I Got Stolen But I'm Still Rollen

Hey there, I am back. After about a decade. Nice to see you. Sincerely.

If you are totally new to my work, welcome! I am a sensory sensitive human who is on the fence about being a person. If you are not new and it has been a long while, thanks for holding out or just continuing to be you even if you forgot about me. I am glad you are still here with me. Let us get acquainted and reacquainted. I have been working with strengthening sensory sensitivity specifically since 2009 as sensitive + thriving, Sensitive Leadership, and Ane Axford, LMFT. I have not been active online for about ten years…

I saw this van (pictured above) driving around in Salt Lake City, Utah some years ago while I was living there after unfortunately exiting New York City. I am back in NY, upstate. For now, let’s get back to SLC. This van looked like it had been through a lot and had the words “I Got Stollen But I’m Still Rollen” spray painted on it in bright sky blue against the mottled black paint below. The letters took up most of the entire side of the van, so they were quite visible. The size appears to have been very intentional. This was not a bumper sticker that you have to be highly motivated to get close enough to squint to read. This was a moving billboard. I think of it more often than I expected to. I snapped the photo of it as we both pulled up at a red light and I happened to have a good angle of it. That I went to this effort shows that I was immediately taken with it, obviously. Something in my psyche snapped to attention and I was thrilled with what I was seeing. It gave me some sort of permission (?), or maybe it was awareness (??), possibly acceptance (???) of my befuddling circumstances. My circumstances were so befuddled that I did not even often think of them as circumstances. Circumstances need words, consensus, some sort of shared meaning, in order to be circumstances. Until this van pulled up out of my dreams and next to my car, I had not been so bold to conjure this expression myself. But I was desperately, spontaneously in consensus with this sentiment. There were two of us, at least. And we just had a powerful committee meeting right there at that stop light. I really truly do not think I even had the wherewithal to imagine the medium through which to communicate this message. A van! Of course. Now that I see it. It is a van, that was stollen. And spray painted.

The owner of this van was so specifically motivated to advertise this vehicle was stollen. Some may wonder why one would be so motivated to advertise this. I do not wonder. I looooooong for a way to communicate how deeply stollen this body is that is still rollen…is still stollen to this day even when I do everything I can to own it. Just as I can only guess the owner of this van wishes for the van to not yet again be stollen, perhaps make the previous thief or thieves nervous at the sight of it versus tempted to be repeat offenders, and at the very least as well as the very very very most just own that this is now the identity of this van. Claim it. Be it. Be seen for what it is. Keep on rollen while it can. Because, you know, I am still rollen. I could very easily not be rollen. For so many reasons. And somehow I am, very much rollen. And I am proud of that while also quite frustrated by it. So if I have to keep rollen as I am in this social context and how I am therefore seen, I would like some recognition that this is rollen that was stollen. And don’t I know it and now everyone else does too. However, I do not have spray paint on my face to make any new or old thieves nervous. I have definitely thought a lot about a face tattoo though. I think about that face tattoo even more than I think about this photo and this van. Maybe I should start thinking about a shirt or a jacket.

As an aside here, I feel compelled to let you all know that in what might be considered proper spelling, one could go with “rollin’” rather than “rollen”. I have been on the internet before so I will save some commenting energy for those who may be bothered by this. I see you. Van owner, I also see you and I see what you did there. Keep on rollen. We can have both/and here. I welcome dialectics. As a second and related aside, there is no commenting available for this post but there will be in the future. If you have something you want to share for now, please check out number 2 at the bottom of this post, which is where I will be putting my energy for this month. I’m easing in. Oozing in. Dialectics.

