Pieces of me

We are all uniquely different.

There has never been another human on this planet who has looked, thought, and moved the same way as I and you do. Humans are also one species, joined and connected by our genetic code, and bound together through our collective history, memories, and knowledge. The stories we live and the narratives we weave and tell, as individuals and as a society, both connect us and contribute to our infinite variation.

 

All of us sit somewhere within this diversity and the oneness of our species. In between these framings, our individual lives play out in countless diverse ways, each action leading us to new destinations and experiences. This constant motion and movement through time and space also brings us together. Our journeys from birth informing the views we take in and those that we hold on to. Our actions and interactions, conscious or unconscious, willing or imposed, intertwine with the social and physical realms around us. This continuous stream of experiences, in constant flux and in flow, shapes our voyage through life, forming, informing, and reforming the different pieces of our being. These experiences of our personal journey (McGreevy et al., 2024) then merge and coalesce, making and remaking us in the living process of becoming.

 

My pieces, intertwined and co-dependent, are all important steps, and paths in my life journey. 

I am a white, middle-aged woman, who grew up in a quiet, rural, village in the eastern counties of the United Kingdom. I have had the privilege to go to university, to train as a teacher and then retrain as a Speech and Language Therapist (SLT). My SLT training sat within a medical model, and I knew little beyond this even after moving from working in schools to working within a mental health service four years ago. This change in direction was not a sudden choice to do something new but born from years of watching my own autistic son drowning in educational environments that failed to know and support him. The deep trauma of standing helpless in the face of his voice being silenced through punishment, physical restraints, and multiple exclusions, leading to a deterioration in his mental wellbeing, gave me the resolve to want to do better for him and for others. The pieces of a human life considered by many as ‘normal, typical, expected’ had only done my son and my family harm. I knew my son was not broken, and I wanted with every element of my being to do work that would amplify his voice and those of other young people in similar situations.

 

My experiences had brought me to the neurodiversity paradigm, even before I knew what those words meant; a philosophical movement, whose central belief is that humans are all different, there is no normal or typical type of human brain or way of being. A crucial element of this paradigm is one that considers the social dynamics at play regarding neurodiversity. This is where the influence of ‘social power’ and ‘social inequalities’ have a critical role in how we view ourselves and others (Walker, 2014). The lens of others is a powerful construct through which we see the pieces of our being, one which can also greatly influence who we are able to become.

 

Like foundations for a building...

we can construct and build up a picture of our being in the information we share, and of the view of ourselves we present to and in the world. Sometimes this is a pragmatic creation of our own design. These are often pieces of our lives which perhaps feel easier to label and offer. I am for example different things at different times, to many different people and to myself: A partner, a mother, a friend, an owner of guineapigs and chickens, an SLT, a former teacher. These are all pieces of me, some personal and away from the public sphere, some formal and professional. My order of listing may already tell of how these pieces frame who I am at this moment of writing. This order is therefore also a piece of me, shaped by where I am, whom I am with and the time available to me to share. In seeing only these summaries, you are likely to have a certain idea of me, a shape of me. This is heuristics at play, the quick shortcuts we use in making sense of the world. What you have in your mind is then also your interpretation of me. Yet, I am much more than the sum of these headlines. My shape is deeper, more nuanced, more intricate than any of these descriptions, or the sum of them, can impart.

 

In more official places, my pieces have often been, and still are, bound in quantifiable ways; my exam results and professional achievements laid bare on my CV, the summaries I give at the beginning of meetings to introduce myself to others, even the job title on my name badge. These measurable headlines also form part of the way we often share pieces of ourselves to relative strangers, who want and need to do know us more intimately. A good example are the medical histories I have given to doctors and other healthcare professionals over the years. These are all concrete, and all perfectly distinct pieces of who I am. They are also pieces over which I have less demonstrable control in how and when I share. I sometimes wonder if the relationship between control and measurability goes hand in hand, a deliberate situation of power dynamics, where the more I can be measured, the less control I have over how I share myself to and within the world.

 

Or like tickets for a bus or a train, or even a passport. 

These summary pieces of me act too like gateways into and within a social space but can never be the sum of my journey. They get me from one place to another. I present the required information, my job title, my qualifications, my symptoms when unwell, to keep going on my journey. I have my ‘papers’ ready to get out of my pocket when I need to and present them exactly when asked for. They may show where I have come from, and where I may be going, and even prove that I am in the right place, but they do not and cannot narrate the detail of the journey I have already taken. These pieces of me say little of the experiences I have had on route, how my journey is going now or all the places I am still yet to go to. There is efficiency here, yet all the colour, life and nuance of my being is squeezed out by what is deemed ‘relevant, useful, and valuable’ by and to others. These pre-prepared offerings and summaries, manufactured to fit in with the expectations of systems and society, hint at a possibility of more yet only offer a narrow and engineered perspective of myself.

