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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Series 2, Ep8: Learning publicly, after late/self-diagnosed autistic or AuDHD

 

EPISODE NOTES

Tightly attuned for survival

teaches you: to be oriented to how other people see you.

Then comes: a late-diagnosis/self-identifying as autistic, or AuDHD

opening a door, unfolding a second adolescence, that doesn't match your age, and the"supposed to have done X by now"s:

supposed to know what I like

supposed to know how to do life

supposed to have a job, kids, partner(s), purpose, blah blah by now,

supposed to know what I really feel and what I really want by now

supposed to be living that already by now

supposed to know WHO I am, by now

 

That AGE COMPARISON,

in the unacknowledged context of survival,

creates a sense of loss;

shoulda woulda coulda

IF ONLY I'd known earlier.

 

Yes, if only. It hurts. And -

We are a product of our times;

of so much before our times

of so much outside of our own spheres of influence

and yet

here we are.

EXISTING.

 

Here you are.

Still alive to find out.

Still alive to re-write the story of WHO you are

based on what you did next.

 

That journey of WHO AM I NEXT?

means:

learning publicly.

Giving over to a process of sharing the process of finding out who you are,

visibly.

 

Of being someone who is re-oriented to inner self

in order to FIND OUT.

And letting go of the shame of

not knowing (how)

so you can GET to know WHO you became next.

That willingness to learn publicly, transforms the sense of loss

into mind-blowing unfolding

of finding out.

 

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

 

[00:00:00] Hey, sibling, you are listening to the Unmasking Unschooled podcast. This is for visionaries, creatives, and change makers who happen to be autistic, who are done with pathology paradigms, the masks and misinterpretations of the past, and the burnout cycles that come from trying to fit in with what doesn't work.

[00:00:31] You are here to create new aligned life structures, to innovate industries, to design liberatory solutions, and create new culture by becoming yourself. My name is Louisa Shaeri. I'm an artist, coach, and founder of SOLA Systems. This is all about you getting unstuck, reinventing and elevating your sense of self.

[00:00:52] Having the social context and frameworks to make a life that makes sense for how you make sense. So you can finally experience who you're here to be in your fullness. Let's deep dive into it.

[00:01:09] Hey sibling. So this episode is one from the archives. I'm going to. Let you listen to it first, and then I'm going to share some more thoughts at the end. When I say from the archives, I mean, it's one of the episodes from my original podcast that I launched in 2020 that's no longer online. So I'm taking some of the best episodes and repurposing them occasionally here.

[00:01:33] This one is called learning publicly. Have a listen, and I'm going to talk to you after. To learn publicly. So giving yourself. Permission to learn publicly is a shame antidote. It means that you can focus on the learning curve and the lessons you're in and begin to move to where you want to be. Instead of hold yourself back until everyone else approves of you or gives you gold stars.

[00:02:07] We're taught that we're supposed to please other people, but that is the biggest lie. That is also why I think that an artistic practice can be so liberating because you absolutely cannot Please anyone but yourself in the making of the work. Bjork said something like this, that if you try to please everyone else, you'll end up pleasing no one, but if you please yourself, only then do you have a chance of pleasing others.

[00:02:36] And I found that to be true. When we please ourselves, only we can let go of what other people might think. And actually experience ourselves and I want to encourage you to think of becoming more of yourself in the same way. You are a work of art that requires non judgment from you in order for you to unfold.

[00:02:59] You're not here to fit in. You're not here to toe the line or be agreeable. And that judgment that you are supposed to be a certain thing is probably actually coming from you some of the time, so the internalized messages that are not you, not about you even, but about where they came from, that we rehearse and we rehearse them as a defense to try and predict what other people might think and avoid being rejected outside the group, but the group needs people who are not sheep and if that judgment is coming from others, that is about them and actually has nothing to do with you.

[00:03:43] It's about the rules they have for themselves about what is correct, and acceptable, and good, and how confronted they are with anything that offers another possibility that maybe they've denied for themselves, or that contradicts the rules that they have abided by in order to accept themselves, or see themselves as worthy, um, and it's not really anything to do with you, it's not about you.

[00:04:09] If you're avoiding the risks involved in learning publicly, And trying something while other people are watching. That can mean that you're also avoiding the learning of what your own opinions are, your own taste. If you've been busy modulating yourself or your work for approval, your own taste and your own instinct gets quieter.

[00:04:34] But the only way to start to be good at anything, anything that we want to do, the only way to start a goal, to start to be good at anything, is to be okay with being at the beginning and being bad at it first and to not judge yourself for it and not be concerned with what other people think about where you're at or how you learn or what is good or bad to them and where you are supposed to be at your age.

