Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
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DPXDC Prompt 58 Part 7
The long dining room that held the ornate old dining table that seated way too many people already held most of the family. Bruce was missing and Damian informed them he was at work, the only other person missing was Jason but it was typical for him to skip out as he didn’t live there and didn’t have the best track record with the rest of the family. That left Damian, Tim, Cass, Duke, and Dick seated.
Damian sat next to the chair that Bruce normally sat in at the head of the table. Tim sat across from Damian followed by Dick, Duke, and Cass. Danny sat next to Damian and Jazz sat next to Danny.
“So, how was school?” Dick asked his elbows on the table with his head on his hands and a smile. He was the only adult in their life besides Bruce that actually cared about their schooling.
Danny had actually forgotten that all of this had happened in just one day. The thought was a little jarring if Danny was being honest with himself. He wasn’t sure what to tell Dick, on one hand he was just asking about school on the other… no he wasn’t going to think about what happened right now. Just the thought caused phantom volts to go through his body like he was reliving the accident. He felt a nudge to his foot from the right and looked up to see Damian giving him a quizzical look. He cleared his throat and looked back over to Dick who was giving him the same kind of look.
“I-I’m, uh… school was fine, didn’t learn much since school just started,” He eventually decided to say after stumbling on his words a little.
“Dash isn’t picking on you again this year is he?” Dick asked with a concerned look on his face.
Danny wished it was just Dash, the pain he felt from the portal was a thousand times worse than anything the bullying blond could pull. If it was just Dash, Danny could have just laughed it off and forgotten it probably, but it wasn’t just Dash and Danny couldn’t help but take a deep breath trying to gather his thoughts and calm himself.
He startled as he felt a hand on his knee, he looked to his left to see Jazz giving him a look of sympathy as she rubs her thumb comfortingly on his knee. She then spoke, “Danny you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, Okay?”
Danny gave her a small nod, a small smile on his face.
Before a new topic could be discussed Alfred arrived with their food and began serving them. Danny loved the food the old butler cooked especially since he was able to do so in a kitchen that wasn’t contaminated. Alfred did his best to make sure everyone was served food to their liking, as long as it was a balanced meal at the end of the day the elderly butler would serve just about anything you’d request.
Danny picked up his fork to begin on his salad, however when he tried to push the fork into the lettuce his hand felt a cooling sensation with pins and needles and his fork went through his hand. He stared at his hand for a moment wondering what just happened. He then picked up his fork to try again and was able to get a mouth full, but when he went for a second bite it happened again, his fork clanging against the bowl again.
“Something wrong Danny? You're staring at your hand weird,” Danny heard Dick speaking and looked up to see Dick staring at him giving him an odd look.
Danny couldn’t help but rub his neck nervously with his other hand, he hoped to get ahold of whatever this was so no one noticed. Though knowing his luck everyone probably did notice, over the years he and Jazz both noticed that the Wayne family was much more observant than their media persona’s showed.
Dinner continued and Danny struggled to eat anything as anything he tried to hold fell through his hand frustratingly and Danny couldn’t help but get agitated.
Eventually his glass he was holding slipped through his hand and tumbled onto the floor shattering into a thousand pieces. Danny let out a frustrated sigh as he stared at the mess he made.
Before he could stand to clean up Alfred appeared by his side with a dustpan and broom and began cleaning it up, “are you still feeling unwell Master Daniel? Perhaps you should retire for the evening, I will attend to this mess.” Danny begrudgingly nodded his head and made his way out of the room.
He wasn’t alone for long as Damian and Jazz tailed him out of the room.
“What was that? It looked like your spoon was going through your hand,” Jazz asked after they were a ways from the dinning room.
“Jazz, honestly I don’t know, it felt cold and then anything I tried holding fell through my hand.” Danny brushed his bangs away from his forehead and they dropped back into his face as he dropped his hands back down to his side.
The walk went silent after that, although it didn’t stay for long as Danny felt the cooling sensation again but this time through his whole body, he let out a yelp as he felt his body sink into the floor.
Damian and Jazz looked at him with panic but as they grabbed at his arms or his hands to pull him back up they went through him just as the spoon and apparently the ground now.
He let out a panicked yell as the floor swallowed him whole, so now he was sinking further down further into the earth. What was going to happen to him? Would he ever find his way back up?
Thankfully he didn’t have to wait long as the cooling sensation left and as gravity took hold of him again he fell. Apparently there was a cave under the manor and he was able to turn back into solid as he felt air again. There was no way he was surviving this, even with new weird powers now was when he’d get impaled by spikes right?
The cave was too dark to make out much but Danny thought he might have seen a computer with several monitors. That didn’t matter now as he finally landed, and he grunted as he landed on a person who also grunted as having a teen land on you couldn’t be the most comfortable.
He knew he was in big trouble when he realized who he landed on, “Batman??”
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I want to know more about other peoples feelings about asmr like the actual sensation of asmr not just the content labeled as "asmr". so for the poll below, "can feel asmr" means experiences a static tingling sensation originating from the back of the head, then propagating to the neck, shoulder, arm, spine, and legs. "likes asmr content" refers to if you like all those videos with soothing sounds or whispering or things clinking together etc etc. so consider these things separately before voting.
ik not all "asmr content" actually induces asmr but not including options around that bcus I don't really care about if, for an example that describes how i feel, you can feel asmr & don't like the feeling but sometimes still enjoy some "asmr content" that doesn't cause asmr. I just want to know if people who feel asmr like the feeling or not.
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