I only started to realize how stollen my body was when I was 25 years old. Then I realized even more when I was about 31 years old. And then so much more when I was 34 years old and all the years after that. I am 42 now. Is that not so wild that one can be on the planet for thirty whole years, stollen in plain sight, without really fully knowing it?? What a steal! Better than any Ocean’s 11, or 12, or 13, or 27. Wow, can you imagine trying to follow a plot line of 27 different supporting yet primary characters all working together to collaborate on some big heist? That might be what my writing is like. So, after I realized what had happened with being stollen, I started to see other people talking online about it. I may be projecting, but they all seemed as equally dejected as I was before I saw this van. I am still dejected but the van feels like some kind of consolation. I am telling you, the power of recognition is strong when you have never had it. Thank you van owner, so much. Anyway, these people online were talking about how they were diagnosed as autistic or with PDA or with ADHD or OCD or sensory processing sensitivity or learning differences or all kinds of neurodivergence later in life, or some even earlier in their life, but that nothing changed. They talked about how horrifyingly they were treated as children in the name of care or therapy. And that even after a diagnosis, it persisted. They still had to expect to be stollen on the regular, meaning they still had to expect that the systems at play would not honor their personhood as it is and as theirs first and foremost. Their subjectivity and experience of life was such that they were still expected to conform to systems that did not support them with their nervous system processing, and also at times to be taken over by these systems simply because they could not protect themselves in them. Many of them were blaming themselves because who else could they blame that would do anything about it?! They could not function in the social systems and so they would lose themselves. They would be consumed or oppressed. They had no spray paint, no words, to boldly display across their chest to hopefully protect them. For instance, the letters ADHD mean so many different things to so many different people. For some it is a stressful pathology needing medication and extra efforts just to barely manage, for others it is a relief to identify and worthy of support and extra resources (which might also include medication and other supportive substances), yet others credit it with how they run financially successful businesses. Some people claim to have cured ADHD by removing parasites from their body, eating a certain diet, or drinking celery juice daily while others identify it as a neurodevelopmental disorder that they will have for life. We do not have spray-paintable words for our faces or chests that have consensus like this van.

When I was 25 years old I formally studied hypnosis, which is what led me to realize how hypnotized I had been my whole life. There were definitely signs that I was passively approaching many important decisions in my life. I had a difficult time knowing myself or feeling functional as well as satisfied. But, it was not until I had terms and labels and specific practices for identifying and shifting beliefs that I realized how much of this had been done to me in a high demand religion. The word “cult” gets seen sometimes as a derogatory name that is being used to debase someone. I am using it as a technical definition. In the same way that it helps to understand the distinction between a sprain and a dislocation of a wrist or ankle or shoulder, I intend to make a distinction between any structured social organization and a cult. I have found a variety of research and study related to defining undue influence and mind control useful, and most recently I find Steven Hassan’s work to be quite comprehensive and user friendly. His work with Freedom of Mind talks about the BITE Model of Authoritarian Control. BITE stands for behavior, information, thought, and emotion as it is unduly manipulated by an organization such that the members of the organization are not able to experience their own freedom of behavior, access to information, thoughts, and emotions.

I want to be very clear, this has nothing to do with personal identification with or belief in any spiritual practices as meaningful to an individual. Unfortunately, a part of the information control that a lot of high demand religions use tells the members that those outside of the organization are critical of the personal spiritual beliefs of the members and so that is why they are critical of the high demand organization. When in reality, people are critical of the high demands of the high demand organization. That’s part of the control around access to information and manipulation of the story. Personal spiritual beliefs, like if and how one practices prayer or communicating with a non-human entity, have nothing to do with anyone else’s access to resources and physical safety. But it prevents the members from seeing what is being criticized, the mind control and the social power manipulation that is abusive, if the members believe their beliefs are being attacked. It distracts from the lack of access to one’s own body and one’s own knowing for one’s own self. This is about social power. And social power affects individual power. And many people do not want to believe in undue influence or brainwashing or mind control because they want to believe that they have all power over all their choices, so it feels easier to blame the individuals who get affected by targeted and proven strategies to psychologically manipulate humans. Or to blame those who have less privilege and power or disability or obvious vulnerability. We do it to ourselves, so of course we also do it to each other - regardless of what we want to believe. Life is terrifying. It is much more comfy to believe you’re responsible for all of it and then also none of it. Sharing power is much more uncomfortable.

