u/Pretend_War_3533

Hello, I am planning a trip in the coming months, but I have celiac disease which is sort of like a gluten allergy (it is technically an autoimmune disorder, not an allergy, but very small amounts of gluten containing cereals such as wheat, rye, and barley can make me extremely sick so I have to avoid cross-contamination in the same way as if I had a severe food allergy). Planning to visit Mashhad and Qum within Iran, another city or two if we're lucky. In Iraq, planning to visit Najaf, Karbala, Samarrah, and Khadimain. Does anyone have any advice for me on how to find food that is safe, how to navigate the cultural customs surrounding food given my situation, and any other relevant advice? I read that people with celiac disease in Iraq and Iran especially struggle a lot due to lack of awareness among the general population especially and lots of food being cooked with or prepared on shared surfaces with gluten containing cereals. I asked this question in a few places dedicated to celiac disease but I'm mostly getting troll answers so I thought it would be worth it to ask here in case anyone has any insight. Sorry it's pretty off topic!

Most of the time I don't want to hug or shake hands, but people still offer and I usually do it anyways sometimes it's force of habit and other times because I feel awkward explaining why I don't want to. Also because I have hugged and shook hands with people before and they've seen me hug and shake hands a lot so I feel weird transitioning out of that especially with people who hug me every time they see me. Even Muslim men ask for a hug or handshake from me often and then I feel awkward like they'd think I'm judging them if I say no. I even wear a n95 respirator constantly to avoid getting sick and people still want to shake my hand!

I am autistic and hijab or not I don't really like to be touched but I also am extremely socially conditioned to just go along with social norms due to like explicitly being taught in school that its very rude to say no to a handshake or hug. I know probably everyone struggles with this but I feel like being autistic makes it uniquely hard for me to break the habit despite being uniquely bothersome to me that I'm breaking rules which I accept and understand. I was able to break the habit of initiating handshakes but I still feel weird about rejecting them. whenever I pull off the hand on chest and head nod thing and avoid a handshake I'm so happy but I rarely can pull it off before someone extends their hand and actually offers a handshake and I feel so bad leaving their hand hanging it feels way too awkward.

Sometimes people will shake my hand and then also pull me in for a hug/back-pat and I think in the social circles I'm in it's incredibly common even for Muslims to do that with women. Vast majority of the Muslims I meet are way more liberal with this stuff so saying "I'm a Muslim I don't xyz" feels very judgemental. Do I just need to start wearing a full chador? 🤷‍♀️ I think there's another layer I'm trying to navigate there because I know handshake-to-hug is like a very comradely thing in many of the circles I'm in and subculturally important. I know its not being done with bad intentions and I appreciate the sentiment but like I don't a handshake/hug 😭😭 a lot of the Muslim men I know handshake-to-hug me every time I see them and I feel so awkward stopping now and saying it's because I'm Muslim because they are also Muslims and I've been handshake/hugging them regularly anyway.

I know I need to develop better boundaries around this, and even before I became a Muslim (like almost 4 years ago now!) I felt weird about handshakes but have never figured out how to avoid them gracefully. I know this question has been asked, but I feel it is usually answered from the perspective of avoiding it in business settings with new people rather than people you already know who always give you a handshake/hug. I actually feel it's much easier in a business setting to do the hand on your heart and nod thing and I feel less weird because it's more formal anyways but when I am in less formal settings I feel cold and rude trying to avoid it.

I suppose I have 3 problems here:

1. How to uncondition myself from thinking people will think I'm being rude or mean if I don't shake their hand or give a hug? Or if they will think I'm rude anyways, how to just be ok with that?

2. How to explain to all of the people who are already used to hugging and handshaking me that I don't want to do that any more?

3. How to specifically navigate Muslim men asking me for handshakes/hugs without seeming judgemental of the way that they practice? When I first meet them, but especially after I've known them a while?

Just as the title says. I volunteer in a capacity where I interact with people who are experiencing psychosis occasionally, but most of the volunteers are not trained to handle mental health crises and our volunteer work is not supposed to be mental health intervention. I find myself mediating between multiple people in/near psychosis and between people who are in psychosis and volunteers who are not knowledgeable or equipped to handle psychosis. The volunteer group is absolutely ideologically opposed to police or other non-consensual crisis intervention, but some volunteers intervene in ways that are extremely unhelpful and escalate already bad situations. I have had psychosis myself before due to lack of sleep and drug use, and I have hallucinated because of seizures and drug use, and I have had dissociative amnesia from trauma, so although I do not have a psychotic disorder, I know what it feels like to be paranoid, delusional, and confused. I generally avoid confirming or denying a person's delusional thoughts or hallucinations, and if they ask me, I say I believe you that you are seeing/hearing/experiencing or that you believe that, but I do not see/hear/experience/believe that. Otherwise I say wow that sounds scary/sad/upsetting etc. Or I just listen to them. I try to think of what I would be triggered by if I believed the things they are telling me and try to avoid those things and I also try to think of the things that might comfort me if I was in that state and try to do more of that.

