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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Series 2, Ep11: Over-identifying with your ACTIONS

 

EPISODE NOTES

 

I coach autistic / AuDHD - status folks

creatives, visionary self starters, change-makers 

who learned to hide, downplay, shrink,; 

Busy bodyminds that learn through DOING, immersion, deep dives;

who are energetically and sensorially sensitive, systems thinkers,

over-adapted to a world

that wants linear process, small talk, and sitting still.

I coach on how to Unlearn, Unravel, and Undo the layers of

over-adapting, people pleasing, second-guessing, scripting

 

And how to create a level of self-alignment, self-trust and self integrity

that radically changes your experience of WHO YOU ARE

from the inside...

to the outer edges of your spheres of influence;

 

because you, sibling, are here

to create new things, or in new ways;

to design a life that lets you

BEAM the uniqueness of your being,

and experience that BEING.

 

You are worthy of FEELING GOOD about who you are

instead of over-working to pass as 'Good Enough' by conforming to what doesn't work.

  

Today's Unmasking Unschool podcast episode

is about a common form of static that can mess with your sense of self

corrupt the flow of energy

corral your actions into contortions.

That static in your sense of self is:

Over-identifying with your habitual ACTIONS.

 

Repeated ACTIONS

Re-actions

have become The Way

The 5-lane super highway

in your nervous system;

the grooves that form the basis of

your habitual self.

The habitual, automatic, unconscious ways you interpret, react to life

that may have worked in the past

but now no longer fit

WHO you are what WHAT you want.

 

When you work with me,

this is what gets shifted:

 

Because over-identifying with your actions, when your actions are learned protective and reactive patterns

to past conditions

means you can't SEE yourself clearly

nor whats possible for you.

 

SO we clean them up.

 

And because

ACTIONS

are a primary source of belief.

 

So when you need to believe New Things about your self, future and dreams

your ACTIONS will be the first confirmation

(before anyone else believes).

Yup.

  

And when your ACTIONS

change course

into a path that reflects deep integrity with who you are becoming, inside, and what you really want

they create the feedback loop

that AFFIRMS that new emergent self.

 

But here's the thing;

trying to change the ACTIONS themselves

and trying to impose a New Way onto your actions

leads to more behaviourism,

more self-editing,

more masks.

 

So this work is about getting 'under the hood' of those ACTIONS

into the deeper belief systems that fuel them.

 

This is the work of coaching as I see it.

  

This is how those ACTIONS begin the change, like magic,

without the resistance

of the habitual self

that no longer fits.

 

Not so you can become more 'normal'.

But so you can EXPERIENCE that being yourself AND making life work

is not only possible

but inevitable

once you are

centring yourself

and your desired life

in your ACTIONS.

 

 

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.

[00:01:08] This is another episode in what I think is going to be a series on Over identifying. Last week I talked about over identifying with your environment, with your surroundings and what that is feeding back to you and reflecting. And today I want to talk about over identifying with who you're currently being.

[00:01:28] And by currently being, I mean like, In the moment, who is that version of you? We aren't a consistent fixed self. We are versions. We are going through life, experiencing different things, different people change. And so we're moving through life, reacting, being versions of ourself and letting different parts of ourself take the lead.

[00:01:53] And so as you're going about your life, sometimes you might have experiences where you're like, Oh, I didn't like how I did that. I don't like who I'm being in that relationship, or I don't like what's happening in this area of my life. I don't like. How I'm being right and so part of a journey of unmasking and coming into a different relationship with yourself can sometimes also involve becoming aware of the ways that you're being the habitual self the ways that maybe you're hiding the ways that maybe you are doing things that you actually don't like or that aren't in alignment for you that don't feel in integrity.

[00:02:36] And so sometimes when you don't like yourself or parts of yourself or who you're being, sometimes it's because of societal ideas and other people's judgments that we absorb, we internalize as self judgment, right? I've talked about that before. And that's not what I want to talk about today because sometimes it's not that.

[00:02:57] Sometimes it's actually you don't like it. You know that it's not in your truth and it's just a habitual version of you. It's a way of reacting, responding to something that worked once or Seemed to be the best way and so you kept being like that and now you're in the consequences of that or you are in the awareness of that, how mismatched it feels and that's okay.

[00:03:28] It's okay to not like all of yourself all of the time. It's okay to be a work in progress. It's okay to feel negatively about who you are if this is the case, right? In the Unmasking Unschool, which is my group online program, I have different frameworks or different systems. And one of them is the SOLA system.

