S4E06 Deconditioning, Decolonizing, and Unbecoming

you. Again, it is a new year, we just went through our entire holiday series parts one, two, and three, as well as learning about our Word of the Year and how we can choose like an intention or a word to be intentional around as we're kicking off this New Year, rather than those resolutions

that don't work. So if you haven't listened to those episodes, make sure you go back and get caught up, you are not going to want to miss those, especially like I said that one with Dimple Mukherjee, our guest who talked about our Word of the Year and how to use a word to guide and also the episode I have about why New Year's resolutions don't work. So as we're kicking off 2023 I want to direct you there. And also just

welcome to a fresh new year. By the time you hear this, I will no longer be a psychotherapist, I will have retired that profession, a profession that I have been in for about 16 years when you include grad school and pre licensure years and, and

then licensure and all that. So it's been a long time. And the topic we're going to talk about today, which is decolonizing, deconditioning and unbecoming, actually tie in really, really nicely to this process of unbecoming for me of decolonizing how the conditioning that told me "Oh, you went to school for your master's in social work, you went to school to become a therapist, now you're gonna quit

being a therapist," you know, all of that. The colonial thoughts about having to stick to one thing and make an education and everything else that's not education is like not good or not worthy of pursuit. And then the deconditioning that has to happen. And to me, deconditioning and decolonizing are very similar, because I had to literally decondition all of the beliefs, all of that conditioning that told me no, I can't do that, oh, I should stick to this thing that I know,

oh, I've had this career for so long. Oh, this is what I went to school with, oh, you're still paying off over $100,000 in student loan debt for this career, right. So that requires a lot of that. And in the process is also a practice of unbecoming because as we're doing our decolonizing work as we're doing our deconditioning, what we're doing is we're really unraveling everything that society has told us that we should be or that we need to be. It's like a ball of yarn that's

been all tangled up. And we're just unraveling all of that, and unbecoming everything that is not authentically us. So that we can step into who we came here to be who we are when we are not following all these societal expectations, all of this conditioning all of the shoulds. That's what happens. That's what the process of unbecoming is and not going to lie to you today, Friend, I did have to have some help. We do have a studio

audience present with us today. And by the way, if you have not signed up to receive my emails, what are you doing because the emails are the only way to get an invitation to join me for these live studio recordings that we're doing for season four, and to be in community to ask me questions, to get coached live on the line. That's what we are doing here this season. And so hop on over to ShiraniMPathak.com/connect or even fierceauthenticity.com and look for the button that says

"Get my emails". Friend, get my emails come and join me so that you can be in the community space with us as we do this. So back to what I was saying. We do have a live studio audience today. A community member is with us. And I had to ask her "Hey, this is the topic that we're doing for today. But I got

nothing. So can you give me some questions that you might have any ways to jog something in me so that we can actually have a podcast episode on this topic?" And what she asked about was, how do we connect the personal to the collective as we're doing this work? What is the connection between the personal and the collective? And the feedback loop that goes in between that? And then also, how do we give ourselves grace in

the process. So thank you so much to our community member, Nisha, who has also been a guest earlier on the podcast, and who also interviewed me for her podcast, which we also posted here on the episode. So thank you to my friend and community member Nisha, for being here with me and for asking these really powerful questions. And I think I'm just gonna get right to it. For me, fierce authenticity, and unbecoming is all about collective healing. My background is as a social

worker. So working on a systems level is not new to me, that's something that's been ingrained into me since I started this whole thing. So it's always been looking from a systemic perspective, both the sociocultural, socioeconomic systems that are there, and also a family system or a friend system, or who's around us, those are systems also. And so I had been trained in this, and it's like, I live it, I breathe it, it's in my blood, we are always in systems of some sort.

And so knowing that background fierce authenticity, and unbecoming, which includes this work of decolonizing, and deconditioning, really is us healing the collective, the macro level, by doing our personal work, the micro level. And there's fancier words to it, basically, like the the macrocosm, which is the big collective systems and structures that hold us all in place, and then the microcosm,

which is each individual part of that collective system. So to me, this work is all about doing our personal work so that we can heal the collective. I'm thinking about Milagros Phillips, who was also a guest on our podcast, I believe she kicked off season three, and she's the race healer. And she talks about how there's this big brick wall that are these systems and these structures. And as each of us does our work,

we're taking our brick out of that wall. And as we take our brick out of the wall, eventually that wall will collapse. And that has been my thing, I truly believe, and you've heard me say this before on the podcast that this is a Trojan horse approach, I truly believe that we are going to knock down the systems and structures of supremacy culture and oppression and patriarchy, and colonialism and toxic

capitalism and ableism. Like all of the isms and all of the things that are rooted in these systems of oppression, they're all going to collapse from the inside out, and kind of like an imploding upon itself, as each of us does the work. And I've talked about it as a Trojan horse approach that is going to be going in sneaky and sly, but from a perspective of us doing our own work. Let's go back and first of all, define what these terms mean. Decolonizing, who's experienced it, how it shows up?

