wish more people with disabilities such as autism would be given more employment, always happy and helpful. Too many useless able bodied people with no customer service skills

'Atypical' on Netflix makes me want to cry, group of folk laughing at a guy cause he has autism,people with autism are so precious It's horrible how in this age people say autistic as an insult. People can't help autism and people with autism are precious

happy autism awareness acceptance month! ppl with autism are the most precious people ever and we don't deserve them

Always trying to understand how my brother actually feels,People with autism are just as precious as ones without it

'Atypical' on Netflix makes me want to cry, group of folk laughing at a guy cause he has autism,people with autism are so precious

Happy forever children's day to the people having autism.

(But bitch, I’m not done. There’s more, but I’ll wait a bit)

[whitestonetherapy]

Back to School...2 (1.10.17)

The next couple of months are going to be busier than normal for me with some large projects that I’m responsible for all happening at the same time.   This is not a complaint at all, because I prefer being busy to the alternative and a lot of my work through WhiteStone is deeply interesting and rewarding.  It does mean the weeks are flying by, and as I’d already started to outline Boarding School Syndrome (BSS) in my previous blog I wanted to complete the outline before more time passes.

Let’s get right to it and talk about some common things that are encountered in a clinical setting.  I mentioned emotional encapsulation in my previous post as a central feature of BSS.  This refers to a form of psychological splitting, where emotional vulnerability is eventually disowned by the young boarder as a defence against finding herself in a situation where this vulnerability might single her out from the pack.  This is the child’s adaptive attempt to survive in her changed environment, and can be either a gradual process or marked by a specific moment that might be recalled within therapy.  Being sent away from home is an event where many of the conditions that are associated with healthy psychological and physical development are suddenly disrupted – this includes the total and sudden loss of the family unit, familiarity (a home, a bedroom etc), pets, places, people and things – these are replaced instead by strange staff at a strange school with confusing customs and traditions, surrounded by other strangers.  This requires urgent adaptation, and the child has to abandon her biologically programmed need for attachment.

The web of relationships, into which we are born and on which we rely for healthy development, is traumatically disrupted by this experience in a number of ways.  Instead of secure attachment, which is fostered in children through attuned care-giving from parents (summarised mightily), the sudden loss of family increases the chances of the child developing an adaptive attachment style to deal with the traumatic event she has undergone.  This may involve emotional encapsulation, a dismissing style, where she learns that it is safer and much less painful to dismiss or minimize her own emotional experiences than to feel them, as she learns her needs will not be met and perhaps do not deserve to be met.  Alternatively the child may instead form an adaptive strategy that involves amplification of her need for caregivers and comfort - a kind of hyper-activation of the need to be close to others.  Instead of developing a secure attachment style marked by flexibility, a growing ability to experience herself as ‘good enough’ and a capacity to understand the emotional experience and intentionality of others, the child may instead develop strategies that shut her off from her emotions (dismissing) or lead her to become overwhelmed  by them (amplification).  In some cases she might switch between both of these adaptive strategies in what psychologists call a ‘disorganized’ way.

These adaptive patterns of being can remain with us throughout life and can run very deep.  What starts out as a survival strategy can quickly become a representational filter that limits the extent and nature of access to our own thoughts, feelings and desires.  And so adaptive patterns begin to influence and shape how we see the world, the predictions we make, how we see ourselves and others.  Much work in psychotherapy is to provide the type of reparative relationship where the flexibility I mention above is encouraged and adaptive strategies can be spotted and some of these ‘filters’ perhaps even changed. 

