ss_episodeTwo
===

[00:00:00] Hello siblings. Welcome to the Sensory Siblings Podcast. I'm your host, Louisa Shaeri, and this is beaming to you from the solar system, the liberatory framework, and unmasking unschool for creatively identified autistic folks who are seeking another way to see no and be yourself. This is a radical re-imagining of what's.

[00:00:26] Possible when we redefine ourselves from within, by unlearning who we are, not making self connection. Our goal, activating the languages of our sensory oriented perception and creating the culture shifts to activate futures and cells, it all starts within.

[00:00:50] So what does it mean? To unmask and how to do it and why might you want to unmask. So before we get into the how, I think it's a really good idea to know what we mean when we think about this question of unmasking, because unmasking as a word is kind of vague and anything that is vague, it's really hard to implement because where do you start?

[00:01:15] And yet it's something that has been in the vocabulary of. Uh, especially late identified autistic people, but also any neuro minorities who identify with the sense of your true self not being fully seen. And I want to start off by unraveling some of the misconceptions that the word itself can lead us to, because unmasking sounds like you're taking off a physical mask and revealing this mythical true self underneath.

[00:01:47] It sounds like when you unmask that there's some kind of radical difference in the degree of how much you are able to be perceived by others. So it sounds like when I unmask, people will be able to see me, which is what we all want and need as humans. We're affirmed and validated by being seen accurately as ourselves.

[00:02:09] We want to feel the connection that being seen speaks to that. Yes, human to human. I recognize what you experience and I bear witness to who you are, and I include you in my reality. So your reality is real. We share an understanding. We stand under the same reality. So we want to be seen and unmasking.

[00:02:32] Sounds like I've been hiding from you, and now I will show you who I really am. Unmasking also sounds like a single action. I take off the mask, I reveal myself with this one action, and now you can see me. And it sounds like it's all entirely within your control and on your body that when you take off the mask, then you will be seen by others.

[00:02:56] That them seeing you is all within your control and that the mask is on your body. And that all you have to do is unmask and others will see you, and they will get you and understand you and make it feel okay to be you. And the problem with this thinking is that the whole reason that you began to mask in the first place is because other people weren't able to see you when you were being yourself.

[00:03:21] So in other words, sometimes our masks are not in our own thoughts and actions. They are in the thoughts and actions of other people around us that are non affirming to us. And so masking might be thought of as remaining unseen, regardless of whether you are or aren't being your whole self. And what I want to share with you in this episode is the thinking about the goal of unmasking, not as a revealing of self and not as a goal of having other people see you.

[00:03:55] Which is not in your control, but of undoing the habit of self negating. So undoing the habit of unseeing yourself, of not listening to and believing your own body of interpreting your experiences or sensations as a reason to ignore the experiences that you are actually having. Okay, so unmasking as undoing habitual self negation.

[00:04:22] And I say habitual because anything that we do a lot, anything that we think a lot becomes automated, it becomes our reality. So any way that we may have reacted in the past to other people or situations, that then becomes how we always react. It becomes habitual. So unmasking is undoing that habitual self negation.

[00:04:50] Now I'm gonna explain what I mean a bit more by using an example. So let's say that you are on your way to gathering of some kind or going to work. And to get there, you have to take public transport. And that public transport for you is a sensory hell. The noise, the fluorescent lighting, the hustle and bustle.

[00:05:10] So at the end of your 20 minute journey, you're feeling a reaction to that sensory environment in your nervous system, and that sensory environment is loading up your nervous system with. Sensory experiences that are either intense or non congruent and difficult to process or just take you more time to process.

[00:05:30] But when you arrive, there's no place to go and calm your nervous system and process it and come back to a state of ease and calm. And not only that, you're in a social context where if you were to openly do the things that calm your nervous system or even just express that reaction that you have, the thought that doing that would draw negative and unwanted attention to you.

[00:05:56] That thought is coming from past experiences where you've allowed yourself to have your natural reaction to sensory overwhelm, and then others have reacted negatively or just not reacted in the same way you've experienced other people not seeing you and understanding you, and so being excluded from their reality.

