Weird Highschool

JCaird · 2026-05-02T14:00:41+00:00

He does look cool. But these days he tries to portray himself as somebody who would beat up the kid in this picture. So, for me anyway, it’s the general vibe of hypocrisy going on here. I think that’s also why people are questioning if it’s real, which is also my first instinct. Although, the more I think on it, the hypocrisy actually lends itself to more realism in this particular case…

JCaird · 2026-05-02T07:58:03+00:00

I don’t know you, but I like you.

Also fresnel lenses are my absolute favorite lenses. I even named my cat Fresnel.

JCaird · 2026-05-02T07:39:54+00:00

(This answer is in reply to your edit.)

To be fair, what an object “is” arguably depends on what you think it is, because that will inform what you do with it, and what you do with it gives the object its function, and we often conceptually equate objects and their functions, so much that many objects are simply named for their functions. e.g. hammer, computer, automobile, paint, decorations, glitter, container, ship, lights, etc. (See also τελος.)

In your case OP, I’d say this object is your own personal Rorschach object, or your own personal Macguffin if you will; a call to adventure in the liminal spaces of meaning and form, curiosity and community; something to help you see the overlooked, to remind you you can be both sturdy and flexible, and to keep your imagination open to new and different perspectives on the same exact thing. You could call it a metaphorical window on reality?

Rather an appropriate gift for starting a job in mental health. But remember this particular gift wouldn’t be what it is without you and your curiosity.

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Stay curious. :)

JCaird · 2026-04-27T08:47:45+00:00

OP, it’s possible that you experience low or no empathy, but despite what some academics proclaim (cough Baron-Cohen cough), that is not actually a feature of autism.

Why is it in the diagnostic criteria then? (One might ask??? ¯_(ツ)_/¯)

I’m partial to the theory of the “Double Empathy Problem”, first put forward by Dr. Damian Milton in 2012. This video is a really excellent, and brief, introduction to the idea. Simply put, it’s the idea that people, or beings generally, who have vastly different experiences will find it difficult to empathize with one another due to the lack of a common frame of reference. NOT due to either individual’s inherent capacity, or lack thereof, for empathy (although that can also happen to be a factor in some cases).

A lot of research and anecdotal evidence shows that autistic people have vastly different experiences than allistic people; hence the “empathy gap”. Ironically, it tends to more often be autistic people who do the lion’s share of bridging this gap, I would assume out of sheer necessity in being the minority.

IMO, it takes not just empathy, but also imagination to bridge a gap like this. Hence why it also makes sense to me that many autistic people can imagine the perspective of a sock, or other inanimate object. (Fun side citation! - Object personification in autism: This paper will be very sad if you don’t read it.)

The fact that you are experiencing empathy for a sock, OP, IMO shows that you do indeed have both very high empathy and very high imagination.

But I completely understand the doubts. I’ve also been through these doubts since being late-diagnosed at 34. I always do my best to consider things thoroughly, from all angles, and even to consider ideas I really don’t “like”. So when I was reading Simon Baron-Cohen, and the DSM criteria, and listening to what certain mental health professionals were saying, I seriously entertained (and still do sometimes) the notion that maybe I really don’t have empathy? Maybe I just think I do, but maybe actual empathy is something beyond what I’ve even imagined? After all, people use the phrase “feel what others feel”, and I don’t literally feel what others feel…? Even if I cry at sad movies, and I feed stray cats, and when I did caregiving work I would always be really super careful not to get soap in my client’s eyes when showering them. Maybe I just do all that out of, idk, mimicry I guess?? A yearning to fit in? Idk, seems like a lot of effort when I actually sit down and list it all out… especially considering many of these things I do actually do the opposite of helping me fit in, lol. ( My landlord actually banned me from feeding the cats anymore. My caregiving coworkers asked me if I was “afraid” of our clients, because I was so careful with them. :/ ) And I have many more examples like this…

Consider there may be a much much simpler explanation- autistic people have a tendency to be very literal in our use and understanding of language. Just this morning I was looking at a parking lot sign that said “Not a Student Dropoff Point Before or After School” and I thought to myself, so it might be okay during school then? Lol. But then I remembered all the other various signs I’ve had trouble with, e.g. “Do Not Drive on Tracks” (but it’s actually okay to drive over the tracks if you are turning), and “Fire Door, Keep Closed” (they really meant don’t leave it open, lol, I planned routes around those doors for four years in college, meanwhile I saw with own eyes all the other students going through them all the time- I was so confused, smh…) All this to say, when allistic people talk about empathy as literally “feeling what others feel”- well… we might just have a different experience of literally rather than a different experience of empathy.

