Joy and the Fear It Induces #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again late writing my post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today is another hard day. Last week when talking to my support coordinator, I realized one of the problems might be the fact that I think I don’t deserve to be happy. This is not necessarily all there is to my trauma-related symptoms and, besides, is it still paranoia if they are actually out to get you?

I’ve mentioned the fear of joy before. It has been following me forever, since learning that I was losing the little sight I had at around age seven. I always prepared for the day when I’d go totally blind. That day still technically hasn’t come, although I can hardly call the tiny bit of light perception I do have sight.

Then there is Jolanda Venema. Dutch people who are in their fifties or older will no doubt remember her photo in a newspaper in 1988. She was chained to a bed, stripped naked, in an institution for people with intellectual disability. I learned a few years ago that it was actually the institution I live in now. I am not old enough to have actually seen the original newspaper article, but I did learn about a similar case in a child and adolescent psychiatric unit in Utrecht in around 1997. This particular girl, a 16-year-old at the time whose name I forgot, was even more like me than Jolanda, in that she had a borderline normal IQ. Cases like these have always haunted me, but that got worse when I entered the care system in 2005 and more so when I was admitted to the psychiatric hospital in 2007. At the time, staff literally told me that, when I needed more support than the three nurses to sixteen acutely ill patients (if they weren’t understaffed) could provide, I’d be locked up in seclusion. And I was. And coerced into taking high doses of medication to prevent me being secluded tons of times after that.

I know for a fact that I’m not allowed to be truly happy. The adage in care is, after all, that it’s better to provide okay’ish care to two people than excellent care to one. And I would’ve agreed if care ever had been excellent. But it never was in the 20+ years I’ve been in the system and not in the 20+ years before that. At least not for people like me and Jolanda.

This doesn’t mean I never experience moments of joy and I do try to acknowledge them. I’m not purposefully being more negative in order to elicit better care. If anything, the opposite is true. However, as another incident this evening proved, most people don’t nearly try their hardest and they don’t think others do either. Well guess what? I do! That doesn’t mean joyful moments don’t induce fear, but fear is not a choice. Besides, like I said, is it still paranoia if they are actually out to get you? I don’t think so.

Institutional Abuse: Abuse in the Care System #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter I post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today I want to talk about trauma that I for one didn’t experience in childhood: trauma and particularly abuse experienced in the care system. I’m struggling majorly with this, as just this evening I had an aggressive meltdown that led to me being thrown to the ground by one staff and another staff admitting that the only reason I’m not being locked up or physically restrained is the fact that I’m not strong enough.

I want to say here that my choice of words is a bit tricky. Is it “abuse” if the client was themself aggressive, even if it was “just” verbally? I am struggling intensely with the fact that, on the one hand, my wife never locked me into a room or threw me to the ground even though I was quite a nasty person to her at times when we were living together, but on the other, there are just two staff to ten clients here. I try to understand that staff are people too and not necessarily worse people than others are. My wife sometimes said that the staff at the intensive support home were ill-intentioned at best, but I doubt it. My point is, people are part of a system. When that system is purposefully created to oppress some people, yes, the “low-key” oppressors are to blame too, but that doesn’t make them personally bad people. Many unfortunately don’t realize how much they’re accustomed to using (and abusing) their power. In fact, where it comes to care staff, most don’t even have a clue that they’re higher up in the pecking order than us clients are.

That doesn’t mean that the (ab)use of power doesn’t affect us. I mean, I was once, at the intensive support home, told that if I were dragged to my room, I had probably asked for it with my behavior. The thing is, even if I had, that doesn’t make being physically dragged not traumatic. Similarly, I can totally understand why the staff this evening threw me to the ground (I’m not even 100% sure he intended on me landing on my head), but that doesn’t mean my head doesn’t hurt.

One last thing I want to discuss, is the fact that institutional abuse may technically be a staff’s action (or inaction), but it is the result of a long line of decisions made by management, the Care Office or other funding agency and ultimately the government. It is not the client “choosing” to be restrained/locked up/drugged/etc. with their behavior and, like I said, the staff are the ones doing it, but if the government chooses a lock or shot is cheaper than support, they are the ones ultimately responsible.

