28.Stuck2
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[00:00:00] Hey sibling. Welcome to the Unmasking Unschool podcast. I'm your host, Louisa Shaeri. AKA solar flare. We are all solar flares. Defying the gravity of group think, beaming frequencies that disrupt the airwaves. And in this podcast, I share perspectives and reframes from the solar system. A liberatory framework for creative autistic folks who are seeking another way to see, know, and be yourself.

[00:00:30] You are not here to fit in and the radical re-imagining of how to honor all of who you're here to be begins within. Hey, sibling, today is about going a little bit deeper into what I spoke about in the last episode. And that common belief that I see a lot, which is I can't be myself and make life work and make this all make sense, and that the only way I get to live is by not being myself and how crucial and key it can be to unravel that belief.

[00:01:09] I want to go deeper into. The experience of being stuck and not being able to see the way forward or the path of, okay, but how do I actually do me and make this work and open up what that process looks like. So how do we move from being stuck being someone that we aren't into being ourselves and therefore making life work because we are being ourselves.

[00:01:36] So what I want to talk about is if you aren't fully being yourself, who is it that you're being, and I want to get more into, if you aren't being yourself, then who are you being? And to really talk about what does that mean? What, what is the being of being yourself? Uh, I've said it a lot. Self is just whoever you're being right now.

[00:02:03] And the being of self is, are you in the experiences that you are actually having? Are you processing that? Are you really allowing the sensations and the conditions that you are in to be something that you process, that your nervous system is offering up and that you are moving through? And then what are you focused on?

[00:02:26] What question are you answering? Where are you focusing your attention? What are you then thinking about your circumstances or about the sensations that your body's offering up and that determines how you are then feeling based on the meaning that you're giving to your experiences, which is then driving what you do and driving how you show up, which then inferences.

[00:02:52] The results that you then get in your life. And this is a kind of repeating cycle, right? And where we have agency is not in trying to ignore or suppress or pretend that we aren't having the experiences that we're having, but is to really know what am I making them mean and how is that then inferencing how I'm showing up.

[00:03:15] And when we have an idea of self that has come out of a lot of misunderstanding and misrepresentation, people misinterpreting you. That belief, that idea, that collection of thoughts about self is an interpretation. It is a lens through which you are interpreting your experiences, and it's going to have a big impact on how much you feel able to.

[00:03:42] Be in a way to act in a way that is true to you and how much you are thinking and interpreting your experiences in ways that actually feel good and feel empowering and feel like there are possibilities, and that drive you to show up to your life and respond to people in your life and your choices in your decisions.

[00:04:06] In ways that reflect that. So I'm gonna speak to the process of getting unstuck as a process of learning how to become that aligned, more authentic self in terms of the meaning that you're giving to who you are. And I'm also going to talk about how my program, my unmasking on school. Helps you do that.

[00:04:32] So if you're interested to know more about that, you can click the link that's in the top of the show notes of this episode, or you can go to my website, solar Systems, SOLA, systems with an S on the end.xyz, and you'll see the information on the main page. Anyway, so this episode is gonna be relevant for those of you that are looking to.

[00:04:57] Move beyond the ways of seeing yourself that have come from other people and to move beyond the standards of living, that that's led you to have the level of ambition, the the learned ideas that people gave you about who you are, about what you're allowed to do, about who you're allowed to be, what you're allowed to aspire for.

[00:05:20] If you are looking to move beyond that, this is for you. So. We develop a habitual self. Let's start with that. And that is the, your, your thinking, your ways of responding to your life to other people become a kind of habitual pattern, right? There are so many options, decisions, possible ways of responding to our life in a day or in an hour.

[00:05:47] That mean that if we were to make every single one of them conscious and intentionally. Chosen. Impossible. Right? Our brains can't deal with that amount of decision making. So what does it do? It just automates most of them, right? So we operate with this kind of working model, these working assumptions, and which is another way of saying beliefs, assumptions for what life is for who we are, who other people in our lives are, and what we.

[00:06:18] Do when we encounter a specific environment, like the things that we do when we come home, we take our shoes off or whatever the, the, the automated things are that we do, right? You've probably experienced, I dunno if you drive or if you do things that you do on a regular basis, like walk from one place to another, like maybe you walk to work or you, or there's some kind of regular pattern.

[00:06:43] And you get there and you can't remember the journey, right, because you've just done it on autopilot. So most of who we are being is an autopilot version of self, right? It's a habitual self. And we just run on that and that becomes a kind of homeostatic, um, safe zone of normality, right? This is just what we do.