[00:05:04] Or your stage of career, or whatever the context is. To trust your own assessment and feelings, and turn up the volume on your inner voice that knows if you want more of this or not. That self judgement can be a habit that is hard to let go of. But it is just a habit. And the other side of that habit is an incredible internal freedom and space to learn and grow, even with people watching.

[00:05:31] And you also benefit them in the process because it makes more room for them to learn publicly and them to accept themselves wherever they are at. Solar siblings has in many ways been a vehicle for learning publicly and in fact intentionally so. And I want to share about my journey with speaking on camera and on zoom as an example of learning publicly.

[00:05:56] And hopefully you can get something from this related to a journey that you're on or something that you want to do. But are worried about what other people might think, or being bad at it for a while until you get good at it, or, um, and yeah, that is stopping you from trying. So speaking, talking, was for years something that I associated a lot of negative feelings around.

[00:06:20] And I don't know if you have had the sensation of being in a context in which you were heavily masking and then catching a reflection of yourself in a mirror and feeling, um, an intense sense of paranoia about that hiding of self being obvious to others, or the masking being visible, or that people might actually see you.

[00:06:41] Um, this was something that I used to experience. And part of this was the culmination of selective mutism or situational mutism. that internal mental block, that mental defense mechanism that would exist in moments of social stress and make speech involuntarily disappear. And also, uh, the culmination of people telling me that I spoke too quietly or too loudly.

[00:07:09] And then on top of this, the sense that I felt like I never knew the right thing to say, although I often got it wrong. And speech happens with a different part of our brain than singing. It's a strange thing to some of us. to push sounds out of our bodies that are representative of word reference without the sounds themselves generally having any sonic relationship with the thing that they reference or any embodied somatic sense.

[00:07:43] It doesn't quite make sense. It's a discombobulated, disconnected way of communicating. When I connected to myself, instead of monitoring other people's perceptions of me, then I found what was really going on, which was that a lot of the stress was actually about listening, about keeping up with the pace and rate of interaction.

[00:08:09] and processing other people's speech alongside lots of other visual and auditory information that was irrelevant. How I'd been struggling to keep up with that rate of speech and then also second guessing how to respond before I'd really processed what I was hearing. So much unnecessary work under the surface that was exhausting but also meant that I was stressed And swallowing my voice and then my voice was also quiet and my expression was unassertive and full of doubt.

[00:08:43] And this fear of speaking was magnified when cameras were around. The idea of being recorded speaking was terrifying to me. And this too was less actually about speaking and more about the ways I'd learnt to adjust my own micro expressions to mirror and respond to. the other person in ways that would influence their impression of me positively.

[00:09:08] So being recorded on camera represented the risk of someone watching that recording without me being present to, in essence, manipulate their idea of me in ways that would keep me safe from rejection. And being recorded and that moment imprinted as a digital record, which would also record the ways in which I was.

[00:09:34] being different depending on who I was with. The unconscious fear was about, again, being found out or seen as erratic. So for years I avoided anything that would mean I was speaking while being recorded on camera. But here's the thing. I'm a communicator. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to have that possibility of using speech in my work, around my work, and as a way to move the vision I have into reality, which is really a complete Reinvention of what is known as the autistic body complete 180 paradigm shift that would make the DSM irrelevant that would mean that people who share these experiences are the experts brought into schools that would mean the means of extending this type of, um, these types of cognition, these unusual types of cognition into thinking tools, into new worlds, into new ideas and ways of being and thinking and existing and having a vision or goal that is bigger than you, um, is what pulls you through these uncomfortable, um, areas of growth.

[00:10:48] And that vision pulled me to confront this. And so when I did take out my phone and face the fear in my own company of being recorded on camera and watch myself back and saw what I looked like while I was talking, I didn't like what I saw. I judged myself. I decided I was terrible at it, that I was doing it wrong, that my voice sounded bad, um, that my eyes were moving around looking the wrong way instead of at the camera as if that's bad, that I was bad at this, um, that this was not a channel I could use and so I avoided it even more.

[00:11:31] And it wasn't until I gave myself permission to learn that to be in my body, to not judge myself, and to observe myself without making it mean something about me. Um, then I could begin to explore how I do me in that context, but also how it felt and what was going on for me that made this scary. And across all contexts, giving myself permission to respond in my own time, to listen openly and not second guess the correct response.

[00:12:04] to feel how it feels to speak, and also how matched my voice was to the voice inside, and also to know that however I come across, if I say I'm good enough, then there is someone else who's given permission to also say that to themselves. So I could see the ways I was habitually expressing self doubt. I could see that I have a specific way of expressing myself when I talk and I could begin to get comfortable with the idea of being recorded.

[00:12:39] And with podcasting it's also been a process. I record with headphones on, so that I can hear myself outside of my own physical head and the sound of my voice that comes through my body to my ears is not the loudest. Instead, I'm hearing what is being recorded and also what used to take days and lots of mistakes is now taking only a few hours and it's a process.

