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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Series 2, Ep9: Strengthening a porous sense of self

 

EPISODE NOTES

THE PRESSURE (and the reward)

to conform, to appease can be so normalised in our experience

 

that the only option seems to be

to bend with it

to give in

to give over to outside forces.

 And in that giving over

is also an erosion

of a sense of self.

 

A porous self that slips in and out of grasp.

 

In my work with the autistic and Audhd folks I coach

I offer that

VISIBILITY doesn't come through making yourself seen within the eyes of another

 

but SEEING YOURSELF

(felt sensed inner truths)

first

and then seeking connection, a witness, a companion

in that truth.

 

In this week's Unmasking Unschool PODCAST episode I speak to my experiences of having a porous sense of self

The artistic sensibilities and energetic sensitivities

that this gifted me

 

but also

how much my journey has been about CREATING and building an ego

developing an individuated, distinct, felt experience of my own boundaried limits

so that I'm not LOST in other people.

In their gaze, and their energy, and their agenda.

 

WHAT I represent to others (autistic / adhd / etc)

matters less than:

 

I experience that I exist.

Because I have CHOICE in my existence.

and that choice creates SELF-TRUST;

creates the self esteem + confidence to show up to my life and relationships

knowing I 'have my own back'.

 

Emerging into an experience of your own self, that is not a product of others dictates

takes time

but it is worth the work of re-orienting to Self Connection:

 

 

 

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. 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 today I want to speak to something that seems to be a salient feature for Many folks I work with, it's definitely been a salient feature in my own past and it has to do with self connection and it has to do with, uh, one of the problems that self connection solves. So before I go into it, just to give some context, if you are new to the podcast, the core framework that I use in the coaching is called the solar system.

[00:01:45] And there's a few aspects of it. Inside the solar system that I'm going to speak to, first of all, one is, there's three phases in any journey of, of change, right? Any journey of transforming, and in the journey of becoming who you're here to be, it's not that you are separate from the world, it's that the two things are connected.

[00:02:07] Co unfold together you, who you are being, and then also the world and how much that world makes you possible and how much you being more of yourself also opens up things in the world. These things happen in parallel, change is a given, but what's the change that you actually want? And so in a process of change, whether it's, Something that's not working in your relationships or your work life or something that, you know, you're putting up with and you don't want it to be like that anymore.

[00:02:43] You don't yet see a way forward. This is a framework for the process of change to go through. And it starts with this phase of refusal. It starts with this phase of saying no. In a previous episode, um, I think it's called the first stage of recovering from burnout. I speak to an aspect of that. Phase, which is really about saying no to what's not working and creating extra large false boundaries, uh, an extra no, right, really going over the top in creating a kind of cocoon for yourself so that within that cocoon, you can start to sense, well, what actually do I want?

[00:03:22] What are my true boundaries? What is a yes or how? Do I make this into a yes. And so I'm going to speak to that in a moment. And also then the phase after that, which is making self connection. Your only goal is really about, you know, having been oriented too much to what the systems want you to be. What's.

[00:03:46] Other people want you to be what, uh, you've been represented as the standards and the expectations that you're supposed to meet. And, uh, the idea of self that you develop in failing to meet those standards or in meeting some of them very well and others, not so well, all of that creates an orientation to pleasing, appeasing, fitting in with getting on board with, uh, compromising over adapting, compensating, camouflaging.

[00:04:16] And so, self connection is really about reorienting your attention, your energy, your resources, and checking in with, well, what's true for me, how am I experiencing this, what are the experiences I'm actually having, and making that the, Primary source of decision making. So first phase is refusal. Second phase is renewal, reorienting to, you know, self connection.

[00:04:44] And then the third phase is then allowing what emerges from that self connection, the wisdom that comes from both of the previous two phases to then start to offer up new decisions, new actions, new ways of being new ways of responding, new ways of structuring things. So that your world around you starts to more and more reflect the person that you're becoming, the version of you that you could be, the one that is more expressed, more fulfilled, more satisfied, more fully realized into the world, into the material existence that we're in.

[00:05:22] And so within This framework, there's a secondary framework, which is called pyramids of wise action or power for short P O W A. And that is another coaching model as part of the solar system. If you put them together, it creates solar power, um, pyramids of wise action really speaks to a way to think about.

[00:05:48] The internal representation of our experiences, of what reality is, of what self is, future, other, past, and how we might think of these things as things that we have working models for, right? Our nervous system adapts to experiences, to what are patterns. It looks for those patterns so that it can make predictions about how we need to be and what we need to respond to.

