The Gaslit Majority: How We Take Back Our Freedom & Change the Systems That Marginalize Us

Welcome back, my friends. If you're playing along, you know that there was no episode last week because the episode date fell on Juneteenth, which celebrates the 1865 liberation of the last of the enslaved people in the Confederacy. Juneteenth National Independence Day is a legal public holiday in the U.S., but orders from the current administration here prompted many federal agencies to pause any commemoration of Juneteenth, Martin Luther King, Jr's birthday, as well as other observances that acknowledge victims and survivors of the Holocaust, women's history, Black history, the heritages of Hispanic Americans, Indigenous Americans, Asian American and Pacific Islanders, contributions made by employees with disabilities, and LGBTQIA+ pride.

As Pride Month comes to a close over the next few days, I want to talk about what it feels like to move through the world when aspects of who you authentically are, and sometimes your very existence, are treated like inconveniences, offenses, and even threats. This is a common experience for neurodivergent people since we're taught very early on to minimize, hide, and try to correct our differences, rather than having the audacity to expect that we can be accepted as we are. The same can be said about the characteristics that result in the marginalization of any group.

Neurodivergence is highly variable, multifaceted, and complex, and though there have been advances in recent years, research on neurodivergence has historically been extremely limited. Still, we know that neurodevelopmental differences are largely genetic and occur — though are not necessarily identified, acknowledged, or diagnosed — at the same rates regardless of biological sex as well as race and ethnicity, which have no biological basis. So generally speaking, people of any race, ethnicity, or culture, and who are biologically male, female, or intersex, are just as likely to be neurodivergent as any other. The research we do have also consistently demonstrates that neurodivergent people are significantly more likely than neurotypical people to identify as LGBTQIA+ and have multiple diagnoses, or comorbidities. That means that neurodivergent people are very often multiply marginalized, or fall into several of the groups whose history, heritage, and experiences are commemorated by holidays and observances that the current U.S. government wants paused at best and, at worst, erased.

Even before the current president signed executive orders mandating the termination of programs that celebrate and protect diversity, equity, and inclusion of marginalized groups, neurodivergent people reported disproportionately greater experiences of being criticized, corrected, excluded, rejected, and dismissed, and those experiences increase exponentially for those of us who were also not male, not white, not heterosexual, not cisgender, not Christian, not abled, not without additional cognitive, emotional, or behavioral struggles, or not conforming to societal expectations in other ways.

As a psychologist, I have to acknowledge that there are evolutionary explanations for the underpinnings of what makes human beings so prone to oppress, dominate, and even ostracize other humans, but that's not an excuse, because there are also evolutionary explanations for why human beings don't need to rely on those drives to protect themselves, their resources, or the species. And regardless of any explanations, the impact of being marginalized — for one aspect of who you are or many — is undeniable.

It's especially insidious when the marginalization is broad and systemic, because those who are not disenfranchised — which is typically the majority, or at least the vocal majority — tend to deny that it's even happening, or that it has any significance, such that the people who are being disregarded and diminished are bombarded with messaging that declares or implies that nothing bad is happening to them, that they caused or deserve the bad things that are happening to them, and that they're powerless to change the bad things that are happening to them except by correcting, or minimizing to the greatest extent possible, the aspects of themselves that make them different from the vocal majority or the powers that maintain the systems.

Let's walk through that with a few really plain examples. If you have ADHD, are autistic, or learn differently and you struggled in school — whether academically, behaviorally, socially, or all of the above — the messaging you probably received from teachers, peers, and even your family was that the school system is fair and works for everyone, so your struggles were due to you not trying hard enough to learn, complete your assignments, follow the rules, be a good kid, or get along with your peers, and the solution to the problem you've created is to stop being the way you are and be more like everyone else. If you're a person of color, a member of a non-Christian religious community, or other minority subculture, the messaging is that there is no inequality or inequity, that any punishment, hardship, disadvantage, or adversity you experience is the consequence of your action or inaction just like anyone else would experience, and you can have all the benefits and rewards available to anyone if you make your differences imperceptible by talking, acting, and living in ways that don't stand out, don't make anyone uncomfortable, and don't require any sort of accommodation. And if you're gay, the messaging is: You have the same options, rights, and protections as everyone else, so you should stop insisting that you are given "special" privileges, and if you've been denied housing, dismissed from a job, or even assaulted for being gay, that's because you shouldn't have told anyone, or acted or looked gay, and none of that would be a problem if you just "dressed like a girl," "walked like a man," or kept your sex life to yourself.

