It’s been a while since I’ve logged into this account. I’ve spent the past year or so finally in a space where I could work on the trauma from my past.
It took me getting to 46 to find a psychologist who actually wanted to help me work on it, who wasn’t afraid of my intensity, because let’s face it, we Autistics don’t exude watered down emotions like neurotypicals do.
A lot of the stuff from my past that I hadn’t dealt with was either because I wasn’t allowed to work through it, I wasn’t in the right space, or I just wasn’t able to mentally look back on the stuff that happened and I was hiding from it.
Not allowed to work on my trauma? Who wouldn’t let you not be able to heal you ask? Well anyone with trauma can answer that easily enough. It’s the people who caused the trauma that won’t let you deal it or move past it. Because you talking about it might mean that they have to confront what they did to you to cause the trauma, and they’re either ashamed of it, or scared of what backlash they’ll have to face.
So when I finally got to the stage where I wasn’t afraid of facing certain aspects of my past and was brave enough to face them, I started making actual progress. I had, for my own mental health and wellbeing, removed certain people’s from my life so I could even do something about it. But even after I did it still took a few years to start the work.
Now there are 2 major people I had blocked. The other others were for the most part, collateral damage. I didn’t want those 2 main people to have any kind of access into my life by going through anyone else. Because of gossip. These 2 are huge lovers of gossip. Except of course if it’s the truth about anything that doesn’t make it entertaining. So they have to twist and alter events to make them more interesting to them. Do they realise that those actions actually bring pain and harm to the person they are gossiping about? Yes they do. But that fact won’t change their actions.
Every person who heals from trauma does it in a way that helps them.
It’s about them, not anyone else, and no one gets to tell that person how they heal. At all. They don’t get to tell the person they’re making it up, that the events they’re talking about are in their in head, they don’t get to gaslight the person trying to heal. Just because they’re uncomfortable or in anyway threatened with what that person is talking about.
When I started talking about the things that happened to me in my past, I did it with TikTok. I did live videos. I had a community of people I would speak to, and even if more often than not I might be speaking with one person, and a different person every time, being able to talk to a phone screen made it so much easier to start processing things, because I could then take that to my psychology sessions and get more out of those sessions.
I found that with each awareness of myself and how I handled things, I was even able to help a small amount of people. To show them with my journey that they could do the same.
I didn’t just talk about trauma of course. I spoke about a myriad of things, including Neurodiversity, assistance dog training, art, life in general, listened to metal……I didn’t have a specific niche. But I had a small group of regulars that would pop in and say hi. I was able to reach my community. Which for the last 3 years has been very difficult due to lack of a car and a few other things.
I had started learning more about my ancestry and the roots of the clan I was born into , and from there I started looking at what spirituality and deities they worshipped and went down a rabbit hole to where I now practise Scottish Folk Magic, Paganism, Witchcraft, Shamanism etc. And even there I’m not set in one niche.
I started doing shadow work in line with the therapy, which had me doing all manner of spells to cut the past away. Everything helped. It helped me. One spell I did in particular had such a dramatic end to it, but I felt so different afterward. I felt lighter. With each step I gaining a confidence I hadn’t ever been allowed to have or was allowed to nurture.
Even before I received my autism diagnosis at 11, I was a project. Something that needed fixing and controlling because I wasn’t “normal”. I didn’t fit. What was me was too much for people to handle. My emotional capacity alone was too much.
So when I did get that diagnosis what did that mean for me? The fix me effort went up in volume. I spent more time being taken out of school to specialists and doctors and put on fad diets, I got mum’s brand of aba without actually having aba. Anything that was even mildly me must be quashed. I must do as I was told, not do as I witnessed. If I tried to say I was in pain I was putting it to get out of school. If I said I was being bullied I was imagining it because we all know I’m not “normal” like everyone else and I’m not seeing how people actually are, and they’re such nice girls, I don’t believe that they’d bully you. I had no body autonomy. I wasn’t allowed to be uncomfortable. I wasn’t allowed to say no.
As you can imagine having no body autonomy and not being allowed to say no led me down a path of sexual abuse when I was older. I didn’t know I could say no. I too afraid of getting into trouble.
Did I go to a private school and go horse riding, yes. But does that mean that anything I experienced growing up was all in my head? That because of my own life choices I’m trying to find someone else to blame for them? That I’m just an ungrateful person and only want to hurt someone else because my life is miserable?
To those that have experienced trauma in their childhood, or trauma at all, who experienced anything that caused you mental pain, are you only trying to blame others for your own sins? Does the status of your parents finances mean that everything you went through all in your head and you’re just ungrateful?
I know what the answer to that is.
For people who know autism exists, and know that not every autistic person is the same or functions the same, but then accuse autistic people of just being horrible selfish humans who make up the pain they experience to blame others and say they only take and take and take till they drive everyone away…..Do you say that to every autistic person or just the ones you’re related to?
To the autistic people who have to fight so hard to even get recognised as human, who have to fight for every single right they have, who live in fear of police because we know what police are like to autistics, who have to fight for validation and every accommodation, who know who they are but have every single aspect of their personality eviscerated by those who are supposed to know you better, the gaslighting…..You know it. You felt it. Are feeling it. Are going through it right now.