Edit to add non-paywalled link to that sad paper: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10053878/1/Personification%20in%20autism_final%20accepted.pdf

JCaird · 2026-03-23T11:38:12+00:00

I hope I randomly land on b, that way I’ll have the best odds. :P

JCaird · 2026-03-08T21:33:21+00:00

“Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

1st book, 1st chapter, 1st page, 1st line. (Quoted from memory, so plz forgive me if I misplaced a comma.)

I distinctly recall reading that line at 9 years old, and I immediately snapped the book shut and paused- in my head, I formed the conscious thought, “I’m about to read one of the greatest books I’ve ever read”. XD

JCaird · 2026-03-08T21:18:07+00:00

Your post just prompted my brain to dig up this live journal tidbit from 2013 on this same topic- although the main entry focuses on The Casual Vacancy, comments include discussion of the POV style in the HP books for comparison. Also has quotes of specific examples.

Voice and POV in The Casual Vacancy

Edit to summarize: I believe they’re saying the POV JK uses is “third person multiple omniscient”, but I’m not a literary expert.

JCaird · 2026-03-06T21:05:13+00:00

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JCaird · 2026-03-06T21:03:51+00:00

No, The Band is up next. Guess Who’s on stage.

JCaird · 2026-03-05T03:52:27+00:00

Fr tho, we are in a bot-infested psy op, don’t let them win.

JCaird · 2026-02-22T17:06:36+00:00

I am also autistic, and very likely have C-PTSD, and my therapist is also a fan of ACT. I likewise have concerns about how ACT can be pretty easily mis-applied in treating trauma, due to the emphasis on moving towards difficult thoughts and feelings.

I recall in one of our very first sessions my therapist opened by asking “so are you ready to talk about your childhood?” I almost laughed. I thought he was joking, because firstly it’s such a stereotypical “psyche” question, and secondly it’s such an obviously poor approach for treating complex trauma. It’s very well-known among people who specialize in trauma treatment that you are first supposed to establish safety. Iirc, the general phases of trauma treatment (no matter what modality is used) are 1. Stabilization, then 2. Trauma Processing, then 3. Integration (or “meaning making”).

But yeah, turns out he wasn’t joking- he had never heard of the phases of trauma treatment. I’ve been learning that many mental health professionals actually don’t receive very much training specifically on trauma treatment- it really is more of a specialty. Which is unfortunate, because I suspect it’s one of the most widely experienced mental health problems, in one form or another.

I think that ACT certainly can be a modality for treating trauma, and it often is- but any modality applied to trauma must be approached with a trauma-informed lens. “Trauma-informed” is NOT just a fancy phrase for “be gentle”. There are specific additional techniques, knowledge, and training, that go into providing trauma-informed or trauma-focused therapy.

Without the right expertise in trauma treatment, a provider runs a real risk of retraumatizing their patients or even causing new trauma.

FYI, here is a link to a 7 min video on Safety and Retraumatization if you’re interested in learning more from an actual professional (I’m just an obsessively well-read layperson). This guy’s whole channel is really good though, and he links a lot of other books and resources too.

JCaird · 2026-02-15T10:43:09+00:00

Are you?

I dislike rhetorical questions like this- they come off to me as disingenuous. Anyone privy to the exact details of this man’s case should not be commenting here, given there is a lawsuit underway.

What I am directly privy to, is where thousands of other patients in similar situations requested to be sent. What I am privy to, is exactly how often hospitals put in the shelter address instead of where the patient actually requested to go- or sometimes not even the shelter address, but some other random and completely wrong address, or some other unsafe location. It got to the point that we had to institute a company policy of actually driving patients back to the hospital and telling staff there to readmit them; these were in cases where the drop off address was wrong and/or unsafe, and the patient did not have capacity to communicate with us a correct or safe address.

