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Hello and welcome back to Band of the Podcast from Me Post and Victoria. Today we are going to carry on talking about How to Be You by Ellie Middleton. This is the last chapter we're going to be reading, and this chapter is Conclusion. When I first discovered that I was autistic and ADHD, I thought that unmasking was going to be a one-time, overnight, relatively simple thing. Aha! I know who I am now, I can be myself, and that's my unmasking done. However, as time has gone on, I've realized that I couldn't have been more wrong. Even now, two years after my diagnosis, I'm probably masking the vast majority of the time. First, because it's a natural instinct that I jump into whenever I'm around other people. But also because of the sheer number of layers that there are to peel away. I think, I thought, that unmasking would sort of be like peeling an orange. One simple layer to peel away, and then what was left underneath would be a whole unmasked me. In reality though, it's more like an onion. Every time you peel back one layer you find another hidden away, and sometimes peeling them away can even end in tears. And if we're running with the onion analogy, actually knowing what each of the layers are is a really tricky thing to do, because they're so deeply ingrained into the way we've been taught to live, function, and behave, all the way from make eye contact through to be able to deal with all of the demands of running a household by yourself. We've often never questioned forcing ourselves through these things, even when they felt uncomfortable or left us burnt out beyond belief, because no one ever told us that we could question them. Especially for those of us who grew up undiagnosed and unsupported. We'd never been identified as having anything quote different about us by doctors, parents or teachers, even if our peers could always sniff it out. So we had no reason to question whether we had support needs or needed to do things in different ways. We had to just put up with it, stick a smile on our face, and force ourselves to function in the same ways that everyone else did. Often we've spent such a long time forcing ourselves to function in this way that we completely lose sense of which parts of us are the mask. And which parts of us are actually us. As I explained in Unmasked, growing up as an undiagnosed neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world can mean spending a lifetime being gaslit, misunderstood, and invalidated. Naturally, this can make us begin to question our own judgment or rely on validation from the world around us. If you have constantly been told that your sensory needs are invalid, that there's nothing wrong with you, and that you just need to get on with it like everybody else, you can imagine how you might start to lose that trust and confidence in your own ability to see things as they are. On top of this, you've spent your whole life presenting as this person that wasn't truly you, often mimicking the people around you, so it can be tricky to differentiate yourself from the quote character that you've been playing. One of the most common questions I've received in my two and a bit years of being a person on the internet is, quote, how do I actually unmask? Often people discover that they're neurodivergent, whether that's through attending a medical diagnosis or through self-diagnosing, and really want to start being more true to themselves and letting go of the mask that they've been wearing their whole lives, but they just don't know where to start. It can be such a daunting prospect for some that they actively choose to avoid, unmasking and letting go of the things that make them feel safe. They know that unmasking will ease some of the psychological burden they've been carrying, and hopefully leave them feeling much happier and healthier and able to keep burnout at bay, but they simply don't know where to begin, or whether it is safe to do so. In the past I found my answers to this question to be pretty insufficient or wishy-washy. Be yourself, do the things you enjoy, trust that it will happen over time. Each answer is technically correct, but they are not incredibly helpful to a group of people who, by nature, need very clear, precise, and specific instructions. They never felt very tangible, and I just didn't seem to be able to put my finger on what exactly it was that had allowed me to start dropping that mask and finding the glimmers of unmasked Emily underneath. Through writing this book, though, and spending so much time thinking about all of the shoulds and woulds and coulds that society has imposed upon us, I've realized that actually that was the missing piece of the puzzle. Unmasking, put simply, is saying goodbye to should, would, and could. If every time you do something, you question, am I doing this because it comes naturally to me, or am I doing this because somebody once told me I should, you can start to identify the parts of you that are the mask, the layers of the onion that you want to peel back. If you find yourself answering, quote, because somebody once told me I should, you can say goodbye to that should and instead find a way of doing or being that feels more natural to you. I should make eye contact, or I can choose to look wherever feels most comfortable for me. I should be able to remember everything on my own. Or I can ask for help when I need it or use different tools to make it more manageable. I should be able to put on a brave face however I'm feeling. Or I can allow myself to feel my feelings and turn to a friend to help me process what's going on. I should juggle all the different household tasks on my own. Or I can ask for support from my housemates or hire a cleaner. I should be able to concentrate for eight hours at a time while sitting behind a desk. Or I can identify that I work better with regular breaks, movement, and background stimulation. And the list goes on and on and on. As we've explored throughout the course of the book, there are an infinite number of these shoulds that society has imposed upon us our entire lives that nobody has ever really stopped to question. Quote, that is the way it has always been