 

The directions we take on our life journey, and the different experiences that shape the pieces of our being, are not only influenced by social forces. 

The physical environments we move within play a further significant role. The pieces we inhabit at various times and in various places are part of this embodied reality. All physical matter that surrounds us, and that we ourselves are made from, is further simply a variation of the energy that has always existed on our planet. Energy is not lost, nor created, but is instead transferred and transformed. Sensory experiences involve the transfer of this energy through physical actions, touching, hearing, smelling, seeing, tasting, moving. Our senses constantly connect us with the physical world around us and our transient path through life is filled with these sensory conversations. Through an embodied discussion and exchange we learn to harness and interpret this energy, to create new experiences and to be present in the world. Our embodiment, just like our becoming, is neither a static description nor a label, but an ongoing process.

 

The fluidity and movement in our embodiment lead naturally to potential variation in how each of us makes sense of our surroundings. We are uniquely and individually engaged in how we unite with the energy around us at any given moment. Our homeostatic capacity to adjust and regulate within our embodied surrounds varies not just between people, but within each of us too. In my case, there are times when all sounds can be too much, when the slightest rustle or breath can distract or overwhelm. There are equally times when I welcome immersion in certain soundscapes; the familiar and reassuring sounds of home, the visceral experience of live music, the loving purr of my guineapigs. I cannot be held by definitive labels, or checklists that aim to rank me somewhere between the extremes of hyper or hypo sensitivity. My connection to sound, and with my environment overall, is itself an ongoing and unfinished dialogue. It is more important to describe my rich and varied embodied relationship with the world, than measure or define it in any kind of linear way.

 

When the balance in the relationship between person and environment is lost and adjustment becomes impossible, the extremes of meltdowns and shutdowns are not surprising. What is more remarkable is that we do not see these more often. This highlights the multifaceted and energy-consuming work of homeostasis as a constant process, whereby available energy is diverted into coping, tolerating, and buffering, consciously or unconsciously, so an individual may continue to do and to be in the spaces available to them. This is when the face of me that is on view may not always feel one that is comfortable, but that I wear nevertheless, to fit the expectations of my social or physical surroundings. These rehearsed and practised outfits that I can pull on in plain sight; the smile and cheerful demeanour in a busy office, or the silent but still physically present me in large face-to-face meeting, are further shapes of me. They are, however, more like imprints, ones I fall into and enact. They offer tried and tested impressions of me but are far from the whole picture.

 

Fortunately, there are also times when there are no rules to be followed, or I can create my own, where the inner me can simply ‘be’. 

The pieces I can inhabit here are natural and authentic, spontaneous, and free. These are the pyjama days, where I can carve time to move through the physical world at a slower pace and in ways that feel comfortable and reassuring. I also offer these authentic pieces of me in places of joy, and in environments, social or physical, where I can do nothing else but burst forth and rejoice in the act of being in the world. All my senses in synergy, delighting in aligning and the freedom of self-expression. My energy bubbles and fizzes, and I ‘sing’ with my being, the person I am in these moments, just as valid and valuable, as any other piece of me.

 

When we time things well, being with the right people, and in the right place, knowing and being our most comfortable and authentic selves can feel like the best thing in the world. There are times though, when we are told these moments feel out of place, odd, a problem. These pieces of our being can be rejected, and others quickly take control. I saw this happening in the countless exclusions of my son from multiple educational settings. I see it too in my own story, both in the past and the present. The space around me to share the pieces of my authentic self becomes constrained and filled in by others’ ways of being, the balance of energy one-sided, and the possibility of anything new shut down. What is lost, is something that goes both ways: My trust and faith in others diminish, my confidence to move along my path, at my own pace, knocked back and suppressed. Those around me, meanwhile, are left unknowingly in the ‘never knowing,’ the ‘what if’ of possibility and curiosity, supplanted by the tried and tested path of expectation.

                                                                                                

Movement is itself a key characteristic of being alive, and is essential to understanding who we are, of making sense of all our pieces. 

When our authenticity is silenced, and movement is away and within, there is a loss of connection and cohesion. Both parties are left stranded, but separate, in a space of inertia, and in that moment neither can truly become. In contrast, in sharing and facilitating authentic movement there is an equity of being that facilitates the possibility of change and the potential for something new, a space where identity can live and breathe, not just be named and labelled.