[00:06:17] And so your past experiences are now playing out in this example as a habitual. Response where you are seeking to avoid that same negative reaction from the people around you. And this is real. People who perceive and process in the ways that dominant culture affirms are just not gonna have the neural pathways and past experiences in their body to identify with and understand what you experience.

[00:06:43] And because they're in the majority and because the world has been designed. In a very one size fits all top down industrialist, uh, industrialist structures that that suit the majority more than they suit neuro minorities, and which has led to this narrowing of social cues and rituals for belonging as an outlier to those dominant and normed ways of being together.

[00:07:10] You don't fit in with those structures and you also don't have your experiences affirmed in their design. So you're having an experience which is at odds with what is commonly understood and facilitated, and we haven't even got to the part where you are actually. In conversation. And that brings a whole other set of challenges when cognitive empathy is unavailable because they just don't have the same perceptive and cognitive processes that you do for making sense.

[00:07:40] And so that then adds another layer where your perceptions and the way you process them are different and distinct in ways that lead to different body language and pace of speech, or ways of communicating and reasons to communicate. And what happens is that a reaction to being rejected in the past is then repeated in that habitual way of being with others, whereby it seems like it's the only option.

[00:08:04] It seems like the only option is to suppress the self and try to assimilate and fit in with what appears to be, uh, the, the kind of rules or that that leads to belonging or approval or to defer responsibility for how to be. To the other person and other people that seem to have very strong rules for what is and isn't correct, and what does and doesn't constitute social warmth and approval to them.

[00:08:31] And we're taught that approval is also something that we need and should want from others. But if people don't have the lived experience to recognize and affirm yours, then it makes sense to conclude that. You have to edit and modulate yourself in order to gain that sense of inclusion and belonging another way, a way that isn't natural to you.

[00:08:55] So your being your whole self doesn't lead to other people necessarily being able to see you or understand you. And so unmasking isn't something that you take off that then reveals you in a way that will guarantee being seen and understood. And connected to someone else who understands and includes you, your experiences in their reality.

[00:09:17] So the idea that you unmask and are revealed in all your individual specificity for others to see and understand and believe is unhelpful to the goal of unmasking. If you have the thought that other people seeing you is the goal. Then people don't understand and see you. You will think you're doing it wrong or that they are doing it wrong, that something is going wrong or that you are wrong or that they are wrong, or you'll use other people seeing you as proof or evidence of whether you are unmasked or not.

[00:09:52] So this can happen in the beginning, often of coming to realize that autistic status traits are something that you experience, that you identify with. Is feeling the need to have them be very visible to others to try and have the experience of being seen in this new state of self revelation. So then trying to unmask becomes another mask.

[00:10:16] It becomes a performance of autistic behaviors that you've read about as recognizably autistic as a way to try and be visible to others, and then seeking that affirmation of that visibility from how others respond to you. You need them to do something, you might even try to manipulate their reaction to affirm your actions and coming from a place of trying to convince them of who you are.

[00:10:45] So if your idea of unmasking is dependent on other people reacting to you in a way that makes you feel seen or on changing their thoughts about you, that goal is a fast track to burnout because you can't actually change other people's thoughts. And trying to do so is not going to feel good to you or to them.

[00:11:06] It's only gonna create more disconnection. You will be in the energy of convincing other people and needing their acceptance as a prerequisite to you accepting yourself. So going back to our example scenario, another aspect of this is how you respond to that situation. Social situation might be to have the habitual, unconscious thought that you need to hide how you're feeling to squash down the nervous system, uh, unrest and dysregulation to fa and pretend that you aren't having the experiences that you are actually having.

[00:11:45] So instead of leaving and taking yourself somewhere else to recover, you might choose to stay and override what you need. With the logic of there's a benefit to me staying in this social situation and to access that benefit, I'm choosing to further disconnect from myself by taking actions as if this isn't the experience that I'm having.

[00:12:11] So accessing the social situation and the advantages it represents then means that you are then having to be in, in a state of internal disconnection. Valuing the social advantages over your own self connection, which is what we are taught, right? That belonging means being part of the group and that not doing so is grounds for rejection, or that having a job that doesn't accommodate you is something that you have to put up with because you are the person that is different, subjugating your needs for the existing structures.

