I did not read it|and I deleted it

When Naming Truth Disrupts Comfort: On Clarity, Community, and the Cost of Being Seen

Let me start with this: I didn’t read the text messages. I deleted the entire thread.

I didn’t read the email. I deleted it.

Not because I was avoiding the "truth"—but because I’ve learned to recognize when something is not safe for my nervous system. As someone with Autism and ADHD, and as a person navigating deep relational trauma, I know what shutdown feels like. And the minute I saw phrases like “you need to do this… you need to do that…”, my system said: no.

"You need to..." language strips the listener of autonomy, and in trauma-informed or equity-centered contexts, it often reenacts control dynamics. The phrase "you need to…" isn't neutral. It carries a power dynamic—a prescriptive tone rooted in patriarchal and colonial control patterns. It presumes that the speaker knows better, and that the listener must conform. For neurodivergent women especially, it's not just triggering—it's a reenactment of being silenced, corrected, and managed.

Breathing Deep

Still—unfortunately—I have eyeballs. So despite my boundaries, I caught a few lines. One of them referenced a sticker on my planner; so I filtered it through AI.

 What followed wasn’t just analysis—it was an opportunity to examine the deeper layers underneath the conflict:

1. ·How I’ve come into full alignment with my Bio#3 identity—specifically as Earth Sense First. (this apparently is not the same as Energy Sensitive, or Empathic)

2. How this difference influences how I communicate, interpret safety, and hold boundaries.

3. How much trauma I’ve had to metabolize in the last two months—finishing a book that unearthed childhood pain, reaffirming the coping tools that protect my clarity and dignity.

4. And how I could choose, not through blame, but through structure—through Bio#3 concise clarity, Truth, synthetization and a commitment to ethical restoration.

   
   

What was underneath, were some themes worth exploring:

1.     A perception that I’m not contributing to community values or ethics in the way others expect.

2.     A need for visibility and inclusion from others in community-facing roles.

3.     A call for more shared collaboration in decision-making.

Are these observations fair?

Are they grounded?

Are they projections?

They are real to the person who sent them—and that matters.

That’s not how I navigate the world. For me, clarity is inclusion. Energetic integrity is community care. I may not always know how to “include” someone in the way they expect, because I operate from resonance—not performance.

So now I find myself with this question:How do others experience inclusion in this community?And what kind of support or recognition would actually feel meaningful—across Bio# types, sensory styles, and relational wounds?

That’s the conversation I want to have.

My past experiences tell me, when someone comes at me with accusations—about control, ego, microaggressions, or lack of empathy—I’ve learned to pause and ask: What unmet shadow is being projected here? Especially when the themes are visibility, power, or validation. I don’t ask this to dismiss the feedback, but to ground myself in a reality that has often distorted my clarity as threat.

Here’s the truth: I expect people to be honest with me. If something’s off—name it. But name it in the moment, if it's safe, or in a way that allows for real-time processing and dialogue.

What I experience instead is this pattern: others want permission to call me out, but don’t offer the same openness to being called in or being asked to reflect. They expect to be heard—but do not hold space for my no, my process, or my truth.

I’m willing to name my own shadows. I’m willing to sit in discomfort and be accountable. But only if there is mutuality. I will not stay in relationships—personal or professional—where people expect critique without reciprocal reflection. That’s not community. That’s extraction.

Reciprocity does not require conflict. It requires discomfort, integrity, and a shared container for truth.

I think we are carrying very different interpretations of shared events.

But I am open—if there's willingness to meet on solid ground:

·       With clear agreements.

·       With boundaries.

·       With regulated, time-bound containers.

·       And when needed, with witnesses to ensure safety and equity.

Because that is the only way trust becomes possible again.

Yet I understand that for Empaths, non-engagement can feel like emotional withdrawal or even competition.

I’m not in competition with anyone. I never have been.