 

This in real-time, moment-to-moment, living and beating heart of me is as important to knowing me as any label, characteristic, or reducible part or piece of me. To understand me more deeply, to understand my ongoing story, involves time that is not counted, space to be that is not constrained and effort and commitment from both listener and me as narrator to explore and to share across modalities, and for all elements of this multi-modal, fluid and dynamic conversation to be valued and understood. To know me as a whole person, it is not enough to just know the visible society-orientated, system-necessitated, and socially acceptable parts or pieces of me. To really know me is about playing a piece in my story too, leaning into the detail behind the face on the ticket, pulling up a seat and journeying with me for a while.

 

Whether learning about myself or knowing another, it is increasingly clear to me that there is a multidimensional quality to this journey. There is openness to exploring the potential in all the pieces; being able to explore movement in the ebb and flow of how they sit alongside and inform each other. Curiosity, not ultimate knowledge and judgement, provides the vehicle that is needed to travel alongside another or to reflect upon my own path, holding space to value different perspectives, the impact of different environments and in every moment the infinite possibility of creating something new. This can never be a linear journey, nor a passive one. Connections within me, with others and the different environments I find myself within, are themselves active and in motion. The energy involved, enriches all.

 

As with going on any journey, preparation and safety considerations are key. 

Exploring the ‘insiderness’ of my identity (McGreevy et al., 2024), the moving connections between the pieces of me, across the time dimensions of past, the present and future, and then sharing them with the world, involves vulnerability. Trust and respect are therefore essential and must be a priority for all. This in turn facilitates a space for deeper connection. For me, safe spaces may have a professional or personal focus, sometimes they have both. They can equally be in person or entirely virtual. What is important is a mutuality of respect. It is in these safe, caring, loving spaces where I can share softer, more intimate, and undeniably more authentic pieces of me: the phrases and words I only use with people I hold close, my memories, my interests, and dreams. Each of these pieces adds depth and nuance to all that I am, all that I do and to what I will become. The more I can trust and feel that trust reciprocated, the closer I can let someone come to knowing better the many different pieces of my being. This also becomes a space where our pieces have the chance to synchronise and interweave; and from this place of relational unity, there is the potential to grow together.

 

Becoming together is a moving, dynamic, and authentic process, a place of joint and continual learning, of unlearning and learning anew, but never alone. There is no power hierarchy, or pre-determined path, just natural humility, where in moving forward, the act of becoming, we tread lightly, mindful of our impact on the world and others around us. 

This dimension of 'togetherness' (McGreevy et al., 2024) stands in stark contrast to the current state of world affairs, where life is being trampled on and cruelly annihilated. 

I see this in Gaza, in Congo, in Sudan, in Ukraine. The wilful elimination and extermination of human life in the name of ego, profit and of extremist definitions of what it is to be human should alarm us all. This destruction goes beyond people too, with the natural environment of our world equally butchered and pillaged. Under the hands of a powerful few, our collective humanity is not only under significant threat but at elevated risk of being lost entirely. Although far in distance from where I am, I cannot disentangle myself from the human and environmental cost of these atrocities. The fragments of lives and of life I see on my screen, which sit in my hand and play out on repeat in front of my eyes, become pieces of my existence too. I see the destruction, degradation and death and ask myself often, ‘How am I different?’ My privilege is one of place, living in a country whose long history of colonial power is tied into the events I witness in the present. This privilege is not one I have asked for but is a piece of me that pushes me further to question what I thought was truth and to think about how important it is to stand up for what it means to be human.

 

The reality is that these same power dynamics, that continuously play out on the world’s political stage, ripple out and through all aspects of our society and of our lives.

The well-defended institutions of healthcare, education, and social care are all built on the structure, process and truths that privilege certain ways of being and pieces of people’s lives over others. Their ubiquitous narrow track, dogmatically following what is preferred and expected, and where failure on a curve for a given percentage is always guaranteed, binds them all. They are further secured by layers of evidence and proof of validity, put forward by their very own systems and proponents. The Randomised Control Trial (RCT), for example, is seen as providing close to the pinnacle of scientific evidence yet fails to capture community voices and leads instead from a top-down perspective. The preferred clinical tools for knowing, the standardised questionnaires and assessments, further gather and ‘harvest’ pieces of people’s lives that are deemed important by the powerful people who designed them. This power then extends beyond an initial encounter in the language of ‘treatment blocks’, of ‘brief interventions’ and ‘SMART targets’, where time and expectations remain the domain of those in charge, and a person is somehow obscured by the objectification of the very support that is supposed to offer help.