Three Wishes, Revisited

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. Last Tuesday, I saw the Writer’s Workshop prompts for this week. Several of them spoke to me but I somehow didn’t give myself the time to actually write on them. Today, I’m finally back on the blog and I’m choosing the prompt in which you’re granted three wishes. I did a post on this topic already in 2020. Let’s see how things have changed over the years. What would I wish for now?

1. Unlimited door-to-door transportation. I listed ParaTransit access as a wish in 2020, but now that I’m actually using it for things other than getting to my wife, I realize that it’s not that having unlimited kilometers would solve my problems getting to places. I’d also need the driver to actually drop me off at the place I want to go to. Transportation, after all, is one of the reasons I don’t go to cerebral palsy meetings as often as I’d like, because they’re often organized at restaurants, which taxis can’t reach.

2. My ideal room/apartment within a care facility. In 2020, I wanted to be closer to my wife, but if I have my transportation desires covered anyway, that’s no longer a necessity. My ideal place wouldn’t be much larger than my current room, but it would have a private bathroom and its own kitchen, in which I could prepare my own food with assistance. It would also not be as close to communal areas as my current room is, because well one of my main problems right now is overload from all the sounds coming from the living room.

Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t list more care hours as a wish in 2020, being that I didn’t have my one-on-one at the time. I do now and of course I wish for it to stay the same.

3. Improved physical and mental health. Don’t we all wish for optimal health? I listed it in 2020 too, as my first wish in fact. Since then, my physical health has improved in some ways and declined in others. For example, I’ve lost significant amounts of weight that I indeed needed to lose and as a result, no longer have high blood pressure. I can also walk for longer. On the other hand, my tremors have gotten significantly worse and I believe my cognitive functioning has declined a bit too.

My mental health, I think, is better than it was in early 2020. I hope it improves more though.

Now that I compare my wishes to the ones I listed in 2020, I see an interesting trend, in that despite better quality of life, my wishes are still largely the same. No, that’s not entirely true: they’re bolder, in fact. I wonder what this means.

Meaningful Activities #WotW

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! No Weekend Coffee Share (at least, Natalie isn’t hosting) this week again. I love Anne’s Word of the Week linky for summarizing my week too. Maybe when Natalie hosts her coffee share again, I’ll do a combination of the two. That is, if I can figure out a word or phrase to sum up my week. This week’s phrase is “meaningful activities”.

This week was truly a good one overall. I’ll start with my spontaneous baking activity on Saturday. My staff and I had gone on a walk, but we didn’t want to stare at the wall for the rest of my long activity time slot, so she proposed we do a baking activity. I proposed to make caramel blondies, for which I’d bought the ingredients a few weeks ago already to use with another staff, who however wouldn’t say when we could make them. The blondies were extremely filling but good. Next time, I’m going to cut down on sugar a bit and add some white chocolate on top. I served the blondies to my fellow residents in the evening. One of them asked for days after that, when she learned that I had some left over, for more “Astrid cookies”.


On Monday, my staff and I went to the institution townhouse for coffee. We didn’t have our wallets with us, so we couldn’t buy any of the treats they offered (the coffee is free). However, one of the people behind the counter offered us a brownie that wasn’t good enough to be sold to share. My staff had only a small piece and I had most of it. It was delicious! I had planned to eat the last of the blondies that day, but had two and besides, I was completely stuffed already. I decided to offer them to the two fellow residents who aren’t at the day center during the day either.

On Tuesday, the same staff was supporting me in the afternoon again and, of course, we reasoned we had to go back to the townhouse with our wallets to buy something this time. We didn’t fancy another brownie, but we did have a look at some of the handmade items on sale. My staff bought some tea and I bought a bag of rocky road chocolates. No photo in the townhouse, but I did take an interesting photo of the bag on my nightstand.

Then on Wednesday, like I shared that day already, I crafted a polymer clay dice for a staff who was leaving. Today, I also have been claying, because one of the staff who’s been here forever but with whom I’ve never done a clay project, wanted to learn. It felt good being able to do this activity even though it was in the morning and I was a little cranky.

