The liberation from the violence of shaming myself as a parent_.txt
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[00:00:00] Oh, hello, and welcome to In Tune Pathways, the podcast. This is the place where we explore autistic identity, culture, and family lifestyle. I'm your host, I'm Kristy Forbes. I'm a late identified autistic woman. I'm an educator, I have ADHD, and I am a PDA autistic. If you're not sure what PDA is, it stands for Pathological Demand Avoidance.
[00:00:37] Ewww! We'll get into that in future episodes. I'm also a parent of autistic children and my passion is shifting away from the medical disorder narrative and into a newer awareness and radical acceptance of the social model of disability. Thank you for joining me.[00:01:00]
[00:01:00] All episodes of the In Tune Pathways podcast are recorded on Wurundjeri Country. The Wurundjeri and Woiwurrung people. Are the Traditional Custodians as part of the Kulin Nation? I pay my deepest respect to Elders past and present, and at In Tune Pathways we are committed to the amplification of First Nation voices and decolonization in our work.
[00:01:27] Sovereignty was never ceded. This country always was and always will be Aboriginal land. I've lived my life with a PDA, Autistic Profile, being guided by a sense of integrity among other principles I was not able to understand as a child. I fought against it. I had a depth and range of feeling that I hated.
[00:01:55] It made me different. And it wasn't safe to be different, and safety [00:02:00] was at the heart and soul, down to my bones, what I needed first and foremost to live in alignment with who I was born to be. But as a child, I did not have access to safety. I did not. Even when I scan and recall and do my very best to find glimmers of safety, I genuinely can't.
[00:02:23] In the moments with my grandfather where I felt truly accepted, I was always acutely aware that in the periphery were the realities of those who would shame, berate, misunderstand, judge, openly and avidly criticize me in order to squeeze, smooth out and smush me away from the shape I was. In the moments I felt loved, seen and accepted, I knew it wasn't the bulk of my reality and after some years, particularly by my teen years, My nervous system would no longer allow those precious moments to be truly [00:03:00] felt.
[00:03:01] Instead, PDA took on a new shape to keep me on guard, hypervigilant, and what it perceived as prepared and safe, for the moments that existed outside of the lovely ones. This is because it was paired with trauma. Trauma is almost impossible to avoid for a PDA, a Navigating Life, because our families can't know what they know until they know it, and often they only get to know it after we suffer, and they suffer.
[00:03:31] The families that learn a new way are To raise and love their children often do so following the trauma, after engaging many professionals who are uninformed, even in their best trying, even amid being good humans. The families that learn a new way do so after we, the children, the young people, burn out and can't leave our rooms.
[00:03:58] Or, after we experience [00:04:00] being reduced to a shell of who we once were. Or, when we no longer want to be. Among people I wasn't familiar with, and when I began school at the age of five, I was unable to speak, or even look up from the ground. When I would go out to public places, I would hide under tables or behind buildings.
[00:04:24] In the 80s, this was less understood than it is now, and though we're learning more about PDA today, there isn't really a vast improvement in public environments and particularly in school. I was viewed as selfish, self centered, behaving intentionally as a form of punishing others with my silence because I wasn't getting what I wanted.
[00:04:46] I was viewed as a spoiled brat. All of my life. All of it. It was those principles that informed the compass. When you are wired with a North Star, [00:05:00] of safety and points of integrity, compassion, vulnerability, humility. And these are the things that guide you toward knowing where a person, place, or thing is safe.
[00:05:14] Life can be a lonely, lonely place. I used to say I had social anxiety, but I have a lifelong informed knowing and understanding that human beings rarely live within the compass we were assigned. We aren't allowed to live within the beauty of ourselves, who we're supposed to be. And when people are robbed of themselves at birth, they often openly project their trauma, their anger, their rejection, and it shows up as disdain for those of us who are perceived as those who will not.
[00:05:52] Sacrifice ourselves, even when we cannot. Being out in the world means [00:06:00] we all feel the danger. The risk of the projection, of the self rejection. Internalized wells of sadness, grief and loss most people feel, and they hurl it at us like bricks of shame with violent force. This is a human experience. Our parts, our neglected shadows, screaming for light and gasping for air.
[00:06:25] Fearing being in the company of others is a wisdom. It's an informed lifelong experience and it's reduced to being labelled as an impairment. The smushing of us as children morphs into a society of adults laden with shame and that shame becomes a constant hijacking of who we are all supposed to be with lashings.
[00:06:51] of who we should be, but who we should be is not clear either. There isn't an end point or a destination, only a [00:07:00] constant quest for self improvement. Growing up within neurodivergent families often means being surrounded by intergenerational experiences, of unidentified neurodivergence that has been survived with alcoholism, addiction, family violence, challenges with living skills, eating disorders, hiding the realities of what we live with because we're taught There's dysfunction, parental abandonment and neglect, and an inherently felt underpinning of absolutely no safety ever.
