Content notice: disabled headmates are discussed in some detail, and the creation of these headmates based on stereotypes is also described in detail, with spesific examples of inaccurate ideas given. Some of these stereotypes are extremely ableist on top of being inaccurate, so a content notice for ablism applies as well. These descriptions are intended to provide context but may be triggering to readers nonetheless.
In 2012, I attempted to put myself through a session of intense breathwork in which strong emotional releases were frequently one of the things breathers experienced. I had begun to have one of these, though thankfully it was only beginning to take hold of my body when I was forced to prematurely end the session due to my family’s disruption of the process. However, it was my belief then, and is my belief now, that unfinished processes like these stay stuck unless they are allowed completion in the same state which they were started in; in this case, I believed that only by attempting and completing another session of the breathwork, or otherwise getting myself to the same state in which the release had begun, could I allow said release to be finished, and thus no longer be stuck within me in some way. I’m unclear on whether the experience I had over the three years that followed was a result of me believing this, or a result of it actually being true, but regardless, the experience itself was one I didn’t like much, if at all. Whenever I would feel as though I was about to shiver, I would try to allow it to happen, only to have that feeling redirect itself into urges to make the strangest movements I’d probably ever made in my life. The distressing thing was that the more I made these motions and gave into the urges, the more persistent they became, and the only way I found to control them was to deliberately hold still, without using anything but my own will to do so. I quickly learned to hold still through these urges when they arose in front of people I didn’t want to see me acting strangely, and I could have gone on ignoring them and probably been content with it, had it not been for the nagging belief that kept me determined to get that emotional release that started the whole problem complete, hopefully so that said problem would also leave with whatever I ended up letting out. I was ready to wait for that session, that opportunity to finish what I’d started, and, hopefully, to be able to move on with my life afterward, that is, until late 2015.
Yes, that year. The year where I created a bunch of characters from aspects of myself because I needed something good to focus on. I was content to be the one who created and controlled those characters and dealt with the tasks expected of me in day-to-day life, so splitting off everything else except for what I needed to continue doing those things seemed like the right thing to do. Among the ones born from that course of action was Adeline, who was known by another name at the time of her birth. She was the one meant to hold the urges I’ve described above, and the root of them, which I suspected was blocked emotion of some kind. I conceptualized her as someone who experienced those urges 24/7, and who, as a result of this, experienced significant disabilities. When I had held the aftereffects of that incomplete session as my own and they were making themselves known to me, I would have to choose between speaking and making the sounds I would be compelled to make under their influence, so Adeline was unable to talk; after all, how could she talk while constent streams of the same wordless sounds flowed from her? I imagined that someone who experienced the urges also could not control their movements at all and would be completely at the Mersey of whatever was trying to come out, therefore, Adeline was unable to control her inside body, and needed a wheelchair to get around the inner world that was rapidly developing without my being aware of it.
All of this seems OK, until disability politics get involved. In 2021 or thereabouts, I began to take a hard look at a lot of the things I thought I knew about disabled people, and to realize, in doing so, that the vast majority of them were inaccurate and harmful. For example, I used to believe that people who didn’t or couldn’t speak either hated their lives, or only saw the good things in them, recalling any pain they experienced for only moments after it had happened. I saw people with intellectual disabilities as childlike, and this wasn’t helped by the way I often heard them spoken to as if they were children. I saw autistic people as unique, but fell for the stereotype that they were asexual, almost emotionless people who would suddenly melt down if their sense of order was disrupted or they couldn’t make something understood. All of these ideas, I know now, are far from the truth, and do a lot of harm to people who experience disabilities, and I have gone on to try to spread accurate information in their place because I don’t want to perpetuate that harm if I can help it. Unfortunately for Adeline, and for many others of this community who are disabled in some way, the understanding I’ve reached has come too late; some of the primary personality traits of these people/beings are connected to their particular disabilities, and fall right into the stereotypes I understand as being problematic. I cannot ethically ask them to mask or lie about that fact, so I will have to do my best to prepare myself and them for the inevitable backlash that happens when two communities clash over whose rights are more important or worthy of protection.