[00:06:15] And those models become working models that we operate with as kind of assumptions and predictive notions ahead of time of what things are and who we are, who other people are, and what's going to happen. And so, In our models, we have not just the conditions around us, but also the conditions inside of us.

[00:06:43] We also have what we focus on, what we make that mean, and therefore as a result, what we do with that, how we respond, how that informs what we do, and that then impacts what we make happen, what we make real, and that then reinforces One particular reality or creates a different one. So in a journey of becoming more of who you are, this is about maximizing your ability to shape your models of who you are, what the world is like, and what's possible for you, what your future is in ways that really help you to have more.

[00:07:32] Visibility to yourself, more energy on the things that you want and more agency to determine and shape what your life is like. So what I want to speak to with all of that today is what is a common experience. I think of having. Kind of a porous sense of self. Your model of self is wavering. It's got holes in it.

[00:07:58] It often disappears or eludes you or escapes or you find yourself doing things in ways that are awkward. Not really what you would deep down want or intend. And that has the effect of feeling like you are less able to grasp who you are. You're less able to experience the reinforcement of who you are or what is true for you in self connection.

[00:08:28] And instead there's a kind of disconnect. And part of that disconnect is. In what you're doing, and part of it is in how the world is feeding back who you are based on its own models, other people's models, societal models, cultural models, and then we're responding to that, right, we're responding, we're oriented to trying to find ourselves within that, trying to be visible in that, trying to see ourselves within that, and if that is narrow, if that Doesn't reflect you accurately or positively, if that doesn't kind of represent and affirm and validate and see you for all of who you are, then it creates this sense of.

[00:09:19] It can, it can create, if we internalize it, this sense of, of lack of, of absence of, I can't see myself of, do I even exist? Right. That I doesn't exist. There's a partial self. There's a partial sense of belonging. There's a partial, uh, access. And so this partial Sense of I'm not quite fitting in or I can't quite see myself and at the same time having this messaging, which is constantly telling us who we are, that is inaccurate or there's just an absence in feedback that resonates with anything that might be who we are, then we can end up feeling like we need to fit in with something that is a projection onto us to also try to go into other people's models.

[00:10:18] Other people's thoughts, feelings, values, actions, and try and change them in order for us to feel seen inside of them. So this looks like trying to convince someone of who you are, trying to convince someone of why you are valid. This looks like culturally trying to argue for your identity. This looks like trying to Be empowered within current systems using the ways that the system has organized identities, categories of self, uh, ideas of what is and isn't real and trying to use that to represent ourselves.

[00:10:56] This leads to all sorts of disconnects. This leads to splits internally. It leads to also. Just a poorer sense of self, a self that is easy. It's like, um, it's like something wavering in the wind, right? It's blown this way and that way. And it gives you this, this sense of a lack of self trust. Can I rely on myself to.

[00:11:24] Actually show up and be there in a way that I am wanting to choose. Can I rely on myself to maintain my sense of self when I'm interacting with other people? And for so many of us, a journey of becoming is coming from a place of a feeling like when I interact with other people, I need to disconnect from myself.

[00:11:49] I need to disappear parts of myself. I need to split and separate internally from myself in order to control, influence, affect how they are being with me. Because if I just come as my full whole self, then that there's going to be negative consequences. Right. And so a lot of what this comes from is systemic, is societal, and is the way that societal and systemic inferences get passed down, passed through relationships, whether it's your caregivers, your teachers, authorities, Bosses, uh, you know, the authorities in society, like the police, the government and so on, uh, media messaging, right?

[00:12:35] This comes to us, it, it arrives at the shore of self, in these waves of an experiential sense of, You are not welcome here in your fullness. Your wholeness, uh, does not, uh, work here. And so, how we deal with that is often to disconnect from self, right? And to, yeah, bend and shape ourselves according to the will of others, according to the agendas of others.

[00:13:05] And, As I'm saying this, I want to speak to, we don't want to hate ourselves for that. We don't want to admonish ourselves and feel bad for the ways that we have necessarily adapted for survival. We also don't want to feel bad for the ways that that has been effective. We may have been rewarded for fitting in for pleasing, for being compliant with.

[00:13:31] Right? And so there's a huge amount of pressure and a huge amount of reward in doing that. But the secondary effect, the secondary consequence is that your sense of self wavers, disappears. It's porous. It's something that is difficult for you to trust, to lean on, to feel like you can lean on it as this is true, this is real, because The availability of connection around that has been not always there.

[00:14:07] And so underneath a poorest self, I think ultimately is an unmet need for connection with others. Years ago, when I had a residency with Manos Tkiris, who's a brilliant. scientist, neuroscientist, researcher at Royal Holloway in London, who's exploring aspects of selfhood that are to do with embodiment.

