Seconded, specific phobias are very very treatable. A good therapist will be happy to work with you on this.

I find TLC's complicity in all of this really befuddling. The people filming knew, maybe not all of it, but enough - probably enough to mandate a CPS report, if they'd been mandated reporters. Enough to see the evil they were helping promote. And these people (the TLC people), unlike the kids, or people adjacent to the family, were not in a cult; they had nothing to fear except having to get a new job. Why do it? Why fund and promote this patriarchal abomination? And why isn't anyone clamoring for their heads?

Sounds a bit like bipolar 2 hypomania

This sounds like a really poor medication fit; I'd get him reassessed asap.

Yes! This is exactly the thing I've been trying to say.

I think probably I was speaking too loosely and should define my terms: by "bright," I mean 130+ IQ, closer to 140+. I'm basing the conclusion on my own experience getting a very similar score on the ACT with only a basic sixth grade education (formally); of course most of my education at that point had come through reading on my own, and puzzling through things, etc. A 28 is a high score, but it is not particularly high; you can get a 28 with good verbal ability and reading comprehension and no math past the beginnings of pre-A (or you could in the late 90s).

Correct. Given her family history, I don't see this as all that unlikely Correct, that's what I meant. People, maybe especially bright ones but I'd be willing to be wrong about that, keep learning on their own if there are any materials at all to allow it and sufficient time not otherwise occupied (by too-early hard physical work, or childcare at 12, or etc.) I think maybe this was especially true before the advent of easy electronic entertainment. Books were all you HAD for entertainment, and the projects or imaginary worlds you could make up to do and engage with. This is not to say that refusing to deal with parental mental illness, secluding yourselves from society, and failing to provide any deliberate education (even deliberate unschooling) isn't neglect. It is. Her childhood was, even viewed rosily, neglectful and abusive, and her parents failed her. But people can be very resilient, and bright kids sometimes find ways to keep learning even in these circumstances.

A basic sixth grade education allows bright kids to get a 28 on the ACT, is what I'm saying. It can absolutely be insufficient schooling, and outright educational neglect, and she still could have gotten a 28 on the ACT after some prep as a high schooler, having not been educated really at all past say a fifth or sixth grade level. These things are not inconsistent.

I got a low-20s on the math with just basic numeracy; my IQ is not wildly high. She test prepped for the ACT, she was taught to read as a child and had some books to read, she presumably was exposed at some point to fractions, decimals, and the four operations. If you have an IQ, especially verbal, that makes reading comprehension easy and test taking easy, it's just not that wild to be pretty educationally neglected and still get a 28 after some test prep. Presumably with a more rigorous or deliberate education she'd have needed no prep for a 33 or 34 in high school; I knew several kids like this, none of them were geniuses.

I am about her age; I took it several years before her, in very early middle school (so late 90s). I got a similar composite. I'd had nothing past decimals and fractions; a low math score was balanced by high in the other subtests. I didn't prep for it at all or know anything about it. Her wiki page says she could read as a child and then studied on her own to prep for the ACT. A 28 composite is not a particularly high score.

In zero universe would I ever wake a sleeping baby.

That's perfectly believable to me. A bright (highly gifted +) kid with a basic 6th-grade education, or who has self-educated to that point (which many bright kids do - very little of their learning happens in school for the first exposure, with maybe the exception of formal math), can absolutely get a 28+ on the ACT. It's correlated with IQ.

You're doing something you don't have to do and which you seem to really dislike doing. Why? As for what I would do, I'd just not drive her.

If you make smallish things this is easier; for bigger things I agree it's a headache. Most online selling places have integrated shipping and when you tell them the weight and size of the item, they calculate the shipping for you and charge the exact shipping amount to the customer. It's a lot easier than meeting up with people locally, although it does take some time to set up at first.

Virtually the only way to make money at this is to sell online. Baked goods, indeed, are almost impossible even online bc you need the health department approval, so you'd need access to a commercial kitchen. But woodworking things, maybe. You could do personalized catio signs, for example, if there's a community access laser printer at a makerspace or library in your area. But to make decent money you'd pretty much have to sell online.

Oh yep, library clerk is going to be a lot closer to minimum wage than librarian. You might consider these types of jobs in the future, though; $26k plus benefits, and you can work full-time somewhere else in the summer, might be decent. Have you considered going back to school, maybe community college, for some type of applied degree? At least here, there are a lot of two-year programs that lead right into stable employment, especially healthcare adjacent or tech adjacent. If I recall correctly you already have a BA, do you might consider a professional licensure grad program. Jobs that pay more than $30k without some sort of licensure or applied degree are just often hard to find in low COL states. I know you're averse to debt, do community college might be the way to go, but $25k for a grad degree (a licensed one, not just a master's of whatever) might mean you could make $50-$60k going forward. There are also community programs here that offer free career counseling. I think piecemeal work is just hard to sustain when you have a kid to support.

School librarian may be a very decently paid job, depending on district.

Fine dining: the antler room

The logic is that it's a mismatch of tone to audience.

You have been abused by your mother. The circumstances of some of the worst of the abuse center around care for an ostomy bag. When someone else requests help with an ostomy bag, the trauma response you have to the situation with your mother is triggered. It's pretty classic. You can say no to these people and they will not treat you the way your mother has. You do not need to project the relationship with your mother onto your relationship with them, although it is completely natural to do so. You do not need to help them, neither morally, nor practically, nor out of fear of more abuse if you do not. It might feel like you're a reasonable resource for this help because of your experience, but actually you're not: you're traumatized, and the victim of abuse, and helping with this will be more harmful to you than anyone else they could find.

Not anything remotely close to what you've been doing. A question nearer the mark is what do we owe ourselves?

I'm not sure about repairing insulin resistance itself (i.e. reversing prediabetes), but you can probably lower blood sugar by eating minimal carbs. One slice of low carb bread, if any at all. No added sugar, no noodles, no rice, no potatoes, nada. I eat peanut butter, low carb bread (again, one slice, once a day), all varieties of cheese, avocados, baby carrots, broccoli, any animal protein I feel like, the occasional single clementine. No drink with any calories (except straight cream on occasion). I lowered a prediabetic fasting (105-115) to a fasting of 80-90 within a couple of weeks. I don't think I can go back to carbs and keep the low fasting, so I just continue to not eat carbs unless it's the above foods. It's pretty easy; once I told myself I could have all the brie I wanted at any time of day, I didn't care much about not eating cookies. Brie is good.

"the day when management gives us a $10/month raise instead of making us buy each other things" Who knows, you could make a similarly cynical friend

Of course - and the thing is, $10 is nothing when you have $200k in retirement and $10k in savings and a partner who makes a full income and you're paid say $75k a year. I'm sure the $25 field trip tshirts are peanuts to most people who live in this upper-middle district, but for a few of us $25 is not necessarily extra money. So A. It's annoying to have to buy your way out of the problem, because that $10 means something to you and if you're spending it, you'd rather it be for something intentional or pleasant instead of to just keep up with the social expectations at your job, and B. when you're doing this kind of thing with a bunch of people who make 1.5x your wage (or 2x), and often have more stable finances besides, it feels like you're sacrificing something that they think nothing of, which is a bad feeling. I'm a little spicy about the latest round of single-use $25 t-shirts, lol.

Or in an unpaid activity as an hourly, not salaried, worker. I suspect a lot of people there are on salary, but as an hourly I doubt they can force you to do anything they're not paying you for.