TW: Descriptions of harmful practices.
This might come as a shock, but I don’t have much of a history of behaving in ways neurotypical people would expect. I know. Take all the time you need with that.
Over time, I’ve suspected this might be part of the reason I can sometimes relate to our clients with similar histories. It also stopped me from buying wholeheartedly into some of the behaviors I’d been told to “address” (re: stimming). For the people I would eventually be working for however, these behaviors were about as appealing as they were to my peers growing up. With varying levels of constructiveness, I often received feedback on my “professionalism.”
I noticed it right off the bat. In grad school, I’m watching my classmates teach “social skills” and sitting there like, “how do I teach a subject in which I have no expertise?” I would be told to fake it til I made it not for the first or the last time.
Funny thing about that: Isn’t “faking it til you make it” literally the definition of social skills in a neurotypical world?
That’s a different post for a different day.
Like pretty much every adult on the planet with a late neurodivergence diagnosis, the mask started to come off, I started to let my freak flag fly, and lo and behold, I found myself more successful in social interactions than I literally ever had in my entire life. Around the same time, the feedback about my “professionalism” also started to disappear.
As I started to navigate my environments, figure out where I thrived and where I didn’t, I also found myself moving to increasingly less, shall we say stuffy, work environments. Of course, as I laid in bed at night, and my brain was replaying every cringey memory it’s ever stored in there (you know how it goes), I found myself frequently pondering the same question. How could I have found a balance between professionalism and the purple-furred weirdo I am on the inside by leaning more into the “wrong” side?
What the fuck even is professionalism?
One thing that constantly haunted me in these uncomfortable meetings about what I needed to improve upon was what exactly those behaviors were I was supposed to be changing. The explanations would vary widely and were always vague. On the few occasions in which I was given a specific example, it was usually so far into the realm of ridiculous that my brain couldn’t take it in.
Check this: One time, as a young BCBA fresh out of grad school, I was told one of the reasons I was unprofessional was because a kid farted very loudly once and I giggled a little.
Oh man, call the authorities.
Yeah, I had a human reaction to a human bodily function and was reprimanded for it. And yes, I have it on good authority that humans have been laughing at bodily functions for literal millennia.
I don’t recount this story because I’m bitter – that company doesn’t even exist anymore. I recount it because it highlights the only common thread I could ever find in these “feedback sessions.”
Fake. Something pretending to be human that really isn’t (present opossums excluded).
In compiling all of this data in my brain, I determined that professionalism was the epitome of an adult from the eyes of a child: A stiff old teacher who smells like mothballs and never smiles. They’re the librarian shushing you for turning the pages too loudly. They’re the pearl-clutchers who never wear anything lower-cut than their chin and expect their children to act like little adults.
So I tried it. After all, I wanted to succeed in my career, and succeeding in my career meant acting like an adult, even though you’re trying to make friends with children. So wait, when I interact with children, it’s OK to be a little less adult, but then the second you address someone older than 10, you have to switch back to the adult, right? Hang on…
Yeah, oddly enough, it didn’t work.
Maybe it’s just us…
I’m about to drop another shocking truth bomb: Neurodivergent people are not great at faking like this. Usually, we have more experience trying it than neurotypical people. We have to work a lot harder, have a lot more to navigate in the process, and expend a hell of a lot more energy doing it.
From a learning standpoint, rarely do we experience much reinforcement for our efforts either. On the contrary, most of us end up receiving extinction, if not punishment. So we’ve been trying to fake it til we make it literally from the first moment we get placed with other members of our species, but the amount of feedback telling us we’re getting it right is fewer and farther between than the feedback telling us we’re getting it wrong. So we’re just faking it, but never making it.
This may or may not be sounding familiar to you.
If you’re here, you’ve probably come across some less-than-flattering feedback about our field from our neurodivergent clientele. One of the biggest stings often delivered is that ABA is conversion therapy for autistics, an attempt to make neurodivergent people appear less so. This criticism is valid, and it leaks into the way we train our baby BCBAs.
Let’s examine for a moment how BCBAs and therapists are often described by autistic adults who went through ABA when they were younger. Often there’s the description of the behavior analyst walking around with their clipboard or laptop, talking about the person (in front of them), describing their behavior to therapists and caregivers in clinical and cold terms with varying levels of accuracy. Then at some point, these professionals turn to the autistic person, giant smile plastered across their face, high-pitched bubbly voice, and start opening up their bag of fun.
After a few sessions of play dough, trains, and bubbles, the autistic person does something “unacceptable,” and the bubbles turn off. The face goes flat, the therapist stands up, and they turn back into that person who was talking about them at first. Once the autistic person’s behavior has returned to something deemed acceptable, there might be more clinical discussion, maybe a behavior plan in place to mimic this behavior, and this confusing marionette of a person leaves for the day.