[00:12:49] So we can see that masking is actually about disconnecting from self, from the experiences that you are having, ignoring and overriding the messages from your body in order to create a false belonging in which you are invisibly doing all of the work. So once we see that masking is a result of how you respond to external circumstances that already don't see you in ways that lead you to internalize those external disconnects, then you can begin to see how to actually unmask and what unmasking really means, which is that unmasking is the practice of reconnecting to self and to the experiences that you are actually having and valuing your own state of self connection.

[00:13:36] Above everything else, which also means unlearning the habitual reactions of your past that are about placating others and trying to fit in with their reality in order to not be rejected or negatively treated, or in order to access work. And that the structures which make that seem like the only option have to be reimagined.

[00:13:59] So unmasking is not about taking off a mask. But about how you choose to respond and interpret social barriers and systemic issues that are beyond your control. It's ending the habitual self negation that may have felt necessary in the past and may still be necessary in specific circumstances, but isn't present at all times, especially now that you're an adult, and especially now that you can make choices about your life that are in your best interests and that are true to you.

[00:14:31] So we have to open our thinking to the possibility that this isn't the only thing available to you. And the measure of unmasking is not how much others see you, but how much you are in a sustained state of self connection. And what this thinking does is it takes the focus off of other people's reactions to you.

[00:14:53] Needing them to accept you first or even paying mind to what their thoughts about you might even be, which are none of your business, or thinking that it's all about your own body. And instead to experience how masking is disconnecting from self. Those disconnects may have come from outside, but they're now internalized and reproduced by you in your own self relationship.

[00:15:19] And the process of unmasking or being yourself or growing into who you are becoming, which all the same thing is making self connection your only goal, which is how anyone is able to be themselves. It's the degree to which they're able and enabled to stay in a state of self connection. So if you have the goal of unmasking, know that most of the work happens in your relationship to yourself.

[00:15:47] None of the work happens in how other people are perceiving you. You can't change their thoughts. You can only model your own self regard and invite them into that in how they are with you. And some of the reasons why you might want to unmask is because in the process of learning these habits of self negation.

[00:16:10] The impact is in your energy. Your energy is what suffers. It's not just the not being seen, but it's how when you aren't being seen by others and you also aren't honoring who you are here to be, then you aren't in connection to your energy in a sustainable way. It's using up energy towards actions that are not for your own sustenance, but for the sustenance of what harms you.

[00:16:35] Masking is exhausting, not just because you're having to bottle up nervous system reactions, but also because to do so, you have to override your natural, instinctive way of being. And to do that involves misuse of part of your prefrontal cortex, which is the very human part of our brain that is able to imagine consequences and plan for them and make decisions.

[00:17:00] It's the part of your brain that can imagine and exit the present moment. But it gets tired really quickly. We only have a number of decisions that we can make in a day before that part of our brain gets tired. So this is what's being used when you are pre-planning how to be or what to say, or rehearsing who to be ahead of time or checking your own thoughts and actions against what other people might think of them.

[00:17:25] Hyper vigilantly, monitoring other people and their reactions, and then modulating your own accordingly as to. Present a certain persona to others, so it gets exhausted quickly because masking is an incorrect use of this part of our brain. We aren't supposed to use it this much or in this way. It's also depleting your sense of self because it involves making choices that go against what is a true reality for you.

[00:17:54] So your body withdraws energy and it's really hard to know who you are when you aren't experiencing who you are. But instead are experiencing who you are not and paying all of your attention to what other people might think of you practicing this false ego, getting rewarded for it. Checking yourself against how you imagine others might think about you instead of being in the experience that you are having, being in your own thoughts, being in your own body.

[00:18:23] It's not being present. Because you are second guessing yourself and other people, which means you aren't present to receive and experience the truth of what you're experiencing. Instead, you are in the calculation of how to be. You also can't experience being seen and being connected to others, which is energizing.

