26. FROM THE ARCHIVES: Are you caught up in trying to be right?

Episode summary:

After realising you are autistic, there is a needs must to deep dive "obsessively".

To share everything you are learning ("info dump").
To make a “special interest” of (a.k.a. become a niche specialist in) all things autism.

And my words to you are: go for it!!



But I also want to share a word of warning;
Because the seeking of those glimpses of self revelation
requires wading through piles and posts and podcasts and publications that are full of misinformation.

And so this process can come a painful confrontation with ableism
including that which you've internalised.
 
And with that, a desire to advocate against that DEARTH of misinformation.
To make it wrong, in order for you to feel right.
 
That was me.
I wanted to argue for all the parts of myself that now needed to be seen,
by focusing on all of the papers, and pathology paradigms and books and blogs…
that had it wrong.
 

In that need to be RIGHT,
for there to be a ‘right’ way to think,
I was also reproducing the same oppressive logics that I was seeking to make wrong.
 
Unlearning that desire to be RIGHT, by making other people WRONG
(even when they are!)
is a crucial component of the journey to 
feeling good
about who you are
and creating the inner freedom to BE who you are
whether or not you have the agreement or understanding or buy-in.

Especially from the people who have more access to knowledge production and dissemination, to share *about* who they think you are, then you do.

The underlying questions I ask in this episode are:

Can you: let them be wrong about you.
Can you: let "them" become irrelevant.  

TRANSCRIPT:

  

Hello, siblings, and welcome back to the solar system podcast. This is episode 20. And it's called Are you trying to be right? So this is really about unlearning something that Western patriarchal and imperialist thinking, teaches, among other things, which is, that being right is important that it's possible to be right that we live in an objective reality that is defined through the written word, and that we can know everything about, and that is what determines what is real and right and what isn't. And I want to talk about this in relation to all the research you might be doing into what it means to be autistic, or the research or the articles, the papers, the opinions, the blog posts, the social media posts, all of that. Because there is a pattern that is part of the post diagnosis or self diagnosis journey. And that is the desire to consume all the information that you can find about autistic people or what this all means, so that you can understand yourself better. And catch more of those glimpses of self those flickers of realisation, realisations real isolation that allow you to welcome back those parts of yourself that you had previously squished down out of your consciousness because of how they are not valid, or valued, of acknowledged or accounted for or real in the society or the context that you grew up in, or live in. Now. They are real, they are part of you, and they are bringing in that research, you're bringing them back into your consciousness again. And that process of welcoming your whole self back into your conscious awareness is a healing process. And will probably maybe involve and be accompanied by memories that now finally make a new sense. And it also carry pain, pain that you can now feel, because it's no longer tied to the idea that you're wrong. And something that you have to suppress and cut off from. So it's pain that comes up with all these memories, as well, we bury experiences that we think are evidence that we're not good enough. And it's an effect and consequence of ableism and normativity. And a world that assigns hierarchies and separations between bodies that teaches that there is one correct way to be. And those separations and hierarchies are internalised we split off and make lesser the parts of ourselves that are not reflective of the supremacist ideals. And try to emulate those at the top of the hierarchy, who have the control and the status and the resources and the attention. So inviting those denied parts back into self is a massive part of this process. And this often means over identifying with them. So it's like hey, I haven't seen you in a long time. Let me give you a big hug. Let me bring you in, then we focus on you over identifying with the parts of yourself that you've newly re seen and that you urgently want others to see and validate. And to see how significant this revelation of wholesales is. And we forget that other people have also cut off parts of themselves. Ableism doesn't just impact those who think or move or learn or be in a body differently. It's or, or who are disabled. It's also a set of rules that we all internalise and have to work on moving beyond. And those of us for whom those rules are more painful or difficult and require more self suppression to fit in with have more at stake and more motivation to undo that ableism whereas others will have more at stake in losing what an ableist and supremacist society has given them. approval, access status, resources, and so on. So, if you are there now, yes, do all the research, read all the posts and blogs and books, allow yourself to deep dive and also to feel all the feelings that are coming up knowing that this is past stuff that needs to be felt, so that you can move through it and then move that out of your body. So doing copious amounts of research will also sharpen your sense of justice. Because of how much misinformation is out there, it will sharpen your sense of self trust, because you'll have to tune in with an inner sense of what applies to you and what doesn't, and also what you agree with, and don't agree with, because you're now listening to what you actually feel, as the measure of what is right. What can happen, though, is this, in the desire for having a whole self seen by other people, we can get caught up in the need to be right. And this happened for me. So this is coming from a vulnerable, vulnerable place where I'm confessing this, and I want to share it with you so that if you want to you can avoid some of the internal pitfalls around this in the desire and need to be seen, we can get caught up in the need to be right. So to prove an argue for the parts of ourselves that now want to be seen, through trying to be right through making someone else wrong. So we take the pain of that past and specific relationships or experiences. And then we take that and we make it all about this kind of big them, or neurotypicals, as if there's this great big conglomerate of people who are at fault and who are to blame and who we need to make wrong. So that we can feel right so that we can feel better. And the reason this is a pitfall is because of how this is actually replicating those same patriarchal and colonial ways of thinking, which says that you are only significant if you are at the top of the hierarchy, if you are validated in being right according to the dominant knowledge according to the majority or to other people. So and being right is, is either or thinking it's about this Cartesian split, I think, therefore I am. The written word being king, these are all part of that logic. And I've mentioned this resource before, but the list of characteristics of white supremacy is a great resource to check oneself against over and over, because we are socialised into this thinking that comes from this colonial agenda. And yeah, so the resource is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture. It's by tema, Lacan, and Kenneth Jones. And I'll link to in the show notes. And so trying to be right means making someone else wrong means imposing your ideas, as the only ones that are right, or the only possible way to think, which is trying to change someone else into your own thinking, and your own reality, which is the exact same thing that led you to disconnect from self to experience, the alienating influence says that lead to that lead to self alienation, and that inner lack of wholeness, this idea that there's only one way to be or that there is a correct way to be or that there is one reality and one way of thinking, when we're trying to be right. We then are becoming the oppressor. Pedagogy of the Oppressed is another really good read if you want to explore that more. And this is how you know if you're trying to be right. So be curious, are these things that you've been doing? Because for sure I did. And I want to encourage you to notice in case in case it helps you sidestep a whole lot of unnecessary heartache. So here's how you know if you're trying to be right, here's some examples. So if you need everyone else to come to your way of thinking, or if you are reading papers or articles or coming across organisations that you don't agree with, and you get into a shame spiral and instead of feeling the shame and processing it and confronting your own internalised ableism you start arguing with with that external paper or article organisation in your own head on the internet. or if you attach your own self acceptance to other people's acceptance of you. So you need them to get on board in order for you to accept yourself or feel worthy and valid. Or if you're writing papers and arguments and posts,