All of that is bullshit, obviously. Individual people aren't marginalized; groups are, and the fact that there are groups of people who are not white, not straight, not neurotypical, and so on, is proof that variability is fundamental to humanity, which means it's not up for debate. Or it shouldn't be. But here we are, many of us overwhelmed by messaging about the inferior and problematic ways we think, learn, communicate, behave, and interact AND how we look, what we feel, who we love, what we believe, where we come from, and what we know is true about not only ourselves, but others like us, and the people who came before us. Even those of us who are brimming with bravery and rebellion are also kind of drowning in that messaging, which for many of us is so thick and deep, we're not even fully aware of it, but we do feel its pressure — the pressure to conceal or reject parts of our authentic selves — not just to be successful, or even to be happy, but to be safe.

If you feel like you're drowning, or like you're fighting for your life, even if people around you are giving you stop-making-such-a-big-deal vibes, you're not alone. In fact, I'd say you're in very good company, because those of us who are different, and are watching the current administration take action after action to eradicate our histories and circumscribe our futures, are unimaginably sad, scared to death, and mad as hell, but all together, we ARE the majority, and we sure as hell deserve lives that are more than silence, shame, and survival. We deserve to know what this kind of institutionalized erasure actually does to us — not just in the headlines and out there in the world, but in here in our bodies, in our beliefs about our options and capabilities, and in our relationships with ourselves and other people. So today I'm talking about that, and also what we can do to get back what has been taken from us, and get it so firmly in our grasp that we won't have to keep wasting so much of our precious energy and time — our lives, really — always fighting or just trying to keep from drowning.

The best place to start is with the thing that often feels the hardest to understand, and certainly to explain: why we feel the way we feel. When erasure happens out in the open — whether by a bully on the school playground, an overtly discriminatory comment made in public, or executive orders and public policies, we can usually recognize that erasure of our authenticity — our humanity — as being harmful in a broad, ideological sense. But even then, it can be difficult to comprehend and articulate the internal impact of events not being just experienced, witnessed, or described, but quietly and quickly reshaping the ways we think about other people and ourselves, our lives, our worth, and our futures. Because that's exactly what happens, not just to some people, but to most of us who haven't had the freedom to be fully and safely ourselves.

If you're neurodivergent — and especially if you're also marginalized because of your race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, or gender expression, sexuality or sexual orientation, appearance, disability, or any other characteristic that falls outside the dominant mold — then you've spent your entire life absorbing messages, both implicit and explicit, about who you're expected and allowed to be, how you're expected and allowed to exist, and which parts of you are acceptable only if they can be made palatable or useful to other people. Whether we like it or not, and whether we know it or not, those messages become part of our internal belief systems, which shapes our thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and interactions.

They show up in the ways we feel about the world, and how we speak to ourselves and about ourselves. They show up in how we interpret feedback, what we share with and show to others, and what we hold back, deny, or even lie about. They show up in the ways we second-guess our feelings, instincts, and preferences, the ways we overexplain what we mean, or just give up on being understood at all. They show up in the ways we hesitate or seek permission before doing something we already know we're allowed and have a right to do, or in the ways we approach everything with defensiveness and defiance before we've even assessed the situation. Maybe most importantly, they show up in what we believe we're capable of doing or achieving, and what we believe we deserve.

And what's especially disorienting is that no one tells us that these things are responses to oppression, which is probably because most people are telling us that we're not being oppressed. If we know we're being treated poorly because of our differences, we might feel hurt or angry, but we usually see our responses as isolated to specific experiences. What carries over and permeates the way we walk through the world feels unrelated, which means it can't be a natural, common, or even appropriate reaction to an experience over which we have no control, so it must be our fault, a personal flaw, what we need to change or fix about ourselves. Because when you've been taught that your processing is too slow, your thinking is too fast, your communication is too blunt, your sensory sensitivity is too inconvenient, your routines are too rigid, your feelings are too big, your reactions are exaggerated, your mannerisms are weird, your body is disgusting, your language is ugly, your music is offensive, your family is trashy, your community is delinquent, your beliefs are wrong, your lifestyle is a sin, your identity is an abomination, or your marriage is a sham, you don't just feel different; you feel wrong — sometimes or all the time, with certain people or with everyone, in specific situations or in every situation.

