Doctor follow-up

[greenstorm]

So I told my doctor everything. Autistic, looking into it for a year or two, learned about it from partner who also is, running in bands of similar-minded folks till recently so it had less impact, whenever I have to interact with neurotypical folks for hours a day I'm exhausted and that pattern continues far into my past, I dealt with as a kid by reading and getting basically permission to go off and do my own thing in school as long as I produced fancy reports and did well on tests, BCIT was more experiential so it made sense I did better in that and worse in UBC except the courses where I could really dig into projects, where I did well. Gender stuff is a thing but not the biggest thing, I prefer the "it" pronoun but it's too much energy so call me "she", I don't care about the gender of my partners but currently one is a dude and one is a sorta-dude.

She believed me. She said she could give me support but didn't know too much about it, she could support and I could lead in this. She asked what she could do. She asked if I thought I maybe also had ADHD and I said I had no idea. She said she thought gender and autistic fields were "growing a lot right now and had a lot of growing to do" and that supports would be available if I were a kid but she wished there was more mental health stuff she could do for me. She let me know that in BC she could only refer me to regional psych, not choose someone who was known to be able to work with autistic folks of various presentations, so she agreed that my choice to go private was probably a good one.

She referred me to a gender counseling thingy in Prince George, gave me a prescription for the stuff my stomach/throat have been doing lately, and supported me in doing 4-day work weeks this month (her computer was down so I don't have the note in hand, but I can get it).

She also supported me in reconsidering my career, moving to the Island since if I hadn't made good social connections up here in 5 years it might be better for me (her words, she has a home on the Island and is living up here for a bit which by bit is several years now), and said she could see me remotely until I found a new family doctor I liked -- this last after I said she was the first doctor who's listened to me and who I felt safe with.

I felt cared about and supported and I keep coming to the edge of tears.

When I reach out for help people so often help me. I guess I'm scared to keep reaching out, because what if I need it and no one comes through?

Comments

[yarrowkat]

<3

we learn sometime in childhood that nobody will actually come through, even if they seem like they are or seem to be trying, and so we solve our own problems until the only security is in solving everything ourselves/ doing everything ourselves. until kind, compassionate, truly listening help brings us to tears. it's precious.

i'm so glad she's good, and can help.

[greenstorm]

Yeah. I would have described this as a neurodiversity lens, where folks just do not know how to help, but it's my new shiny lens I'm running around looking at everything through.

I still struggle with understanding why people are so bad at supporting each other, even when they have good intentions, in our society right now. Is it me, or is it getting worse? What's the emotional equivalent of the physical concept of mutual aid?

[yarrowkat]

maybe it's both, on the lenses. :)

it is getting worse. or easier to see? but i think both. the divisiveness here is worse than its ever been in my lifetime. the emotional equivalent of mutual aid, is community care. and we desperately need it; it is how we will survive what is happening in the world, in terms of facism, pandemic/disease, global warming, racism/injustice, all of it. i do not know why it is so hard right now, just that it is. we're more interconnected and more isolated than ever. is the division part of the problem, maybe? idk.

[greenstorm]

I mean, that's the point of conceptualizing it as a lens, for me: it reminds me that it's my various perceptual frameworks at play, rather than some sort of absolute reality. There are always so many potential lenses!

Community care. Good. I've been thinking about a couple takes on why things are so bad lately. In some ways the folks I know are so focused on tearing down that it's like staring at that power pole during an accident: when you focus on what you're avoiding rather than what you want instead, you automatically end up at what you're avoiding. In some ways I think we've lost the idea of contributory politics: we feel like voting once in awhile is supposed to get us what we want, when our frequent involvement in making society is really what's required (goodness do I feel this extra working in government). In some ways I think the base concept of city acquaintanceship/cancel culture - remove people from your community and never see them again as a first resort, rather than trying to sort out some form of tolerable relationship, has left us without the skills of understanding different viewpoints, of fostering empathy, and of interpersonal problem solving. There's just not a lot of mending.

I don't know, I've been turning it over and over in my mind a lot lately. I need to step in and support groups who are doing it. Here, the indigenous folks seem to be leading the way.

[yarrowkat]

"you hit what you head for"? i do think you're right about contributory politics, and it ties into what you were saying this morning in the other entry, about there being levels of participation in everything and all of them help some, and we have to allow the good in the more accessible levels rather than expecting everyone to reach the less-accessible levels immediately; there has to be a ladder to get there. or people get turned off and just turn away from it.

and yeah, social mending seems to have taken a huge hit in the last couple decades somehow.

[greenstorm]

"you hit what you look at" even if you're trying not to head for it.

I had some winter driving training on a frozen ice sheet with swivel wheels on the back of the car once. We went maybe 2mph through a course of pylons, and ended up between two pylons to within 12" either side. It was an amazing lesson in how your body will take you where you're looking, no matter where you think you're trying to go. Look between the pylons? End up in the right place. Look at the corner one you're trying to avoid? End up on top of it.

I think society is the same way. We can't inhabit a model we don't have; we can't replace a set of behaviours with no behaviour. And honestly, it's not real inspirational either.

Social mending sounds lovely, doesn't it?

[yarrowkat]

that sounds like a fascinating and somewhat harrowing driving exercise.

absolute yes we need models of what a future built on community care and mutual aid would look like. what is post-capitalism, how do people find value by which to trade goods to live, how do we care for each other in that context? what does a day, a season, a year, look like in that world? that is a thing we need to be figuring out.

[greenstorm]

Oh, it was so great, and so much what I needed. Because everything was completely in slow motion and nothing could be damaged, I could learn what to do with my body in different situations, try different things out, and really learn in my bones what to do when inevitably something challenging comes up at high speed in a real-world situation. For instance, whenever something is a little bit weird with driving (skid, icy patch, headlights blinding me, etc) I just put my eyes where I want to end up now, even if I can't think of what else to do. *So* helpful. It's much harder to learn at speed!

Yes! And also, how do we decide what we need to live, and how do we decide what to do without? How do we decide what of our bodies, our minds, our time, is an acceptable sacrifice? How do we find value in work that needs to be done? So much! And there must be people doing those things. Where are they?