But I am protective of the clarity I carry—and what happens when others repeatedly misinterpret it. I’ve experienced enough misrecognition, invalidation, and projected shame to know when I need to set boundaries for my safety.

There are moments in community where a single phrase, image, or object reveals more about the room than it does about the person holding it.

Recently, someone took issue with a sticker on my planner. It reads:“I’m going to be disappointed by a man today. I can feel it.”

The response to that sticker wasn’t curiosity. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a conversation. It was moral critique, discomfort projected as righteousness. It was, frankly, a case study in how unexamined power dynamics, spiritual bypassing, and gendered fragility still infiltrate spaces that claim to be about growth, embodiment, and truth.

Let me be clear:That sticker isn’t about hatred. It’s about pattern recognition. It is trauma-informed realism with a thin layer of dark humor. It’s a protective phrase for a nervous system shaped by years of being dismissed, interrupted, gaslit, minimized, and expected to perform emotional comfort for men who never examined their own impact.

When a man (or anyone, really) sees that sticker and feels “attacked,” I ask:Are you feeling harmed—or are you uncomfortable being reminded of a system you unconsciously benefit from?

That sticker says more about my lived experience than it ever could about yours. And if your first instinct is to demand its removal, rather than ask what it means to the person carrying it, then what you want is emotional sanitization, not community.

Neurodivergence and Misattunement

I am autistic. I also live with ADHD. These are not traits I tuck away for your comfort. They shape how I process, speak, engage, and hold boundaries. My clarity is not coldness. My directness is not ego. My structure is not rejection. These are the tools I’ve developed to survive a world that has consistently misread, misdiagnosed, or mischaracterized me.

You have been warned: repeatedly. When I meet people I tell them that i do not pick up emotions. I tell them their directness is required for clear transparent communication. If they are not hearing me... not my problem.

And yet, in spiritual and community settings, I’ve repeatedly been asked to dilute my clarity—to soften what I sense for the sake of group harmony. But harmony built on silence is not peace. It’s performance.

As an Earth Sense First Bio#3, I experience the world through grounded, patterned resonance. I don’t “feel things out”—I sense structure. I map integrity. I measure what’s real through physical, vibrational truth—not through emotional consensus.

That often puts me in tension with those who operate from emotional empathy, especially when discomfort arises. But discomfort is not danger. Discomfort is the invitation.

Inclusion Is Not the Same as Comfort

Inclusion is often misunderstood as emotional safety for the dominant group. But real inclusion requires that we let go of control over how truth arrives. Sometimes, truth shows up in the form of a sticker. Or a sentence. Or a woman who’s tired of being asked to shrink so others can expand.

Some women have also bought into this softness, diminishing their power. They can also become perpetrators of this harm.

If your idea of inclusion only works when truth is quiet, soft, or pleasing—you don’t want inclusion. You want assimilation.

Internalized Systems and the Scapegoating

Let’s name something clearly: when we talk about “community harm,” we’re often dancing around deeper systems—internalized patriarchy, colonial control mechanisms, ableism, and emotional gatekeeping that show up cloaked in spiritual language.

The expectation that I "soften my tone," "hold the room," or "perform love" is not just a personal grievance—it’s part of a long, documented pattern of how women, especially neurodivergent women, are punished for not making themselves digestible to dominant group norms. When I’m labeled as cold, controlling, or arrogant for simply being clear, what’s really being revealed is someone’s unexamined bias toward compliance and emotional labor as virtue.

We don't talk enough about how colonial dominance survives through politeness, not just violence—and how patriarchal dynamics depend on emotional obedience from women.

Especially from those of us who carry precision, insight, or systemic pattern recognition that can’t be swayed by feelings alone.

This is particularly dangerous for neurodivergent people who are used to being:

·       Misunderstood and mislabeled

·       Punished for setting boundaries

·       Expected to “explain themselves” in ways neurotypical people aren’t

·       Used as lightning rods for group anxiety or discomfort

Scapegoating isn’t just interpersonal. It’s structural. And it shows up most often when the group refuses to look at its own shadow—and needs a target to offload discomfort, projection, or confusion.