Almost none of us were told that, when a situation isn't comfortable or doesn't work well for us, the situation can change. Other solutions are possible besides us changing, failing, giving up, leaving, or getting hurt. Systems and institutions can be expanded to allow for differences, and other people can accept and understand differences. Have you ever met a kid whose older sibling is deaf, or is being raised by two dads, or has gone all the way from preschool through elementary school with the same best friend who uses a wheelchair? They learn to communicate using American Sign language. They see families as coming in all kinds of configurations. And they expect spaces to be wheelchair-accessible.

Adults are just as intrinsically capable of accepting and understanding differences but, they've had more time in the systems and institutions that aren't expanded to allow for differences, and receiving the messages that, when people are marginalized for their differences, it's their fault for not doing enough to be less different. It's our fault for not doing enough to be less different. It's my fault, and your fault, for not doing enough to be less different, right? Abso-fucking-lutely not, but that's what we're taught. Though some of us have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who are open-minded, inclusive, and accommodating — even people who are outraged by unfairness, cruelty, tyranny, unjust policies, and prejudicial practices — we're still immersed in broader cultures and political systems that operate somewhere along the spectrum of valuing to vilifying diversity, in all its many forms.

The U.S. is, on paper, the land of the free, with a government of the people, by the people, and for the people — all of whom are created equal and endowed with unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Its history, and present, are less idyllic, so most Americans who fundamentally differ from the norm were encouraged, taught, told, pressured, coerced, or forced to be less like themselves and more like everyone else. And we have really, really, really tried. We believed that we could, that we should, and that we had to, and a lot of us succeeded — not in changing ourselves, but in hiding the parts we were told were not acceptable.

Is that true for you? Did you learn to anticipate what people expect from you and figure out how to deliver it before anyone even asked? Did you make yourself more agreeable, less odd, more cautious, less likely to need help or make a mistake that could bring attention to your differences, your flaws, the things about yourself you haven't yet been able to change or fix? Did you leave parts of your story out, make excuses to justify the actions of your family or community, leave people's assumptions about you unchallenged? Did you realize one day that you've been working harder than anyone you know for as long as you can remember, and for a fraction of the happiness, peace, security, and success it feels like other people just get to have?

The realization that things have really always been harder for you, that you've been uncomfortable, stressed, overwhelmed, overstimulated, anxious, or afraid of being called out, ruled out, or put out all along could just as easily be interpreted as systemic failures and cultural flaws — not personal faults, but you probably wrestled with your deeply ingrained belief system that says you're to blame. Most of us do. And you may have found or newly appreciated people who know and celebrate the real, whole you, but also encountered others who said you should stop making waves, play by the rules, don't act so entitled, stop bringing so much attention to yourself, suck it up like everyone else. That comes from people who love us, who want the best for us, who are afraid for us, and for themselves. It also comes from our supervisors and bosses, our doctors, the people who make and enforce the rules for how a person can succeed, what constitutes failure, and the consequences for each. It can come from people who are respected, and those with enormous power and influence. And it can come as a total fucking surprise, an agonizing series of steps back after many hard-earned steps forward.

And again, here we are, the gaslit majority. But there's something that's incredibly important for us to remember, and it's this: Gaslighting is a strategy for creating a power imbalance, for making someone feel vulnerable and incapable, so by definition, that strategy can only be used on a person — or a hell of a lot of people — who have at least as much power, resilience, and ability as the gaslighter, who's using manipulation to compensate for their inferiority — whether it's one person or a large government. Think of it this way: If you could quantify all the aspects of yourself you've seen as the problems, and all the time and energy you've spent trying to conceal, unlearn, or fix them, and whatever that value is, you took it all back — every bit of it — and used it to be and do whatever you want, you would be fucking unstoppable. You ARE fucking unstoppable, limitless, with incalculable potential. And they know it, which is why they're proclaiming from untouchable ivory towers that you're not.

