Tag Archives: oppositional defiance

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Adverse Childhood Experiences 14: Hope

I keep reading bits about despair and about how a generation of children is being “ruined” by the pandemic.

Not so, I say. There is hope. We need to support each other to survive and then to thrive.

This generation WILL have a higher than average ACE score. If the Adverse Childhood Experience scale is from zero to eight, children in this time period will have at least one higher point than average and many will have three or four or more. Loss of a parent, a sibling, beloved grandparents during covid. Increases in domestic violence, child abuse and addiction. These are all part of the ACE score.

What does this do to children? They have survival brain wiring. They will do their best to survive what is happening. A friend and I both have high ACE scores, 5 or more, and we are both oppositional defiant. We showed this in different ways. He grew up in the same community. He escaped from home and knew all the neighbors. He walked to the local church and attended at age 3 or 4. He has lived in this community all his life.

His oppositional defiance showed up at home, where he consistently refused to obey. And in school, where he confounded and disobeyed teachers and passed anyhow.

My family moved every 1-5 years. I hated moving. I wouldn’t talk to kids in a new school for a year. It was very difficult. So my oppositional defiance was very very internal. I hid in books and in my head. In 6th grade I got in trouble for hiding novels inside the school book I’d already read. I also would just not listen and my respect for the teacher got even lower when she would be angry that I knew the answer to the question once she’d repeated it. I wasn’t listening because I was bored. She was the first teacher that I thought, well, she is not very bright. The next year they stuck me in the honors class and I stopped being bored, though I still questioned practically every opinion every teacher had. I wanted evidence and I did not believe it just because the teacher said it.

I am not saying that oppositional defiance is in every high ACE score. I don’t know that. Why oppositional defiance? Imagine you are a small child and you are beaten. There isn’t rhyme or reason. You can’t predict when the adult will be out of control. Why would you behave “well” if it makes no difference? You might as well do what you want, because nothing you do will change the adult. Or imagine you are a small child who is with one person, passed to another, then to another. You may not exactly trust adults after two or three repetitions. And you want to survive.

There is an increase in addictions, behavioral health diagnoses, and chronic illness in adults with a high ACE score. A researcher when I first heard a lecture about it said, “We think perhaps that addiction is a form of self medication.” I thought, oh, my gosh, how are we ever going to treat THIS? Well, we have to figure that out now, and we’ve had 30 years to work on it.

I was very comfortable with the oppositional defiant patients in clinic. I got very good at not arguing with them and not taking their behavior personally. They might show up all spiky and hostile and I might be a little spiky and gruff back: sometimes that was enough. I think the high ACE score people often recognize each other at some level, though not always a conscious one. With some people I might bring up ACE scores and ask about their childhood. Sometimes they wanted to discuss it. Sometimes they didn’t. Either was ok.

One thing we should NOT do is insist that everyone be “nice”. We had a temporary doctor who told us her story. Her family escaped Southeast Asia in a boat. They had run out of water and were going to die when they were found by pirates. The pirates gave them water. They made it to land and were in a refugee camp for eight years or so. She eventually made it to the US. She was deemed too “undiplomatic” for our rural hospital. I wondered if people would have said that if they knew her history and what she had been through. It’s not exactly a Leave it to Beaver childhood, is it? When she was telling us about nearly dying of thirst in the boat, my daughter left her chair and climbed on my lap. She was under ten and understood that this was a true and very frightening story.

We can support this generation of children. This has been and is still being Adverse Experiences for adults as well. Family deaths, job loss, failure of jobs to support people, inflation. Remember the 1920s, after World War I and the last pandemic, of influenza. “On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, which provided enabling legislation to implement the 18th Amendment.” (wikipedia). There were forces trying to legislate behavior, as there are now. The result in 1920s of making alcohol illegal was speakeasies, illegal alcohol, and violence. Some people acted wild after WWI and the influenza pandemic and some people tried to lock down control, by controlling other peoples’ behavior. It did not work then and it will not work now. The wildness is out of control grief, I think, grief dysfunctional and drinking and shooting and doing anything and everything, legal or not. We remember how the 1920s ended too. Let us not repeat that. Let us mourn and grieve and support each other and support each other’s decisions and autonomy.

Blessings.

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Vaccine refusal folly

Who should NOT get vaccinated for Covid-19?

This is supposed to be humor. You may not find it funny.

Clearly oppositional defiant people do NOT get vaccinated. Here are a list of the reasons that I have heard, most of them said to my face or on email:

Hyper Conservative:
1. God will take care of me.
2. It’s false news. All made up by the media. The media is liberal. Even Fox News. Even CNN. They don’t know the true meaning of conservatism. I honor the flag.
3. We do our own research. We have better and deeper sources even than QAnon. If you don’t know what I am talking about than you don’t know! Why are you so stupid?
4. Alien lizards made the vaccine and it has tiny nanobots and it is tracking us and will take over our brains. Some people have ALREADY HAD THEIR BRAINS TAKEN OVER BY LIBERAL MEDIA AND NOW QANON! It’s probably best to bunker down.
5. No I don’t vote. Where is my medicaid check? Those evil government people are trying to take away my mother’s social security. If I voted, I would be part of the problem.
6. Masks kill you. Because you breathe your own breath. It’s not the CO2. You didn’t realize that your breath was THAT foul, did you? EEEEEEE-YUK.
7. No one can tell me what to do. If they do, I won’t do it. I won’t die. So there.