[00:13:07] In Solar Siblings, in the beginning, the first ever iteration back in May 2020, um, I decided to give myself permission to learn publicly or visibly and I said to myself, so what if you fail at this Zoom call? In fact, there is no such thing. Failure is just how you learn. Failure is just part of the process and trying is how you get confident.

[00:13:36] Not judging yourself along the way is what actually gets you there, but also that vulnerability and imperfection is what creates connection. We know this from the work of Brene Brown. It's beneficial to others when you admit. What is hard will be open and accepting of yourself and also be okay with learning publicly.

[00:13:57] And I would add also being present. You can't be fully present if you're up in your head about what others will think. You can't be of service and make an impact and create change if you are caught up in pleasing people. So I decided to be open and say You're going to see me mess up, and you're going to see me get things wrong, and there'll probably be technical issues, and I'm nervous, but we're going to do this anyway, and the first Zoom call did start 15 minutes late because of a technical issue, and I was freaking out, running around, trying different cables.

[00:14:36] My partner, who's looking after our two kids in the front room, trying to make sure they didn't come into the kitchen, was trying to help me. It was chaos. Eventually I got it working, uh, but then I was stressed and my voice was shaky and some people had already decided, okay, nothing seems to be happening, and they'd left.

[00:14:53] But I carried on, and carrying on means I got to find out what I could do, instead of judge myself before I'd had a chance to learn in my own way how I get there. So you have to give yourself the room to try and fail, uh, to not be liked, to disappoint people, and for none of that to stop you. You are worthy of finding out who you are by existing outside of the expectations, um, that you maybe assume others have of you.

[00:15:26] So being okay with learning publicly instead of judging the results allows you to feel what it feels like to you in that process, concentrate on what you're actually doing. and on what you're trying to communicate or connect, uh, who you're trying to connect with, who you're trying to help or, um, serve, and then also you can hear the next step.

[00:15:52] Fast forward to now, and I'm voluntarily, like, choosing to do this twice a month for an hour and a half each time on Zoom, recording the group calls, recording myself on camera, speaking, and I've chosen to do this. No one's asked me. I have chosen to podcast. These would have been unthinkable to my former self, but the process of not caring has meant I've been able to connect with you.

[00:16:22] It means I get emails from listeners telling me how much I've helped them. So imagine if I decided that my voice was too bad and never carried on. So my point here really is what nudge or desire are you avoiding because it requires you to let go of that need to please or be perfect or good or control what others think of you?

[00:16:45] What part of your expression are you avoiding getting to know for fear of disliking yourself or for fear of what you've never focused on being bad or being at the beginning? And what is at stake? What do you lose out on when you don't let yourself occupy your whole self, image, body and expression, vocal or typing or however you do you?

[00:17:14] What do you miss out on when you ignore your own image and expression? Who misses out on your message or your gifts when you hide? What experiences do you not get to have because you're scared to confront all sides of who you are right now? And what are you telling yourself when you don't share yourself?

[00:17:35] Because you are good enough, you are valid, and you are worthy of self reverence and attention. So I encourage you to go there, decide that you're going to practice non judgement, feel how it feels, process those feels, be in your body, learn publicly, decide that it's good for everyone. Especially if you don't express yourself like a seasoned TV presenter.

[00:17:59] Especially if you move, or talk, or look, or process, or do things in ways that don't, um, conform to ableist standards. Especially if you confront other people with something that doesn't conform to those narrow ideals. Decide that you're worth getting to know for yourself. Decide your learning and your growth.

[00:18:23] is worth moving towards, even if other people don't like it or approve or understand it, and decide what bigger vision or project you can focus on that is beyond you, that will pull you through those learning curves. that are public or visible.

[00:18:42] So I wanted to add a few words on the end of this because there's an idea in that episode that I want to flesh out and highlight a bit more, and it's this idea of finding out, finding out who you are now. After late self identifying or getting a diagnosis as autistic or ADHD or all of the above, Some of what happens after that is a process of recognizing all of the ways that you've been adapting to certain ways of doing things, a certain idea of who you are, or many mishmashed, incompatible ideas of who you are, and newly, Realizing and recognizing the degree of that adaptation and how maybe you don't have to do that anymore.

[00:19:31] Maybe there is so much more to you to the world that hasn't been part of your experience, or you haven't felt able to open up to because your sense of self and your identity has been limited to that survival. And what I want to highlight is that In that process of unfolding who you are, who you could be, the world, or your experience of it could be now, there are these three phases that I talk about as being the core phases of a process of transformation that the solar system lays out, phase one being refusal, being I don't want to do that adaptation anymore, saying no, saying a super big massive boundary cocooning thing.