Their only play is to try to snow us, to get us to concede that we're to blame, to make us believe we, and the people who came before us, were wrong to think we deserved acknowledgement, compassion, equity, happiness, freedom, safety, security or success. That's all they've got, and we've got so much more, so we're gonna' call their bluff — but that only works if we accept our power and stop playing the game, and that is much harder to do than it should be. If you've thought about it before or, if you first considered it when you heard me say it just now, your initial reaction was probably excited and hopeful, like, "Hell yeah, I'm sick of this game. It feels like it's killing me. I can't wait to get out of it!" But that was probably temporary, maybe even fleeting, before you started thinking about all the aspects of your day-to-day life that are part of the game, which very likely includes ALL the aspects of your day-to-day life or damn close.

Many of us have gotten really good at this game, even if we hate it. We've spent years learning the rules, perfecting our performance, compartmentalizing what works and what doesn't, what's safe and what isn't, in each setting, cleaning up messes behind the scenes, and holding things together so that we've managed to look like we're thriving from a distance, and even though we're exhausted, we can't imagine that giving up what's always felt necessary could possibly be better. But once you see that the game was designed to limit you, that the rules weren't written to guide you but to control you, and that you can't be true to yourself and win it, you realize that you can't keep playing it.

It stops feeling like discipline or integrity or respect or professionalism, and starts feeling like something closer to submission or betrayal or servitude or like you're spending your entire, precious life playing a role according to someone else's script instead of living. You may have come to that fork in the road before without really knowing it. At some point — maybe after another shutdown, another heartbreak, another performance so convincing you nearly lost yourself in it — you may have hit a wall, burned out, broke down, or just stop caring about pleasing, impressing, or being valued by people who don't even know the first thing about who you actually are.

In those moments, and right now, you have two choices: You can double down on being who you think they want you to be, or you can start the uncomfortable, unfamiliar, life-saving process of reclaiming what never should have been taken from you. Whether you're ready to do that right now, or you're planning to think about it for a while or come back to this episode later, let's talk about what that process actually looks like — not the fantasy version, in which everything gets easier and better the very moment you accept yourself, but the real version, in which you make choices and take actions that are deliberate, and sometimes agonizing, because they mean living differently, and being different, in systems that say — quietly or loudly — that you can't and you shouldn't. Because here's the thing: You're not going to reclaim your freedom, find peace, or achieve the level of success, joy, or ease that's evaded you by becoming more productive, more organized, more efficient, more disciplined, more marketable, more palatable, or more like everyone else. That hasn't worked in the past — or it worked, but it didn't really, because it only got you so far, cost you more than you can possibly keep giving, and could still be threatened or stripped away by greedy, ignorant, unethical, power, hungry, fearmongering bigots. I mean, let's call it like it is…

Where was I? Right…The way you reclaim and protect your freedom, peace, success, joy, and ease is not by becoming more productive, compliant, or watered down, but by becoming more honest. That doesn't necessarily mean becoming more vocal, direct, or exposed; it means becoming radically and entirely truthful with yourself. Truthful about what you actually think, feel, need, and want. Truthful about what your brain and body aren't capable of doing, and about what they are. Truthful about what matters to you, what you care about, what feels right to you, and who you actually are. Truthful about what you've tolerated, suppressed, abandoned, hid, and tried to change because you thought, understandably, that you had to.

We all started out with this level of truthfulness about and with ourselves, and it's the most important thing any of us has lost or could lose again, because the first thing institutionalized erasure takes from us is our relationship with reality. This happens early in our lives, before we have an intellectual understanding of what's real and what isn't, but we can feel the incongruence between our experiences and what we're told — that we're not trying, that we don't care, that we're not really in pain, that we're bad, that we're stupid, that we can't do something or that we can, that we're just like someone else, that we won't amount to anything, that what we like, or the way we walk, talk, or move, is wrong, that other people who seem fun and nice to us don't deserve our love or respect for reasons that make no sense.