On Thursday, the staff and I rode the side-by-side bike to Twello to buy some things. I bought raisins, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and corn waffles. We also needed a new mixing bowl, since I’d found out earlier that the one we used to have had a large tear in it. The staff offered to pay for it with the home’s debit card, which sounded reasonable, since it was the home’s bowl that tore. Not that I have a mixing bowl, but well.

Yesterday saw another trip to Twello to go to the market. When we were at the townhouse on Tuesday, one of the institution managers was telling us that he’s going to campaign for the upcoming local election at the market on Friday. I didn’t see him at the market, but I did get to talk to two other parties’ campaigners, both of who gave me some seeds to plant. I’m having to think on where to plant them, as my little yard has no flowerbeds.

Overall, this week was truly filled with meaningful activities. Since my new day schedule will (hopefully) take effect on April 1 and I’ll then be having two weekly cooking or baking activities, I’ve been looking at things to make then too. My wife inspired me to look into vegetarian dinners. Not that I’m a vegetarian or ever plan to be, given that meal delivery service meals suck even more without the meat than they do when it’s included. However, when I prepare the meals myself, I’d love to look at ways of adding flavor without meat or poultry. The idea is that usually I won’t have to cook for the entire home, so I can experiment without considering my fellow residents’ preferences.

Don’t Get Me Started… #SoCS

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today’s prompt for #SoCS is “Don’t get me started”. Oh my, don’t get me started… or I’ll rant forever.

I have this habit of ranting about my care to whoever will listen. Not even about my current care, but about my care at the intensive support home. This afternoon, I was telling a staff who’s just quit smoking that, now that institution grounds are officially a non-smoking area, I no longer permit staff cigarette breaks during my activities.

I say that grounds are “officially” a non-smoking area because, in reality, no-one listens and even the higher-ups smoke on grounds.

I am a non-smoker and yet I understand the fact that clients want to smoke in the yard. Who are the higher-ups, whether they abide by the rules or not, to prohibit smoking in our own home? Well, outside of it, of course, because yes the non-smokers have a right to a smoke-free home.

Staff, however, are usually the ones who smoke the most and I don’t fully understand that. I mean, yes, it’s an addiction, but it’s also a habit. And, besides it being just plain yuck, staff are taking extra breaks in order to meet their “needs”.

Back to my not permitting staff to take cigarette breaks anymore. Every staff here understands, even the hardcore smokers, but back at the intensive support home, not so. I told this staff about a staff doing my morning activity time slot. At the start of it, she said that it’s long, right? It’s ninety minutes. “Can I have a cigarette?” I told her to stand on my balcony and discard her cig safely. Half an hour later, I was doing a clay project. “You’re now busy with the clay anyway. Can I smoke again?” I reluctantly let her use my balcony again. Half an hour later still, an hour into my activity, she was like “I’m going to need to discuss something with a coworker”. And off she was. When she came back ten minutes later, I told her I didn’t like her essentially taking three breaks during a ninety-minute support moment. “But you don’t have one-on-one,” she ranted, saying that with my “just having extra care” this means she could leave me alone whenever she needed to. And besides, she didn’t need to offer up an explanation to the client for her decisions. Well guess what? Yes, staff do need to justify their decisions to me when these affect my care.

And don’t get me started on the difference or lack thereof between one-on-one and extra care. They’re both just sums of money the institution receives for a client. Yes, some clients have more one-on-one hours or extra care hours or whatever than I do, some even having 24-hour one-on-one. However, these sums of money are based on average amounts of care a client needs. If a client has 24/7 one-on-one (which none of the clients at that home had), it means they on average need one staff with them all the time, but sometimes two and sometimes briefly none. I at the time had seven hours of extra care/one-on-one support a day and my support coordinator claimed that my day schedule at the time spanned nine hours. There are various reasons why firstly this wasn’t true and secondly it doesn’t mean I had two hours of support that wasn’t being paid for, but don’t get me started on that…

#WeekendCoffeeShare (January 3, 2026)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. It’s nearly 9:30PM as I start typing my #WeekendCoffeeShare post, so no more coffee for me. I just had a cup of orange-flavored green tea. Feel free to grab a cup of your favorite beverage and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s cold, windy and snowy thanks to weather phenomenon Anna in Scandinavia. I can deal with the cold, but the wind and snow are rather annoying.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I haven’t really been moving much lately. I signed up for the free trial of Apple Fitness+ a few weeks ago, but canceled it on Thursday because it kept getting in my way when I tried to change my workout type on my Apple Watch. Not that I’ve done much other than walking, but I did try to dance once and somehow my watch kept messing up.