You’ve probably already guessed that a dismissing style is particularly common for ex-boarders.  Joy Schaverein has outlined various clinical markers for this.  Here are some examples:  problems with intimacy and difficulties being fully open and honest about feelings even with a loving spouse or family;  difficulties identifying such emotions in the first place, which may register as anger and yet mask other emotions which are hard to accurately name; difficulty talking about these things even in the safety of therapy; a tendency to make very dependent relationships but then to ‘cut off’ emotionally (either as part of a repeating pattern within relationships or permanently); difficulty creating or sustaining intimate friendships, or sustaining situations such as employment or education etc;  a tendency to be more comfortable time-tabling family life, and perhaps holding fixed views of what ‘should’ happen; a tendency to struggle dealing with vulnerability in others, (if your own vulnerability has been dissociated, it is tougher to acknowledge it in others).  Interestingly, as Duffell points out, ex-boarders in therapy may not at first recognise these things of themselves, even though their spouse or family may see these issues very clearly and indeed have encouraged their loved one to seek help.  Often these issues manifest as a depressive episode for ex-boarders, and this is a common trigger for entering therapy and eventually seeking help.

What is the psychological process that such people have gone through to get here?  What happened to them at school?  Duffell talks of a ‘privileged abandonment’ and Schaverein talks of the moment of abandonment itself.  The moment of being taken to boarding school and parents departing is a moment for which no young child can be prepared or give consent.  Many ex-boarders can remember this moment clearly, as for example I can.  Others report a sense of amnesia, a dissociation of feelings and a sense of numb shock.  As Schaverein says, this is the moment “the child becomes lost for words”.  Remember that young children need adults to give words to their experiences – particularly emotional ones -  as this is what allows children to metabolize their powerful emotional experiences and make sense of them.   This cannot now easily happen as reliance falls on a house-master who is looking after many children, and has limited experience or training in these respects.  In later years children may develop a sibling bond and take on some of these parental tasks and ‘parent’ each other, but this will not be possible for young children arriving at a boarding school. 

It can be common from this point for children to feel homesick, which is really a proxy for feelings of bereavement.  This is often a gradual process of realisation, from initial alarm, to searching behaviour (anger and guilt), then hope of rescue, then mourning, grief and feelings of internal loss.  As well as grieving, children may experience their new school as a form of captivity.  They are taken to a place they cannot leave and where all activities are regulated and time-tabled - food, clothes, work, play, censored letters, lessons, and so on.  As Schaverein says, ‘private reverie‘ is discouraged, and unsanctioned spontaneity may be frowned on.  Whether this is just an enduring extension of the Victorian idea that boarding schools are a place to ‘unmake the child and make the man’, I cannot say, but I think it’s a fair bet.  Here is a quote from a Mr Woodard, founder of my own public school, who in 1858 said the aim of the place was to, “remove the child from the noxious influence of home and home comforts”.  Hmm.

Younger children often experience a powerful and troubling internal incongruence too.  Perhaps they have been told school will be fun, possibly (these days) a little like Harry Potter, and that they will be enjoying lots of activities, and that the whole experience will be good for them – as Duffell says “the making of them”.  So the child is placed in an internal double bind.  She ‘knows’ that this is ‘good for her’, but it does not feel good.  She may also have a sense that financial sacrifices have been made so she can go to boarding school and that she is expected to be grateful… yet it does not feel good at all.  The child’s experience inwardly is at odds with what her caregivers have told her it should be… and thus she may come to experience herself as unworthy or a failure, and to doubt her own perceptions.  She may have a sense that to share these things will be deeply upsetting and that caregivers will be angry, and so she may come to feel responsible for maintaining the emotional equilibrium of her parents at a very young age .  These are things for which small children have no words and only a limited understanding, and so cannot verbalise.  The child increasingly becomes separated from a coherent narrative of her own life. 

As an adult a further double-bind is that such an upbringing is considered a ‘privilege’ and so discussion of any of these serious things can feel like a dangerous flirtation with being considered an ingrate,  fair game for ridicule rather than compassion from a society that considers them to have been born lucky.  This is common. The same process works internally too; ex-boarders may hide from themselves (and their therapist) the traumatic nature of their boarding school experience, such is their sense of shame at admitting such a ‘lucky start’ might actually have caused some problems – there can be a feeling it would be deeply ungracious, a bout of navel-gazing and quite unmanly to ‘whine’ about such things.  So as adults, ex-boarders may trivialise the tough experiences they had as young children, especially if they came to associate closely with (and attach closely to) the school in which they spent many formative years, and where some good friendships and good times were also had.  It can be hard to consider the cost at which these things have come, even when facing troubling issues later in later life.