done, so that is the way that we'll continue to do it. In reality, though, a lot of it is nonsense. Who decided that those were the best ways of doing things? And who were they to know what was actually best for each of us? If we learn to let go of should, would, and could, we can find better ways of doing things that better suit us as individuals, and in the process discover who we really are behind the mask. And remember, there are no prizes for doing life in hard mode. One of the silliest shoulds that I think society has created in recent years is this idea that the only path worth taking is the difficult one. We seem to have been tricked into believing that struggle, difficulty, and sheer hard work are some kind of rite of passage to being a quote good person, and that anything we do to make things easier for ourselves is cheating or lazy. Hiring a cleaner is so lazy, or maybe it's an incredibly smart decision for somebody who has identified that they don't have time themselves. What are you, a child? Nope, just an intellectual adult who has realized that food prep is a challenge and that she'll be getting the exact same amount of nutrients from her meal, whether she chopped the carrots herself or not. Listening to an audiobook that doesn't count as a proper reading. Actually, it does. If you'd prefer to lie down in the dark and listen to your favourite story rather than strain your eyes and force yourself to concentrate, you'll still get the exact same ending. Why is it that making life easier for ourselves is seen as cheating? The phrase an easy way out is commonly used to imply that doing things the easy way is inherently not the best way. As though for our actions to have worth, we have to expand extra energy. Shouldn't the point of life be to find ways of making it as easy, enjoyable, and pleasant for ourselves as possible? You don't have to force yourself through unnecessary struggles to have earned the stamp of approval as a good person. You don't have to do things in a way that completely opposes your wants, needs, and natural ways of being just because someone once told you that you quote should. Learning to say goodbye to should, would, and could isn't only a great way of being able to achieve more. While being a happier and healthier person, it is the ultimate act of self-love. It's a way of saying to yourself, quote, I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be accommodated. I deserve to be me. And we all deserve that. Acknowledgements. I never thought I'd get the chance to write one lot of books. Acknowledgments, let alone two. So I want to start off by saying an enormous thank you to every single person who has ever read, supported or interacted with my work for giving me the platform that has allowed me to do so many things that I'd never in my wildest dreams believed would be accessible to me. Thank you to Amy for shaping Unmasked into something I could feel so proud of, for taking the chance on me being a multi book author, and for helping me to develop how to be you into the book it needed to be. Thank you to Rachel for truly hearing me and taking me from content creator with an idea to multibook penguin life author. And to Elise, Kayla, Shana, and the Penguin Life Team for all your hard work in sharing Unmasked with the world, so that they'd be open to reading book two, and for all your work on this book too. Mum, thank you so much for everything that you do. I can truly never say enough. You're my rock, the only reason that anything has any chance of running smoothly, and the person I know is always on my side. Dad, thank you for all the time, patience and energy you've put into understanding and supporting me in really being me. In the space of two years I've seen you go from someone who found neurodivergence tricky to talk about to someone who constantly accommodates me and advocates on my behalf. I know how much effort you've put into that, and it never goes unnoticed. Lewis, thank you for being my best friend. I'm so grateful for you every day and so proud of the unmasked person you're growing into. It brings me endless joy to see you sharing your funny, caring, and enthusiastic self with the world. Thank you to the entire Middleton and Pickering families for being my biggest cheerleaders. I could not ask for a better family. Grandma Chris for your supportive texts that always seem to come exactly as I need them. Grandad Jeff for your kindness and calming influence. And Grandma Elise for getting to grips with Instagram so you could keep up with what I'm up to and be my biggest fan. Thank you to Alex for always being there to listen to my tearful voice note or a frustrated rant. And to Scholes for making sure that no matter how much the world wants me to be Ellie Middleton, there's always space for Ellie Milburn. Thank you to Charlie for being my same brain twin and for your endless love and support, and to the whole hot, hilarious gang for showing me what a friendship group is supposed to feel like. Thank you, Leanne, for always helping me figure things out. To Saranne, Verity, Luke, and Claire for being the organizational lifesavers and career builders I've always needed, and to Evie for giving me the space and validation to empty my thoughts every week. And finally, thank you, you, for taking the time to read this book, for making it this far, and for loving yourself enough to know that you deserve to give yourself the kindness, compassion, and consideration that you have always given to people around you. Your bravery in accommodating and loving yourself is what gives me the courage to keep doing the same. Okay. So this was How to Be You by Ellie Middleton. Ellie Middleton is an activist, speaker, and writer, committed to breaking taboos and empowering neurodivergent people to thrive in and out of the workplace. She is the founder of Unmasked, a community for neurodivergent people, and author of the instant hit Unmasked How to Be You, her second book. Thank you so much for everybody who has listened. I absolutely really appreciate it. And yeah, I don't know what our next book is gonna be, but I hope you keep listening. This has been Behind the Padder Podcast, and we post in Victoria. Thank you very much, and bye.