January Monthly Newsletter!

Hi Friend! “Why am I weird?” I often asked myself this question when I sat alone during lunch at school. It seemed like everyone knew the rules of friendship, and I didn’t. It wasn’t until I turned 24 that I started to understand the true rules of friendship, and here’s how I discovered them.

This month, I started listening to podcasts on my commute to work. Recently, I listened to an episode with Mel Robbins on the podcast On Purpose with Jay Shetty, (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) in which she discussed the ‘Let Them Be Theory.’ This theory essentially refers to letting go of the things that are out of your control, giving you space to grow and make space for the things that do matter.

During the episode, she explored how to apply the Let Them Be Theory to your friendships and this expanded my way of thinking towards my past friendships.

“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.” - Octavia Butler

According to Mel Robbins (Öffnet in neuem Fenster), there are three pillars of friendships:

1. Proximity - refers to how physically close you are to the person.

2. Timing - whether you’re on the same timeline.

3. Energy - whether you have an inner connection with the person.

This interested me because my most challenging friendships only met two of these pillars: proximity and timing. For example, at university, I lived with my ‘friends’ and experienced university life together, but the fundamental pillar missing was energy. We didn’t have the inner connection that made our friendships different from those we experienced with other people.

It made sense as to why the friendship deteriorated. It wasn’t that there was something “wrong “with me or due to not conforming to their ideas of life. It was rather that we experienced and viewed life differently. During university, I was (and still am) an open-minded person, who loved to get to know new cultures and experience something beyond the norm. This brought a different approach to life that didn’t fall into their category of interests and hobbies. As a result, our energies were opposites.

It reminded me that not everyone I meet will become my friend.

Although it’s hard coming to terms with the fact that not everyone will become your friend or even remotely like you (especially as someone with rejection-sensitive dysphoria). It’s made me focus on the people that do matter to me. The people who accept me for who I am, the people who don’t judge me based on first impressions, and the people who lift my energy.

It’s made me learn to “let them be.”

Recently on the blog:

• Autism & the Moral Panic (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

• Why I Took a Break from Writing Online. (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

• Navigating my Twenties as an Autistic Person. (Öffnet in neuem Fenster)

Monthly Autistic Creative Recommendations:

• NeuroNoir (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) - A community for Black neurodivergent women and LGBTQ+ people. They hold in-person events in London and Manchester.

• It’s Just Liv (Öffnet in neuem Fenster) - A late-diagnosed ADHDer content creator who shares their experience of being a neurodivergent person in a neurotypical world.

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