 

The overriding focus for so much of the care that is available to us is one of capturing and shaping the pieces of individual lives in controllable, predictable, and time-efficient ways. This is pre-determined, boxed-up care, making people fit more neatly into further fixed boxes, all delivered within a restricted period. The concept is that the more this ‘work’ is standardised, countable and replicable, the more can be achieved, and we are too often assured that quantity and completeness are markers of a job well done.

 

This ‘busyness and business’ of ‘doing to’ and ‘being done to’ is what I have experienced at great cost personally, and seen across my working life, as a teacher, in my SLT role with schools and all too often continue to see in mental health; a production line of inputs and outputs, of finding finite, system-driven answers to ‘urgent’ problems that need to be fixed, but rarely seeing the whole of a person, or the power in truly building something together. The danger then is to be lulled into security, to take on ways of being that seem to seamlessly fit with the requirements of the system, yet fail to acknowledge that it is the system which is broken, not the humans at the centre of it. Worse still is the reliance on ‘tools’ that masquerade as affirming assessment, therapy or care, but whose message is clear in their very existence, that ‘difference and the true nature of humanity is not welcome!’ Neurodiversity is all well and good, so long as you ‘do’ neurodiversity, ‘our way.’  Yet, neurodiversity is neither a verb nor an object. The idea of tools to measure, quantify or achieve a specific level within it speaks only of the very paradigm from which we must break free (Walker, 2021).

 

Looking through the multi-layered lens of the pieces of my life, I now see how hard it is to definitively hold in one place all the constantly evolving and moving pieces of any life. 

The two-way nature of a relationship and the reciprocal movement between people and place adds a further dimension, ill-suited to rigid frameworks of baselines and numerical success. The act of being well, of self-knowing and becoming, has always been bigger than the questionnaires that try to capture and codify it, or the powers that push to define and shape it as being solely within ‘us’ and ignoring the spaces we move in and through. Wellbeing is personal and intimate, yet also shared. We are well with others, and we are well within and alongside the world we inhabit, not outside of it. We cannot be labelled or held by tools couched in only one finite form of existence, when every moment each of us lives in the infinite potential of something new and different. We each diverge naturally, eternally and inevitably over time, as there is no right way to be, only varying societal prescriptions of 'how' to be (Walker, 2021).

 

My personal journey, my work and my thinking all join at this point. A place where I see the importance of all the pieces of me, and how these pieces have led me to where I am now, both personally and professionally, shaped my thinking, and energised my resolve to be and do things differently in all walks of my life. In this infinite unlearning and learning of what it means to be me, I reject the use of others’ knowledge to quantify ‘the size of the problem’. In holding such a narrow lens, we risk being judge and jury, of planning and completing a journey, not only in the wrong direction, but also without ever really staying a while to appreciate the view, and to see the pieces of another through their eyes and in their own time. We all too often end up telling people where to go, how to solve their ‘problems’ without ever reflecting that any problem may be our own, in our inability to accept and value difference. Then, in trying to reduce and remove what we do not like, we radically risk doing harm, not just to the individual we are with, but also in the reduction of spaces and opportunities for mutual growth, where we could both go together.

 

Respectful therapeutic care, just like being and becoming, is not about trying to capture what cannot be held. 

Humanistic care is fluid, moving alongside and with the flow of the energy that is shared, for however long is needed. This brings freedom into our relationships, and for me professionally into the therapy space, to explore different directions, for periods of time that work for individuals and in spaces where they feel free to move and be themselves. This is permission to offer interactions that aim to be in synchrony with the steps of another, with the pieces of their being that are meaningful at that time and in that place. We should not lead with privilege but instead make space for others to share with us in their chosen way, because we understand and value the authority of each person to know, to be and to do, and the transformative nature of each relationship and each connection we make for all.

‘Becoming’ both personally and professionally may be a fragile and pioneering space, constantly susceptible to the forces that hold power in our social and physical worlds. Yet, in looking at all the pieces of me, I realise that I have always been on this journey and have always been whole; ever changing and always growing. To see me, is to allow time for me to tell my story, not to minimise, dissect or move to alter it, but to listen, accept and join with me just as I am. In this, we can be and become together. Importantly, by putting the innateness of our humanity first, over the engineered productivity of so much of our modern existence, it is we who become powerful, as we choose to disrupt and break free of dominant ideologies in the most human of ways.

 

References

 

McGreevy, E., Quinn, A., Law, R., Botha, M., Evans, M., Rose, K., Moyse, R., Boyens, T., Matejko, M., & Pavlopoulou, G. (2024). An experience sensitive approach to care with and for autistic children and young people in clinical services. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00221678241232442

 

Walker, N. (2021). Neuroqueer Heresies: Notes on the Neurodiversity Paradigm, Autistic Empowerment, and Postnormal Possibilities. Autonomous Press.

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