from a place of needing to prove that everyone is wrong, or even if you're making those arguments in your head or in your own notes, and you're taking time to create responses to people that you actually just don't agree with or don't like, what if you need every single person in your life to get on board with your worldview, or yourself view? Or if you're creating blog posts and stuff about neurotypicals, and how they're wrong if your thoughts are this kind of vague, them are those people who have done me wrong. And I know this is hard to hear, because it can feel that you need the world to change. Before you get to be valid. It feels like you need for other people to see you and validate you, in order to validate and accept yourself. So this is really about not doing that. And recognising that it's a more productive way to go about it is to allow people to be wrong about you, and not make it mean something bad about you, not tying yourself worth to their actions or thoughts. Because all of what that that is doing all of that kind of direction, directing all of that power of self acceptance onto other people, is sidestepping the actual hard work that you can do in yourself, to accept yourself to validate your own ideas and thinking and to not need approval or acceptance from someone else, for those to be valid. And then that allows you to act on them in the tangible in the world of structures to express what's true for you. And it might still involve writing or sharing, or social justice work or advocacy, but at least now it will be coming from a place of service, instead of a need to be right and prove others wrong. It will be coming from love instead of attachment to changing other people, which is the opposite of love, right? As you've experienced all the times that people try to mould you into something that you aren't. And the truth is, it's actually much harder to wade through all of this muck of misinformation, then to do that inner work is actually also unnecessary. Hence me creating a system of self returning that is about the application and what you are actually doing, and thinking and not just information. And this is about focusing on unlearning, undoing sources of self alienation and reconnecting with the parts of yourself and then actually doing what means that you're living in alignment with what is true for you as an example and as a beacon for the solution as a solar flare, as a burst of permission, permissive energy and different frequencies that allow others to hear that they too, can trust their own inner source of self validation. We don't actually need to read all the vast swathes of ablest misinformation. For you to get to your truth. You just need to trust yourself, we need to trust ourselves and our body minds more we need to ground in community. And the solutions emerge out of that state of self connection and self validation and self appreciation. Rather than out of being right and changing other people and focusing on what they're doing that you don't like. We transform this world by being the solution rather than trying to control others by focusing on building solutions rather than arguing for identities and validation as a prerequisite to your own self validation. So if people don't believe you're autistic, so this is the world that we live in. If people think that being autistic means something different to what you think, let them and remember that this is a story. This is a particular story, you might have one version of what that means. That is a product of all of the thinking that you've done or all of the ideas that you've come across. And that is going to be because it's shared language. And because there is no centralised source of what this this classification this kind of grouping of people means, but then people are taught that the DSM and the kind of psychiatric definition of it is the authority Well, it's just getting into arguments. So if other people haven't read all of the stuff that you've read that allowed you to get to where you are, then they haven't? And how can they have the same perspective? So are you expecting them to understand what you didn't know only a short time ago, and you won't help them to get there by giving them the power of your own self acceptance, in their opinion, and in their understanding, let them be wrong. And I'll give you a last few thoughts that might also help. So think of a paper that you've read that you feel is completely wrong. Or that you think has the wrong ideas or is wrong about you, and I want you to imagine the person the human writing it, and to consider how maybe they're in a space of internalised ideas and ableism, or judgement or rules for how people should be, and that they're simply just doing the best that they know, as are you. And also notice how sometimes these are judgments dressed up as academia in the way that they are regarding a group of people as wrong. Treating that judgement as if it's a fact. And consider how much little how much less room they have in that thinking for who they get to be and what parts of themselves they get to accept. So that is existing in conditional love their conditions in their world, for what is okay for what is not okay. That anyone who moves outside of that, any statistical outliers, any one that doesn't fit, confronts. So we might wonder why a person is creating intellectual work about a group of people that they don't belong to, and saying, this group of people are so weird, here are the whole the ways that they are weird, that other papers have written about, and this weirdness has a name. And that makes it a fact. And now that this is a fact, this paper will ask, Well, why are they so weird and wrong? Hey, maybe it's their brains, or their genetics or something in the womb that went wrong. Let's do a brain study to find out what caused their weirdness. And doing all this work, instead of confronting the possibility that their own ideas of what is weird or right or correct, or human, might be hiding and embracing a magnificent and vast world of possibility that just doesn't fit their current model of reality. So we can have compassion, for what kind of space that they are in that they have had to have such hard rules about how humans should be, and that they've made a whole career out of insisting on the enigma of this group of people, without any self reflection of what parts of themselves are they cutting off, for the sense of being right and false belonging and being an acceptable human and fitting in with the status structures and hierarchies that we are taught? What rules for belonging is their self esteem tied to so having compassion for what kind of world they must be in to have such rules for how others should be they are working on trying to change other human beings who don't want to be changed in order to fit their reality. So have compassion, let it be irrelevant. Let go of reading all of the papers that you don't agree with, Sidestep and unfollow all of the social media accounts of people that you don't actually like. Don't agree with or that don't feel good. Don't get drawn into arguments on the internet, or in your own head. Don't think that you have to have worked it all out intellectually, in order to feel valid or begin to live your life in a more aligned way. Trust your body more than receive knowledge. Don't get sucked into the cult mentality of a group of people who bond over making other people wrong. Be it people who identify as autistic or other people. You are here. You have life you exist. And that is the only necessary sign that you need for your validation everything else. Is the universe meeting its own infinite possible expressions. This universe includes all possibilities that includes you and making other people that God or king or queen in your world will have you tried to control them and gain power over them. So instead, cultivate your own self validation, and a community and set of influences and mentors that feel good to you, that remind you of your own power to self validate. In self trust, and self accept, and how you must belong to yourself first, that is a prerequisite to experiencing any kind of belonging in this world.