Sometimes the other volunteers get upset and try to argue and tell people what they are experiencing is not real. For example yesterday someone who I have interacted with for many hours many days in a row, who seemed to trust me (as much as you can trust anyone when you're psychotic) suddenly switched and became convinced that I did something bad and started screaming at me. I remained calm and explained to him that it is okay that he thinks that, I won't try to argue with him, I understand he is scared and angry, and if he doesn't want to talk to me he doesn't have to. We were going back and forth and I was answering his questions in this manner, I was explaining myself calmly and telling him, I can understand that you saw me doing xyz horrible thing, I don't expect you to trust me since you saw it, but I can promise you from my perspective I did not do that thing, and I am sorry I can't explain what you saw other than it was not what I experienced. That worked one other time and later he apologized to me and said he had me confused, and he was starting to lower his voice but still yelling at me, threatening me (rather nonsensically. I didn't feel threatened but he said he was going to call down the holy spirit to tsunami me) but it felt like we were making progress because his volume was getting lower and his body language less intense and then another volunteer stepped in and told him in a very stern tone I didn't do anything to him and to stop threatening me, and it began escalating again. Later I told the volunteer they don't have to do that and I find its easier for me to deescalate if there's less people involved and that I was ok and can handle that kind of interaction myself in the future. At another point in the night, he was misgendering another volunteer and that pissed all of the other volunteers off and they were glaring at him and talking about him afterwards while he was still there. I understand their perspective but he thought I was his mom, his wife, an 8 year old child, a cop on a TV show, FBI agent, that I'm carrying his baby, etc. He's told me I'm not who I say I am like 100 times at this point, and he isn't trying to offend anyone he's just literally hallucinating. Them glaring and talking about him makes it like 100x worse because he assumes they are against him because they are glaring and talking about him. He was convinced he impregnated everyone with his mind and the volunteers told him that's sexual harassment and got very upset, and I understand it's unsettling and creepy to hear from someone but it's also real to him and I don't think he is aware it's a disturbing thing to say to someone.

I have been trying to connect him with resources so that he can find somewhere to sleep that's safe and also stop hanging out at our volunteer site where there are lots of risks to him (it's not a good area, especially because he sleeps there after we leave, we have a campfire and he believes he is immune to being set on fire, and that he needs to breathe smoke to drive out toxins. He has progressively lost his voice from sitting in front of the campfire and purposely breathing the smoke in and I am worried he will get really sick from the smoke and from being wet, staying outside all the time, not getting good sleep, and he is pissing off the volunteers so they aren't treating him with the most respect and it's making his delusions much worse. Plus I think when he stares at the smoke from the campfire he has worse hallucinations). I am really frustrated with the other volunteers at this point I understand where they are coming from because he has been a jerk to us but he also has moments of relative lucidity where he realizes we are not trying to hurt him and apologizes. Many of his delusions are also that he is worried other people are going to hurt us and hes trying to warn us about it but they are really annoyed by it regardless of the content. The other night I sat with him for hours while he was really afraid and he was crying so hard because he thought that he killed his family and he didn't know what year it was and I had to hold in my tears too because I can only imagine how scary that would be. I really feel sad for him and I wish the other volunteers fully understood he can't help it and stopped treating him like he's trying to be an asshole or taking it personally. Or trying to "draw a line" with him if they aren't prepared to call a hospital to come pick him up and get him help. He is an old man, I know its scary to be yelled at and threatened with nonsense but I dont think he wants to scare or harm us he is just not truly confused of his surroundings. I know we as volunteers don't deserve to be yelled at, threatened, or treated shitty, but sometimes I feel like the volunteers get into a power struggle with him about their right to be treated respectfully and it is honestly making it worse.

One of our volunteers also seems to be paranoid and border-line delusional but more stable in general. She is pretty consistently convinced that there are cops trying to infiltrate our volunteer space and while I know cops do sometimes infiltrate community organizing, the level of intensity and certainty she has about it seems excessive to me. She was convinced yesterday that the above mentioned psychotic guy is a cop who was sent to cause chaos among us. They were mutually triggering each other in a bad way. She was convinced he was a law enforcement agent speaking in code to her and he was convinced that she was a bad person who was trying to hurt him/us. So all night they were both triggering each other and at one point the volunteer did step away and get some space to emotionally process/regulate and I think that helped but when she came back she was still easily triggered by the way he was acting. At one point she threatened to throw away the pillow and sleeping bag that I brought him because she was so upset. The whole night I was kind of like going back and forth to try to make sure they were both OK and neither of them were OK and I think both of them may have perceived me trying to help the other one as a bad sign. I was more or less able to keep them separated from each other but in the future if that volunteer is there at the same time as this guy I need some advice to handle it better.

What can I do to make the situation better? Sometimes he seems aware that he needs mental health help, and he has expressed interest in going to a living room program (peer led crisis intervention where he can be connected with better resources) but we can't make him go and it's hard for him to get there by bus, and the volunteers aren't willing to drive him because he can be rather volatile. I called the program today to see if there's any way they can help find him transportation and they said they would call me tomorrow so I really hope that is possible. Usually when someone is psychotic they don't stick around this long and hang out around us for what has basicslly been a whole week now. I assume he is doing that because he feels at least somewhat safe there and even if he sometimes turns to thinking the volunteers are bad and scary on some level he might know we are safe enough to be around? Maybe that is wishful thinking though. I just want to help him get somewhere safe where he can get the help he needs :(