[00:14:32] What does it mean to have a self? What is self and not self? How do we constitute a self? And in the residency I got to Be in their department, have a lot of time, ask a lot of questions. And part of what I wanted to ask was about experiences that I'd had in my teenage years when my sense of self was so porous that I disappeared.

[00:15:03] into the sensory world around me. I would absorb the energetic, uh, absoluteness of everything, the color, the lines, the shapes, uh, the sounds, the textures, the, these all made imprints on me to such a degree that I would become them. And it was like, I had such an absence of an identity, of a sense of self, of an ego, that I was able to become them, right?

[00:15:36] I was able to suddenly be the color blue of the desk, the voice of the teacher, um, the sound of crows, the kind of moan, hum of voices, and It was exquisite. It was what I think has informed an artistic sensibility and energetic sensitivity as well, but it was also socially really inconvenient and confusing and very difficult to interact with other people in those states.

[00:16:11] And. I was around, I'd say 12 years old when I first realized that this might not be everyone else's experience. I thought this was just what it was like to be alive and recognizing that, you know, when I'm sitting next to another student and I'm wanting to be their friend and I'm wanting to interact and I'm having all of these imprints of who they are, their voice, their, uh, appearances, their expressions, their energy, to the degree that I Couldn't distinguish myself so clearly from them.

[00:16:45] I would become them. You know, what was creating that? What was that about? Anyway, so I presented all of this to Manos Tkiris and he said he couldn't tell me, but research that they had done with people who Uh, I can't remember what the term is, but they feel other people's pain as if it's their own, like witnessing someone in emotional or physical pain, they would feel it as if it was their own body and happening to them.

[00:17:18] And that here's hypothesis for what might be underlying that was an unmet need for connection. And at first, I didn't really want to take that on board and I kind of brushed it aside in my own thoughts and pushed it away and it wouldn't go away. And eventually I entertained the idea for a second and I, and I tried it on and I recognized how true this felt, how at that particular moment in my own journey, I had.

[00:17:55] Really unmet needs for connection. I was in a social context every day where my ability to experience connection with others was really difficult to access and also to connect with myself as a foundation for connecting with others was also not available. Right. I was overwhelmed by the timetable, the school structure, moving from classroom to classroom.

[00:18:23] All of the. Inferences around me that were not supportive of the ways that I work best. And so at that time, that unmet need for connection was strong enough. My sense of self weak enough, my synesthesia, my hypersensitive visual and sonic orientation and sense making all meant that where I was seeking connection was in everything that was.

[00:18:55] non human, everything that was beyond human, everything that was experience that was happening, that was the way that I naturally think, but trying to reach out further, trying to dive deeper, trying to find That connection and I found it in objects. I found it in the sensory. I found it in the ephemera around me to such a degree that my emotional landscape I think is shaped by the energy of things I feel in energies and I think it's Visually and in energies, and that has been my primary sense making form, right?

[00:19:42] But partly from that unmet need for connection, I might hypothesize. Partly from a societal and social context where I was Vigilant that sensitivity then was useful when it came to trying to fit in, right? Trying to match other people's energies, other people's ways of talking, uh, the dynamic of a group.

[00:20:10] But in doing so, I was constantly reinforcing their reality, their models, their ways of being. And. in the same moment undermining what mine needed to be. So that lack of reflection, that lack of connection, that lack of access, all magnified this sense that I, me, don't fully exist, a sense of self that was elusive.

[00:20:38] And, you know, this is why I think, I don't know if I've said this before, but meditation and spirituality that is about losing ego is so often been Not the direction I've needed to go in and for me, it's much more useful to be in the work of forming an ego of dealing with who might I be in the world and developing.

[00:21:04] An ego, building one up, constructing an ego, creating a sense of self where naturally I'm already tripping out in the oneness of all the things and all the energy and what I need is a process of individuation, a process of distinguishing myself from other, finding my edges, finding my boundaries and so when we're Dealing with a porous sense of self, what I want to offer is that, yeah, number one is this need for connection.

[00:21:42] So first of all, validating that human need for connection. And then the second thing is boundaries. We often, I think, come into adulthood with a really wildly inaccurate sense of our own boundaries. I see this in my clients. I see this in the ways that I was so ready to be what anyone wanted me to be. I was so oriented to their models, their reality, their ways of doing things.

[00:22:20] And always over and above, what are my needs and what are my experiences and where am I? Yes. And where am I? No. So coming into a new connection with our boundaries is a product of being able to exercise that choice of. Checking in first of all, self connection. Am I a yes or am I a no? And that yes and no can be inconsistent.