And, yeah, follow people that free up and disrupt your thinking or that offer you good thoughts, and open up your world. And then work on embodying and expressing your own values and that self validation in how you live as a walking example. Pay attention to your own business, your own relationships and your own relationship to yourself, connect with what can you bring to the table, in the form of a solution, or a bridge of where we are, from where we are to the kind of world that you want to live in be that bridge or be a tiny part in that bridge becoming real. It's only when I let go of the need to be right that I find peace, peace afforded by allowing people to do them to be wrong about me to have their own worldview and to not need to change it. In order for me to accept myself, and then working on building upon what is true for me as a tangible reality. And this is continual unlearning work for me to to allow other people not to have to, like or approve of me in order to, for me to get to be who I am right now, this moment, to not have to fix myself into an identity that I can argue for, as a way to try and be seen, to focus on seeing myself in my work and sharing that as a liberator example, that someone else can follow. And also following the examples of others who I'm attracted to, because they helped me see myself more clearly. And in a positive and empowering way, building my world with conscious emphasis on peace, and unconditional love, and the joy of creating something that didn't exist before. That offers something completely different to those paradigms and those spelling nets of fear and falsehoods that I got caught up in and kept trying to wriggle out of by trying to be right in someone else's eyes. And when you're coming from a place of self validation, you'll be in touch with that inner compass of when to stop, when to recharge, when something is just not your not for you. When to gather inner resources, you'll be able to read and deal with what you don't agree with, or even confront what you don't agree with or the laws or the ideas by creating persuasive work by getting people on your side because they will feel that your self worth is not tied up in their idea of you. And lastly, if this spoke to you, and if you notice that you have a bit of this going on, don't make yourself wrong for it. We all do this, we are taught that we need external validation and we will have layers and layers of the metaphorical onions appeal to come back to ourselves and grow more and belong more deeply to ourselves and therefore to all of existence. We all do this. So if you find a bit of this going on for you actually get excited because it's a signpost for a breakthrough into a deeper level of self acceptance. So I hope that helps. Let them be wrong about you and get to work on solutions for your own life. Okay, see you soon.