[00:03:53] And so this is a way to think about this journey of self becoming of unfolding all of who you are and who you could be in the world and the circumstances that make that more possible. And so the SOLA system has these metaphorical planets, these kind of areas of focus to represent what that journey is like, to kind of give you the, the dots to join up.

[00:04:20] The first phase in the SOLA system is all about unlearning. It's all about, I call it the tunnel of un. It's this uncomfortable, confrontation with who you've been being and what the world is like and all of the things that are maybe hard to look at or we avoid or we don't want to deal with or we've just kind of got used to.

[00:04:43] And I talked about that in the last episode. They've become like the wallpaper, like the standards, the norm, the unconscious things that we've just accepted because They are the repeated, uh, standard thing that we're living, right? And so unlearning is really about becoming aware of all of those things so that we can start to discern, make different choices and refuse the things that are no longer working for us.

[00:05:10] So planet one is unlearning social conditioning. Planet two is unraveling the autism construct, this notion of difference and where does it come from so that we can see it for the construct it is so that we can see that there's a specific lens on difference on the body, on the human that enables that construct to exist in the way it does, and we can choose what parts of that we want to use when.

[00:05:39] If, and then planet three is undoing the habitual self or the habits of essentially being out of integrity, right? And so that's where I'm really going in this episode. And as I'm working on new materials for the Unmasking Unschool, making things clearer, kind of re synthesizing these systems of unmasking and, and becoming who you're here to be.

[00:06:05] I'm also looking at what are the. Results. What's the evidence along the journey that can be used to confirm that, okay, I'm starting to get this principle, this metaskill, this phase, and that first phase, the tunnel of un, this uncomfortable unlearning, is really about this cleaning of The lens through which you interpret your life and experiences, that lens that gets cloudy, gets muddied when you identify with circumstances in your life, with what are temporary circumstances, as if it's a fixed lens.

[00:06:46] reality and therefore viewing the future, viewing what's possible through those circumstances or through the past that got us here. And it's a restrictive lens, right? It's a limitation. It's not a clear view on what's possible. It's not you being visible to yourself. It's not you having that clear line of communication between inner and outer self, right?

[00:07:16] There's this. this confusion, this muddying of the lens. There are these false ideas and beliefs. And this is why for the podcast image, you, you see me holding up a lens, right? A lens that's reflecting the external world, but blocking actually the view. And so these first three planets are about cleaning the lens, about removing, refusing what gets in the way of experiencing a more accurate, internally felt sense of self and acting in integrity with that and that internal source of self connection, of self trust, of confidence and self esteem.

[00:07:56] So we're removing the stuff that gets in the way of you experiencing yourself in the most accurate, true light, and then being in connection with yourself to build that self esteem and take the kinds of actions that are. And so the measurable result of this first phase is becoming aware of all of the ways that you've over identified with the conditions of your life, with who you think you are, what you are to others, and how your past has shaped your current sense of self.

[00:08:28] And so, yeah, in the last episode of this podcast, I talked about. The problem with over identifying with your current life, your current conditions, what that supposedly says about you and in this episode, I'm really going deeper into the habitual self over identifying with who you've been being when you look at.

[00:08:49] as the evidence of who you are and identify with it, identify yourself with that. Then you, you get stuck, right? You get stuck in that version of self, but self is always changing. You are always growing, evolving, hopefully. And if you're being intentional about that, then the version of you that you're being is, is shifting rapidly, right?

[00:09:18] It's, it's, right. There's an evolution, there's a constant discovery, there's a constant breakthrough, there's a wow, oh, I've just realized, actually, I don't like doing that anymore, or I've just realized that the way I show up to that relationship, I'm kind of letting them walk all over me, whatever the thing is, these awarenesses, these realizations, open up the possibility beyond who you're being right now.

[00:09:43] And awareness is key because over time, with repeated experiences of similar life conditions and repeated reactions, those reactions become like the well worn tracks in your nervous system. And brain, right. They become super duper fast. It's like the go to way of reacting. And it's like grooves in the, in the record who you're just being, because it's the most available, most used way of reacting.

[00:10:21] Right. So you can think of that, like, it's a five lane, super highway road. To respond to react to life and all the other options that you haven't really tried, or you wouldn't know what that would be like. They're like dirt tracks going off through the woods and they don't seem like options, right? You're on the highway.

