Re: No one is lying
Regrets, too on your experience - the younger the harder.
As regards communicating - I only hazily recall a fad of a few years back re autistic (or similar) children. A group coalesced around a claim that certain 'auditors' (it was some other title) could elicit rather lengthy 'communications' from the subjects. I think.. via a keyboard 'facilitated' by these 'trained' emissaries (?)
Think Ouija.. the debunking was elegant, but I've forgotten too much of the story even to Google for the details. Believe PBS did an hour on this, at the time.
As with the witchhunt of childcare workers portrayed as Satanists, also via highly manipulative 'therapist'-inculcators -- we should never lose sight of the fact of the dense thread of superstition extant in Murican culture. It complements the antiintellectualism, love for Disneyland fantasies (and maybe the xenophobia is in there too, orthogonally?)
Scientology demonstrates the hi-tech generic version, complete with algorithm$. Created virtually "on a bet". Desire - never mind if the object is near-impossible - appears to befog discrimination, often.
May we survive long enough to someday leave adolescence -