When I was 31 years old, I reached a point of burnout. At the time, I understood it to feel oddly similar to what I experienced when I was 25 and felt totally betrayed by my whole life and family and needed to depart because they could not and would not empathize or attune with me. They stayed in the cult and I could not. With this second burnout at 31, it was a much bigger cult. I left NYC, which is the place I have felt most at home with other humans and also a place where the immense cost of living in capitalism is highlighted, and returned to where my biological family was in Utah. I was so depleted and lost and I did not know what to do. Many more people are talking about autistic burnout now. Many of us have experienced it. I got to a point where I realized I had been totally betrayed by the culture I grew up in. There was authoritarian control about what a “normal brain” was and prioritization of capitalistic production, and I certainly did not have that “normal brain.” Throughout school, in any organization I had been a part of, when employed, in medical care, and especially when dealing with any governmental organization — there were behavioral, informational, thought, and emotional manipulation tactics that told me I was pathological and would be left behind if I did not conform to their expectations. The totalitarian religious organization I grew up in was simply a microcosm within a much larger organization that never intended to help me orient to me. My freedom and use of my power, as I am (very sensory sensitive), never seemed to be of concern.

I have not yet mentioned that I had constant tension and pain in my body. Autoimmune illness aplenty. Scoliosis resulted from all that I was holding in my back, literally holding in and holding back and holding down. I had been to many physical therapists and doctors. Not one of them said to me “perhaps you do not want to be in this demanding organization you are in, or married, or doing most of what you are doing, or least doing it the way you are doing it with the pressure you are doing it with. Have you ever considered that? Maybe you do not have access to your own desire, and limits, and needs, and wants and so that might prevent you from taking care of your body well in a way that’s centered in you. What do you think?” I know now, that is what I needed to hear. Anyone at any point in my life could have said that to me, and they didn’t. That’s something. No one even asked me about my identity or my satisfaction or my motivations, or what I felt about all that was being told to me. I would like to believe that many of these professionals were well-meaning and also just did not understand neurodivergence so they did not know how they were not helping me in the ways that I needed. Certainly, some of these professionals really believe in their ideas of what is healthy and intended for me to conform to them even when it hurt me. Which, when I write that sentence, isn’t that wild that some health professionals think that health is being hurt?! I am not talking about discomfort that aligns with one’s values and is in service of chosen decisions to move in meaningful directions that might also be difficult or uncomfortable or even chosen pain, like with surgery one opts for. I am also not talking about errors or lack of important knowledge related to care done with best intent. I am talking about forced pain, soul crushing pain. There are those that would simply feel sorry for my chronic pain in my body and not view the evidence of it resolving, as I take social action to orient more to my subjective self and less to conforming, as indicative of it coming from societal causes. And the real kicker here is that when you have lived and been programmed in this way then you’re a prime target for narcissistic abuse, and anyone who wants to relate with someone without concern for their subjectivity will be drawn to you like a magnet. Not a fun pattern to continue to live through. Not something you can solve on your own when the culture at large that you live in validates this as “normal”. My nature is adaptive and it has taken a lot of work to stop adapting to my being stolen over and over.