As kids, we rely on adults for absolutely everything, so we adapt to the reality they're offering the best we can, which means accepting what they tell us is true — even when it contradicts what is true for us, and that makes it easier to accept what other people tell us is true as we become adults ourselves, which can put enormous distance between ourselves and our own actual truth. Bridging that distance can take time, and a lot of reflection, followed by asserting — with conviction, out loud with your full voice when you can — "This is true for me." You don't have to tell anyone else; just say it or think it to yourself, because you are the person who knows it's true, and needs the disparity between your truth and "the" truth to be reconciled. So call out what's true for you and trust that, even if it's inconvenient or unflattering or hard for someone else to accept, that doesn't make it any less true.

The next step involves a part of the process that is rarely mentioned in conversations about growth, self-acceptance, or personal development, which is: allowing and moving through grief — not because you did anything wrong, or because something is wrong with you, but because it's painful to realize what you've lost. Most of us have lost years, energy, the chance to experience life authentically and see where that takes us. We lost opportunities, and we endured situations and relationships that didn't suit or serve us. When you stop hiding, performing, and editing your story to make other people more comfortable, you see just how much of your life was spent trying to be allowed and included, and you become aware of ways other people could have protected and fought for you, and what a difference that might have made.

Mourning that can be excruciating, but that grief is part of your truth, and getting through it isn't the most painful thing you can experience, because it's way worse to spend even more of your time and energy — your limitless life — trying harder and harder to squash your authenticity so you can finally become the version of yourself you think you need to be to win that unwinnable game. No one can become something they aren't — no matter how long they try or how much time and energy they've already wasted trying. It makes sense to grieve over that — and really you have to, because otherwise you'll be carrying it, and it's heavy as hell. So when the sadness comes — about what happened or what didn't — let it come, and then when you can, let it go.

The third step is to reclaim your autonomy. Being truthful about and with yourself is how you begin to take back what was taken from you, and grieving that is how you release the burden of knowing what you lost so you can move forward. Reclaiming your autonomy is how you protect what you've recovered so it can't be taken away from you again. For neurodivergent people and others who are perceived as being different, perhaps the most dangerous lesson many of us learn very early is that we — individually and as groups of others like us — don't really have the right to say "No." If other people don't understand, or it inconveniences them or makes them uncomfortable, we're not really permitted to opt out of, or say "No" to, environments that over- or understimulate us, or to timeframes that don't work for our brains. We can't really say "No" to doing things the one "right" way we're taught they should be done — even when we're willing to do them, but our own way. We can't really say "No" to being around people who make us uneasy or reduce us to the thing about us they find most off-putting. We can't really say "No" to draining conversations, overwhelming demands, relationships we don't value, or activities "everyone does," but that are insufferable for us.

We also can't really say "Yes," or otherwise choose environments, activities, interactions, and ways of doing things that work best for us. And while children, in general, don't have a lot of say, most are allowed to make progressively more and more choices for themselves as they get older. That's often not the case for children who see and do things differently than the majority. A toddler who screams at the top of their lungs in a movie theater is usually told they like the experience and just need to get used to it. A kindergartner who brings lunches of home-cooked Indian food that they eat with their hands will almost certainly be told that's poor manners and to use a utensil. A second grader who writes their letters clearly, but is more comfortable holding their pencil the "wrong" way, will likely be provided occupational therapy or otherwise forced to use the "right" grip.

A child who was assigned male sex at birth and draws pictures of himself and his best friend getting married in brightly colored tuxedos, or who confidently tells others from the age of 2, "I'm a girl," will quickly be corrected by nearly everyone. Kids who use mobility aids are often told with exaggerated concern why they can't do things their peers are doing simply because they would do them differently. Children who want to eat the same thing for every meal, watch the same movie on repeat, or play with the same toy during every recess, are almost always prevented from doing so. Kids who speak to each other using African American Language, or Black English, are often told to "use proper English," or informed that certain words "aren't words," even though the meanings of the words they're using are understood, which is what makes something a word.

Once children who demonstrate differences from the expectations of the dominant culture become teenagers, they're almost always given less room for self-determination than their peers who are, or are perceived to be, neurotypical, non-disabled, cisgender, heterosexual, Christian, white, well-behaved, appropriate, polite, principled, respectful, compliant, "normal." And that doesn't happen only in conservative or rural communities; it happens in progressive schools, liberal households, and diverse cities, because even spaces that are designed with true inclusivity in mind exist within a larger cultural context, so default in some ways to the expectations of the broader majority, if for no other reason than to try to protect them from the rigidity and cruelty of the "real world" — as though being rejected and hated by others is somehow worse or more dangerous than being rejected and hated by ourselves.