Hyper Liberal:
1. Goddess will take care of me.
2. Antibiotics are evil. Vaccines are evil. If you live NATURALLY, you will live forever. But I ordered that book that tells you how to cook your own medicines on your stove!
3. There is this HERB. It fixes everything. What do you MEAN, my kidneys are failing? But I live NATURALLY.
4. Doctors are evil. Well, not naturopaths. The government is evil. Yeah, I’m on medicaid. My mother NEEDS her medicare check. WTF is WRONG with you people? Why would I VOTE on the evil government?
5. Scientists are evil. If they would use NATURAL remedies, we’d all be fine. No, I don’t get labs checked. I don’t need to. Yes, these are shoes. Whaddaya MEAN shoes aren’t natural? These are handmade with hemp processed in a massive factory and NO LEATHER because LEATHER IS EVIL. I have bamboo towels, too, bamboo is natural. What do you MEAN it takes a fungkload of chemicals to process bamboo into fabric? It’s NATURAL.
6. Humans are evil. We should live naturally. Yes, I live in a house. Houses are natural. If you use natural cleansers and only allow natural fabrics and toys and crystals and foods. I don’t approve of logging. Yes, my house is made of wood, what of it?
7. No one can tell me what to do. If they do, I won’t do it. I won’t die. So there.

Martians:
1. It makes their brains explode in their helmets.

Alien Lizards posing as humans:
1. Well, actually we need to get the vaccine. I got it.

Gorillas:
1. They get the vaccine too, even the oppositional defiant ones. Except for the wild ones that are really canny and who we can’t catch and dart gun with the vaccine.

This is supposed to be humor. You may not find it funny. Don’t use it as proof that you shouldn’t get the vaccine, though people with really crazy ideas shouldn’t get it. Did you hear that they are about to send all the remaining vaccine supply to Africa because people here are refusing it? Is that a rumor or is it true?
The CDC has other ideas. But we don’t trust them, right?

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: folly.

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Ode to defiance

Is oppositional defiance running YOUR life?

I am oppositional defiant. I have been for as long as I can remember. I ALWAYS want to argue when someone tells me to do something or gives me advice. BUT, I have learned to work with it.

I work with it by arguing with myself.

Give me a topic. Or advice. I will promptly argue the opposite, internally or externally. Then I will argue the original side. Then my demon fights my angel until they are both tired and decide to go have a beer. Somewhere along the way I will make a decision and also I will laugh, because it’s funny.

B has figured this out. “You argue with EVERYTHING.” he says.

“Yes, and if there is no one around, I argue with myself. All the time.”

However, he is also oppositional defiant. He is smart too, and doing some self examination.

“I am thinking about my life. I think ALL of my important decisions were oppositional defiant ones.”

“Someone told you you couldn’t do that?

“Yes.”

He’s chewing on that. Heh. He accuses ME of overthinking. I replied that I am making up for his underthinking, heh. He suggests that I STOP overthinking and I say, “You want to DESTROY the SOURCE of my poetry?” Double heh.

The point is, some of us are oppositional defiant, but really, we don’t want that to run our lives EITHER. We don’t want ANYTHING or ANYONE to tell us what to do.

B says, “I think that everyone refusing the vaccine is oppositional defiant.” He has a lot of friends, both liberal and conservative.

“That is interesting.” I say. And I wonder if it is worth dying for, to be oppositional defiant. Not if it’s running your life, right? I don’t want ANYTHING to run my life except ME.

So then I spend a bunch of time arguing with myself about the causes of refusing the vaccine. And I have not reached a conclusion. Yet.

I took the photograph at the Bellevue Mall on Monday. A three story waterfall. Really? Isn’t there enough rain in Seattle? We should have a three story sun instead.

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in praise of opposititional defiance

I am oppositional defiant.

I can and will argue about anything. ANYTHING.

And guess what? I can and will argue either side.

In fact, when I am sick there is only one person to argue with. Myself.

So that is what I do. Autopilot. I think of something and then instantly question it. Is it true, do I really agree with it, what arguments are on the other side. Sometimes there is an angel on one side and the devil on the other. Sometimes it’s two scientists or politicians or I’m arguing the male viewpoint as far as I can versus the female as far as I can.

One time my mother in law was visiting when my son was around nine. She looked out the window. My son was pacing back and forth in front of the garage.

“I am worried about him.” said my mother in law

“Why?” I said, glancing out at him.

“He’s bored.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Just LOOK at him pace.”

“He’s not bored.”

She was shocked and slightly outraged.

I said, “Go stand by him.”

She looked confused but she did it.

After a bit she came back inside. “You are right, he’s not bored.”

Because, you see, I knew what he was doing when he paced there. He was narrating a story out loud. It usually involved spaceships, dinosaurs, other planets and explosions. He did sound effects. It was the opposite of boring. It was very very exciting.

When I needed his attention I would say his name. If that didn’t work, I would start adding sound effects. I would add explosion noises and squeaks and dinosaur calls at inappropriate times. He would stop and glare at me.

I have to say that now I am not surprised that he was a late reader. I am actually surprised that the teacher could talk through the explosions and dinosaurs and spaceships at all….

Anyhow, pick a controversial topic. Argue one side of it. Then switch positions and argue the other side. If you can’t, you need more information from the other side. Do a search on google. This will confuse the hell out of your feed, which knows very well that you are not a fan of oil drilling or hunting elk. But it’s GOOD to confuse your feed, it needs to know that you are a versatile thoughtful very smart human being.

And have a great time arguing with yourself. Be sure to put the blue tooth in your ear so that no one calls the people with nets to take you away…..