[00:07:08] It's on autopilot unless we have a reason that is. To examine those choices or decisions, right? Something unexpected happens. Uh, there's a package on the doorstep and we're interrupted, and then we are opening that instead. Or we meet someone on the way home and we have a conversation or a big life event happens and we start questioning.

[00:07:31] Why am I living this way? All of these decisions that I've just assumed are just like what I do. I'm now looking at in a new way. So we run on autopilot unless we're interrupted, uh, by something that wakes us up to that autopilot, to those decisions, to how we've been being and enables us to make a new choice.

[00:07:54] So it's that habitual self who is, if you are stuck, if you are feeling like life isn't working the way you want it to, you haven't found a way to make things work. It's that there's a habitual self that is showing up to your life in a certain way that is this kind of unconscious, automated way of not just acting.

[00:08:19] But also just interpreting, meaning, making, thinking, believing. It's the, the assumptions that we've made, it's those assumptions that we have to unlearn to get out of the stuck because it's those that we have to unlearn to stop being ourselves. So the emergent self that we are wanting to become. That our inner being is inviting us to step into when we are feeling pain in our life, when we're feeling frustration, but that self, that new self is unpracticed.

[00:08:56] It's a series of decisions that we haven't made yet of new decisions that we haven't made yet, right? It's outside of what we've habitually done. It's not the same programming that our automated self has been running, and so. What we are experiencing in our life is a result of that automated self. So the quality of your relationships, the way that you live, the structures, the way that you work, what you make things mean.

[00:09:29] The regular emotional states and moods that you are in. All of it, right? Is a result of running that particular programming, that automated self, but that automated self isn't one that you sat down and you came up with and you wrote and you made decisions around, right? It's an automated self that was influenced and shaped by the.

[00:10:02] Uh, by everything that you've ever been through, right? Not only your past, not only the family or relationship context that you grew up in, the schooling, the social systems, the media, the culture. Not only all of that, but it's also. The body and the brain that you, you are in, right? That you also didn't choose.

[00:10:28] So we're running this kind of automated self, it's a product of a whole bunch of inferences that we didn't choose. And so the work of becoming a more aligned version of yourself, of being more intentional. Means unpacking all of that, which sounds enormous, but really it's a tiny shift after tiny shift, tiny decision, tiny awareness and new change.

[00:10:58] And the more and more you do that, the more and more you life reflects that new decision. The more and more momentum you've experience and the more and more agency you recognize that you have over what your experience of yourself and what your experience of your life are. And so every little tiny shift that you make also opens up the possibilities of all the other shifts that you're experiencing.

[00:11:27] So it means that once you gain the skill of reprogramming of. Making that shift, you can keep doing that. It's like being handed the, um, the man, the, I don't know, I don't know coding, but it's like being taught coding for your own reality, right? So when that habit yourself that you've been being no longer fits when you realize you want to be in a new way or you are being pulled by something that you are wanting into that version of self that can make that happen.

[00:12:02] That old self, that habitual automated self. The programming that you've run that's been the product of your environment is gonna feel uncomfortable, it's gonna feel stale, or your life will feel uncomfortable, your life will have pain, your life will have frustration, or it'll feel like it's not yours. Or you'll feel like, hang on a sec, when did I agree to this being my life?

[00:12:27] Like what's going on? This isn't how I want to experience it, and I don't know how to change it. It this is the work, right? It's the reprogramming. And what's holding you back is just the fact that you are running an automated self that you didn't choose, and I'm saying you didn't choose, and I really want to underscore and underline that because.

[00:12:53] This is really about evolving out of those that given programming, that automated programming that came from social identities and roles that you've kind of been assigned, that have been given to you. And I wanna speak to this by quoting Bobby Har. And there work called the cycle of Socialization, which I'll link to in the show notes.

[00:13:19] And it's a long quote, right? So bear with me, but here we go. Often when people begin the study of the phenomenon of oppression, they start by recognizing that human beings are different from each other in many ways based upon gender, ethnicity, skin color, first language, age. Ability, status, religion, sexual orientation, and economic class.

[00:13:39] The obvious first leap that people make is the assumption that if we just began to appreciate differences and treat each other with respect, then everything would be all right and there would be no oppression. This view is represented beautifully by the now famous quote from Rodney King, in response to the riots following his beating and the release of the police officers who were filmed beating him.

[00:14:01] Why can't we all just get along? It should be that simple, but it isn't. Instead, we are each born into a set of social identities related to the categories of difference mentioned above. And these social identities predispose us to unequal roles in the dynamic system of oppression. We are then socialized by powerful sources in our worlds to play the roles prescribed by an inequitable social system.

