autistic blitzø enthusiast

Anyone else remember having their parents try to teach you Emotional Regulation Skills way too early and only understanding in hindsight how fucking nuts it is to try to do what they were doing to a kid. Like having your mom tell you "you're the only one who's in charge of your feelings :) nobody can MAKE you feel bad unless you let them :)" but at the same time you'd get scolded for making someone else feel bad by being rude or acting out, so in practice you're both in charge of your own feelings but also everyone else's feelings, and that didn't feel fair, but you had no idea how to put that into words because you're five.

it only occurred to me years later, but if "you control your emotions" and "you choose how to feel" then every time my parents got angry at me it was because they chose to be angry, which doesnt seem like the kind of thing you want to be teaching your kid

a lot of advocates of sexual assault awareness have talked about this in recent years but it's actually like. REALLY important not to conflate "sex I regret having" with "sexual assault." yes, the person who was cheating was a dirtbag. sorry you had sex with a dirtbag! but being a shithead isn't the same thing as being a rapist, and finding out something you don't like about someone after you've already had sex with them is not the same thing as being coerced or assaulted by a long shot.