I see you. I see you fighting. I see your struggle. When your own family tries to pull you down because they can’t stand the thought of you being strong and your own person independent from them and not what they tried to make you, I see you.
I fought for a long time. I am not the person my family knew. The push over. The door mat. The one who apologise for things she didn’t even do. Who would make peach with the people who caused her pain. When I started saying no more, when I started walking with my head up and not cowering and darting out of the way of others even at the shops, when I saw people have to notice me and make way for me, when I refused to be disrespected anymore and started speaking about my past, MY past, my eccentric blocking of family members, and leaving mainstream religion (which a whole other story) wasn’t just a funny story to talk about behind my back. Now I was a problem. I was a trigger.
Not every person who grew up in the same family had the same upbringing or experience.
If anything of what I was talking about was a lie in anyway, I would have just been ignored. It just would have been silly old me doing her eccentric things again. Isn’t sad she’s this, isn’t it sad she’s that.
I had effectively, or so I thought, blocked these people from my social media. I blocked people just so they couldn’t see me through anyone else. I did a huge culling on fb and insta. And no one from those accounts even knew I had TikTok. Till one day while blocking trolls from following my accounts I saw that my sister had started following me. I immediately blocked her thinking that would be it. It stupidly didn’t occur to me that she could easily view me through someone else accounts, or even make another one.
But over the last 9 months at least, I started getting alerts that someone was watching me. It was confirmed a few months ago after an event at home, when my mother messaged my son out of the blue knowing what was going on. I confronted my father about it because I had specifically asked him to not tell either my mother or my sister anything about me anymore because I was sick of them gossiping about me behind my back. I didn’t deserve it. And since he was the only one left on my fb I didn’t think it could be anyone else. He denied it. But I knew someone was watching what was going on with my life because there is no way my mother would have know otherwise. But again I thought it couldn’t be my sister because I had blocked her.
I sent a message to my mother telling her since she had years with which to contact her grandson, and I wasn’t stopping her from doing so, she didn’t get to pick a difficult time in his life with which to do it just so she could have gossip fodder. She hadn’t cared about him before then so why pretend now. I didn’t get a response.
I kept on my healing journey. I kept working the past, and was working toward trying to pay a huge debt after my assistance dog in training got sick and died at only 2 in a horrible way (again another story). There was a lot going on. I kept doing live videos and I was talking about the things that happened in my past. MY past. I didn’t at that time mention names. If I referred to my sister I called her the crotch goblin, and no one knew my mothers name. I didn’t give out those details. But my lives were getting spam reported for the most ridiculous reasons. Like nudity, or I was talking about abuse that happened to me and I was reported for hate speech. Things like that.
Then one day I sent a message to my father to say hi. I don’t talk to him much because it’s not always comfortable and I was always being accused of asking for money. Which I wasn’t. Not even hinting at it. I mean just because you speak about difficulties you’re having doesn’t mean you’re implying you want money.
We got through the pleasantries, then he said, oh and i know what you’ve been saying on tiktok too.
Now as soon as I started getting more suspicion about someone watching me I started revealing more things. I wanted. to draw out who ever it was.
So when my father said this I said, so you do have someone watching me. I said it’s my sister right. He diverted from the question. I asked for the usernames of who ever it was, either one person or however many, I just wanted the usernames so I could block them. Not a hard ask right? I was refused. I messaged my mother and also emailed her. I was going with under the belief at that time that it was my sister. I mean it couldn’t possibly be anyone else. Mum sent me through a huge reply. I got through the first part where she denied my sister had a TikTok account and didn’t read the rest because I knew it would be the same gaslighty bullshit it always was. I in response sent her a screenshot of the one account of my sisters that I knew of.
I asked on multiple occasions for the usernames so I could block them and that this stalking would cease, I finally said, look I’m happy to just start talking about more stuff that I wouldn’t have otherwise if I don’t get those usernames. I don’t deserve to have this going on. I haven’t done anything to any of you. No one listened. So I started talking about more stuff that happened. All of it stuff that happened. Whether it was to me directly or just stuff that happened in the past. I was booted off the live and restricted. I did a video outing my sister with a screenshot of her profile on TikTok (a public profile) where her profile pic is snapchatted so no one would even know who it was, and part of her maiden name, and a screenshot of a message she sent me back in 2019 that was so horrible I couldn’t even process and hadn’t showed it to anyone even after she wrote I should share it with all my social media friends. That had her last name on it. I didn’t share anything else about her. I didn’t share her phone number or address because I don’t have them, and even if I did I wouldn’t share them.
Next thing you know I’m at home on a friday afternoon in the middle of a training session with my dog, when I get a knock on the door. It’s the police. I’m naturally confused. They had gotten a report that I was trying to kill myself. Then a giant ass ambulance, not one of the small ones, a giant one, reverses into my driveway. The few neighbours who had come out to see why the police were at my house multiplied to every neighbour who could even see my house and then some. I was a spectacle to my street. The neighbours who already thoguht I was weird were really getting a good show.
Of course I thought it was a bit too coincidental that this happened now. There is an internal investigation going on to find out wtf.