[00:14:33] This socialization process is pervasive coming from all sides and sources consistent, patterned and predictable, circular, self-supporting, self perpetuating, intradependent, and often visible, unconscious and unnamed in struggling to understand what roles we have been socialized to play, how we are affected by issues of oppression in our lives.

[00:14:59] And how we participate in maintaining them. We must begin by making an inventory of our own social identities with relationship to each issue of oppression. So I'll link to that in the show notes. And so social identities we. Absorb, right? We take them on as if that's who we are, because those are the messages that we get over and over and over, and that are also enforced within the specific cultures that we're in, right?

[00:15:29] And the the layers of imperialism and punishment and control and judgment and exclusion. That mean that if we deviate from those roles, then other people respond to us as if we are being a danger or we're being wrong, or we are a problem. And it, it's, so these systems are designed to keep us in our place.

[00:15:53] Right. And so what this means for you in this work of unlearning, uh, and rewriting those that, that encoding Right. Is that those roles have, it's not only that, it's in the messages that we receive, but it's also, uh, that our nervous system, it's reinforced in our nervous system as being that role equals safety and that deviating beyond them equals lack of safety.

[00:16:26] And what this also encodes us to, to believe is. On a deep level that we don't get to choose our own social roles. And so we are given these roles and they don't fit us. And the natural response would be to set a boundary, right? So, uh, responsive anger or rage, uh, at being. Seen a certain way or not having control about who we're supposed to be or what we get to do.

[00:16:57] Right? And so that rage, that anger is often then internalized. We are encouraged to swallow it and that rage and anger is seen as a problem. And I'm gonna link to a resource in the show notes about this false sense of, of a right to comfort and. Uh, how that shows up for people in power, specifically in this resource.

[00:17:21] How it maintains white supremacy as a system of harm and as a condition for which discomfort is necessary to dismantle, right? So we are entering into a space of discomfort when we are confronting these patterns of socialization. So discomfort is an a necessary component. But I also want to speak about this on a nervous system level.

[00:17:48] The other day I saw a video that's probably decades old, but it's relevant. So in this video, there's a guy in a lab coat. He has a bunch of fleas that look like tiny dots jumping around, and he collects them into a glass jar, puts the lid on for three days, and then after three days, he tips them out onto the bench and these fleas in the video.

[00:18:07] Then are jumping as if the glass jar is still there. So they're keeping to the height of the glass jar and the shape as if it's still around them and, and, and keeping them in. And apparently they stay like that and even their offspring also only jump to the height of the glass jar, even though it's actually no longer there as a physical limitation.

[00:18:31] So we bump up against these external limitations, these like lines not to cross, uh, these roles that we've been socialized into. And, uh, in our response to them, we learn to internalize that as a holding back, as a pulling back, as a, instead of experiencing that pain again, I'm gonna hold myself in and I, and this is what keeps us also stuck, right?

[00:19:01] It keeps us in the frustration and in the sense of helplessness because when we've experienced leaping too high or moving away from the group, it hurts. And so we brace and we hold ourselves back, and we change and modulate our behavior away from un unnatural and inner self having external expression.

[00:19:27] And so that holding back becomes a, a, a pattern in the body, not just in our thoughts and not just in our beliefs, but also in our nervous system. And so this becomes, uh, a lived reality, right? Our, those as those working assumptions become our lived reality in our bodies and in the way that our body's chemicals and nervous system and physiological workings.

[00:19:55] Use that as a kind of stabilizing homeostasis norm. So sometimes the glass jar isn't there anymore. Sometimes you're in adulthood as if you are still in the school system or sometimes you are living your own life, but your. Responding to it as if you are still in the toxic upbringing of your childhood.

[00:20:23] Sometimes you are jumping from one bad relationship to another bad relationship, and it's the same jar every time. Same person, same different person, same jar, right? Same box. Because in our nervous system, we've adapted and adjusted to that being our reality, that just being normal, that being the familiar, assumed reality that we are inside of.

[00:20:47] Even if that familiar reality isn't actually safe, we replicate it because it become our normal. And this is why we get stuck. And this is also why when you go to make a change, you might do it for a bit, but then there is something in you that claps back, right? That self sabotages that feels so deeply uncomfortable.

[00:21:12] That we seek to bring things back to how it was to the same mediocrity or the same frustrations, the same familiar emotional loops. And this is also sometimes when if good things happen or you see a possibility, you immediately start looking for what's gonna ruin it, why it can't be true, um, what's going to come and undermine it and bring us back to where we were.

[00:21:38] So when we are reaching beyond the. Roles that we've inherited, right, that we didn't choose, that we've socialized into, that are a product of a whole bunch of stuff that is not in our control. When we're reaching beyond it. There's a nervous system, thought pattern, reality, idea of self that also has to be released.