[00:20:18] Fuck off to the world. No, thank you. So that you have that space within which you can start to sense. Well, okay, what do I actually want? What are my true boundaries? What do I prefer? What are things that I need? And so this second phase is a reorientation to, yeah, what's happening in me? What's the internal experience that I'm actually having?

[00:20:43] What's my body saying? And the wisdom within that to then know. What might work? What might be different? What do I want to do differently now? And emerging out of that phase into the third phase of restructuring, actually materializing the ways to have your relationships, your living structures, reflect that, reflect what works for you, what feels good to you, who you are internally, and therefore begin to reflect that back, support and enable and encourage all of those sides.

[00:21:16] of you to be expressed. And so in that process, there is a sense of, well, I don't actually know who I am and who I thought I was doesn't really fit. And I've kind of collected up and carried all these ideas of either who I'm supposed to be or the ways that I'm, you know, not correct, or the feedback that I've had has been based on.

[00:21:41] Me as someone who's adapting me as someone who's trying to fit in or get by or survive, but not, well, who could I be? And so this permissive space of being able to do things differently is leading to this question of, Well, I don't actually know what that would look like. And it's almost like a second adolescence, right?

[00:22:04] It's kind of facilitated by a degree of rebellion that may or may not be a fuck off to the world, but it might be some degree of that internally so that you are allowing yourself to find out, to try stuff, to dream bigger, to experiment. And part of that is obviously learning publicly. I also want to speak to the grief that also comes with this, right?

[00:22:27] I wish I'd known earlier, or if only I'd known then, then I could have done things differently or I wouldn't have felt so that I needed to do things the way that other people expected me. Right. And that grief and that being present with, okay, well, what is next? Who actually am I? How, How do I begin to even start to reformulate my life to make sense for who I could be now is really difficult to do from that space of feeling like you missed out.

[00:23:02] And what I want to say is that the more that you start to be in that process of finding out is the more that you start to reformulate that grief and that sense of loss into something else, which is wow. All of that lived experience of what doesn't work isn't wasted. Instead, it gets repurposed. It gets reorganized into a wisdom for what will work and a sense of deep conviction to follow that path of what will work.

[00:23:35] And out of that comes this deep self trust to know, well, I tried that and I'm worth it. I'm willing to be in the process now of trying something else. So I'm encouraging you to embrace that this might be where you're at, at whatever age you're at, whatever stage in your life, and to just be willing to be in it without judging that you're supposed to be anywhere else.

[00:23:57] You're alive in this era, in this moment. This is what happened to you in your story and your story's not finished. You get to write what happens next and what happens next is what will frame everything that came before it in a new way. So this looking forward, this opening up to, you know, who did you become?

[00:24:18] What did you do next? If we, if we look at it from a position of the future, who is that version of you? In the future, who is looking at you now and can inform the choices that you're about to make. And those choices are going to also reorganize your sense of the past, not. Just as one of loss, or if only I'd known, but also one of, wow, the strength that I built to live that, to endure that, to adapt to that, is now repurposed as the strength to, Adapt to what does work to reformulate and recast who I am now, what my life is now.

[00:24:59] And that strength is there. It's something that you get to experience in a new way. So I'm encouraging you to be in the finding out, to not worry about what age you are at, or when it's happening in your life, or where you're supposed to be, and to just allow yourself to be in the discovery of who you become now.

[00:25:19] And this isn't just for you. This is for everyone who, you know, whose gifts, real self humanity have been overshadowed by restrictive oppressive or industrialized or supremacist systems that aren't working for anyone and are asking us to collectively do things differently. And so you are part of that.

[00:25:40] Right. Your journey of finding out who you are is part of that. And there are ripple effects to every step in your unfolding and what that means for you that go way beyond what you even get to witness, right? Tweak something in a relationship that has a knock on effect. You restructure something or you set a new boundary.

[00:26:04] You reinvent how you do things. That has a ripple effect. It becomes a model, a way of doing things that someone else can witness or borrow or understand. And I'm excited for you. I have, you know, I'm lucky that I get to sit up close and witness how much can change and how quickly and I see it in all of the coaching and I see it every day and the same is true for you.

[00:26:31] There are aspects of your life that can transform. There are experiences that you will have where you will blow your own mind that you have no idea yet about yourself. And when I say no idea, there may be an inkling, there may be a sense, there may be a felt sense within you, but mentally, experientially, you know, the, the ideas, the thoughts that you have won't, won't catch to that, won't know that yet.

[00:27:01] So being able to witness this. Happen constantly and things transform for people in ways that they are just so surprised by, gives me a level of conviction to know that it's the same for you. You have no idea who you are. You have no idea what's possible. And that is such a generative, exciting, unknown, but I want you to use the fuel of what didn't work, the pain of your past, the struggle and the difficulty of it as a source of conviction.

[00:27:33] A source of fuel to now find out, you know what? I'm alive. This is my life. Let me make it mine.

 

 

 

 

 

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