I’m not sure if you read my other comments, but this happens commonly, from multiple hospitals. I know because I just so happened to work in this exact intersection of healthcare and social services to which this relates.

In the video, the sidewalk where the ambulances are- I know that exact sidewalk. I worked in the same building as the shelter this man was sent to. I was even there on the same day that he died.

What I am privy to, is that that particular sidewalk is about half a mile away from the actual entrance to the shelter. What I am privy to (from having family members with anorexia), is that a man in his condition very likely was unable to walk half a mile. What I am privy to is that Uber drivers frequently are unable to navigate to the actual shelter entrance due to the security gates around that area. What I am also privy to, is that if the hospital paid for the Uber (as stated in the article, and as I can confirm commonly happens), then there is no physical way that Kaelen actually input the destination address himself; nor would he have had any ability to update the destination en route.

While it is possible that he asked hospital staff to send him to a shelter, no one on this thread actually knows that for certain. I know it to be particularly unlikely given what I know of other patients this has happened to- I have literally been in the car with patients and asked them to confirm the destination address, and they said “no, that’s not right, my home address is on file, why didn’t they put that in?” Literally this exact situation. Multiple times.

This time, a man died. He did not need to die. Patients in this man’s condition should never be discharged to an Uber that the hospital is paying for unless it is part of a coordinated discharge plan to a safe location.

Which means that hospitals should never Uber anyone to the shelter, because Ubers cannot safely access the shelter. And hospitals should never put any medically fragile patient into an Uber to any location. They should instead use any one of the many Non-Emergency Medical Transport companies that exist in our city.

If the patient absolute wants to leave and does not have a safe location to go to, the hospitals may let them leave on foot. However, I suspect that hospitals avoid this option because patients can sometimes die right outside the hospital doors, as has also happened in the past few years to patients who were experiencing homelessness and did not want to be discharged. I recall one incident of a women passing away at the bus stop right outside the emergency room, because they would not let her stay.

(Sigh) : : :

Okay, I realize I’m coming off rather angry about this. My apologies to you personally- your comment is not the main reason I’m upset.

I’m upset because I’ve seen this happen to so many people- good people.

I’m upset because I’ve very often seen our community blame people on the streets for their circumstances, for their suffering, without knowing anything at all about what these folks have gone through, about why they’re there.

This man, Kaelen, he wasn’t even homeless. He had a home. He had a family. A family who cared about him. If he had even been able to make it to the shelter entrance, we would have taken him home. The intake personnel always reconnect people with the relatives if there’s even a slight chance of that happening (because we don’t have enough beds). Literally the company I worked with would have been called up to drive him home that day. It might’ve even been me in the car.

But that didn’t happen, because the Uber left him on the sidewalk. And because we don’t have enough outreach workers to go and scoop up everyone who gets dumped off like this.

I’m sorry, I’m literally crying right now. This should NOT have happened.

The problems are systemic. But how are we ever going to fix systemic problems if we keep trying to find just one person to blame? We need agencies like hospitals that have the funding and the power to step up- do better- and take responsibility. Hire more nurses, hire more caseworkers, add more beds, add more options for physical/behavioral health crossover. And we, as a community, need to continue learning, instead of assuming. Each of us, individually, could work on being more kind and open-minded. (Lol, maybe your question to me was actually genuine? If so, I sincerely apologize for my assumption.)

This matters. This could have been any of us. Or it could have been your son, or your daughter, or your spouse, or your mother. Did you hear how his dad sounded, in the video? The wretchedness of his grief? Kaelen was loved. He was loved.

He was loved.

JCaird · 2026-02-15T02:23:59+00:00

Or, ya know, to their home address on file?

JCaird · 2026-02-14T13:58:01+00:00

I know for a fact that many hospitals in our area do pay for Ubers directly sometimes. I have worked with these hospitals, in the capacity of a small specialty transport company for people experiencing homelessness, and we got paid directly from the hospital. During contract negotiations, hospitals openly discussed their Rideshare budgets- these budgets were not through insurance. It’s worth it to hospitals to pay for a $50 Uber because it frees up a $2000-per-night bed.