[00:18:47] You can't experience that if you aren't connected to yourself. Sometimes we get so good at masking that we forget how not to, and that there are other options, or we haven't experienced an alternative for a long time. So the thought of socializing means we are having to prepare for that mental hard work and that nervous system suppression, all of which in of itself creates anxiety, which is also exhausting.

[00:19:14] So not unmasking is signing up for a lifetime of misused energy. Misused because you're putting it into actions which don't reenergize you and allow you to stay in sustained self connection to your own energy source. It's unsustainable over the long term, and so you might think to yourself, I'll just get through it and then recover.

[00:19:39] But I want to suggest that maybe there are other options available. Even if you dunno what they are right now, even if they take years to find or create that, it's still worth it. And so the reason to begin this journey is to reclaim your energy as your own. Your energy is not just the ability to get things done.

[00:20:01] It's the being aliveness that comes with being in integrity. It's the vibrancy of your being. It's the power that you have to put towards shaping your life. It's the sense of being connected to your life force and to the meaning of your existence and the intuition for what is for you. It's the opening up of what your life could be instead of a dulled sense of deferring your life until tomorrow, until you have energy, until you have courage, until you meet.

[00:20:29] Whatever requirement you've learned to believe is necessary before you can accept yourself, and it's the possibility that there are places on earth and with other people that don't require this of you. Consider that every step into protecting your own energy and learning how to be present in the experience that you're actually having grants you a bit more energy, and that starts to build momentum.

[00:20:57] It means leveling up your self regard to a much higher degree where you put it above everything else, especially everything that you think you can only get if you mask, unmasking, unlocks your energy, your inner clarity, which means that you start to make new choices that honor instead of deplete that energy in ways that you'll never get back.

[00:21:20] So unmasking is not taking off a mask. Unmasking is making self connection your only goal. And for that, you have to undo the habits of disconnecting from yourself and negating self in order to try and fit in. And you aren't here to fit in, but to do incredible things that require you to be able to think outside of and beyond the limitations of what other people think and of dominant and industrialist structures.

[00:21:49] And you already know how not to fit in, how not to follow the crowd. You might have just forgotten how not to judge yourself for it or how not to make yourself try to fit in because you think that will feel better. The only reason we do anything is because of how we think. It will make us feel so considered that masking hasn't actually led to the feeling of belonging or to what you want.

[00:22:15] Consider that there might be another route to get there. That doesn't mean that you have to negate yourself your energy, but you could do it in a way that energizes you. Consider that you can only experience that feeling when you aren't masking and have your full energy and presence at your disposal.

[00:22:34] And finally, unmasking is also about our collective work to shift the culture in ways that lead to new structures, new ways of doing things, designing social rituals, making visible that there are other ways of being. That are legitimate and that there are sources of other kinds of knowledge, other languages, other insights.

[00:22:57] This is not about sensory processing disorder, but sensory processing in another order that hasn't had the tools and resources that dominance sensory styles have had. So unmasking is also a cultural uncovering of possibilities evidenced by the full range of human experience. It's the rejecting of the imposition of meaning onto our bodies without consent.

[00:23:25] It's rooting down into the knowing that there is so much more to you than the misrepresentations and misunderstandings of others, and that you begin to access that more when you start to make self connection. Your only goal that the culture shifts required for unmasking at large. Start in each of us and in each of our relationships to ourself.

[00:23:49] The goal of unmasking is not to be seen by others necessarily, or not to be concerned about being seen within dominant culture, but is to create the structures in our own thinking and our own lives that enable sustained self connection. So that's it, siblings and I will talk to you next week. Thanks for listening to this week's Sensory Siblings podcast.

[00:24:18] Head over to Solar Systems dot XY z, where you can join the plus Siblings Discord server and discuss the topics explored with other listeners. And if you are ready to go deeper into activating your future self, I want to invite you to join my six month unmasking unschool called the, so. Plus siblings, you're going to unlearn the habits of self negating, then create self-esteem, self clarity, and the self-belief to model the social esteem that will create culture shifts first in yourself, and then rippling out into everything you do and beyond.

[00:24:56] Head over to solar systems xyz slash. Siblings where you can join the solar system, plus siblings and I will see you inside.