It absolutely is not, and more to the point, that forced choice is part of a false narrative. Parents don't have to choose between raising a kid others will hurt and raising a kid who will hurt themselves, and none of us have to choose between being someone others will hurt and being someone who hurts themselves. That rhetoric is propagated by people who oppress others, who use domination to control and confine those they see as different, and who use fear to gain the support and ensure the complicity of everyone else.

That entire system is incapacitated when we reclaim our autonomy — and that doesn't require us to become aggressive or confrontational. It starts with remembering that you can participate in your own life according to what's true for you, that you're not limited to certain roles, tasks, or expectations, that you are allowed to have preferences, to make adjustments, to ask questions, to choose based on what works for you, what you want, and who you are. Then you get to act on it, and hopefully you picked up on my word choice there, because it matters. You don't HAVE to act on it because you don't HAVE to do anything you don't want to do. You are autonomous, you have agency, and you get to do what you choose. If starting a new life on a different continent thousands of miles away is the right thing for you to do, figure it out and do it.

But most of us will reclaim our autonomy in more subtle ways, like having a snack before going out to dinner because you're already hungry, turning down the music your partner turned on because they're talking to you and you can't focus on what they're saying, looking into that degree you've always wanted or putting feelers out there for a new job, or just accepting that you're feeling sad or disappointed instead of pushing the feeling down and pretending to be fine. That's all it is. Just acknowledging and acting on what's true for you instead of ignoring it, hiding it, denying it, or apologizing for it.

Just like becoming honest and grieving what's been lost, reclaiming autonomy is a deliberate process that will take time. It's not a switch you flip or a one-time action, but something you rebuild choice by choice, interaction by interaction, response by response, until your life is aligned with the person you actually are, not the version of yourself you thought you had to be. Can you imagine? THAT is true freedom that can't be taken away, no matter what circumstances you face.

Now, if you're thinking there's no way everyone — or anyone — around you will agree and cheer you on, you're probably right, because they're in the same oppressive system that tells us what "normal" is, that being "normal" is the only way to be happy, successful, and safe, and that people who can't, or won't, be "normal" threaten those who do. But here's the thing about systems: They're inherently impermanent, because they always involve multiple components that impact each other. You and I and the rest of the gaslit majority of people who are marginalized for one or many aspects of who we are, we're all independent parts of that system. Instead of feeling like we're only being impacted by the other parts of the system, like our lives are limited by what the system allows, we can each use our autonomy to impact the other parts of the system, and the system will have to change.

The reality is that we have far more influence on systems than they have on us, because systems have no capacity without their parts. They don't even exist without whatever comprises them, so why the hell are we being dragged along by systems that devalue, disempower, and damage us? Why are we agreeing to play a game with rules that stack the odds staggeringly in favor of a very small minority of people who believe they have more right to everything than the entire rest of the world combined? Though I highly recommend you make your political voice heard however you can, you don't have to go march on Washington, or spend all your days off calling your senators, to change the game and the systems that perpetuate it. You just have to be who you actually are, live according to your truth, and allow others to do the same.

That changes everything. Just starting changes everything, so if you don't have the slightest idea what your truth even is, or you feel paralyzed by the corruption, the contradictions, the senselessness, and the threats, it's enough to just start listening to yourself, trusting yourself, and choosing yourself. And then do it again, and again and again, until it's not a special occasion, a breakdown, or a brave choice, but just the way you live. instead of shrinking in fear, which is what a lot of very reasonable people feel like doing, let this time of unprecedented treachery and duplicity be what reminds you that your freedom is not something you have to earn by following the rules, blending in, working harder, pleasing everyone, or suffering in silence. Your freedom, your identity, and your life are already yours. That should have never been a question, and it never has to be again.

Until next time, remember: You don't have to change yourself to deserve happiness or success. Being who you are isn't the problem; it's the solution. I'm rooting for you — exactly as you are. I'll see you next week.