[00:22:48] That yes and no is moment to moment, day by day, hour to hour and coming back into or creating, forming a new sense of true boundaries, accurate boundaries and staying within them. That's the point of boundaries, right? Staying within, having the sense of containment, having the sense of here's what I'm a yes for.

[00:23:16] Here's what I have attention, time, energy, resources for. Here's what is resonant with me. Here's what I can get on board with. And here's where that stops. And here's where I reach a limit. Here's where I sense that if I carried on, I'd be pushing past. And so a big part of the journey of becoming who you're here to be, being more of yourself and having a stronger, more, more stable, more self felt, internally strong sense of self.

[00:23:54] Is coming back into connection or creating truer, more accurate boundaries. So many times the expectations that are placed on us are about a different pace, a different way of doing a way of behaving that doesn't fit. And the idea that you can't make life work unless you push past, unless you are constantly overworked, are burnt out, are stretching.

[00:24:31] So we get used to the idea that things only happen when we are doing that, when we are In that state of being stretched and that if we're not and we say no, and we respect what feels like an internal no, then something terrible and bad is going to happen. Rejection is going to happen. Survival will not be possible.

[00:24:54] So a big part of what happens when folks come into the solar system is that. The orientation to other people's expectations, other people's wants and needs is often the thing that needs the first work. There's a reorganization that has to happen internally where it's like, Oh, wait, I get to decide. I get to decide if I have my camera on and off, I get to decide, do I want to ask for coaching today?

[00:25:27] I get to decide how I navigate the program. And I'm not having to meet Louisa's expectations or anyone else in the group. I'm here to meet my own and that being a new thing and that being a really big part of the journey of, okay, I'm. Accessing a social environment where I can be in self connection and make that my priority.

[00:25:53] The result of strengthening the internal communication with yourself around yes and no boundaries, internal boundaries, right? Not even the ones that we communicate to others yet, but just what am I good to do right now? What happens is when we act on that, we actually reinforce the internal reality to a degree that means that we start to trust it more and that self trust, that trust in self, right?

[00:26:27] That's the, the, the deeper meaning of trust. The word confidence is to, to self trust that gives us a sense of being able to then trust that we can navigate external situations and not disappear and not, and not get blown around in the wind, in the agendas of other people, in their personalities, their energy.

[00:26:48] And so the impact of that is that other people relationships being places where there are expectations becomes. So much less stressful. You are much less in a state of vigilance. You're not bracing anymore for what might happen because you already trust that you have your own back. Literally have your own back, right?

[00:27:16] Literally I'm aware of the boundaries and the wholeness of me and I'm bringing all of me into my own experience in that moment of being with other people and that being the The thing that is dictating my decisions around how I navigate it now, if that's not happening yet, it's just because this is a slow process.

[00:27:42] It's just because sometimes there are ways that we say yes. When really deep down, we're a no that are so habitual, so automated that we don't even spot them. And so somewhere we pick up the sense of disappearing and suddenly I don't feel good and I can't. I've lost my sense of self and we're in that state for two weeks and it takes time to trace back into the past of, okay, where did that start?

[00:28:13] What happened? What interaction set me off down that cascade of disappearing again? And we can then trace back to pinpointing. Oh yeah. It was in that moment that I allowed something or agreed with something or it did something where I didn't do something that was not actually in my truth. Right. And that was an automatic response.

[00:28:43] But now that I've spotted that and now that I can notice that and I'm aware of it, next time I can have a different response. I can open up the possibility of choice. Now, everything that I'm saying, what I'm not saying is that you strengthen a sense of self by being completely yourself and completely unmasked all of the time, no, it's that your masks are a choice.

[00:29:10] That they become optional because you have an array of other options that you've practiced that you've rehearsed that you've laid down grooves in your nervous system for That you can trust that there's connection around somewhere in your life And you know that it doesn't lead to rejection isolation Or a disconnect within yourself so You can have a strong sense of boundaries and the places the relationships where you might still need to mask or might still want to those can be In fact, things that are reinforcing of your sense of self because they reinforce choice.

[00:29:53] Because they are in a space of choice. And the other aspect of what happens as a result is that you experience your own agency, you experience your own sense of power. It's like you can bring all of yourself into a room. Right? You're not oriented to who do I need to be, but you're oriented to how do I want to be?

[00:30:20] What's working for me? What is my experience? And that self connection then offers a compass and a foundation for then navigating experiences in a way that means that you can sense, is connection available here? Do I like what's happening? Is this working for me? How do I want to do relationships? What structures and timings and pace are good for me?

[00:30:49] And less be in the compromising and the over adapting and more in the sense of your own power and agency to shape what your life experience is.

 

 

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