[00:10:45] You're being how you've always been. You're going. The way that you've always gone and you are going fast and don't pause, stop, slow down to notice that the highway is an option amongst many. So these reactions that become habit, the same way that your environment that you're in can be it. A habitual unconscious norm, the same is true of the way that you react.

[00:11:13] It's just like what you do, it's who you are, and you stop noticing it. You stop noticing that there are options, choices. And over time, those high speed, Highway reactions become how you are, right? Becomes just who you are and becomes the source of evidence for your identity and who you're being. And then you've also created evidence for other people who reflect that back to you and affirming it and it just becomes who you are.

[00:11:46] Sometimes that can be influenced, clouded by people's reactions and reflections back to you that are inaccurate, right? I got told a lot when I was younger that I was shy. Took me years to recognize I wasn't shy at all. I was just processing, taking in, uh, I'm visually oriented. So I was a looker of looking, observing, and not interested, or at times not able to respond verbally.

[00:12:14] Big difference, right? Between being shy and what was actually going on for me. But the reflections of others, the feedback, who they told me I was, started to be part of what I identified with, right, became an assumed identity. And sometimes that can be inaccurate to the truth of your inner self, but because you've identified with it, it sort of becomes like the limits, the rules that you conform to for how you get to be in the world, right?

[00:12:46] Well, I'm shy, so this is how I act. The same is true of reactions that have become habitual and automated. So like, someone does something you're not happy with, you swallow your voice, you get anxious, you start feeling uncomfortable, or maybe the opposite, maybe you're angry, you lash out, you Get abrasive, bullshy, right?

[00:13:14] None of those are a problem unless it's actually not helping you feel in integrity with who you feel yourself to be on the inside and also what you're trying to make happen. And so sometimes those reactions, they might have worked when you're younger, but maybe now they don't work for you anymore.

[00:13:32] They're not effective. And these are actions, reactions, repeated actions that are recreating. Results that you don't want, a life that you don't want, uh, an experience of who you're being that you don't want, relationship patterns that you don't want, right, but the familiarity, the safety and the speed of that super fast five lane highway on your nervous system makes it feel like, well, this is just who I am.

[00:14:04] So when you are wanting something new, something different, wanting change, or trying to create something new or in a new experience or in a new challenge life's presenting you, then the confrontation can be with an idea of self that doesn't fit, right? And it's this feeling of like, you know, the crabs that that find shells and then they start growing and then they need to go and find a bigger shell.

[00:14:32] It's like that. It's like your sense of self feels constrained. It feels like clunky, uh, awkward, and it's not working anymore. And that's you ripe for reinvention. That's you ready to grow. Sometimes life is presenting you with Some type of challenge that you have no idea that you can deal with and your current identity is not going to be a match for the learning and the unlearning that's going to be involved in meeting that challenge.

[00:15:11] One for me has been being nice. This is occasionally a version of me that still shows up and by nice I mean lacking boundaries, apologetic, letting people walk all over me and thinking that that means I'm liked or that I'm being kind, mistaking that for connection. And really that is a five lane super fast highway to pretense, to pretending I'm okay with things, to, uh, leaking energy, to signing up for stuff that really I'm a no.

[00:15:50] So that has been something for me to unlearn. I've had to come off that five lane highway, do something that feels super scary, unfamiliar, and take the dirt track road of, I'm going to say no, or I'm going to check in with what I'm really feeling right now. Or I'm going to take a minute to just observe who is the person in front of me being.

[00:16:16] I'm going to be willing to say no, refuse, not comply, and learn how to do that without getting all defensive or explaining why or being apologetic, right? No, I'm going to learn how to set boundaries and sit in the discomfort of watching someone else be unhappy with that. I've been listening to. Durand Bernard a lot lately, and he has a song called Boundaries.

[00:16:43] And one of the lyrics is, nope, I'm not going to sing it to you, but I recommend the song. Nope. Uh, but yeah, laying down new roads, new roads in the nervous system, new grooves, right, that are a conscious slowing down, pausing, and making a new choice that feels uncomfortable, new, and that deviates from my previous identity.

[00:17:09] So a lot of being nice, I created this identity of being agreeable, uh, not wanting to make someone uncomfortable or not wanting to disappoint people. None of that was an option. And so it's, it's laying down new uncomfortable dirt road tracks as, okay, here is a new option. I'm going to have to consciously start choosing that option.

[00:17:35] I'm going to have to be with myself through the discomfort of it, through the discomfort of the unknown. This is why it's the tunnel of un. I don't know what the consequences will be. I don't know how people are going to react if I stop being so nice. Right. And so, This is something that I'd identified with, even my name, I give a name Louisa can sometimes feel for me a bit nice.

