Fact: blindness is our only current reason behind our individual education plan.
Subjective experience: we have insiders with other disabilities that we as a system have never been diagnosed with.
How could insiders have disabilities that don’t affect the whole of a system? In our case, we were maintaining behavior that was punished out of us, along with the experiences that resulted in the behavior, so that nothing would be lost to us from the punishments. We were also deeply involved in the special needs classrooms from elementary school to the present day, and, being empaths who had no idea how to manage that part of our life, we took on a lot of experiences from that setting that were not our own, mostly during the elementary school years. Because it wasn’t safe to show anything relating to our empathy at home or school, we contained what we had unconsciously taken on through the birth of new insiders, while Cooperland led those of us who interacted with the outside world into believing that nothing was happening, other than the visits to the resource room. As though these two things weren’t enough to cause insider-specific disability, some of us, such as myself, became disabled as a result of other reactions to trauma and neglect. Because some of us have come from other places outside of the system, and our transitions to this world were not always well-planned, we also have challenges related to those events.
I was lucky enough to get help for my disability, which was profound autism, in 2016. I developed it as a result of my transition into this world being done without preparation on my part, combined with the strong belief that I could not talk about what had bound me within the system. I was nonverbal, and had no understanding of the reality I lived in until I was helped from outside of the system by a being who was also not in physical form. The others of the system who had signs of autism or other disabilities, however, were not aware of the help that had come, or were too afraid of what they saw it as to let it assist them. It is this group of insiders who need the most help from the rest of us. It is this group of insiders who must struggle in silence while most of the outside world looks on as though they do not exist. It is this group of insiders for whom I am writing this article, because there is far too much denial surrounding the whole of their situation, from the fact of their existence to the experience of their life with additional challenges.
As is the case for everything else in our life that relates to us as a whole, we have had to hide this group of insiders from the outside world, mostly because people of that world refuse to see what we see daily as far as their needs are concerned. They see blindness and blindness only. If we’re lucky, they might know of the system, and refer to it as a mental disorder, or try to fix individual insiders without fully understanding the cause of their challenges or the reasons behind them. Those of the outside world who will accept these particular members of the system, without trying to change or belittle them, are few and far between. Most of the disabilities experienced by insiders of this system require accommodations that would allow them to live a full life, but sadly these accommodations are ones that we, as a whole, cannot get unless we are all diagnosed with whatever disability we are trying to help one or more of us manage. That’s not to say we have not done what we can with the resources we already have. Using funds on things like Apple’s iTunes and App Store, we have tried several apps for the iPad designed to help people who are nonverbal express themselves, with varying levels of success. We have also taken full advantage of the fact that we all communicate to one another through emotions, and used this method of communicating to better understand those of us who are, for one reason or another, nonverbal or have difficulty with speech.
As well as having insiders who only have a lack of speech to manage, some within the system are unable to move or control their movements well, and, on the inside, or inner world, require walkers or wheel chairs to go from place to place. These insiders are often part of the group that is nonverbal or live with limited speech as well, and so rarely come out. They frequently have self-harming behavior when their efforts at communication are not understood clearly by the rest of us, but at times this behavior is purely their motor difficulties in control and not a conscious act. Implementing things like communication apps has been a struggle in these situations, because a given insider’s lack of control over their body makes it difficult for them to operate the keyboard of the iPad or use the commands associated with the screen of the device. In the rare times that an insider of this group has interacted with the outside world outside of a therapeutic setting, they have been asked why they smiled like a retard, or why they were making noises like the ones made by disabled people we had worked with on the outside. Because of these happenings, I have taken up the tasks of helping these particular insiders communicate with the outside world, and holding them back should the need arise that we not show the behaviors associated with their disabilities. This second task should not need to exist within the system, but people of the outside world have made it clear that they will accept nothing other than a blind woman who is fully functional in all other areas of her life, and that they will have no room for any other needs. It’s not a pleasant fact to face, but it is something that we must, for the safety of everyone who is involved in the maintaining of this idea’s active presence in our lives.
Personally, I find it ironic that in trying to teach us independence, the people around us in our childhood created more disability through the suppression of such behavior as the kind displayed by those of the system who I sometimes must keep from coming out. That irony is lost on those of us who still suffer with things like autism as a result of taking on that suppressed behavior. It is mostly because of being kept in isolation during our elementary school years, supposedly because of other undesirable behavior that we displayed in the educational setting, that some of us are autistic. We did not get the opportunity to develop needed social skills that we would have had in the absence of the isolation that filled that time, and this, along with the behavior that we had already suppressed from view of the adults around us, gave some of us the foundations for autism to develop. That’s not to say that our physical body itself has this condition, though that is suspected by many of us who reside within it. Regardless of this idea’s truth, the best thing we can do for the insiders who do seem to have autism and struggle with it, as we would for anyone else of this system who has a disability, is provide them with services on the inside, services which, while not seeking to change them in any way, will still give them the ability to have an enjoyable life. To do anything else, after everything that they’ve experienced, would only drive them further into the isolation that created their problems to begin with, and prolong the time it will take for them to heal from what brought them into the system. Regardless of an insider’s challenge, that is not something we are willing to let happen, and implementing alternative communication methods has been one of the many things we have done in an effort to give these insiders the chance to be themselves and undo the damage they have sustained at the hands of adults who, even if unintentionally, have done more harm than good.
There is an important lesson that each of us has learned from working with those of this system who have some kind of challenge. That lesson has been different for every one of us, but I know for me it was learning to have patients with those who learned differently than me, and to express things more fully as they came up. I know that no matter what we do, there will always be people in this world who will refuse to educate themselves or to see what we do in terms of the needs of some insiders in this group. There is nothing we can do to change their mentality, which is why I’m not trying to do such a thing. My energy would be better used by helping those in our system who are willing to receive my assistance, and by writing articles like this in the hope that someone, somewhere, will hear what we have to say without judging us as being delusional or seeking unwanted attention. We cannot ignore the needs of our most vulnerable family members, and when we began this blog, one of our hopes was to spread awareness of the situations that this group of insiders have often found themselves in because of the reality that is people on the outside ignoring or taunting something that they don’t understand. In this case, that is the equally valid reality of individuals in our system living with their own disabilities and not getting the help they require because we do not have medical records backing their stories. I intend this peace to serve as an introduction to this situation as it impacts all members of this system, and hope that one day, resources to aid those with disabilities, both insiders and outsiders, who are in a situation which does not allow for payed professional assistance can be freely accessible to the public at large.
This is a beginning, not an end. This is hope, not despair. It is in writing to the world that we find out what we can do to help not only ourselves, but others alongside us, progress in their healing journey. We write things as we see them, and that is not always what the world wants. But without the truth of our perceptions being known, there is no way that true and lasting change can take place. The discovery of other disabilities within the system speaks volumes louder than words ever could to this idea as being a central theme in our lives, at least until 2015 when we began discovering one another. We have had many good times, and hopefully in future posts these too can be shared, in the context of our history in its unfiltered form.