Sometimes, the scapegoat is the person who is least willing to lie.

Sometimes, it’s the one who won’t pretend.

Sometimes, it’s the one who doesn’t have the privilege of politeness because their nervous system is screaming “unsafe,” and they’ve had to learn how to listen.

So no, I will not remove a sticker that calls attention to a pattern I’ve had to survive.

And no, I will not explain my trauma in palatable language just so it fits someone else's idea of “unity.”

Real community honors differences in how we perceive, communicate, and self-protect. Real community does not scapegoat the ones whose clarity threatens illusion.

What I Won’t Do

I will not:

• Justify my humor.

• Apologize for surviving out loud.

• Remove my truth so someone else can avoid doing their own work.

I will not create a world where women have to check their tone before speaking their trauma, or where neurodivergent people are asked to mask their clarity to soothe collective discomfort.

What I Will Do

I will continue to name patterns—even when it’s inconvenient.I will continue to hold my own nervous system as sacred.And I will invite others to meet me on ground that includes:

• Clear boundaries

• Reciprocal accountability

• Consent before feedback

• Discomfort without punishment

If we can’t do that, we’re not building community. We’re reenacting harm.

The Work Beneath the Work

I believe this is happening now for a reason.

There are layers of the Bio#3 that have not yet been acknowledged—depths of power, of shadow, and of light—that our teachers either couldn’t or wouldn’t face. Their refusal to reckon with that depth created harm. Harm that we, now, have the opportunity to name, witness, and heal.

This isn’t just about one sticker. This isn’t about money. This is about creating space for the full range of Bio#3 embodiment to be seen—for the first time without distortion, punishment, or projection.

It took me years of trauma excavation, therapy, discomfort, tears and truth-telling to claim this part of myself. I had to dismantle every false story, every inherited silence, every lie told in the name of “peace.” In the name of "softening" my impact. In the name of "gentling" my intensity. And in doing so, I had to see clearly what my teachers could not: that the parts they labeled as “too much,” “too sharp,” “too fast,” were never the problem. Their refusal to see their own shadows was. Their refusal to see all the clear, concise and articulated careful words that I am a Bio#3. What better way to refuse the shadow, than silence the "seeer".

I cannot unsee what is seen.

This is a choice point—for all of us. Either we step into the next phase of the Work with courage, integrity, and truth… or we repeat the same harm under new language.

I will move forward. Because this is my life’s work—and it was never about me.

It’s about community. It’s about what it truly means to live in right relationship. It’s about making space for all Bio#3s—Empathic, Energy-Sensitive, Earth-Sense—to exist without apology, without distortion, and without being cast as a problem just for speaking clearly.

The world is going to change drastically over the next 25 years. Old systems are unraveling. False identities are cracking. And what emerges will be shaped by the clarity, the structure, and the discernment we cultivate now.

This Work—the real Work—isn’t just about healing the past; it is deconstructing your biases, facing your shame, your fear, your disappointments in yourself and others. It is about deconstructing your colonial, racist, sexist views. It’s about building the infrastructure for the future. And I believe, deeply, that Bio#3s are here to clarify, synthesize, see and name that process—if we are finally allowed to be seen in our wholeness.

So I offer this not as a declaration of blame, but as an invocation for repair.

We are not just holding space.We are holding a map.

And the map begins with telling the truth.

Final Thought

Truth-telling isn’t always soft. Sometimes it’s disruptive. Sometimes it carries humor.

Sometimes it comes on a sticker. If that offends you more than the systems that made the sticker necessary—you’re not being attacked. You’re being invited to reflect.

And if you can’t sit in that reflection without needing the truth-teller to change?Then maybe you’re not ready for community at all.

Maybe there will be another Torch-bearer. Maybe our community will fail. I have to be ok with that, because it is your choice.