I knew what autism was as it was defined by health professionals and as a developmental disorder that was supposedly obvious in young children. I am a licensed therapist who studied systems theory and mental health. Family members had been diagnosed as autistic. They appeared and behaved differently than I did. I passed as someone who apparently did not need any accommodations or curious attunement, and then I also learned to try to pass otherwise I would be punished. I was sincerely confused, not sure if wearing a mask was what everyone knew they were doing and we all just felt like this was life or why I could be the only one that wished we could all put the masks down. I was afforded some sort of power for being seen as a beautiful woman by societal standards. I have enough intellectual and emotional intelligence and could overcompensate, so I could not even really see how much I was burdened with what was not mine until I could not carry it anymore due to exhaustion. I had learned to use words well. I had learned to protect myself. And I had learned that no matter how clearly or loudly I spoke, no one heard me anyway so a mask was literally the only option if I did not want to be penalized and in some way lose any kind of social power I already had. People would speak to my mask instead of to me even when I wasn’t wearing my mask. Even when I asked for help directly, the mask was put back on me and I was told that I was fine and just doubting myself. I was told I was beautiful and amazing and needed to develop my self esteem, which I interpreted to mean that my internal experience was supposed to not be my self. Or my sensitivity was seen as pathology and I was told to get it together even when I just wanted to be me - be sensitive. Even after specializing in sensory sensitivity and owning it, that led more people to be more critical. I was told my sensitivity was an excuse rather than a fundamental part of who I am. How I appeared to others was apparently my self, to them. I see my self and so many of those I work with often asking “am I allowed to be in pain and feel this pain right now?” What is it that we need to do in order to actually participate? Knowing what is want-able, need-able, limit-able, and desire-able is the dilemma of being able to mask and adapt to one’s environment as a sensory sensitive human.

When I was 34 years old, I gave birth to a baby in my bedroom (on purpose) with the help of both a licensed and unlicensed midwife so that I could support my sensory sensitive needs as best I could. I needed the unlicensed midwife so that they could legally support me in what I needed without being forced to send me to the hospital to induce my birth in the case that I did not go into labor during the two week window assigned for my birth. I did not go into labor during that window, but did go into labor 4 weeks after the assigned due date and birthed my baby with less trauma than I believe I would have experienced in a hospital. I would have loved to have had the medical supports of a hospital, just not the loss of power and loss of attention to my sensory needs. I needed the licensed midwife so that she could legally perform the care I needed that the unlicensed midwife could not. This was a real last straw moment for my realization of how stollen my body was. While pregnant, the behavior I had experienced from others related to my body and expectations about a developing fetus sent me all the way back to my own infancy and childhood. The amount of rage that surged in me when others would ask about the sex of the fetus and then make immediate assumptions of who this developing being would be showed me my own deep, deep pain. The amount of disgust that flooded me when others would assume I was married to a cis man and my primary value in life was for sex and birth, that my body was free game for whatever they wanted to say about it while I was pregnant, showed me my identity and orientation more piercingly than ever before. No strangers asked about me, as I feel me.

I am frustrated with the culture of binary gender and I didn’t create it, nor can I change it on my own. I generally don’t acknowledge it but many others do and so they generally don’t seem to notice that I don’t. My frustration is not with people in the culture but the culture itself and how persistent it is. I don’t know what to do about that other than what I am with my life, my work, my parenting. It’s painful and awkward and I have no good answers. Even if and when I tell people I am non-binary related to gender and use they/them pronouns—I still get she and her and woman and so…hands in the air and wave them around like you really do care but people just think you’re dancing. Furthermore, related to sensory sensitivity, so many sensory sensitive humans and their brain functioning that is not related to sex or gender get missed because of gender assumptions. It is so hard to be talking about the same things with different people. Sensitive men have a whole different challenge than sensitive women, and it is socially constructed.

I studied family and human development, psychology, and philosophy in my undergrad degree. I worked in human development labs, with children in school programs, and started to learn about theories of human development and family systems—how they impact each other. I also started to notice that a lot of theories I studied seemed to me to make sense for OTHER humans I observed, but not myself nor my biological family that I was raised in and share genes with. Within my bio family, I have members who have been diagnosed as autistic, bipolar, schizophrenic, alcohol dependent, anxious, and depressed. There were multiple extended family members with genetic variations that caused developmental and health complications and early deaths. I also suspect there is a lot going on in my family that has not been talked about or assessed. I could see themes and ways that my bio family seemed different in functioning, and ways that we stood out as well as ways we hid from broader sociocultural norms. Then as I started my masters degree in marriage and family therapy and studied more related to pathology and mental, emotional, behavioral, relational health I continued to notice a sense of separateness in how I saw information applied. I could see how a lot of it made sense to what I was taught as normal, but it just did not seem to apply to me or to what brought me to study humans, development, systems, families, mental health, and therapy in the first place. I did not know it fully nor did I have the words for it then, but I was really really really interested in sensory sensitivity and consciousness or development of theory of mind.

