Have I discussed this before?
Good, then we can do it again, or for the first time, whichever it actually is.
Content warning for planned ignoring and some strong language.
As many of you may already be aware, school was not the best place for any of us emotionally. One of the reasons behind that was a need we began to feel in high school to keep a close eye on all of our mannerisms so that several in particular could be masked as much as possible. These ones were related to our switching, and the reason we felt as though we had to mask them was because of a series of events among several staff at various levels of our school’s district, who responded to our open displays of plurality by putting a policy in place in which, when one particular teacher noticed that anyone other than me, Rozaya (known as Maria at the time) had come forward, they were to tell me they were going to wait for me to return, and then begin doing something else. They were not to engage with anyone but me, and wait until I had indicated to them, in some way, that I was “ready to work.”
The view of our emerging was as some kind of bad behavior, and I say that based on the approach taken to it, which, in our collective opinion, was harmful and served only to make others comfortable at our expense. Though we only experienced it in action once, the fear of its use for a second time followed us everywhere, and the uncertainty surrounding whether or not other people in the building were going to start applying it as well soon followed. I will not describe the single experience we had with it; it is not my story. However, I will lay out the harmful impact that this policy of ignoring, as we’d taken to calling it when it was an active threat, has caused us in terms of our ability to enjoy life.
Let it not be understated: plurality was a collective identity insofar as it being as much a part of our defining characteristics as our blindness or our love of music. Any of these could have changed, but they did not, and strangely, while the latter two were accepted, plurality was rejected simply for being different, or, perhaps, because of the transformations it involved. Whatever the reasons, the fact is that it was rejected; while there are plurals who do not switch regularly, we did, because of the nature of our beginnings and the environments we were exposed to, and thus it became a part of our identity as a plural. It was thanks to switching that we gained one of the only friends we ended up with in high school, and thanks to the policy of ignoring that we were too afraid to allow this switching to continue unless we were 100 percent sure that there were only students in a given room. Eventually, the fears created by this policy would extend to include the potential that we would be misread as having switched when I was just being myself, and this potential became such a focus that we would end up skipping days of school (always one at a time, and never in a row) so that we could come back without fear of being driven into stress-induced displays of plurality which would undoubtedly result in problems, at least as far as we were concerned. Oh yes, have I mentioned the wonder that was the timing of therapy’s involvement yet? I’ll give you a hint: I walked into my sixteenth year on this planet believing the string of bullshit S had been spending the past several months convincing all of us was true.
Of course, the result of that belief was that I now had two reasons to fight for what I now call open plurality; I wanted to see us grow into ourselves, and, in the cases of those of us who had been traumatized, I wanted to ensure that they had an environment rich with chances to discover that the world was a safe place. My plan, then, was to allow switching in as many times and places as I could, trusting that others around us would not react to it badly. It is clear to me, now, that I misplaced that trust. Two meetings with the members of staff responsible for implementing and carrying out the policy of ignoring, one involving my mother and another involving our second therapist, L, who came into our life after S left it, did nothing at first, and then vary little, to address either the policy or the impacts it was having, and these were numerous. Ten days of suspension of the policy, made to sound longer than it was by the words, ‘until the end of the school year’, hardly counts as meaningful change, in our collective opinion. There had already been damage done to us, and there would be continuing harm caused by there being no follow-up in subsequent school years, and no answer given after either meeting to the question of whether or not we still had to fear the policy and all of its potential consequences. We would not be free of it until we graduated, and even then, some of its effects would still linger.
When I first learned that the policy had been put into place, my reaction was one of anger. I repeatedly wondered how the people around me could see something as harmless as plurality in such a negative light that they felt the need to treat its outward signs as though they were bad choices on my part, hence the two meetings that were held about the ignorant response that such treatment was. When the first meeting got nowhere, and even resulted in the validity of my experience being questioned by people who had only seen me in passing, my anger turned to depression and fear. The more I went to therapy and was reminded that we had come from trauma, the worse I felt; after all, as far as I was concerned, I was failing the community, and could do nothing about it if I wanted to graduate, and the only thing therapy seemed concerned with was replacing our switching with coping skills, on the assumption that this was all its purpose was. Over time, I began to worry about our safety, especially when we were shown that the policy would and could be put into practice, at least by the teacher who had originally received the instruction to implement it. What if they ignored us and a child, confused about where they were, wandered out into the halls? What would happen if that child ran into something and we were physically hurt? What if there was an emergency or a fire drill; how long would the ignoring hold out then?
These questions, and more, froze me in my tracks in terms of my original intention for us. Instead of being openly plural, I began to worry about every small thing I did, wondering if it could be misread as a sign of switching, and who would be the next to ignore us over that inaccurate interpretation. I managed to ask one teacher if he too would ignore us if he noticed that we had switched, and he said that he would not. That class was the only one where I could let my guard down, and I often took advantage of that fact if I had nowhere else to go because he was just as happy to let me stay as I was to be allowed to do so.
After realizing, by my eleventh-grade year, that things in regards to the policy were not going to change, I shifted my strategy for getting through the school day. I contented myself with writing for this blog when I had moments free of work, and immersing myself in plurality-related content when I had nothing better to do. When I became an adult, I tried to advance my case by holding a second meeting. This meeting did nothing but end the policy for a small period of time, as previously mentioned, but by the last six months of school, I had no more energy to struggle. I did my best to hurry through the last of my work, knowing all the while that had I not had to cope with the anxiety the policy induced, I would have finished with the rest of my class, and been able to graduate on time. As things turned out, I did get to walk with those who had, until that point, been a year behind me. It wasn’t perfect, but I will never forget the last words I spoke during my high school years, and the small victory they represented.