If we were having coffee, next I’d say that I’ve been struggling quite badly over the past few days. My day schedule is still a never-ending battle, I still haven’t heard from the Center for Consultation and Expertise consultant and on top of that the behavior specialist responsible for my home will be going on maternity leave soon. Yesterday, I also found out that I won’t be getting a new assigned staff now that my assigned staff is going to be my support coordinator. It wouldn’t have been a problem, had she had enough time in her work week to be both support coordinator for ten clients and my assigned staff, but she doesn’t. Staff keep saying I can go to any staff with my concerns, but this is actually not going to work for me with everyone having different opinions and no-one ever taking responsibility for so-called team decisions.

I had a meltdown over this whole thing yesterday. Staff kept arguing with me that I am too needy of my assigned staff and I have the capacity to understand the staffing situation so I don’t need an assigned staff. That last comment was made when I said the other clients often cling to their assigned staff people too. I’m honestly fed up with all the claims that I’m fundamentally different from every other client.

If we were having coffee, I would share that I quit Morning Pages already. I started on January 1, but last night hardly slept at all, so I decided I was lying down after breakfast again. Besides, the app I used won’t let me browse entries with VoiceOver, so I can never read what I wrote. Not that you’re supposed to for a while when you’re truly doing The Artist’s Way, but eventually I wish I could check back.

If we were having coffee, I’d finally share something positive: I’ve been crafting again this past week. On Tuesday, I made yet another polymer clay cheer up frog and, on Thursday, I made a unicorn with seed beads for its eyes. The frog, I once again made in record time: just over twenty minutes. And it’s awesome.

Yesterday, I was talking to my assigned staff / support coordinator about possibly making the unicorns and cheer up frogs to be sold at the care agency gift shop in the next town. The reason I went into it wasn’t altogether positive, namely the fact that another resident now has to pay for support to accompany him to his football and I’m scared that, eventually, the higher-ups will decide polymer clay isn’t “work” so I’ll have to pay for one-on-one support with that too. However, I do like the idea.

The War on Time #3TC

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone on this cold Boxing Day. When I saw today’s #3TC prompt, I was reminded of a newspaper article my father shared with me in late 1999. It was called something like “The war on time” and was about all the ways people have fought over timekeeping and calendars over the centuries. It included, of course, the change from the Julian to Gegrorian calendar in 1582. I gathered from that article that our calendar’s still not fully aligned with the sun, so that it’s proposed that the year 4000 won’t be a leap year.

By the way, can you believe we’re closer to that year now than we are to the year Jesus was born? Interestingly, in that same article I read that Jesus wasn’t born in the year 0 (which I’m pretty sure no-one had a number for back then) or 1. He was probably born at least five or six years before then and most certainly not on Christmas day. It makes some sense to celebrate his birth around the end of the year though, but that would be closer to March rather than January. Then again, back in the day the months of January and February didn’t exist.

I used to love learning all about timekeeping and calendars. I could probably find a lot more info about it now, over 25 years later and with my having access to the Internet. But I can’t be bothered, honestly. I’d rather be writing random ramblings.

Now going to turn off my little electric heater. The heating in the care home broke down on Wednesday. I noticed I was freezing, but didn’t connect the dots, since it was supposed to be -5°C outside too. I spent the holidays with my wife and came back around 5PM this evening to a home that was still cold. The staff figured out the problem yesterday and it got fixed, but with the type of heating we have, it takes forever for the entire home to warm up, hence why I put on the heater.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 13, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare again. I’m starting this post at 5:35PM as my iPhone is upgrading to iOS 26. I’ll probably finish this post after my evening coffee at 7PM. By the look of it, the iPhone update might not even have been completed by then, as my Internet is incredibly slow. Anyway, let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. Early in the week, the daytime highs were like 14°C and we had a little rain. No more rain today or yesterday and the temps have dropped to 10°C. That’s still warm for this time of year.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I’m still going strong meeting my movement goals on my Apple Watch and it’s now finally decided to actually add days to my streak. I broke my streak record a few days ago. The previous record was 309 days and it was set in June of 2023. However, of course I cheated with this one, as I paused my rings while sick last September.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you this week is a mixed bag. Early in the week, I found out that, as of next month, all self-employed temp workers will be let go. That’s understandable, as a self-employed person actually doing the same things as regular employees, is considered tax evasion on the part of the employer (in this case the care agency). The Tax Service had originally planned on handing out fines for this starting this year, but due to the problems in care and other sectors, it postponed this a year. I had known that this was going to happen for years, but due to the care agency’s careless attitude, hadn’t been sure that the care agency was actually going to follow through this time.

