Sometimes I feel like a monster
What happens when the same week someone tells you that you've created a safe space where people feel truly seen, you also put your foot in it so spectacularly that your brain is still replaying the horror movie version three days later?
That's what this video is about. The both/and of being someone who has accepted their own freakiness, while still wanting the ground to swallow you whole when the Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria kicks in. Spoiler: I don't think you ever fully graduate from the shame spiral, but knowing where it's coming from helps.
Let's chat about it whilst I use up some art materials.
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You know that feeling when you are with a group of people, or with another person, and you say something or you do something and you can immediately feel the temperature change and you know that you've made a misstep.
Something has gone wrong.
Maybe you've misread the room. Maybe you've said something inadvertently hurtful. Maybe just what you've said hasn't landed in the right way and you feel that white, hot wave of shame that floods over you. Yeah, thanks, rejection sensitivity.
That's what I want to talk to you about today. I want to talk about how being yourself is hard.
For those of you who don't know me yet, welcome. Thank you for clicking on this video. My name is Zuzu. I'm an artist living in Copenhagen and I write things and make art and videos about the celebration of outsiderness generally. I'm queer, I'm autistic, I have ADHD.
So I want to talk you through what happened to me this week because I think it's a really interesting juxtaposition. And while I do that, you may remember from my bingo card video a few weeks ago that one of my goals for this year is to use up all of my art materials.
And one such art material was a gift from a friend a few years ago and it is a pack of air dry clay with all of the tools and whatnot included. She gave it to me about three years ago and I had one little kind of play with it and then it has been abandoned for about three year,s so I'm really keen to use this up and make some cool little fun weird things. I don't really know what yet, and I'll show you what I'm making as I go along, but when I'm talking about stuff I do like to have something to do with my hands so we're gonna do that.
So, what happened? I was with a group of people that I trusted, or that I do trust, and I felt comfortable being myself, know, unmasking, just being who I am, basically. We spend a lot of time together.
I had a very strong opinion about something which differed from the host of the event, the host of the thing that I was at. If you know anything about me that's not going to surprise you at all I am a person who generally has quite strong opinions and is generally very transparent about what I like and what I don't like, but in this instance I had an opinion which differed from the host and I expressed it loudly, maybe a little repeatedly, with lots of arm waving and swearing and very me.
I was a little tactless, was a little thoughtless. I was, I felt at ease. So I dropped the filter a little bit. I didn't calibrate for reading the room. And you know, I can say I was a bit tired. I was a bit like whatever, safe, comfortable. But I mean, the truth is I was tactless. And the person who was on the receiving end of the opinion, the person whose opinion differed very wildly from mine, was a little taken aback, should we say.
Now, I wasn't cruel, I wasn't personal, I wasn't attacking anybody. I was just very vigorous in the giving of my opinion and yeah, tactless is probably the best way to describe it. I could have been more thoughtful about how what I was saying was gonna land. Basically, I was just a lot, you know?
I apologised, they were very gracious about it and everybody moved on.
Except for the little gremlin that lives in my head, who has been playing this instance back to me with the, what should we call it? The RSD (rejection sensitivity dysphoria) director's cut of events, in which I have grown to three times the size of everybody else at that table and I'm red-faced and sweaty and drunk and banging the table and shouting and everybody is staring at me, a gog. Mouths open in horror like I've just announced that I like eating babies.
It's pretty graphic and it's ridiculous and logical me knows that it's ridiculous. That's not what happened, obviously. That's not how it was taken. But every night since when I close my eyes that is the image that's playing out behind my eyelids.
[Okay now I put some parchment paper on the table because I thought it might help with cleaning things up but it's just making noises and it keeps catching on my jumper and I don't think it's making a blind bit of difference so I'm just gonna rip it all off. I can't talk and make things and have a sensory bleurgh happening all at the same time, so bear with me while I just recalibrate my workspace. I'm also gonna pop my apron on, because I don't want to get clay on my clothes. Hang on.]
So I had this instance where me being my gloriously wonky, unfiltered self made me want the earth to open up and swallow me whole. I just, I felt so, um… Ashamed. I felt ashamed of being, you know, brash and loud and bombastic and so transparent. Like I wish I was the sort of person who could hide how I felt about stuff. Like everything just plays out immediately on my face, in my voice, everything about me.
Which is something that, you know, the people who know me and love me, I think genuinely appreciate about me. Like you never have to guess about how I'm feeling about things. You'll find out. Either I'll tell you or it'll be so apparently obvious that there's no escaping it.
What made this so interesting is that also that very same week, almost the same day? No, it was the day before. The day before podcast episode that I'd recorded a while ago came out and I shared it in my community post. You might have seen it. was called a podcast called Find Your Freaks with Tonya Kobu.
And we were talking about belonging and inclusion and the power of finding your right people. And at one point she is talking about my newsletter and about my website. And um I'll just play you the clip. This is what she said, which I still can't listen to without crying.
[It has always felt very personal, very intentional, but what I've noticed recently, there's a feeling of safety. feel like I am safe with Eli. I am safe in this community. And it doesn't matter like who I am or what I am, you know, my daughter who's 15 and also autistic with ADHD and has a hard time with the social structures, loves cats more than people.
