My Fear of Leadership & the Community I’m Building

It's a liberation playground crossed with a social club

Hi everyone,

→ I’m launching a small private community of personal growth enthusiasts called Self-Liberation Society. If that sounds like your thing, come join us!

→ I had this idea awhile ago, but I’ve had to work through a lot of fear and ambivalence, which I detail below. It is all intertwined with being neurodivergent.

The story so far...

In early 2023, I had an intense inspiration for a community I wanted to build. I built a lead page with the whole vision...but then my momentum stalled.

I just didn’t feel ready to lead a community.

About six months later, I realized I’m autistic + ADHD, and subsequently I have gone through the process of internal unmasking: reconceptualizing all the things I’ve struggled with in my life as not reflecting my failure to attain normal-ness, but a mismatch between who I intrinsically am, and the norms and expectations of the social environments in which I have existed.

This has gradually changed my level of confidence in my ability to teach or lead in the personal growth space. In the past, I invalidated myself with thoughts along the lines of, “But I can’t even keep my house clean!”

Without the neurodivergence lens, the only explanation I had for having a messy house is that I must be depressed (even though I didn’t feel depressed), or have some kind of trauma-induced problem with self-care.

In reality, I just have no intrinsic motivation toward housework, which is pretty commonly found in ADHDers. It just doesn’t produce enough dopamine to make it worthwhile to my brain, and since I live alone, there is no social pressure to do it either. And it just being “a thing I’m supposed to care about” is just not how ADHD motivation works.

I used to have all sorts of vague “there’s something wrong with me” narratives to explain why I just couldn’t do things that were “supposed” to be easy to do. And because personal growth as a field likes to think we can fix any problem by thinking the right thoughts, not being able to fix this made me feel like I was failing at personal growth, and therefore couldn’t help anyone.

Normal parts of ADHD existence, like not doing something until there is enough urgency-dopamine on hand to make it doable, is commonly labelled “procrastination” and presented as a solvable problem. But in fact, it’s not a problem. And, it’s not “solvable”. I can accommodate it, but I can’t change it. But I don’t actually need to.

It turns out I can fix this by thinking the right thoughts...as long as I can correctly identify what the problem actually is that needs to be fixed. In this case, it’s not my messy house that is the problem, it’s the belief that I need to meet neuro-normative expectations. I don’t. Problem solved. 😁

Next problem: a lifetime of social trauma.

Being autistic makes social landscapes into minefields. You don’t know what you don’t know, but you do know that whatever it is, everyone else knows.

When I anticipate social interactions, especially ones that are unpredictable or unstructured or involve unclear expectations, it can bring on a vague freeze response. It’s difficult to work with, because there doesn’t seem to be any content associated with it. I’m not worried about anything in specific, it’s just a nebulous fear that makes me want to avoid the situation.

This fear is not just from childhood bullying, although I did experience quite a lot of that. I’ve also experienced adult friendships and social situations abruptly end by the person cutting me out of their life or kicking me out of the group. Either no explanation was given, the explanation assumed intent that I simply didn’t have, or it was something equally unhelpful like, “If you can’t understand why I’m upset, I can’t explain it to you”. 🤔

I think I have gravitated toward personal growth circles because it’s normalized to speak openly about social dynamics. But even when there is willingness to repair instead of bail, without understanding why these breakdowns occur between autistic and allistic communication, trying to repair a misunderstanding can just make it worse.

So the idea of walking straight toward more visibility and social exposure definitely triggers my fear-freeze-avoid response. Just writing this post telling you about SLS is enough to invoke it—my thoughts slow down or blank out, and all I want to do is anything else.

To work through fear like this, you have to sit at the edge of your window of tolerance until your body learns that it is not actually in danger. If you follow the urge to avoid, you are just telling your body the danger is real, and it will be more afraid next time. But if you try to steamroll through it, your nervous system will become overloaded.

All I can do is patiently give my body the feedback that reality is safe, actually, by just doing the thing, very slowly, and take breaks if it becomes too much. I’ve been doing a lot of this lately as I’ve been putting the pieces into place to launch SLS.

The autonomy question.

I have been on the outskirts of many communities over the years. Staying at the edges of things gives me maximal autonomy, and autonomy is a need that feels vital to my existence.¹ Why would I want to give up my outsider status to build an inside place that I’m then responsible for? That...is a very good question, which I have pondered a lot over the last few months.

The only way I can square that circle is to create a community that does not require sacrificing autonomy or authenticity, but rather encourages it.

The name Self-Liberation Society isn’t just because self-liberation is part of my branding. It’s a reminder to myself and everyone else that we are not here to conform to expectations. We are here to find a different way to be together—one that treats differences as strengths instead of things to fear or suppress.

The idea that we could create a culture of liberation is really exciting to me.

I’ve always been averse to the concept of having a “following” because it felt like pressure to mask more. What if people expect me to have answers to all their problems? All I can tell people is how I solved my problems, and maybe that information will help, and maybe it won’t.

And truly, I don’t want to be a self-help guru or a therapist. It’s not who I am. I’m not a service provider, I’m an artist.² It’s a very different role, one that is still about contribution, but on my own terms. How do I combine that with what is essentially a service position? I’m not sure, to be honest.

I want to create a space where everyone feels empowered to contribute, and for us to co-create a community together. What emerges will emerge from all of us, and I’m as excited as anyone to see what it will be. I think of groups as living systems, and SLS will eventually have a life of its own that we will all discover and create together.

But I don’t have experience in doing this exact thing. I have a lot of experience in DIY healing, a few years of unmasking, and a lot of different trainings in various methodologies, including some around “groups as living systems”. But none of the places I’ve been and people I’ve learned from were doing the thing I want to do.

I’m trying to create what I want to experience. It’s an experiment.

I will figure out (as I go) how to do leadership and community in a way that actually works for my nervous system, my attachment history, and my very high need for autonomy—and that fosters the kind of thriving community of curious, engaged people that I want.

I don’t know exactly how it will evolve, and that’s the whole point. I want to grow alongside others who also want to grow together. Because there are ways you can grow in community that you just can’t on your own. I have thoroughly mastered self-reliance, and now I want to experience something new. I want to play in the unknown, emergent, wild space between people, even if it scares me.

So, I’m jumping in.

Of course there are parts of me that are a bit freaked out. But there are many experiences that you can’t fully prepare for. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. 💚

If you want to join me, Early Access is open! Go here to learn more about it and see if it’s a good fit for you.

1. I am not sure if I am the PDA kind of autistic (Pathological Demand Avoidance / Persistent Drive for Autonomy), and I’ve just accommodated it so thoroughly that I don’t really experience problems with it now. I do know I have gotten really, really good at working with internal resistance and getting all of me on the same page.

2. See my friend Sarah Dopp’s newsletter for more on this distinction.