I was and am very interested in power in all its forms and how power works for those who are sensory sensitive, power within the body and power socially. Immediately following completion of my masters degree I studied hypnosis and utilized somatic mind-body practices which took me into a deeper sensory experience and brought me more to what I was looking for, especially as a potent introduction to altered states of consciousness. Then, shortly thereafter I found the work of Dr. Elaine Aron and her research related to sensory processing sensitivity. And the orchid hypothesis expanded so much into how I saw the starting place of so much I was working with. This clicked a lot of things into place for me as I started more specifically studying and working actively within a neurodiversity paradigm rather than a pathology paradigm. I started a therapy practice and business called sensitive + thriving in 2009 which then developed into Sensitive Leadership. With all my experiences in human development, systems theory, and more, I inverted Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to the Holarchy of Needs. The simplest explanation of it is that our sensitive selves are needing to meet our needs from transcendence down to physiological in that order, rather than the proposed order from Maslow (who took this theory from the Blackfeet tribe and it was used to fit capitalist/colonist ideals) of physiological needs up to transcendence. I go into much more detail about what this theory working from transcendent needs to physiological needs means in various resources, and how to specifically apply my theory of the Holarchy of Needs. I found that many theories of mental health had some kind of “normal”, aka conforming, that was often actually a version of being as in control and productive as possible. And these theories of how to find health often directed those who were struggling to adapt to those who did not appear to be struggling as the solution. I have other ideas about other things you can do besides control and adapt. More to come on that.

Some of you who are reading this have been with me since then. I took a long hiatus offline and I know some of you have been wondering where I was and if I would show up again online. I was not sure if I would come back online, and I think I needed to not be sure. I was working out a lot of my childhood trauma that extended into current day trauma related to sensitivity, ableism, and identity/gender…and also birthing and raising a human on my own unexpectedly…which is and was also connected to all of that trauma. And y’all, I have been using psychedelics intensely and there was a lot in my body that I was holding for a long time. It’s coming out. Mushrooms have so much room in my heart. I say this with as much humility, respect, and seriousness as I can, I truly do not think I could have accessed this level of identity trauma in my own body in this social climate and with my social resources without psychedelics. Even though I still roll, I was still stole. Along with my own personal therapeutic work, I have also continued to work with individuals in my practice and to work in some other settings that were informative to this work.

Having a child has forced and allowed me to be faced with some things I would not otherwise face so directly and be required to process and make decisions about directly. My child showed indications of sensory sensitivity early on. On his own, he has identified from internet resources that he believes he has autism and ADHD - AuDHD as it is called in some spaces. And I had a unique opportunity to apply all of my work in a very in depth, continuous, and daily way as a parent. My kid is now in 2nd grade after trying out a few different school options the last few years (during a global pandemic!). We have decided to go with an online school that works with neurodivergent kids—especially those identified as 2E. 2E is short for twice exceptional, exceptionally gifted and exceptionally challenged or disabled. If you are interested, it is called FlexSchool. I cried when I discovered it and after I spoke to the founder. It was one of those cries where you just spontaneously flood your face because you did not know how much you were holding back until after you end the call and realize how simple it all actually was and how possible it is to have had what you needed but never had. So this is a big moment for me. My kid is finally, hopefully, settled into a school that feels like a real supportive learning and growing environment. We got here! And now I have a bit more space to do more of what I have been pondering about and refining for about ten years. And, wow, parenting just shows me little me and little us in big big ways. I want my work in the world for him, and so I want this work in the world for me, and for us. I have thought a lot about you. I have thought a lot about this. It is all intentional. And it is my first go at it, but not really because of the work I did before. I imagine it will evolve and change. And for now I am committing to this for only one year. I will see how the year goes with working this way and assess at the end to see what might come next.

