branchandroot

Gather round, friends, while I tell a tale of how absolutely vital it is to be ready to defend your boundaries around the typically neurotypical.

This week I was at an intensive leadership workshop, the kind that’s kissing cousins with indoctrination camps in my personal book—-straight through from 8-6 plus evening ‘outings’, breaks that are actually assigned socialization or team project time, constant demands on your cognition and sociability hand in hand. Some people like this. I am not one of them.

Unfortunately, turning down the ‘opportunity’ is a lot like turning down an actual promotion. It means you don’t get offered any more promotions, not from that boss at least.

But you know, I had vague hopes about this one! My personal ‘executive coach’ averred repeatedly that while it was important to push beyond one’s professional comfort zone, one’s personal safety zone should be sacrosanct.

So, when, in the afternoon of the second day, we got to the “neuroscience of habits” segment and circled up to play a ‘game’ that involved counting off around the circle with “buzz” instead of the actual number used for 7, multiples of 7, and numbers with 7 in them…

Well, I stepped forward and said that some of us, as in me, wouldn’t be able to do that, being discalculaic. To his credit, my own coach offered to stop the game. Unfortunately, the woman in charge of this particular event said “oh, let’s do just one more round”.

Because, of course, she had no idea what discalculia is, and was too fucking typically neurotypical to ask what I meant. So we went another round, in which I very fortuitously did not get a number that was a multiple of seven, which I would have failed instantly, and then I quietly left the room and had a massive meltdown. Because, goddamn woman, could you hit all of my k-12 damage about being set up to fail for math harder if I drew you a target?

…which, of course, I had, not that she saw it.

Thankfully, my departure was noticed, and pointed out by several of the group, along with the group norm that we had all agreed to, about how if someone was not prepared to be “open and vulnerable” everyone else was to respect that. Two people in my cohort texted to let me know that the group talked that through, and how they’d failed as allies, and to offer hugs. That part was nice.

Ms. Clueless emailed to ask to speak with me when I was ready, which took about an hour and a half, and also a double dose of my breakthrough panic meds. And she apologized, and was suitably ashamed of herself, and everyone dealt well when I came back (which is to say, was kind without referring to the meltdown at all). They’re a good group, by and large. And the next day, when I felt a bit more steady, I agreed to educate a room full of people about what discalculia is, and immediately had about four people thank me because they thought they might recognize that description in their own relatives/children, and would see about accommodations.

So, happy ending. But the middle, the meltdown, still exists, still happened, and I’m still tearing up over twenty-four hours later, just writing about it.

And the bitch of it is, we HAD AN AGREED UPON NORM that said I could call quits. If I’d been able to say one more No, I’d probably have been okay, because my coach would have backed me up, and I suspect several of the group would have also. But I hadn’t mentally prepared to defend like that, so I got stuck in that deer-in-the-headlights, lets-play-nice spot for just a breath too long.

Unfortunately, I think the moral of the story is that, unless you have a partner who knows and is prepared to defend you while you take a break, you can’t drop your guard at these things. No matter how much they try to team-build, no matter how much they engage in the milder versions of trauma bonding within the group… you have to turn that bonding reflex off and take care of you. And it’s going to be especially hard if you have a history of boundary problems, because if you don’t have a ‘rule’ for how to handle that kind of situation it’s so, so easy to slide back into ‘no rules, no boundaries’. So set your rules first, before you go, before you engage. Rule one: protect yourself, stay safe, and FUCK playing nice.

Because being the object lesson in basic fucking empathy is never fun, and it’s never your job.