I say there will be backlash because I find it highly unlikely that everyone I come across, either in online spaces or offline ones, if I can reach those, is going to be understanding of the fact that Adeline, or any other person in this community who has disability-related needs that I don’t share, has a right to get those needs met. I find it highly unlikely, for example, that Adeline would not be expected to walk if she came to the front around the wrong people, because, after all, I could do it, so why couldn’t she? We shared the same body, so, it could also be argued, I could just walk for her, if I wanted her to experience the world so badly. I could see the concept of system responsibility being used to bolster this viewpoint as well. I had a conversation with someone on Twitter today about this subject, and they assured me that trying to correct a headmate’s disability presentation because it falls into stereotypes associated with the disability itself, and/or its impact on a person, isn’t the right thing to do if the headmate is comfortable with the idea that they are an individual in their own right, as opposed to a character controlled by another in a story. Adeline, by her own words, is a person all her own. I don’t have to, nor will I, feel bad about the way she developed, because I didn’t know better and I do now.
The thing I continue to struggle with is finding spaces in which not only Adeline, but anyone else of this community who was influenced by my outdated ideas about living with autism, intellectual disabilities, and so on, can be who they are without fear, and without triggering others who have been hurt by such concepts. As I’ve said above, I recognize the harm these ideas represent, and am actively apposed to their promotion, but I find the idea of forcefully reshaping someone over such things, when they cannot consent to that reshaping, to be just as troubling, whether they’re physically present in this world or not. I will not, and cannot bring myself to, forcefully impose changes on community members when there isn’t anything inherently wrong with the way they are. I know there are sections of the plural community of this world that will say I have every right to do exactly that, but I personally can’t stand the thought of doing something so cruel. The only thing I can think to do in regards to the problem at hand is to either find or create a space in which everyone is accepted for who they are, regardless of whether or not they have disabilities, and whether or not their disabilities fall into stereotypes because of situations like the one I was in during 2015. Doing either of these things now, most likely, will be easier than ever, and all I have to do is try. At a point in the near future, I will. But I have hope beyond that, and have seen things that make me reluctant to voice it for fear it will be crushed.
Online spaces are one thing, but physical ones are another entirely. I can think of no solution for allowing all of us to be ourselves in those when disability gets involved, because though I am autistic and blind, and can comfortably allow people who are autistic in their own right to come forward when I know that doing so won’t cause problems in some way, I still struggle with the idea of allowing community members like Adeline to come to the front, even when I’m alone. S’s presence eased a lot of this fear, but learning about how harmful many stereotypes of disability were had the unintended effect of bringing a lot of it back. As of now, the best solution I can think of for finding physical spaces in which everyone can be themselves, regardless of disability, requires a lot of information gathering, namely about what a given community member’s particular needs are, and a lot of preparation, mostly of single-use spaces into which that person can come forward for as long as they want and do whatever activities we’ve been able to ensure are available in said pre-prepared space. It’s far from a perfect fix, and we’ve only used it a handful of times, with widely varying results. I would say that there are probably better options for achieving what we’re wanting to achieve in this case, but I’m not entirely sure that’s true; the systems in place for disabled people in this country, in general, need a lot of improvement, and I’m saying that as an American who’s lived in the US all my life. I’m still struggling with the idea that we should be the responsible ones who do the right thing and keep disabled community members from fronting in physical spaces where they can potentially be seen, because we have that option and other people whose bodies themselves are disabled don’t, so we should just move over. I know that there are people who would agree with that line of thinking, and I also know that there are people who wouldn’t, but I see both sides and don’t know which one to settle on.
Perhaps, if I am ever in a place where people won’t mind disabled community members coming to the front, this won’t be a conflict I’ll have to struggle with. Maybe it’s a question of time and place more than anything else. I won’t know until I get out and start meeting people outside of this state, and, hopefully, building enough of a connection with them that I’d feel comfortable bringing up plurality in a general sense. Whether or not those conversations would evolve into disability-related ones I wouldn’t know until I was interacting with someone. All I can do, for now, is keep that potential on the table, because there’s nothing saying that it can’t happen. While I wait, I’ll be getting to know those of us who are disabled on the inside more than I do now, and that will keep me busy for a while yet, which is fine. I don’t think anything about this particular situation is going to change unless I start getting to know us first. Everything else can wait.
Thank you for reading.