[00:22:01] And that releasing is, it's like, uh, a letting go, a literal. Detoxification of these old patterns. A re encoding in our, in our cells, in our body, in the way that we, um, experience reality in our nervous system that also is re encoded, right? And this is why tips and tricks for how to live in autistic ways doesn't change much like having the information.

[00:22:33] Doesn't address what's underneath. 'cause number one, it's not analyzing the conditions and the context along with your traits, right? It's putting it entirely in your body and not acknowledging the entire structures around it, right? The world is the same, but it's also not acknowledging the degree to which we've had to adapt the degree to which we've normalized that over adapting to the extent that that just feels normal.

[00:23:01] That feels like safety. Because it's familiar, not because it's actually safe and how we learn to pull ourselves back and hold ourselves in because of the glass jars that we've moved through, some of which we possibly now have much more agency and power to address or move or shift, or aren't there anymore.

[00:23:25] So this means that we've also learn to pay attention to the glass jars and that potential pain instead of our own internal truth, our own internal boundaries, our own internal needs. And we've started to then mistrust our own boundaries, our own needs, our own internal. Direction. So the work of becoming who you are here to be of unlearning those old roles is also the work of relearning how to trust and sense those internal, um, instructions, right.

[00:24:06] Which is what I call self connection. It's, it's coming back to them and learning more and more that those are real and that you get to believe them. Right? So if you are feeling stuck, I want to offer that. It's because you are. Habituated to a social role that no longer fits or that never fit a role that has you staying inside certain lines or lies of so-called normal.

[00:24:38] So-called correct, so-called right, so-called good. And that those lines, those lies and the vigilance around them. Have become the glass jar that you've internalized, but it's now that that's keeping you stuck. While there are collective systemic, structural, familial upbringing, media aspects to what created that stuck and where the responsibility for creating them, the blame lies, the actual work of undoing, the internalized aspect of that can only be done in you.

[00:25:18] But it also needs a social context for healing, right? It needs a social context to experience the self outside of those socialized roles. So another person, a community, a relationship, a group, people that can believe and affirm who you're becoming, that inner self, your inner truth. What you've experienced, what was hard, what you've struggled with, and the desires and the wants and needs that you have, and affirm and reflect those back to you so that they can more and more start to be experienced by you as real.

[00:26:07] So. How do we do this? So this process of becoming is what I hold space for in all of the work I'm doing right in the containers I offer. And in the coaching calls, it's really about you coming into self-chosen roles until your inner self and the the needs and wants and secret dreams that you have in you.

[00:26:36] Are also starting to more and more become reality. Now, this isn't one big leap. This is not, I was this, now I'm this. It doesn't work that way. This is why what I'm offering in my unmasking unschool is six months, right? It takes time. And it's also about having that relational human context where this work and this unraveling and this re encoding.

[00:27:05] It can happen, and we don't do it in one go. We do it tiny, tiny shift at a time. One belief, one piece of reality encoding, one thought, one assumption that you've been operating on that is revealed by a problem that you have that is revealed by a frustration that is revealed by something that is you're in pain around.

[00:27:31] So you bring the problem, you bring the frustration. To the coaching. And then we look at, okay, what's the underlying thinking that's going on? What's the underlying assumptions that you've been working with about who you are, about what the world is and what your life gets to be in that particular problem?

[00:27:49] And the guiding compass for that is not me telling you what to believe. It's not me telling you who you are or what to think. It's that we bring you back into self connection and. Back into your own ability to know. So the re encoding is happening in relationship to your connection to your inner self, and then it's in the, in the practicing and the living of that.

[00:28:18] So you change one little belief, you see things in a new way, and you start acting on that. Once you start acting on it is when something outside of you in your life then starts to. Give you new feedback and starts to, and you start to see changes in your life, that start to more and more affirm, okay, this new self, this new perspective, this new, um, way of being more closer to my own truth is more and more real.

[00:28:53] So this is the work that we do, and a big, big part of this is being able to experience connection and feeling seen. Because you have a space in which the communication differences and the processing differences that you embody are not a problem, right? And so some of the glass jar is removed, and this means that you aren't having to.

[00:29:26] Negotiate with other people's assumptions around that, and you aren't having to disclose your trait. So this means that when you're bringing your problem, when you're bringing the thing that you're working on, the frustration that you don't have to self edit. You don't have to clip your words, you don't have to hold back.

[00:29:46] You can process, think, respond, move your body, move your eyes, move in a way and at a speed that is actually natural for how you process. It means that you don't have to hide or downplay parts of your identity, right? We also don't interpret. Autistic traits as being like this separate silo from everything else?