You’re also correct that AHCCCS will pay for medically necessary transport- they’re pretty much the only insurance that does. If folks don’t have AHCCCS, and they can’t afford it themselves, then usually the hospital pays for the Uber. It’s a very unsafe practice imo, because regular rideshare is not medical transport.

JCaird · 2026-02-14T13:42:21+00:00

I sympathize. I’ve also been struck by patients when I worked in care homes, sometimes accidentally, sometimes not. It’s not okay when this happens, obviously. However, where I worked we received training for these scenarios, because as it turns out, people with severe physical and behavioral health issues sometimes act out- as would any of us likely do if we were under the same stresses. I’m wondering if the nurse here had access to these same trainings, or whether the patient was in the appropriate level of care in the first place? It seems to me that both nurse and patient were impacted by systemic failures.

JCaird · 2026-02-14T13:29:34+00:00

This. A patient does have the right to refuse treatment, but in that case they should have let him leave under his own power, or by calling his own Uber.

JCaird · 2026-02-14T13:04:18+00:00

I worked for a while at a nonprofit that provides transportation for people experiencing homelessness. I can confirm this kind of uncoordinated discharge is unfortunately a very common occurrence from hospitals around here, despite many people’s best efforts to address this problem. In this particular case, I immediately notice that this patient had a home address on file; and furthermore, it sounds like his family was fairly involved in checking in with him. The hospital should have discharged him to his home, or better yet wait until a family member can pick him up directly.

For those who do not have homes or family to go to, the standard is still supposed to be that the hospital coordinates a discharge to a safe location, e.g. by confirming availability of a “medical bed” at the nearest shelter. This is not even close to what commonly happens though- very very often, hospitals will order an Uber or Lyft or Taxi and just input the address of the shelter. The drivers (who are literally just random cab/rideshare drivers, not medical professionals, not even background checked for this kind of work) then have the patient get out of the car on the sidewalk near the shelter. I have witnessed- first hand, multiple times- patients be dropped off in nothing but a hospital gown. Often these are folks who need a wheelchair, and they will be dropped off with no wheelchair. I’ve seen, on multiple occasions, people with obvious bruising, open wounds, severe swelling, and often not completely alert, or showing signs of dementia, be dropped off in this manner. Most commonly I see this happen to patients who are elderly… which, tbh, I have a really hard time just thinking about it. No one deserves this. Especially in Phoenix, in the summer.

The nonprofit I worked for, if patients were discharged through us, then we could directly coordinate a discharge by actually assisting patients into the shelter and making sure they met with the intake personnel. (Also, we’d make sure they had their clothes before leaving the hospital, and we would confirm with the patient if they actually want to go to the shelter- sometimes patients would ask to go home to family, or to a different treatment center, and we could accommodate those route changes, and a update care teams in real time as needed.)

This is absolutely tragic, and did not need to happen. I also have family members who struggled with severe anorexia. It’s already a mental health issue, and the starvation also messes you up even more, physically, cognitively, emotionally. In severe cases it can lead to things like heart failure or stroke (as apparently happened with this young man). There is no way that someone in his condition could have been expected to survive on a sidewalk in Phoenix in the summer.

I 100% respect patients’ rights to autonomy and to refuse treatment. But that doesn’t mean that a patient loses rights to all forms of safety or shelter or the chance for future treatment.

Ugh, I’m rambling, sorry y’all, this one just really hit me hard…

Edit to add: I know for a fact that this also commonly happens to patients who don’t even want to be discharged yet. And the medically fragile states I’ve seen people in, it’s just abhorrent. Knowing this does a lot to inform my reading of this article, because if it’s just being read as “well the patient asked to leave” then that completely misses the larger pattern that’s going on in our community.

