Join me for the free online seminar: How to get unstuck and unmask, when masking is a systemic issue 22 March 2023, 1pm GMT Register: https://www.solasystems.xyz/workshop _____________________ Are you on my mailing list, sibling? Join here solasystems.xyz for email broadcasts from The SOLA System to help you work to cultivate the self-clarity, self-acceptance and pride to BE who you are. The SOLA System + Siblings, the 6 month online 'unmasking unschool' guiding you on a journey through The SOLA System, alongside a community of siblings to share the journey with. Learn more: solasystems.xyz/siblings Transcript: www.solasystems.xyz/blog/027 _____________________ Episode summary: Masking is a systemic issue. A learned response to to stigma, inaccessible and oppressive structures and social expectations. It also creates a belief that I want to highlight: "I can't be myself AND make life work" This is an inevitable conclusion of having learned that YOUR natural way of being upsets people. Or is wrong. Or is not enough. Or is too much. That being yourself is just not an option that leads to interpersonal, physical, psychological or material safety. That you have to put other people’s comfort and good opinion and acceptance and the status quo that maintains that, above yourself. And disconnect from yourself in order to maintain. Along come the two main narratives to then draw on: that “it’s not possible to be myself AND make life work” because: 1) of who YOU are, and what you do/don't do or 2) is because of who THEY are, and what they do/don't do. Neither of these are empowering. The answer is somewhere in between: That yes, there are the external systems and structures, the dominant consensus reality, specific cultural norms and ideologies and harms, the people who are resourced in their natural state But there is also: the habitual self you’ve been being, that you created in response to all that. That acts in agreement with what doesn't work - because you believe there is no other option. The habitual ways of thinking and reacting and acting that over time that became just the way you do things, and over longer time, became the only self that you know how to be.  The only way THIS self knows how to make life work, is by NOT being all of who you are. To put your own self connection last. The only way we begin that external change, is if we first unravel it's effects in our self-relationship. In our: beliefs, thoughts, actions (the parts we can control). In this week's podcast episode, I explore how the solution is to know deeply that: the ONLY way for you to make life work IS to be yourself. _____________________ The Unmasking Unschool Podcast (formerly: sensory siblings) is brought to you by Louisa Shaeri, beaming from The SOLA System; the liberatory framework and unmasking unschool for late-identified autistic+ folks seeking a new way to see, know and be yourself, beyond the paradigm of pathology, and the confines of normativity. Unmask, unravel the false ideas of who you are and emerge from systemic invisibility into the light of your full self. Learn more at solasystems.xyz