[00:18:00] And this is why the alter identity, the alter ego, the alter energy of SOLA flare was necessary for building SOLA systems for building this work and this offering and doing it around a stigmatized aspect of, of self, right? Because nice Louisa, it didn't cut it when. I needed to be on the internet or interact with service providers or people commenting on posts, right?

[00:18:30] Or family members opinions. Nice means I'd have to stay hiding. Nope. So consider in your own life, in your own sense of self, where are there actions that you've identified with that you think that that's who you are, but you kind of don't like it anymore, or it's not really working for you and you want to show up differently.

[00:18:54] When I'm coaching people, those surface level actions are treated as a consequence of deeper belief systems, deeper conditioning, habitual thinking, habitual idea of self, the story, the interpretation of who you are and what's happening. And so we want to lift up the hood and look underneath those actions of a habitual niceness or whatever it is for you.

[00:19:20] It could be habitual resentment, bitterness. Lack of follow through, perfectionism, avoidance of failure, self judging, right? These are all things I've had to be coached on. These are all things I've coached other people on. Right. We lift up the hood. If you just focus on who you're being in the actions, you're going to take a behaviorist approach.

[00:19:45] You're going to create another mask. And again, it's going to be about contorting yourself, forcing something instead of getting rid of those contortions, unfettering, unimpinging, liberating yourself. So you want to get under the hood of those actions and look at what's shaping them. If I have a belief that I'm not enough and then I'm focusing on trying to be enough in other people's eyes, thinking that they need to be happy with me or that I need to please them for me to be enough, I'm going to be attached to what their reactions to me are.

[00:20:20] I'm going to try and control that. I'm going to maybe feel desperate, feel less than, feel unworthy. And then maybe I'm going to be nice and unboundaried and not take any risks in the relationship and not really be vulnerable and not be open to connection. I'm maybe going to self edit and be super hyper conscious, vigilant, self conscious and agreeable.

[00:20:44] And I might then attract people for whom that is really convenient. Because who they're being is someone who wants the control, the dominance, the superiority, wants to have minions and yes people and entourage. And so then I'm going to attract results that reinforce the belief that, yeah, in relationships I need to be nice.

[00:21:09] And so it reinforces that identity of niceness when actually it's not who I am, it's just who I'm being. When I see myself being like that, when I see actions, how I'm showing up, and it's not really who I am, and it's not really in integrity, and it's not really getting me the kinds of relationship experiences I want, then guess how I'm going to feel about myself?

[00:21:34] That great, right? And maybe that's accurate. Maybe I don't like that. I don't like how I'm showing up and then I don't feel in control of who I'm being and then I don't feel in control of life and relationships and my experience of who I am and I'm going to feel like I'm a victim to my circumstances.

[00:21:55] I'm going to feel like I'm a victim to those people that I've attracted or allowed that are domineering or that need to feel better than me. It's going to feel like it happened to me and I can't help it and it's just who I am and it's just my lot in life and then I'm going to feel like I can't be myself unless those external things change or those people around me change.

[00:22:22] All right. Or when I have this type of job or this type of person or this type of money, then, then when I have that. Then I can start to be myself, or then I'll be enough, and then I can do what I want, then I can say no, and we get into that when I, then I type of thinking. So if you're over identifying with who you're currently being, and you're mistaking those actions as who you are, and then if you don't like who you're being, then some of your thoughts are going to reflect that.

[00:22:55] And. Maybe that's okay. Sometimes, maybe, that's not conditioning, that's not internalized judgment. Maybe it's that you know you're out of integrity, and you're not cool with it. And it's just parts of you that you haven't made conscious, you haven't looked at, you've kind of ignored, or you've got used to.

[00:23:16] And so, becoming conscious and allowing some of those thoughts in. And being like, yeah, I don't like that I dress this way, or I don't like that I am closed off, or I don't like that I'm really defensive. And you might also, on top of that, have a layer of judgment that you're supposed to be. Everything that you want to be, that you're supposed to be the final product, the end result, then there's going to be a layer of shame on top, a lack of self trust to hold yourself, even when you aren't being exactly how you want to be.

[00:23:50] So you want to come on to your own side and allow and be okay with and accept all of your humanness, all of the parts of you, even the ones that you currently don't like, or it's not really you. in your truth or in integrity and allow them into your awareness. Be conscious of them. Notice them. Be like, cool.