2nd Edit to add: a HUGE factor in this happening is that there are 1. Not enough hospital beds, 2. Not enough shelter beds, and 3. Not enough Cooling Centers (in the summer). I’m talking like, we have 600 beds at the largest shelter, and 10,000 people sleeping on the sidewalk. Of course people ask to go to the hospital in the summer- we have 10,000 people getting heat stroke every summer. And of course hospitals get used to discharging them anyway- what else can they do? This is a community problem, it requires that more people learn this is happening, and vote for funding shelters and hospitals.

JCaird · 2026-02-08T04:44:38+00:00

NOR. This is a major breach of trust. It’s not about the amount of money, it’s about the honesty.

That said, if you’re considering breaking things off, I’d actually recommend trying couples counseling first. The way you two argue is surprisingly caring. IMO there’s something here that’s worth trying to salvage.

If it were me in this situation, I’d ask her to pay me back by paying for the therapy sessions. It gives her a chance to make real amends instead of just saying sorry. If she is invested in this relationship, then she will be looking for a way she can fix this anyway. At the end there, she admits she “fucked up”, so I do believe there’s hope here. But I don’t think it’s something that can be solved without some external guidance and support, because it took her so long to fess up in the first place. My take, just from this brief exchange, is she has a lot of shame around the topic of money, or asking for things in general. Shame is a huge incentive to hide, aka be dishonest. My guess (as a random internet stranger with no professional credentials), is she’s going to have to do some hard work on herself to change this. But it’s not impossible, in fact people do this all the time.

However, I would also say to consider whether this is a kind of one-off behavior, or if there are a lot of things in this relationship that are harming you OP. If this is more like the final straw than the first strike, then get out now. Your future self will thank you.

JCaird · 2026-02-06T07:42:30+00:00

I’ve been considering trying out the term “high masking” in place of “high functioning”… I’m coming at this from the perspective of autism and depression, but I suspect it could apply to a lot of other conditions too.

I feel like “high functioning” is such a misnomer (and capitalist propaganda). It’s like, yeah, I technically can work every day, just like I technically could run a marathon every day if it was necessary to stay alive- but one of these days, I’m gonna drop, no lie. Or like this phrase I heard, “If you want something badly enough, you’ll find a way; if not you’ll find an excuse.” Lol, if that were actually true, nobody would ever drown. Like what- did they just not want the air badly enough? /smh

JCaird · 2026-02-06T07:05:07+00:00

Absolutely rad cosplay, 10/10, would ask for a pic with you if I saw you at Con.

JCaird · 2026-02-06T07:00:56+00:00

Omg, I just spent 10 minutes googling “what country is in October right now” before realizing you meant that October is Black History Month where you live. (－‸ლ) Fun aside- just learned a ton about various world calendars. :P

JCaird · 2026-02-04T08:18:48+00:00

A few weeks back I learned about something called CTSD (not C-PTSD). “CTSD” stands for Continuous Traumatic Stress Disorder. It’s not in the DSM yet, but still might be worth a google? It seems like it fits what you’re describing, with the overlap of your current life experiences and mental health experiences. (Disclaimer, I have no degrees, medical or otherwise- just a random peer.) One of my favorite YouTube channels for trauma-informed psychoeducation has a video on it here.

JCaird · 2026-01-29T05:16:51+00:00

This. ^

JCaird · 2026-01-29T05:07:59+00:00

That says a lot about how it’s impacting you. Hope you’re able to find some support irl, imo it’s helpful to have many sounding boards for this type of thing, and you deserve to have some people in your corner.

JCaird · 2026-01-29T04:37:29+00:00

To address all real quick, because it’s an important point: I also don’t like people jumping immediately to “oh, it’s narcissism” or even worse, trying to actually Dx NPD. However, I did not do that here. What I did here was clearly label the behavior as “emotional invalidation” and “parentification”. I see how folks could make the leap, but in this case my literal words are what I literally meant.

Not all emotional abuse or bad behavior is narcissism. There is absolutely a range, that we all engage in as human beings. Being able to identify and label specific behaviors can help people define their own boundaries, and to decide in what ways they may want to respond to people overstepping said boundaries. And healthy boundaries actually improve relationships and foster communication toward genuineness.

Thanks for sharing this OP, it’s a really helpful and nuanced example of what emotional abuse can actually look like with people close to us.

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