[00:30:14] No. This isn't just that you are autistic. There are other aspects of your socialized roles and identities that play into this. That mean that you can't separate those out. But there is a big impact that comes from not having to figure out unspoken codes for how to be or worry about fitting in or what to say and when to say it, or having to explain yourself.

[00:30:38] Over and over, or, and I'm also really big on a culture of access and a culture of acceptance and not having to pretend that you aren't feeling the way you're feeling that day, or if you're having a nonverbal moment or you're having a, a, a way that you want to show up that would serve you. This is a space where there isn't a specified way to show up, right?

[00:31:04] You don't have to do anything that you don't wanna do or speak when you don't want to speak. Or be it, uh, be anything other than who you are in that moment to yourself. And then as well as the analysis of the context and the necessity of acknowledging that that context is what's hard and removing the communication and processing barriers.

[00:31:29] There's also a process that the modules of the course element of this take you through, which is a series of self-reflective exercises to identify. Okay, how is the ways I've been socialized, showing up for me right now in my beliefs, in my assumptions, in my habitual self? And so you go through this process so that you can really identify where your work is and what to bring to coaching.

[00:31:56] Then you gain two skills. You learn the skill of self coaching. Of transforming those assumptions, those beliefs, those patterned encodings. And you learn the skill of being coached. And so in this program, you get access to weekly coaching. You get coaching for as long as you want it. Um, it's a six month program, but you get to stay.

[00:32:18] So this means that there isn't a correct pace for moving through this. And you get to witness other people being coached around highly relevant experiences and. Um, beliefs that they're moving through and you get to witness therefore what that process looks like. So you get a whole bunch of context to immerse inside of.

[00:32:43] When you shift a belief that isn't serving you, your experience of your life also shifts. You start to see new options, and in the process of doing that over and over, your experience of your own life. Completely transforms because of how you are showing up to it in a new way. To the extent that it starts to support and affirm who you're becoming and the life that you are wanting to create and starts to feed back to you.

[00:33:12] This is who I am now. I am this version of me, and it's more and more of that that allows you. To let go of the old patterns, to release them and to shed those old skins. And then guess what? After a while, the people in your life who maybe didn't believe you or aren't believing you right now, or aren't helping you see yourself accurately or have given you negative feedback, and you are hung up on it, right?

[00:33:42] Those people, either they will catch up to who you're becoming as a result of this work. Or they will leave, or you will set new boundaries, right? So the catching up of how other people see you happens last. It happens at the very end. Often when we are looking to do this work, we look to other people and trying to change their thoughts, trying to change their minds, trying to change how they see us first, because we think that then we'll have permission, but actually that comes right at the end.

[00:34:19] And when you are already more and more and more being who you're here to be, eventually they have no option but to get on board with you or you will be able to. Relate to them in a way that is more aligned with your truth. And then this process, in this program, you also get tools for those conversations, right?

[00:34:41] For setting boundaries, for being rooted in knowing that your needs and needs and not preferences, and the legitimacy of who you are and how to communicate that legitimacy and those needs, and to live by them so that your energy is protected. And so that your life structures are sustainable instead of taking your energy from you.

[00:35:07] And so if you know that you are wanting to make some big changes, you are being called into a new version of who you are. You are wanting to figure this out, right? I, it's time now that I relearn how to be myself. If you are feeling like, no, there's a bigger plan. There's more to me than this. And there are things that you're doing that you don't wanna be, or there are internal fears and doubts and feeling like you don't have permission, feeling like you don't have a clear path, feeling like, I dunno how to do this.

[00:35:44] I just know I need to consider. This is your boarding call to join me on the next iteration, the next cohort of the solar system plus siblings. I am opening doors right now, and so this will be the spring cohort. We are doing a new thing this year of doing it in cohorts, so groups going through it at the same time, and doors will close soon and they will stay closed for a while.

[00:36:12] So if you know that you are wanting to do this work and you're wanting to have support and have a ready made context for doing it. We take off on the 27th of April, the doors close sooner than that. So take a look at the link in the show notes. This is for you if you are identifying with autistic traits.

[00:36:33] If you are multiply marginalized, and if you don't wanna apply the pathology paradigm, you wanna find your way, you don't wanna just. Understand your autistic traits as tips and tricks, but you want to really go through the process of, no, it is time that I am in the driving seat. I'm the author and encoder of my life and who I get to be, and you are wanting to come back to yourself.

[00:37:00] You are wanting to get unstuck. You are wanting to make new moves and sustainable changes. Then if that's you, I'd be honored to support you in that journey. So doors open now. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you very soon.