I then did a video about wtf. It got reported and taken down first for threat of suicide and then for bullying and harassment. I then sent my sister an email asking for to back off.
She responded and then I responded and you can imagine how it went. In the end she kept denying her involvement saying some random person came across my TikTok and somehow knew I was her sister and then screen recorded most of my lives to send to her and that’s how she saw what I was doing.
Quick aside….who here actually believes that?
She also said my father never actually said it was her. No he didn’t. But given the facts, and my deductive reasoning abilities, it couldn’t be anyone else. And when I directly asked my father he again sidestepped the question. If it wasn’t her why allow me to continue to say it was? It didn’t make any sense.
In the end after the last correspondence from her I blocked her email. It was just nasty and she did everything in her power to try and take. medown, to make me question my reality, to make me sound like a crazy person who had the most amazing and marvellous upbringing and was spoilt and got whatever she wanted and I’m just ungrateful and want to take people down for no reason other than I’m miserable in my own life. She refused to call me by the new name I taken (I legally changed my name in the effort to move forward and cut that person I was from my life), said my new name was shit…..It just went on. The most discriminating, ableist fuckery I’d read. And after being in the autism advocacy role for a few years, I’ve seen a lot . It’s also why I had to pull back from it.
I’m also at this time not going to hold back from sharing it, and my reply if I feel the need.
In the end all this effort to take me down, undo all the work I’ve done to get past the trauma that almost destroyed me, that impacted my life in so many ways that the fact I’m still alive after getting through some of the stuff that was done to me is a frickin miracle, it’s not going to work.
Did it cause me to stumble? Yes it did. I found myself back in that same frame of mind I’ve fought so hard to get out of. Questioning everything about myself and my actions, questioning my reality and my own experience. Doubting myself AGAIN.
But is any of this going to make me stay silent? No it’s not. Not one but me gets to decide how I heal or how I do it. My experience is my own.
To those reading this, if you take anything away from anything I’ve said, take this: The people who tell you to just let it go and forget it, who tell you talking about the past won’t fix it, the ones who say that are the ones who cause that pain, if they’re the ones who did it to you, or they do it to others. They don’t want you to shine any light on their actions because they don’t want people to see them for who they really are.
The more they react by what you reveal, only shows how much it’s triggering them. If you were lying about your past, they wouldn’t have reason to be so upset. Would they?
To those people who were involved with stalking my social media: If I was just making up stories, why are you so upset by anything I have to say? Why not just scroll past or block me? Or is the thought of taking someone down who is in anyway threatening to you just too big of an opportunity to pass up? Why spend so much time time screen recording my lives (because downloading someone else lives is not an option) and sending them on to my sister (if that is how it happened)? How does any of that make sense?
What is so deficient about a human that they’re so threatened by the progress someone has made to heal themselves and their life, that they have to spend so much time and effort to destroy all that work? How is that considered “normal” human behavior, but the things we autistic people do to get through each day of our lives is abnormal/wrong/selfish/narcissistic?
For people who would fight to the death anyone who tried to take their rights as humans away, or tried to dictate how they processed events that happened in their life to the point they would start a march or a protest to complain about it, how is what you’re doing by telling someone else they don’t have those same rights, or telling them anything they experienced in their in life totally is invalid not something that makes you a shit human being?
In the end it won’t matter anything I say to any of them. Anything I have to say will always be wrong.
I spent so long coming to terms with the fact that I would never be able to change my mothers opinion of me no matter what I did and that the years I spent trying to “fix” our relationship by taking her with. meto psychology session was just a waste of time. It wouldn’t ever change. I would just have to rationalise it as much as I could in my head and the put it aside. I thought I had managed that. I actually said to my psychologist, I wonder who it will be next that I have to process? Usually I would get a dream about someone and I’d take that as a sign from my brain that it was ready to deal with that. Then my sister popped up and all this shit happened. I actually thought. I was done dealing with her. She was the first I cut off. I had to. I don’t regret it. I then cut my mother off when it was clear that she had no respect for me at all if she was going to keep justifying all the attacks my sister made to me that she herself initiated with gossip. What made it worse is that they were both there for a lot of what happened so they know the truth.
I was just trying to live my life. I’m still just trying to live my life.
In everything that has happened not once have I asked anyone to take my side. They weren’t there for it. They only have what I say to go on. It’s also why I won’t ever take sides with anyone in an argument with anyone else. Not unless I know that person and I know their pattern and know for a sure thing wtf is going on. I wouldn’t expect anyone else to anything different for me. A person tells their truth in their pattern. Even the most unpredictable person has a pattern.
If someone else is in fact screen recording my lives or sharing the videos I make to give to my sister, they’re going on only what she has said. They don’t know me. The stereotypical story of the the charming man, or wonderful woman who never hurt a fly, and their whole family knows what a lovely person they are etc, but behind closed doors….. Everyone has heard that story. It makes for entertaining midday movie material. And the person at the brunt of their actions gets painted as the crazy person.
Oh and stalking someone online is still considered a criminal offense.
Life of an Actual Autistic and her Assistance Dogs Kobash & Luisneach 