Thoughts on Realism about Residual Vision after Reading Some Essays

I am currently reading a Dutch book on visual impairments. Some of the essays are about sociological and psychological aspects of blindness. Nothing I didn’t know yet, but some of it confronts me with my own situation and my attitudes toward it, either formerly or currently. For instance, two essays are about partial vision. I’ve [...]

Read Full Post »

Paradigms on My Social and Communicative Deficits

Paradigms about my lack of social contact and its underlying causes are, in a way, paradigms on three levels, all of which have shifted in time and vary depending on whom you were to ask:

Paradigms about the nature or form of my deficits in social interaction;

Paradigms about what behavioural, social, emotional or psychological processes are [...]

Read Full Post »

Thoughts on the Dutch Field of Disability Services and the Difficulty in Being “Atypical”

Today, I’ve been surfing the Internet for websites of Dutch disability service agencies, and been thinking about the high rate of what I see as “differentiation” within the field. By this, I mean the rigid definitons of what clients are like and/or, if additional problems or an unusual personality profile are present, a lack of [...]

Read Full Post »

Yet More on Social Skills and the “Locked up Inside” Issue

I had a very difficult discussion with Arda this afternoon. It was meant to be a discussion according to the plan for having discussions, which I, by the way, never even had a discussion according to – I’m definitely planning on doing so next week. This time also didn’t get to be a discussion according [...]

Read Full Post »

What Is Being Realistic about My Blindness and Residual Vision?

I just received the report about my rehab. The things that are very noticeable, in places that I expected but that I still need to write about, are the comments on my residual vision and its relevance and/or significance. In some way, the conclusions drawn by the mobility instructor and the ones drawn by Kira, [...]

Read Full Post »

More on Social Skills and Discussions

Arda made an interesting comment this morning. I have an officially scheduled discussion with her tomorrow afternoon, which I dread cause I dread all my officially scheduled discussions, never mind how informal they are – they’ll always go wrong anyway. She said that when we’re conversing during breakfast, for instance, I’m doing pretty well. And [...]

Read Full Post »

Thoughts on Passiveness, Poor Social Skills, and the “Locked up Inside” Issue

Lately, I’ve been having numerous discussions on the topics of social interaction and communication at training home. This has led me to be kind of frustrated several times. For one thing, Renee (my coach) gave me some plan on how to prepare for a discussion, which was meant as a way of preparing for the [...]

Read Full Post »

Thoughts on an Essay Discussing Euthanasia

I borrowed a book of essays on medical ethics from the Dutch library for the blind. I’m currently reading one of the author’s essays on euthanasia. The author is a Christian, yet he supports euthanasia as defined as ending somone’s life on that person’s request. That is not to say the author has no objections [...]

Read Full Post »

Introversion vs. Social Ineptness

I’ve been reading some things about MBTI personality theory lately, and of course been taking a few tests. On all, I score as about as introverted as can be. I mostly score as an INTJ, but with most qualities bordering on their counterparts – except for Introversion. The only exception is the BlogThings test I [...]

Read Full Post »

Thoughts on Special Educators’ Attitudes to Me

Today while walking the route to the supermarket, I had a brief discussion with the new student in work placement here at the training home. She’s doing an education called Social/Pedagogical Work and plans on going to a teacher training college after finishing these studies. She’ll get a degree in elementary education and is planning [...]

Read Full Post »