For the young child at boarding school there follows, in time, a choice point.  Either the boarder must adapt and find a way to navigate her new environment and begin to dissociate from her need for her (now unavailable) family and home, or continue to suffer and take the chance of being singled out as a target onto which other students can project their own fears.  Eventually the child dissociates from the pain and protects a nucleated self from experiencing further trauma.   In short, she must adapt or find herself alone and singled out.  Here is emotional encapsulation. “He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it” (Orwell).  I will link to a documentary at the end of this post, where this process is shown in some detail.

Finally, the sense of loss young boarders experience is repeated many times with return trips to school over many years, and so loss is re-experienced routinely in a way that reinforces adaptive strategies.  This further crystallizes a split between the ‘survival personality’ of the boarding school self and the ‘home self’ which is fundamentally changed too.  Those suffering with BSS often report a sense of ‘no longer being known’ at home when they returned for school holidays, and so having a sense of not belonging anywhere, they had changed in ways not recognised by their parents and so were now alone here too.  Many ex-boarders remain with a sense of exile throughout their lives, a sense of non-belonging as if they are not really participating in their own life.

Nick Duffell spends a lot of time at the moment lobbying for the abolishment of boarding schools for the under-16’s.  I am not sure I would go that far.  I can think of plenty of examples where home-life may be far more troublesome than an upbringing in a good institution.  For children in their teens it is important to also begin to individuate and this seems a more natural and much less damaging time to consider this type of education.  I also think that technology such as mobile phones, and much greater emphasis on pastoral services in schools should not be ignored – it is obviously much easier to maintain a meaningful contact with children at school in recent years with phones and email, and schools have become much more sophisticated in terms of considering the wellbeing of children in their care.  That said, I want to be careful not to diminish the suffering that many will be experiencing right now who are at boarding school – an institution is absolutely no replacement for a good family - but general trends in a better direction must also be recognised. 

I’ll be coming back to this topic, no doubt, and I hope this blog is at least a useful general overview and a start point for readers who are interested to know more. 

As promised, here is the Cutting Edge documentary “Leaving Home at 8”.  It tells the story of four boarders who we meet just a few days before their departure to boarding school.

www.whitestonetherapy.com

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

It's cool cos we're like, adventurers: Cameron and Donna go about things differently than they normally would in "Adventure", or, a H&CF recap

The fifth episode of Halt and Catch Fire is named for a computer game that everyone (or, a good portion of the Cardiff staff) gets sucked into; in the end, the coders who cheated/re-coded (?) their way through the game are the only ones who get to keep their jobs. It is Peak Halt and Catch Fire Metaphor, in this case for an episode where our main characters are initiating or escalating a different sort of game, and finding out what kind of players they are. J*e toys with his father (and also Bos, who only has one scene in this ep?), unwilling and also not really able to see him, and vacillates between behaving as obnoxiously as his father does and trying to be a better, kinder type of executive. Gordon steps out of his hardware geek comfort zone and attempts to wine and dine his father-in-law and Japanese executives, and it works out in the end, but just barely, and because he begs for help. Ultimately, both seem to recognize their limits.

Donna gets very little screen time in this episode, and most of it is with Hunt, of all people (RosaDiazEyeroll DOT GIF). Her parents are all over this episode, though they interact more with Gordon, and the way Donna gets eclipsed feels significant. When we do see her she's making French toast for her father's birthday, or making peach pies for her parents' barbeque. Ever the perfect wife, she even buys her father a putter and tells him it's from Gordon. All of this elaborately sets up Gordon's arc, in which he decides his p.c. is worth asking his douche of a father-in-law for a round of golf so he can ask him to set up a meeting executives from a Japanese tech company.

