Dr Emily

My name is Emily and I'm a psychologist and regular guest on The Imperfects.

Together with The Imperfects, I acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast was recorded.

I acknowledge this land always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

Well, I actually, you know, I've been listening to the reflections and I thought, yeah, from the pond.

Yeah, no, I think that really, I just thought it was a really nice opportunity just to have like a deeper reflection, the reflection.

This is great.

I guess, first of all, I just wanted to acknowledge, gosh, what a beautiful reflection it was for a start.

But also just to reflect back to all of you and to the listeners about how commonly I say this, that this experience is, I think, very familiar to a lot of people.

that whether there is a diagnosis, for example, of neurodivergence or whether actually it's just kind of like a meeting of your adult self is to recognise the pain and the criticism that has in some ways characterised or defined how you've got to this point in your life.

Particularly with a new diagnosis, one of the most common responses is,

is that it changes the lens through which you look at your life.

So it's like for your entire life you have looked through a yellow-coloured lens and that lens has told you that you're not good enough, that you're lazy, that you're too loud, that you're too much, that you can't do these things if only you were better.

That's the lens.

And then all of a sudden you get this diagnosis and it's like this lens is now a different colour and all of a sudden it's like, oh, my goodness.

All this time, this is the way I've talked to myself.

Or all this time, this is also how other people have characterised me.

And I just wanted to start just by really acknowledging how both disorienting, freeing and distressing those recognitions can be.

Yeah, I think it can be immensely liberating.

And absolutely exciting.

You know, what is it that I can do differently now when I don't have this harsh inner critic constantly on my back?