It makes me wonder what are the most common forces / reasons that move people in privilege to help make changes. That doesn’t place the minority or marginalised groups under further obligations. Sometimes it’s not until someone has a personal experience that they feel motivated to become an “ally” or advocate. Like a family member being neurodivergent or LGBTQ+ or other marginalised groups. In some ways social media has been a great driving force in promoting awareness and more spaces where people can articulate and share these kinds of views. But it’s not enough and we see it can be a big performative (if that’s the right word.) maybe as communities grow and come together they will contribute to a changing culture but it requires organisation and intention and determination at a time where people already feel overloaded overwhelmed and tends to fall on people already facing the struggle of being marginalised etc
I mean, are there any (forces/reasons that move people in privilege to help make changes) unless it begins to personally affect us/them? Partly just out of naivety and realising challenges that you were ignorant to before. Why would you want to give up privilege willingly? At the moment it feels like safe spaces are often those where a particular part of identity is accepted, but often not an an intersectional way - and I also notice this theme sometimes even in communities of marginalized folk that there is then a different sort of 'us and them' mentality that can crop up. Which I guess just demonstrates lack of safety generally. But it means that if you are 'multiply marginalized' then perhaps there are few/no safe spaces.
Yeah I hear that and intersectionality makes it complex too. I have faith or andream that communities can be created to foster this safety though and within that can be spread to others who might not have been aware of their privilege and the micro aggressions others experience. Those inbetween the marginalised and the oblivious to thier privileges I think play an important part in changing the tide but again intersectionality makes it not that black and white. To some degree we are seeing the confines of normal change over time. (Maybe more labelling ?)But not in a way that feels good enough or safe enough which I never thought of. When thinking about the us and them and spectrums of radicalisation it’s hard to imagine another way to honour acknowledge and respect the differences without it becoming too polarised because it kind of is in the way it affects people. Maybe in time we will get better at it with practice or trial and error as it’s still kind of a new concept.
I keep rereading this post - you've articulated my thoughts so well, both professionally as an OT in perinatal mental health team in a very deprived borough of London where marginalised birthing people are prescribed meds for 'mental illness' rather than tackle the daily realities of families living in one room in inadequate temporary accommodation. Never have I spent so much of my time and practice advocating for the people I work with and liaising with housing, education, DWP, immigration etc. Offering sertaline and a food bank voucher does not increase safety 🙄 Plus they're excluded from accessing psychological services because, I quote, "their social circumstances are too complex" - even though they are the very things contributing to their trauma...
And then personally, I was diagnosed as autistic last year at 42. Now things make much more sense and I can finally stop blaming myself for all the failed attempts at CBT for my extreme noise sensitivity - no amount of carefully planned exposure work will change my physiological response to everyone's barking dogs and year round hot tub parties that everyone seems to have where I live!! It's exhausting having to constantly make adaptations to survive in a neuro typical world when the courtesy is not returned - offering a 'quiet' shopping hour at the crack of dawn in my local shopping centre does not make my community neuro affirming! There's a lot of work that needs doing but I hope my two amazing autistic daughters have a slightly more understanding community - they give me the motivation to keep doing the work.
Thank you so so much for writing this. I feel like I’ve tried to get this thought down in words quite a few times and never succeeded and you’ve explained it so well.
I am a white cis woman and so I’m obviously still very close to the top of the triangle, I would like to state that, also.
I’ve been heavily invested in counselling and therapy and self development from being misdiagnosed as having generalised anxiety disorder in my late teens. Like my autistic traits, my autistic needs were diagnosed as me having a mental illness. Me personally being wrong and needing fixing. Finding out I was autistic in my thirties, realising that all of it - all of it - is not my fault, all of it is not something wrong with me, it’s not something that I can even change. I’ve really struggled with all of the self development stuff ever since. Because I’m not the problem. The people refusing to accommodate my different communication needs are the problem. The buildings designed to be too bright. The social spaces that are overfilled that I just can’t access. The social isolation that comes from that. It’s all real, it’s not my thinking being broken and it’s not going to go away by taking a few deep breaths or listening to a hypnosis track…
I don’t know, I feel like I knew these things but reading you saying it too has just been really affirming. Thank you ❤️
YES! I'm so pleased that it was affirming for you to read. I'm sure that having a 'break' from those spaces over lockdowns cemented that for many people too, realising what it can feel like to not have a frazzled nervous system all the time
Yes! I feel so strongly that it really shouldn’t have to be an individualistic pursuit - like you said, meditation or whatever is just not a solution because you can only have systemic solutions to systemic problems, and bc it requires a degree of privilege to even access the individual solutions.