On Monday, one of the regular staff here, who is responsible for planning, said it’s indeed true and that this will likely lead to more staffing issues and possible cuts to our care. Other staff have been reassuring that my one-on-one hours have already been approved until late 2026 and I need not worry about cuts to my one-on-one. All this makes me quite worried regardless, as I’m just now learning to actually fill my one-on-one with enjoyable or meaningful activities.

If we were having coffee, then I’d talk about these meaningful activities. On Monday, I finished the Christmas decorations I crafted last week. No photo of the individual pieces, sorry, as my staff hung them on the branch that we use to decorate for the seasons before I remembered to snap a picture. I do, however, have a few pictures of the entire scene.


As a side note, my staff also borrowed some of my clay cutters for creating more decorations. These, I believe she is now finishing and will be putting up soon.

If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you that, yesterday, I visited the next town’s market again. I love going to this market, which is quiet enough that I don’t get overloaded yet there are enough stalls to buy all of the things I’d like to buy. I had fried shrimp at the fish stand. Well, one of two fish stands, actually. It turned out I usually go to the other one and like that one better, but I was with a staff who’d never been to this market. I also bought olives, mixed nuts and candy.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I finally got my mother-in-law’s access to my records at the care agency revoked. I had originally asked that she’d be given access because, for some stupid reason, the powers-that-be wouldn’t give me access. Their reasoning was that it’d lead to too much distress, something I now realize isn’t grounds enough for denying a patient access to their own records. However, due to this decision, for many years, nobody had access to my records, so the staff could basically write down whatever they liked. That’s why eventually I asked my mother-in-law be given access. Not that she ever reads my records or that I trust her to respond appropriately if she does. Now nobody has access again, but I’m soon going to persuade the behavior specialist and manager to give me access after all.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (December 6, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Yesterday, I had tons of ideas on my mind on what to blog about but no motivation to actually write. Today, it’s the opposite. I’m joining in with #WeekendCoffeeShare even though I think I don’t have a lot to share today. I, as usual, had my last cup of coffee for the day about half an hour ago and am going to take a break from writing this post to have my soft drink and chips. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. For most of the week, it was chilly but not rainy with daytime temps around 7°C. Today, the daytime high was 10°C but it’s been raining all day.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that I was pretty active for most of the week, both by walking and one time by cycling to the next town just to have a purpose for cycling. I didn’t need any groceries and we only ended up having a snack, but at least we weren’t aimlessly cycling around.

Today though, I spent the entire day indoors and still need to dance or whatever to reach my movement goal on my Apple Watch. My streak for whatever reason is still stuck on 33 days even though I’m moving each day and it’s been stuck on 33 days for a month or so.

If we were having coffee, then I’d tell you that I had many plans over the past week but haven’t accomplished a lot. On Monday and Tuesday, I did create some Christmas decorations out of polymer clay. Yesterday, I attempted to bake cookies. They turned out okay but not great and the process was frustrating. Nonetheless, it was better than lying in bed or staring into space, which is what I’ve been doing a lot lately.

If we were having coffee, I’d cheat a little with the coffee share being about the past week, since there was none last week. I’d share about the meeting I had with the behavior specialist early last week. It went well. First of all, like I said, the “one chance” rule about orienting new staff got ditched. My assigned staff, who is in training to become my side of the home’s support coordinator now too, E-mailed me the new orienting plan yesterday and it looks pretty good.