[00:07:39] My parents were not allowed to enjoy me as a child. They were not allowed to be or accept themselves and their parents and their parents parents and their parents parents parents. For many, this is still the case, particularly when we do not know. when you're a [00:08:00] divergent. This takes on so many forms, yet the seed is shame, self loathing, self rejection.
[00:08:09] Then comes the projection. I was raised by fight or flight. Nothing was ever safe or made sense because nobody ever felt safe or was provided any sense. Everything was survival. Others would look on and see differently. The eulogies.
[00:08:34] Over the years painted a different picture, but PDA sees through it all. When I was old enough to seek semi liberation by becoming a mother at 18, and moving away to a different state for survival, I became one of those adults and one of those parents. A perfectionist, controlling, ideals that had no real foundation other than societal acceptance and I [00:09:00] projected it all onto my now 26 year old daughter.
[00:09:05] I used to say. I'll continue to make amends to my children for the rest of their lives. And I can see now, I said this in a self deprecating, self punishing, self rejecting way. I will continue to be engaged in an ongoing dialogue with my children around the ways in which I caused them harm. I projected the parts of my own trauma I was not aware of and changed the shape.
[00:09:35] of who thou were supposed to be. This, however, takes on a new shape today. It's no longer about self deprecation and depreciation. It is no longer informed by shame and a longing to be punished. due to self loathing. When our children respond to our [00:10:00] amends with, I forgive you mum, me, I would say, don't say that, you don't have to do that, don't forgive me, I'm not worthy of your forgiveness.
[00:10:11] And I thought I was doing them a favour, by keeping myself suspended in shame. And my amends took on the shape of a of continuing to project my shame and trauma onto my children in the process. It was in the form of rejecting their forgiveness, meeting their love and beautiful words and graciousness about my mothering, with counter arguments about the ways in which I harmed them and was not worthy of their love.
[00:10:45] This further harmed them. I continued to rob them of the mother they have a right to, a mother who lives in her purpose. seeks and finds joy. A mother who doesn't have all the [00:11:00] answers and models the importance of this to her children. A mother who honors her neurobiology and sits with pain without self loathing.
[00:11:13] And a mother who, when she can't honor her neurobiology, when she doesn't sit with pain without self loathing does not take that experience. and turn it into a shameful one. I moved myself, my children, my energy, my hopes and dreams, my life away from my family in order to be liberated. And I unknowingly and knowingly continued the abuse they left off with as a result of their protection.
[00:11:49] I picked up the tab. My children picked up the tab. And this is intergenerational trauma in action. Sometimes in our best [00:12:00] trying to recover or heal, we don't realize we are continuing to shame ourselves, and it oozes out, it spills over, it riddles our lives like a cancer, and becomes a river we all try to wade through.
[00:12:19] Some of us drown along the way. I made huge mistakes in my parenting. I traumatized myself. My children and I process this together and they thrive seeing me recover and be happy and in turn they recover and they are happy. I began an intensive program just last week for treatment resistant PTSD. In my very first session something unlocked and shifted like a game of Tetris after [00:13:00] 40 years of talking therapy.
[00:13:05] My therapist allowed me to see that guilt, guilt is an indicator of depths and ranges of goodness within. But shame, shame kills, it robs, it continues the trauma and adds to it, it passes the baton. This isn't about our children, it's about us. This isn't about my parents, it's about me. I love and accept and forgive.
[00:13:36] And I have to take action today to free myself, to liberate myself, to disconnect from those violent bricks. I have to get out of harm's way. It's not about shame or blame. It's about liberation. It's about turning 45 and wanting to be [00:14:00] who I was always supposed to be. Because no matter how much work I do on myself, on my trauma, on my shame, If I stand in the path of those violent bricks, it's all for nothing.
[00:14:16] Our recovery, our men's, is our recovery. It's our development of self love, self respect, honouring who we were always supposed to be. It's this modelling. It's our modelling this to our children. Being sorry. does not require a lifetime of shaming ourselves. I have the right to freedom, as you do, as do our children.
[00:14:51] Heya, thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the In Tune Pathways podcast. I'm so grateful for all of the [00:15:00] people who bear witness to my pathway as a mum and as a late identified PDA autistic. And I want to check in on you. I want to know, do you have access to community? I often don't advertise this because it's such a sacred, principled space.
[00:15:17] And I feel so privileged and honored to be able to facilitate this space. We have a closed community called Intune Access Support Family Collective. And we are now open for registration. If you'd like to be connected with other families who I'm sure you'd We'll absolutely share parts of your story and your family's story, meet you without judgement, and hold space for you no matter how you show up.
[00:15:45] Because we are committed to meeting people where they're at and not where we think they should be. If you'd like to learn more about ITAS Please visit our website www. christieforbes. [00:16:00] com. au forward slash ITAS, I T A S. It's that simple. We look forward to seeing you if you decide to join us.