We were such a small school that everyone in the class got to make a graduation speech. I don’t remember the whole of mine, but what I do remember was the part in which I said, “I’m looking forward to living the rest of my life openly multiple.”
In saying those words, I realized how little I cared about what the consequences of allowing us to be ourselves were now that I could be free to let that worry go. When I walked off of that stage, echoes of the fear still remained, but they were just that; the fear itself had been left behind, and I thought I would never have to face it again. As things would turn out, I would, but for entirely different reasons.
A serious consequence of the policy of ignoring, and the unanswered questions I had about how far it would be taken and what would happen if surtain conditions were present, was that I felt a need to prevent these potentials if at all possible. My solution for this was to prevent the others of this community from coming forward at all, and, when it could not be helped and they needed to for one reason or another, to control their actions by the influence I still had over them due to the nature of their connections to me. Anyone who knows much about being plural is well aware that system members are, by definition, relatively independent; they are far from puppets, and this was no exception for us, but I was forced to treat them as if they were characters through whom I interacted with the world, a stage we had begun to leave roughly two months after I had created the first one of us I knew about. In simple terms, I was forced to control them in ways I hated myself for even thinking of, let alone acting on. This tendency did not vanish when I graduated, and to combat it as Cooperland pointed it out to me, I created a contract of correction and followed it. As described and clearly shown in this article, that contract backfired in an extremely unexpected and detrimental way, hence posts like the one linked here.
There is far too much anguish I still experience in remembering the details of the problems the policy caused, so I will put things in as simple a way as I can. If it had not been for the policy of ignoring, I would not have had to prevent the others from coming forward; I would have been able to be myself and let them be themselves as well, and such a contract would have never been needed. If it had not been for the policy of ignoring, I would not have had to worry about whether or not people thought we had switched, and I wouldn’t have had daily anxiety about being actively disengaged with over behavior that harmed no one, or take steps to ensure that such behavior could not even remotely be seen, such as preventing the others from seeing important things like the teaching of life skills. If it hadn’t been for the policy of ignoring, I would have managed to hold friendships because I would have been able to allow others of this community to fill in gaps present in my own social skills instead of struggling to do everything in that area on my own. If it hadn’t been for the policy of ignoring, we would have been much further along in our own goals for our own life and our own future, instead of struggling against the bullshit it caused, which remains to this day. If it hadn’t been for the policy of ignoring, I would be here talking about all the wonders that plurality brought to my life, instead of wondering what those would have been like had things gone differently when and where they really needed to.
It is not my intention to rant, but rant I will when it comes to exclusionism, and the policy of ignoring was exactly that. Ignoring is often used as a form of punishment, therefore I view the policy as a form of such. We were punished for something that was part of who we were and are, and this is inexcusable. The punishment was unnecessary; we were not harming anyone or disrupting anything, and the reality was that the threat of being ignored was more disruptive to our learning, and the policy itself, when applied even the one time that it was, was even more so because it required that a teacher stop everything they were doing until I had reclaimed their attention by performing as desired. I find it ironic that those who support the behavior program we were involved in, or the use of related practices on other students, complain as loudly as they can about the disruption of class, distraction to peers, and inability to learn that the behaviors they are supposedly correcting are apparently the cause of, while failing to see that their preciously evidence-based interventions cause just as much if not more of the exact same problems for not only the student they work with, but those around them as well. I waisted more energy, time, and resources worrying about the distress, class interruption, and distraction that the policy’s active use would or could cause, and that worry caused those very things and more, as I’ve already described above.
If people want to continue to claim that the use of ignoring as a behavior management tool is evidenced-based, they can be our guests. But until behaviorism as a field bothers to look beyond what they can see with the naked eye, and starts to grow and learn from what other research tells us about many extinction-based practices – namely, that among some populations the decrease or vanishing of a behavior does not in any way indicate a related decrease in the emotion it communicates, the desire to engage in that behavior, or any other internal factor related to the action that is focused on – I question its validity as a safe thing to use on children, teenagers, the elderly, the disabled, or any other vulnerable group of people. In simple terms, if behaviorism can’t start to recognize that inner experiences matter and that forcing someone to change their actions doesn’t always mean the inner states will follow along, then what the hell is it doing among people who may rely on behavior itself to communicate those inner states, and why do we tolerate its presence? Look at the behavior program I was in. That was labeled a success, and everybody thought they did great things for me, everyone, of course, accept myself and the system who were on the receiving end. I complied, then turned around and wrote and wrote and wrote about how much damage it did, because that was real, and so was the distress we as a community experienced with the policy of ignoring. That policy was just behaviorism relabeled to look like something different; it wasn’t given a name until we gave it one, and the name we gave it was disputed because people didn’t think it fit the instructions that had been given.
I have a better name, and this one is even more accurate. How about we call what was done, the use of planned ignoring? You know, the practice that has already been called emotional abuse, been called out for teaching people that their communication doesn’t matter, (see the link) and been held potentially responsible for increasing trauma-based reactions in children? Yes, the shew fits and I will gladly put it on, and keep it there.
Behavioral therapists, educators, and anyone else in a position to oversee interactions with students: There is no excuse for using planned ignoring when the thing you are addressing with it is a non-harmful expression of someone’s identity. If you have addressed such things with this practice and have justified it, then you are guilty of continuing preexisting oppression of that identity and should go onto the internet and do research about how to properly support someone in that identity’s expression. It is not too late, but know that trust will probably be difficult to rebuild with the person and may take a long time to return even with your best efforts to support them and reverse the damage caused by the maltreatment. They need you to be there for them, not to harm them, and the best way to do that is to avoid doing things like using planned ignoring because they act in a way you or others around you don’t like. I hope that at least some of you take this seriously, because it is serious, and deserves your time. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments. I do check them.