Rebelling

Amy Knott Parrish (00:02)
Welcome to Rebelling, a podcast for people tired of wondering why the world doesn't make sense and want to try something different.

On this podcast, we'll take it down to the foundations. We'll explore the systems and norms that shape our day-to-day lives, question what we've been taught to expect and accept, and name the bullshit. I'm your host, Amy Knot Parrish. Let's stop playing it cool. It's time to start rebelling.

Amy Knott Parrish (00:42)
Hey y'all, welcome back to Rebelling. It's the start of our second year together. Y'all, this podcast started as a way to make space for neurodivergent people to see themselves in the world. And over time, it's grown into something bigger. Now it's not just a space to question norms, but a place to also question the beliefs, systems,

standards, expectations, and practices that shape our day-to-day lives.

Early on, I realized what I was trying to make sense of wasn't just neurodivergence. It was something structural. It wasn't only being neurodivergent. It was how being neurodivergent put me in the world and then how the world shaped.

the way I was neurodivergent. It gets big and complicated. And when things like that happen and they're hard to see clearly, like we start to kind of go into denial. And then thinking about denial got me thinking about magical thinking and something I could not stop.

running through my head was the story of the emperor's new clothes.

And as I was thinking about that story, I realized that magical thinking is a coping strategy.

Magical thinking helps us deal with unpredictability. It gives us that sense of control when control is actually pretty limited. And because our brains are prediction machines, when we find a way of interpreting the world that reduces uncertainty, we go back to it. We go back to it even when the situation has changed.

We go back to it when the context has changed. We go back to it when it doesn't really work anymore.

We go back to it because not having control is hard. And changing coping strategies is hard.

So last year my parents came over for lunch. My mom said something rude to my daughter and I had that familiar moment of like, ⁓ shit, what do I do here? Because the old pattern would have been for me to just smooth it over, to make it smaller, keep things comfortable, tell myself it's no big deal. And if I was just a good enough daughter,

those moments would stop happening. That's magical thinking. That idea that if I behave correctly enough, I can prevent something that is already happening.

But that day I didn't do that. I didn't smooth it over. I named it. And I didn't try to fix it in the moment. And what that meant was I actually had to see the situation differently.

not as something I could manage by being better or more careful, but as something where I needed boundaries. And I had to learn what that actually means, not as a concept, but in practice. What it looks like to hold a boundary when it's uncomfortable. And so what shifted for me is I stopped trying to use my behavior to control the outcome of my relationship with my parents.

I stopped using magical thinking to keep things stable. And what exists now is different. There is more distance. There's more discomfort, less smoothing over. And clearer lines around what I will and won't participate in. It's not resolved, but it's real.

and I don't have to explain it away anymore just to stay in it. And so what I started to see in that moment was that this wasn't just about me and my parents. It was a pattern,

a way I had learned to create stability in relationships.

And that pattern showed up in other places too, because a lot of what we call coping is something we learn from the environment we're in.

A lot of magical thinking isn't just personal, it's shaped by systems. Environments shape how we understand cause and effect. And when systems are complex or unclear, we fill in the gaps with reasonable inferences based on what we see, based on what we can see. And those inferences usually make sense. Given what's visible, they're logical.

but they're still incomplete. And sometimes they even get reinforced, not because they're fully accurate, but because they seem to work often enough that we trust them. And that's what makes them hard to see.

Over time, those patterns become learned responses. Learned responses become shared expectations. And shared expectations start to feel like reality. And that's how you end up in something like the emperor's new clothes.

Everyone can feel that something is off, but no one is totally sure what they're seeing. So no one says anything. And we all end up trying to explain something that doesn't actually make sense. So here we are looking at the naked emperor, trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. Because of course it doesn't. It's a blind spot.

systems produce blind spots.

And then people make reasonable inferences from incomplete or misleading signals, which can lead to understandings of those systems that aren't fully accurate.

And so I want to talk about blind spots.

Blind spots are places where something is shaping how you see or respond, but you're not fully aware of it. It's not just things you don't know. It's things that are actively influencing how you think and act without showing up as influences.

And this is where we're going in year two. We're going back to basics, but not in the sense of simplifying things or finding answers. More like going back to the foundation of how we even make sense of things in the first place. This season is it's all about noticing where the models were given and our lived experience don't line up and what happens in that gap.

Not to fix everything, not from certainty, but from curiosity. We're not going to do this from outside the system. We're doing it from inside it. And that means we're going to get things wrong sometimes. We're going to have to revise how we see things as we go. And we're going to have to practice staying with that instead of rushing to certainty.

This is not about being more correct. It's not about becoming more correct. It's about becoming more aware of how we're seeing at all.

and noticing what we usually miss.

On a bigger level, this is about noticing what ways of living have been pushed to the edges or made harder to see, and what might become possible if we look differently.

We're going to stay grounded in reality as it is, including limits, constraints, trade-offs, not just idealized ideas of control or progress.

And so year two starts by talking about work because work is where most people spend most of their time. And it's one of the clearest places where our blind spots show up. Most of us are working inside systems that assume work is stable, predictable, and linear. That if you define the goal, you can define the steps. And if you follow the steps, you can control the outcome. That's an industrial model of work.

And for a long time, parts of work did function that way. But a lot of what people are doing now isn't like that anymore. It's adaptive. It shifts. It responds. It changes as conditions change. And when we try to use linear models to manage adaptive work, what we get isn't clarity. We get friction, confusion, and this ongoing feeling, something is wrong.

even when people are working really hard.

This is where blind spots show up. Because if the system tells you work should be controllable, but your experience is that it isn't, you usually don't question the system first. You question yourself, your effort, your clarity, your discipline. You make it your fault that it isn't working.

And then you adapt in ways that make sense under that assumption. You over explain, over function, over correct, or try harder to stabilize something that was never really stable in the first place.

What we're going to look at this year is what it means to work inside environments that can't be fully controlled, not as a failure, but as reality. We're going to look at what it means to shift from managing work like a linear system to relating to it as something adaptive and responsive.

We're going to look at what changes when we stop assuming clarity and control are always available.

We're also going to keep building on the idea of social security, not as a fixed system, but as a way of understanding support in changing conditions. The things that actually hold people steady when stability isn't guaranteed.

So welcome to year two. I'm really glad you're here. If you want to reach out, you can email me at amy at rebelling.me with your thoughts, ideas or reflections. And I want to invite you to Rebelling Study Hall starts Saturday, May 2nd, and we'll meet on Zoom from 1130 to 1230 PM Eastern.

Rebelling study hall is a no cost space to talk about what doesn't make sense and what we don't understand. It's a place for us to be curious about exactly what I'm talking about here. Curious about norms and systems all without judgment. And I'll hold the space as a coach and as a human with enough structure so that it doesn't get loose and fragmented.

You can sign up for that at www.rebelling.me. And I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

Bye.

Amy Knott Parrish (14:34)
Thanks for taking the time to listen to Rebelling. You can find resources and links from this episode in the show notes or at rebelling.me slash podcast. Next time we'll keep questioning what we've been taught, naming what doesn't make sense and turning towards directions that do make sense all while we figure out what they are. Until then keep

rebelling.