We go to your website, like, and we go to your website on bad day. She has a rough day and I’m just like, do we need to go to Zuzu's Haus of Cats?
So, she just pulls up her chair next to me cause I have a large monitor and we just go and we click around and I'm like, just tell me when you're ready for me to keep clicking.
And it's not a maternal safety. That's what I think is different. Like that's not what I feel. It's just like, you're my safe friend. And I think that's what you provide. And I think a lot of people have a hard time with that. We know how to present safety as a caregiver. We know how to present safety as a rebel advocate, but just like, no, come sit next to me. You don't have to talk. can just be.
That's hard, Eli]
So on the one hand, me showing up as exactly who I am has created this safe space for people to show up exactly as they are, which is brilliant, gorgeous, wonderful, kind of my life's work. And also I showed up this week exactly how I am, a bit too enthusiastically, and it was the source of an enormous amount of shame.
I think maybe sometimes I come off like… because I talk about the ‘celebration of otherness’, because I've done so much work on being okay with my difference and who I am and kind of owning it and embracing it and accepting it and because I stand here, putting myself forward as an example of how you can do that. You can come to terms with your difference and you can celebrate it.
Somebody else told me recently that I make being a weirdo seemed like an interesting place to be rather than something to be avoided and run away from and I love that. I think that's amazing but I think that sometimes makes people assume that I've sort of transcended this awful feeling, this shame of being wrong, of getting it wrong, of missing the social cues and making these kinds of faux pas.
I mean I'm not immune to that but like the shame that comes from that, the shame that's still after all these years is like ahhhh I wish I wasn't me, I wish I wasn't this person, I wish I could be different and better and what have you.
So I have, I mean I do, I celebrate otherness, I have done a lot of work on accepting who I am and my foibles and my weirdnesses and all the rest of it but that doesn't mean that I have transcended the shame that comes from that as well.
I mean everybody feels social shame to a certain degree, everybody has these missteps but I think for somebody with RSD, with Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria and for those of us who are autistic or neurodivergent in various ways it sort of jumps over ‘I did a bad thing’ and goes straight to ‘I am a bad thing’, which is heartbreaking.
So why I wanted to tell you this was to show you that this is a both and situation. I am immensely proud of the work that I have done to develop self-compassion and to develop self-trust, self-love I suppose. An instance like this, although it still plays out in my brain the same way, I am able now to go, okay, no, this is not true. This is my brain playing tricks on me. This is the rejection sensitivity. This is not actually what happened. This is just my response to it and it will pass and at some point I'll look back on it and it won't matter anymore - or I'll remember it, you know, 20 years time at 3 o'clock in the morning and be like, ahhhh that time I did that thing!
But what really happened was there was a mildly awkward situation and I apologized, we all got over it, everything was fine. I don't even know why I have to think about it again!
I don't know if you ever like fully graduate from that. I don't think there's ever a ceremony where you get a certificate and be like, oh, you will no longer feel shame about being socially awkward. I'm at peace with who I am. I know who I am. I like who I am. And it's all okay.
I think that's the conclusion that I want us to draw from this. It's all okay.
Anyway, I wanted to share that with you because I know that a lot of you watching are also autistic, also have rejection sensitivity and I think the thing really that has helped me the most is being able to name it for what it is. Being able to go, oh, that is rejection sensitivity and that's the thing that's making me feel this way.
The knowledge about rejection sensitivity, like knowing what this phenomenon is and that's why this keeps replaying in a loop with this like distorted version of events, knowing that's what it is and having that hook to kind of be able to hang it on, I find that really, really helpful.
I know labels aren't necessarily the most helpful thing in the world in all circumstances, but I think for this particular thing, it has made a difference for me. Understanding that process, understanding what is actually going on in my brain. The reason I wanted to talk about this today is because I know a lot of you are working really hard on accepting yourselves and you know, it's tough to be a weirdo. It takes effort to be okay with yourself, to love yourself when the world tells you repeatedly that you're doing it wrong, that you are wrong.
I want you to know that all of this that I've been talking about: the shame spiral, the horror movie director's cut of what happened, the gap in your brain between reality and the awfulness that you feel, that doesn't mean you're failing. It's just part of the process. It's just part of being a person. Even when you have fully accepted yourself, even when people are telling you that you're an inspiration and even when people are telling you that they love you. Even when you've done the hard work of getting to a place where you feel good about yourself.
You're still allowed to have hard weeks, you're still allowed to have bad feelings, you're still allowed to have messy, complicated emotions. It's just part of being a human being. Especially when you're a wonky one. So I just wanted to share this little story with you and tell you that you're probably doing better than you think, even if you feel like shit. You're doing great. I'm doing great.
It's hard to be a person and I don't want you to look at somebody like me who's out and proud and what have you and thinking that this never happens, because it does and it's just a part of life.
I hope that was helpful. I hope it makes you feel a bit less alone.
I'm gonna go back to my clay and spend the afternoon making weird little things that I'll probably show you in another video and you'll have to come back for that one, so if you haven't subscribed already then do that and hopefully I'll see you in the next one.
Bye bye!
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