[00:24:15] Okay. I wasn't happy with how I did that. Or I'm not happy with how I'm showing up to my life. And I'm okay with that. That's where I'm at right now. Sometimes over identifying with who you're being and the actions that reflect what is unconscious, right? What is just habitual. Sometimes this is just.

[00:24:38] Lessons that you haven't learned yet, things that life is trying to show you and that reality is teaching you something about who you're being, but it's not who you are, right? It's not the end result. It's not, this is who you are, full stop. So over identifying with what is unintentional, habitual, can mean that you stay stuck being that self, an unintentional self, a self that is out of integrity, a self that is a product of conditioning, past.

[00:25:10] current circumstances, stuff that happened to you, and is going to feel like a self that lacks the agency to change all of that, to choose to take those dirt tracks over and above the habitual highways of past selves. The ability to become the ability to shift and change into more up to date versions of you that reflect where you want to go.

[00:25:38] That is about those actions becoming intentional because you're conscious. You're aware of the belief systems, the thinking, the conditioning, the reactions, and those working assumptions that are underneath them. So this is the power of being coached. This is the power of the power system tool, the system that I teach inside of Unmasking Unschool.

[00:26:01] This is the goal of the Tunnel of Un, of unlearning the self that you thought you had to be, that you became, that you habitually were. The self that is reacting to circumstances. That is re actioning, repeatedly acting in a certain way and starting to bring those into conscious awareness. That is so much of the work.

[00:26:25] It's, 90 percent of the work is awareness. And because after more and more awareness, more and more noticing, Okay. This is who I'm being. Then you can start to make a new choice. And this is also why you can come into the unmasking unschool. People do, and they experience change. They experience massive change in their sense of self and what their experience of their life is like without yet having changed anyone else's mind or anything much on the outside in terms of life structures, right?

[00:27:01] Or convincing someone else. So much can change just through this awareness, and there are entire possibilities that open up when you have that experience of consciously taking a dirt path, right, a new action, making it your new road, because then you know you can do it again. Then you have a totally different meta relationship with yourself, where suddenly all these other dirt tracks become available.

[00:27:33] You start to see there's so much more to life, there's so much more to you than you've been experiencing, right, than this habitual self. Then these working assumptions of who you think you are, that are just the product of past actions and past reactions. When you start taking new actions out of that awareness, you have different consequences, right?

[00:27:58] And you, In those actions, create a different type of evidence to start to believe different things about yourself. And if those actions are affirming that new depth of relationship to yourself, that new level of self connection of self trust, then it's, it's an affirming action. It's an action that Creates self esteem that creates and builds that new self so over identifying with your actions will keep you stuck in an identity that has nothing to do with who you're becoming where you're going and what's possible for you and so becoming someone who can create change on purpose by bringing your actions into alignment because the under the hood stack of influences that are shaping those actions are organized right.

[00:28:53] Uh, oriented to inner self, inner truth, self connection, then you start to experience that inner self as a transmission, as a tangible reality in your life and in your relationships, because you start to be felt. to you. You start to be more true to you. You start to be more present with your current being and make those choices that are more aligned.

[00:29:27] You start to experience a new ease in yourself, being good with you, having self esteem. I. Like me. I like how I'm showing up. I like who I'm being and being able to direct your life as you would have it. This new level of agency, new level of energy, because you're boundaried in a different way. You're saying no and yes to different things.

[00:29:50] And sometimes that experience of taking your action. Just happens automatically when you've had the coaching where you've done the self coaching to deal with what's going on underneath, you've done that inner work, and then suddenly these new options, this new self starts to appear like magic and that magic.

[00:30:13] Is what I'm seeing constantly in the group. It's what gets reported. It's what gets shared. Every Friday we do a celebration and all of these new unfoldings, new discoveries, new uh, experiences of like, whoa, this is who I am today. This is who I'm this week. This is something I've just done. It's exhilarating to watch.

[00:30:33] It's so affirming and it's, it's available to you. That experience of constant breakthrough, of constantly discovering who you can be in this life. It's possible for you too. So sibling, what actions have you over identified with? Who have you been being that you've decided that's just who you are when actually maybe it's just a habitual self and maybe that habitual self is feeling constraining, is feeling too small, is feeling pulled back, stifling, and Maybe it's time to take some dirt track roads, get off that main normalized habitual path, and find out who you are.

[00:31:16] All right, sibling. I hope this has helped you and I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

 

 

 

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