By contrast, Donna's scenes with Hunt are one-on-one, with no major professional stakes. Echoing J*e's evil boss act, Hunt yells at Donna for not submitting the right report, and then after she explains that the report is under a supplemental report, he snaps at her for not putting the report he wanted on top. Let that sink in -- Hunt yelled at Donna because he's so entitled and incompetent that he couldn't shuffle through a stack of papers; again, how is he her boss? (LOL jk I know how, it starts with a 'p' and ends with 'atriarchy') -- but later he calls her at home to talk about it, just after Donna has hung up on a drunk Gordon who's panicking about offending the Japanese executives. (Which sounds mean, but anyone who's been paying attention can see where Donna would be tired of having to endlessly listen to and reassure Gordon.) Hunt compliments her work and her efforts, and then he apologizes for taking his frustration out on her. They have a weird conversation about 'peach pie' (…..), and because Donna is so starved for halfway decent conversation with a vaguely grown up, emotionally responsible person, she gets out and ~plays her electric piano~ that night. Which sounds funny and like a cheesy, too on the nose metaphor, but this is one of the first times we see Donna by herself, not doing some kind of domestic labor, and it's when she starts to lean into and enjoy the tension between her and Hunt.

It seems like Cameron is always doing what Donna wishes she could do (as in, what Donna wishes she could do professionally, not in terms of 'piano playing'…), and this episode is no different. Cameron spends most of "Adventure" assertively claiming credit for her work, arguing with coworkers, and figuring out how to get herself promoted. She comes back from a business trip (which she understandably worries was another of J*e's set ups, even without really knowing what happened in the previous episode) to an office full of new people and a short lecture on how corporate and tech culture don't accommodate anxious introverts who'd rather do all the coding on their own so that they don't have to try to communicate with other human beings. She goes directly from the lecture to The Kill Room where Gordon and his team are coming up with the most ridiculously cliche geek culture names for her code. "Excuse me? I wrote the BIOS. I name it. Lovelace." After she reminds them that Ada Lovelace was the first computer programmer ever, they test the BIOS and it turns on. They pop champagne and congratulate themselves; Cameron skulks out without a word before they can offer her some, though she probably would've had to demand that from them, too, to get any.

In the following scenes Cameron struggles to adjust to having a new boss, fellow coders, and, as America's Next Top Model Host Tyra Banks might put it, not being the prettiest girl at school anymore. Meaning, Cameron isn't the only young misfit software writer at the office anymore, and it's both inconvenient and genuinely emotionally challenging for her. The writers and Mackenzie Davis quietly add considerable depth to an already compelling character here, addressing and unpacking a lot of gripes that unsympathetic viewers continue to have about Cameron. We see her interact successfully, if awkwardly with Lev and especially Yo-yo, who invites her to a group hang, and she hesitates; so yeah, she's anti-social, but she's also scared, and seems like she really isn't used to people not judging or looking down on her.

She interacts far less successfully with her new boss, and yeah, she doesn't respond well to authority -- but with how both the boss and J*e treat her ("no need to get your panties in a wad"; "If I've given you the impression that because of this thing we've got going on that you're entitled to special treatment…") , she frankly has good reason to not trust them. (And yeah, I'm gonna be That Bitch and point out that neither of them would have spoken to a male employee that way.) And yes, Cameron in an entitled young white woman (though lets be real, no one would be calling a white boy genius entitled), but she also is apparently qualified, it's just that she has to be unattractively forward about showing it. File under: Before You Write Cameron Howe Off As An Unlikeable Brat.