This is a very simplified summary compiled by the various stories I have read from autistic people who have received ABA in the past. I am not one of these victims, and it is not my intention to oversimplify or in any other way misrepresent someone’s very real, lived, traumatic experiences. My point with this description is the common themes in the impressions our “professional” behavior has left: We are fake, robotic, rigid – a living uncanny valley. We take this behavior class, and then try to “pair” with neurodivergent people, often children, and expect them to learn– from us– how to navigate and identify healthy social relationships.
BCBAs especially are often described as rigid and robotic, yet we encourage this behavior among one another in the interest of remaining “professional.” Office norms are also often imposed, such as limiting visible or uncommon body modifications like tattoos and hair colors, and business casual dress codes that are somehow supposed to translate into getting down on the floor and playing with children.
We call it professionalism and, true to form, we as a field took this to an extreme.
Have you tried not faking it?
Think of the people you trust the most – I mean really trust. Think of a person that for you is completely safe. You know you can be at your most vulnerable around them, and they will do nothing other than what is best for you. If you don’t have someone in your life like that, think of a fictional character you may have seen who represents this, or maybe imagine what this person would be if they did exist.
What is that person like when you’re not the center of their attention? What are they like when they interact with people other than you? Have you ever seen them when they didn’t know you were in the room? How different are they?
My guess would be that the differences are slight. Sure, we all have to mask and adjust our behavior according to different social situations, but the changes should still be consistent with the person’s character. Maybe that person thinks fart jokes are fucking hilarious. They may not be making fart jokes at the wedding, but they are probably still appreciating humor of some kind.
Even people we may not get along with very well will have at least some points in their corner if they are genuine and consistent. Inconsistencies in character are literally never well received.
“Yeah, she’s nice enough, but she seems really fake,” is never used to describe someone we want to spend more time around, and certainly wouldn’t want to be forced to do so. You know, like children who don’t have much control over who they interact with and who they don’t.
It’s a well-known fact, especially in the field of mental health: We’re more successful when we’re genuine – genuine to ourselves and to others. This is of course much easier said than done. Our environments shape what behaviors we choose to engage in, which is what makes behavior change so potentially dangerous when it is in the hands of someone with a poor understanding and/or appreciation of internal events and mental health. That really is the heart of the issue here.
Who came up with these rules of professionalism? Neurotypicals. They wouldn’t be the norms if they didn’t. The world wouldn’t be so hard for neurodivergent people if it was built for us. As such, ABA perpetuates these rules because it was literally created to force these norms on others, whether we as individual practitioners agree with that value or not.
So what is that balance?
The point is even children can tell you’re being fake; perhaps even more so because they lack the internalized social norms to pretend they don’t and give the benefit of the doubt. Our “professionalism” has violated trust not just with our learners, but with their caregivers as well. Promising compassion and care and then turning into what looks an awful lot like a psychopath has done trauma to many caregivers as well as their loved ones.
That being said, there is a certain level of… something… expected when you are coming to a place of business. There are behavior classes that make others more or less comfortable and confident in your services. I’m just pretty sure that natural hair colors and a purely wholesome, G-rated sense of humor aren’t part of it.
As I’ve gone quite a while now working for increasingly neurodivergent-affirming practices, I’ve not heard much about how I need to work on my professionalism. On the contrary, I’ve managed to form good, genuine rapport with coworkers, learners, and caregivers alike. So just based on my honest experience, here are some aspects I have come to understand as real, comfortable professionalism:
- Genuineness: Behave in a way that is true to who you are. Engage in behavior that comes naturally to you, but maybe if the social situation you’re in is less your best friend’s birthday party at the bar and more your cousin’s rustic wedding on a farm. A little quirkiness is good. It shows you’re a human and not a robot… or maybe if you are a robot, just be up front about that.
- Humility: Some behavior analysts (coughABAIcough) seem to be allergic to admitting mistakes or wrongdoing. There’s this Old Guard (™) belief that being wrong is the absolute worst thing you can be– that somehow all of your credibility goes out the window if you’re caught being anything less than omniscient. Here’s the thing though: No one who matters respects that. Owning up to mistakes builds trust. It shows you’re transparent and not so up your own ass that you’ll never be open to feedback. It allows you to listen to a learner’s and/or a caregiver’s concerns with sincerity. It allows them to know that they are heard, and that you will work with them to reach their goals (right?). Showing openness to learning makes you safer and more trustworthy than the person who is clearly convinced they already know everything.
- Compassion and empathy: Your learner wants to do well. Your learner’s caregiver(s) want to do well, and usually they want their loved one to do well too. The other professionals on your learner’s team usually want them to do well. Stop acting like ABA is the only field in the world with anything to offer. Genuinely care about your learner’s goals, interests, concerns, feelings, even if their priorities aren’t the same as yours. And for trash’s sake, stop “pairing” just so you can get compliance.
- Stop telling autistic people they are wrong about their own experiences: You don’t know their own lives better than they do just because you have a post-grad degree.