It makes me wonder what are the most common forces / reasons that move people in privilege to help make changes. That doesn’t place the minority or marginalised groups under further obligations. Sometimes it’s not until someone has a personal experience that they feel motivated to become an “ally” or advocate. Like a family member being neurodivergent or LGBTQ+ or other marginalised groups. In some ways social media has been a great driving force in promoting awareness and more spaces where people can articulate and share these kinds of views. But it’s not enough and we see it can be a big performative (if that’s the right word.) maybe as communities grow and come together they will contribute to a changing culture but it requires organisation and intention and determination at a time where people already feel overloaded overwhelmed and tends to fall on people already facing the struggle of being marginalised etc
I mean, are there any (forces/reasons that move people in privilege to help make changes) unless it begins to personally affect us/them? Partly just out of naivety and realising challenges that you were ignorant to before. Why would you want to give up privilege willingly? At the moment it feels like safe spaces are often those where a particular part of identity is accepted, but often not an an intersectional way - and I also notice this theme sometimes even in communities of marginalized folk that there is then a different sort of 'us and them' mentality that can crop up. Which I guess just demonstrates lack of safety generally. But it means that if you are 'multiply marginalized' then perhaps there are few/no safe spaces.
Yeah I hear that and intersectionality makes it complex too. I have faith or andream that communities can be created to foster this safety though and within that can be spread to others who might not have been aware of their privilege and the micro aggressions others experience. Those inbetween the marginalised and the oblivious to thier privileges I think play an important part in changing the tide but again intersectionality makes it not that black and white. To some degree we are seeing the confines of normal change over time. (Maybe more labelling ?)But not in a way that feels good enough or safe enough which I never thought of. When thinking about the us and them and spectrums of radicalisation it’s hard to imagine another way to honour acknowledge and respect the differences without it becoming too polarised because it kind of is in the way it affects people. Maybe in time we will get better at it with practice or trial and error as it’s still kind of a new concept.
I keep rereading this post - you've articulated my thoughts so well, both professionally as an OT in perinatal mental health team in a very deprived borough of London where marginalised birthing people are prescribed meds for 'mental illness' rather than tackle the daily realities of families living in one room in inadequate temporary accommodation. Never have I spent so much of my time and practice advocating for the people I work with and liaising with housing, education, DWP, immigration etc. Offering sertaline and a food bank voucher does not increase safety 🙄 Plus they're excluded from accessing psychological services because, I quote, "their social circumstances are too complex" - even though they are the very things contributing to their trauma...
And then personally, I was diagnosed as autistic last year at 42. Now things make much more sense and I can finally stop blaming myself for all the failed attempts at CBT for my extreme noise sensitivity - no amount of carefully planned exposure work will change my physiological response to everyone's barking dogs and year round hot tub parties that everyone seems to have where I live!! It's exhausting having to constantly make adaptations to survive in a neuro typical world when the courtesy is not returned - offering a 'quiet' shopping hour at the crack of dawn in my local shopping centre does not make my community neuro affirming! There's a lot of work that needs doing but I hope my two amazing autistic daughters have a slightly more understanding community - they give me the motivation to keep doing the work.
Sorry for the essay!
Thank you so so much for writing this. I feel like I’ve tried to get this thought down in words quite a few times and never succeeded and you’ve explained it so well.
I am a white cis woman and so I’m obviously still very close to the top of the triangle, I would like to state that, also.
I’ve been heavily invested in counselling and therapy and self development from being misdiagnosed as having generalised anxiety disorder in my late teens. Like my autistic traits, my autistic needs were diagnosed as me having a mental illness. Me personally being wrong and needing fixing. Finding out I was autistic in my thirties, realising that all of it - all of it - is not my fault, all of it is not something wrong with me, it’s not something that I can even change. I’ve really struggled with all of the self development stuff ever since. Because I’m not the problem. The people refusing to accommodate my different communication needs are the problem. The buildings designed to be too bright. The social spaces that are overfilled that I just can’t access. The social isolation that comes from that. It’s all real, it’s not my thinking being broken and it’s not going to go away by taking a few deep breaths or listening to a hypnosis track…
I don’t know, I feel like I knew these things but reading you saying it too has just been really affirming. Thank you ❤️
YES! I'm so pleased that it was affirming for you to read. I'm sure that having a 'break' from those spaces over lockdowns cemented that for many people too, realising what it can feel like to not have a frazzled nervous system all the time
Yes! I feel so strongly that it really shouldn’t have to be an individualistic pursuit - like you said, meditation or whatever is just not a solution because you can only have systemic solutions to systemic problems, and bc it requires a degree of privilege to even access the individual solutions.
Yep, absolutely this.