Thanks for being here with me, whether you are new or have been around a while. This work often brings me to moments of intense gratitude and simultaneous aggravating pain that we get to be here for each other and with each other. Whenever I get to work with someone, witness their being and be with them in this work, I feel awe at how we come together. I know enough to know that I don’t know how it happens. I just try not to get in the way and to believe that this is our work to do now so I must be able to do it, with you. While I was offline for all those years, I had a lot of anger and resentment and disillusionment and hopelessness. I was grieving a lot. And it is only now, right now as I type this, that I can feel that this moment of being able to type this to you was helping to hold me in that work that I needed to do on my own. But I felt you there in that way. In this way. The hope that I could write this someday. And here I am, writing this, today. Even though at times it felt like a hole had opened up and swallowed me in its endlessness, I suspect that I was only able to do that work and be in that abyss because of this work with you. Working in the void seems to be a necessary part of shaping what is yet unformed, by forces both intentional and unintentional. This work that we have done and the work that was/is yet to do seems to be holding me in it.

All that I went through and all the work I have done with other sensitive folks led me to develop simple, yet potent, practices to work within the total lack of interest in the subtle, sensitive sense of self. Even with all that I share about the work I do, I still find too many times in therapy that people I work with are missing their own sense of self. They are still asking me how to fix their issues with ADHD rather than how to meet their needs. They are still oriented from outside, from the social context that invalidates and ignores that we are real. And we can function when we meet our needs. We are here. And we can live our lives when we are actually living OUR lives. It is both more complicated and more simple than I can express in one paragraph. And it is doable. I see it in myself, I see it in my kid who has not been tainted in the ways I have. I see it as I work 1-1 with sensitive folks who become progressively more empowered to share who they really are and the incredible gold they have inside. We are hidden in plain sight, if we can recover our sense of self I believe we can experience our abundance more readily than might seem possible. There is a reason we keep getting stolen. And we can own our value.

I will go more in depth on important topics I have just glossed over above in posts to come, for now I want to show you what I am doing now. I hope you will join in with whatever feels relevant to you and I look forward to connecting with you further throughout this year.

1. The first thing to do is to enter your email to subscribe and make sure you are on this mailing list for S1, so that you will receive new posts and updates as they are available here. If you got an email from me about this post, you’re on the list. You are ahead of the game. If, however, this is not what you’re into, you are welcome to unsubscribe and I encourage you to if you know this is not for you. If that’s you, thanks for checking this out and I wish you the best in finding what you are looking for.

2. The second thing to do is to watch the video below and if you want a physical card deck to practice with, you can get it here before December 22nd. I am offering some cards that I made with all the useful little nuggets in one place as little nuggets so as not to overwhelm and to be as useful as possible right when you need them. You can also just go through them one at a time to strengthen daily. Using Kickstarter will allow me to order in bulk to be printed at once for all of us and it may be the only printing ever, or at least for the time being. I will see how it goes and assess from there. So if you want them, now is the time. They are the heart of the work I am offering this year (2024) through this iteration of my work called subtle self. You can watch the video to see what we will be up to in 2024. It is about an hour, so get a snack and enjoy. Even if you don’t want the physical cards, there will be practices to share together that I will share more about in January and that you can learn about from this video. And at the end of the video I do an intuitive card reading for the upcoming year for us, and I think it is pretty on point.

It feels good to be back and also more me than ever. I also feel nervous and unsure. And I am really curious how this year will go. I do not know. But I am here for it. I am still rollen.

It’s just us, you know. Being us. No one is going to save us, individually. But we can come together to do better and feel better and do less harm and feel less terrible. And that paradoxically feels like it could save us. Because us is us. And we are still rollen.