We also discussed my day schedule. In the future, I’ll hopefully get more set activities. In preparation for this, my assigned staff created instruction cards for some of my activities, so that I can hopefully do more activities regardless of which staff is assigned to me. She E-mailed these to me too and I gave some feedback.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I’ve been having lots of memories lately. And by “memories” I don’t mean good ones. Yesterday, for example, I remembered the team meeting for my current home I attended in the summer of 2023. One of the staff, when I told them that I can’t prepare my own lunch, replied: “But you lived independently, right?”. I immediately got defensive, because yes, I technically lived independently, but I shouldn’t have. Yesterday when I was talking about this with my wife, whom I’d first met when living on my own in 2007, she told me more about how bad it actually was. Until a few years ago, I believed that, while I couldn’t cope, this was mostly a mental thing. In other words, I was falling apart mentally but could really care for myself if I hadn’t been so scared. Well, no.

It is sad to realize that part of the reason why I need so much care is lack of training in childhood, adolescence and to a lesser degree early adulthood. I’m still struggling with my parents’ reasoning that they couldn’t have taught me because I was too strong-willed and just didn’t want to learn. It may’ve been true that I didn’t understand why I had to learn something that caused me frustration, but then isn’t it the parents’ job to guide the child through their frustration? I’m honestly still struggling with this.

I Don’t Owe Anyone a Grateful Heart

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all. Today’s prompt for Reena’s Xploration Challenge is quite fitting. Reena asks us to ponder the paradox of gratitude and resistance.

Sometimes, by being grateful, we can bring about change. I am reminded of a story in one of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books in which nurses on one floor were irritated with another floor’s nurses for their constant negativity. Instead of fueling the conflict by becoming negative themselves, the nurses wrote a lengthy gratitude letter to their colleagues. I am not sure whether this was exactly what the story was about, but this was at least the message I took from it. The fact that the one group of nurses focused on the positive rather than giving in to the other group’s toxicity, turned the situation around for the better.

At other times though, particularly when there’s a power difference between two people or groups of people, gratitude becomes passive resignation. In this case, while it can be helpful in the short term to the oppressed person to keep a positive outlook, if the oppressor takes gratitude as acceptance, in the long run nothing will change.

I will give an example from my own life. Regular readers of my blog know that I’ve been accused of having a negative attitude by many people in positions of power, such as my care staff and treatment providers in various care settings. An example is being told I ought to be happy that anybody wants to work here at all. Well, no. While it’d be easier for me in the short term if I could just accept the umpteenth random stranger for my one-on-one care, in the long run it’d mean I’d always get assigned the random temp worker because regular staff would rather support the others and chill out with other regular staff while they can. Besides, even if it’d cost me less effort to resign than it costs me to rebel, I don’t owe my staff a positive attitude. If there’s anyone for whose sake I should have a grateful attitude, it’s myself.

It doesn’t mean I don’t struggle with this whole idea. I feel intense guilt whenever a staff throws some variation of “be happy anyone wants to work here” at me. I am also constantly reminded in my head of my assigned staff at the intensive support home, who was disappointed in me for never having a perfect day even when they’d followed my day schedule completely and had always assigned me regular staff. Which, for the record, never happened.

I, for clarity’s sake, don’t think violent resistance is the answer. When I have a meltdown over some rule I disagree with, being aggressive will always end in me being restrained. However, there’s a whole world between aggression and passivity. And sometimes, unfortunately, the people in positions of power are so caught up in their reality of being the ones to decide, that they (either willfully or not) ignore my less obvious attempts at resistance.

For example, last week I was trying to resist the “one chance” rule about orienting new staff. I tried going along with what the staff wanted, but this only led to further abuses of the rule. I tried talking sense into the staff, but this didn’t work either. Finally, on Saturday, I had the most massive meltdown. I am not proud of my behavior at all. In fact, I really wish I could’ve solved the issue without being aggressive, if for no other reason, then because the staff are far stronger than me and I ended up being restrained. In the end, I thankfully finally got a meeting with the behavior specialist on Monday and the rule got ditched. Now all I can hope for is that my main message, that I have to consent to every individual rule or agreement affecting me unless the behavior specialist uses the Care and Force Act, got through to everyone.