Of course all of this sets up Cameron's unexpected meeting with J*e Sr., which is surprisingly satisfying despite being miserable and uncomfortable. We see a retread of the pilot scene where J*e figured out that the way to get to her is to paternally and warmly praise her work; Cameron is characteristically ~sassy~ with J*e Sr. until he tells her, "When my guys came back to New York they couldn't stop talking about this prodigy named Cameron Howe!" She's skeptical, and then he says, "They said you're the modern Ada Lovelace." Boom. In the next scene they're having drinks. It's going fine and Cameron is adorably geeking out over how J*e Sr. worked with Grace Hopper until he figures out that Cameron's father was killed in action while serving as a helicopter crew chief in Vietnam. Anyone who's lost a parent who actually took care of them feels Cameron's reaction. She excuses herself, and J*e Sr. smiles unctuously. Because of course he’s been playing her.

Cameron figures it out though, and it results in her eventual triumph. Or well, she mostly figures it out -- she uses her very real grief to act all wounded and emotional and pump J*e Sr. for more information, before calling him out on trying to manipulate her into convincing J*e to see him. I'm pretty sure J*e Sr. was trying to poach her because it would hurt J*e, and that Cameron is still underestimating just how comfortable they are with turning people into pawns. She gets what she needs, though, and the following day she uses her rarely seen practical knowledge to dazzle J*e into giving her her boss' job; in effect, she figures out the (corporate bro) code, and rewrites it into her promotion. Cameron is slowly learning what someone like Donna already knows about corporate structures and dealing with male upper management. Now they just gotta figure out how to not sublimate their ambitions into pesky crushes on the upper management!

Stray bytes:

I love how all we see of Cameron's business trip is her spending Cardiff's money on hotel amenities. #incharacter I still have weird feelings about her not knowing what a concierge is, though

The opening montage is brutal though, did you see J*e trying to put on his shoe? Reminder that yes, he's an out of control abuser, but that J*e was the victim of p*lice violence/brutality. The beating he got in the previous episode was no joke.

J*e, who lied his way into a company, forced it do his bidding, and nearly destroyed it, calling Cameron 'entitled': L M A O

Today in "Oh my G-D Gordon STFU": "I'm not the one screwing Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!" You're not in a position to judge anyone's sanity OR sex life, GORDON, also just accept that Cameron is WAY OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE AND WOULD NEVER DATE YOU

How do we feel about how the show portrays the Japanese executives? Total Orientalist-type nightmare, or am I being overly-critical?

The storyline with the Japanese and their apparently strict corporate etiquette is very Mad Men, which is fine with me, tbh

"Donna was right, you're all hat and no cattle!" Speaking of which, Gordon is officially Halt's Pete Campbell/white dude who has ridiculous sounding outbursts, right? ("Hell's bells, Trudy!" "Not great, Bob!" "It's a shameful, SHAMEFUL DAY!")

As much as Gordon annoys me, his in-laws are terrible to him. Like, Susan really believed the putter was from Gordon? Gary thought Gordon wanted to spend time with him?! W T F. RICH WH*TE PEOPLE ARE SO WEIRD.

Compare Cameron's 'I name the BIOS' with Donna's facetious, "Don't you mean Susan Fairchild?"

According to the internet, a helicopter crew chief's primary job is to maintain the helicopter itself. Cameron's dad was basically a helicopter mechanic, which makes so much sense, if anyone needs me I will be tearing up over the idea of Cameron coping with her grief by taking apart computers as a kid

"You're both disgusting." Cameron Howe, Computer Programmer, Game Designer, and Misandrist

Steve, on Cameron: "She's got a real attitude problem." #THATSMYGIRL

The scene near the end where J*e seems to quietly panic at the idea of Cameron meeting his father. This…is textbook childhood abuse stuff. Just saying.

I'm just gonna say it, ICYMI: petition to make 'playing her electric keyboard' a common euphemism for female masturbation

‘It’s cool cos we’re like, adventures’: Be Your Own Pet, also fronted by a bratty, skinny, Southern bleached blonde known for heckling her own openers actually wrote a song called “Adventurers” back in 2006. How weird is that?!