What needs deconditioning and what exactly is unbecoming. So let's just back up a step and go there. And now I am no expert or scholar on decolonizing. There are plenty of educators out there, who this is what they teach. And what I'm going to share with you is my understanding and how it shows up for me. So I am a Brown woman, I call myself a triple colonized Brown woman because first there was the British in

India, and then the British took us to Fiji. So step two, and then my family chose to move to the US another very colonial country. So I call myself triple colonized. And to me that means that any of us who have ever lived in any sort of colonial rule, the word rule isn't even the right word. But to me, it's like we have experienced colonization in our past we have experienced colonization in our history. And so that means an outsider came in they took over, they pillage they plundered,

they took for themselves. They tried to convert people to be like them. And then of course with indigenous populations and a lot of African people who were enslaved, there was also genocide that occurred. So these are all of the different ways. And I'm thinking of Milagros Phillips how she talks about it that for Black people, it's enslavement, right? They have to release that trauma from their blood, their bones, their DNA. For white people, they need to release the trauma of being the

colonizer. And then for and the enslaver, and for Brown people, we have to deal with undoing the colonization. So I'm going to speak from a Brown girl perspective, because to me, I think about the ways that we have been so impacted. And honestly, I get jealous when I hear Indian people who ended up in the Caribbean when the colonizers took them from India to work sugarcane plantations out in the Caribbean, I kind of get jealous and I'm like, wow, they assimilated so well, it

seems into the culture. We have Indo-Caribbean people in our community, they verify that over time, there was assimilation that occurred with the Indigenous populations that already resided there. Now me I get a little jealous because we were colonized by the British over there in Fiji, and it very much was a separation and a divide the Indigenous Fijians and the Indians that colonizers had taken over the human cargo they brought right they never intermingled well. I don't know

the history behind that. But I always felt like wow, this really sucks that intermingling didn't happen that there's still such a divide of us versus them. And to me, that's one of the tactics of supremacy culture, and it is one of the tactics of

colonization is this US them mentality. And there's so many ways that there's colonialism shows up, it shows up in hierarchies, it shows up, as I mentioned earlier, at the start of this episode, in valuing education, you know, the written word is what's valued, and only doing that which is deemed acceptable or appropriate. Those are some of the ways that colonization show up. And of course, there's so many more. And like I said, I am not the expert or educator in this,

there are plenty of people you can learn from. And you know what, we'll go ahead and link a few names in the show notes for you so that you can learn from these educators. And I am sharing my experience of what it has looked like. And of course, Hindus already had a caste system in place. And some people argue that a lot of the colorism came from the caste system.

That's a history I have not researched into. And it's still important to note that these hierarchies of there's some who are better than some who are less than and then of that group, there are some who are better than and some who are less than and so it just continues on and on. And other ways that colonialism shows up is meritocracy, where there's these rewards for doing well. There's these rewards and advancements for putting your head down doing your work doing

it well. Good Behavior is rewarded. And then you get to advance, right? So there's so many ways and this doesn't even scratch the tip of the iceberg of it. And then this gets carried out in the ways that we engage with one another and the ways that we behave. So now let's move on to deconditioning. To me, deconditioning is undoing all of the sociocultural conditioning that colonialism put on us. And to me, that means undoing all of the stories and lies that tell you you're not

good enough. It means undoing and healing from recovering from all of the stories that lead to impostor syndrome and

perfectionism. And the not enoughs, inadequacy, feeling like you have to constantly be in hustle mode, feeling like you have to constantly be in go mode, and judgment and criticism, you know, the ways it shows up in our relationships and when we get judgey judgey towards our partners or siblings or parents or friends, towards our coworkers, anybody right how we get so judgy how we get critical how we get into

comparison. To me. These are also ways that colonialism shows up and part of the decolonizing and deconditioning work that we need to do. And here's the other part of it to me, as you've heard on the podcast before this is not just done on a brain level, like from your head like on a thought perspective, this really needs to happen in our bodies, because supremacy culture has hijacked our nervous systems, supremacy culture has

used fear to control us. And let's go ahead and for the sake of the rest of this episode, put supremacy culture and colonization together in one bucket so I'm going to start using those interchangeably. Fear has been used to control fear has been used to oppress, and that takes a toll on our

nervous systems. And so as we are deconditioning, these stories, these ideas, these beliefs, we also need to get into relationship with our bodies, you may have heard me talk about it on the podcast before to me heart work, the work of healing our hearts in our relationships, plus somatic work, getting into relationship with our bodies, equals a new legacy. And ultimately, that's what we're doing here with

fierce authenticity, we're creating a new legacy. And a part of that legacy means we have to get in touch with our bodies, we have to get in touch and in tune with what is our nervous system alerting us to what are we finding as threats around us. And this could be the sideways look you got from your coworker. Or it could be you getting called into your boss's

office for review, right? Or even not even a review, but just getting called into your boss's office, I remember that would trigger so much fear in me, when a boss would be like, Oh, hey, come over to my office and talk to you. It was an instant trigger and freak out for me and my nervous system. And I didn't

know it at the time that that's what was happening. But this is all a part of the deconditioning work is not just the stories, and what contributes to it, but is also about our bodies as a messenger and what messages they're giving us and also our nervous systems, which to me is what brings us to unbecoming and how these three just feel like they're almost like they flow seamlessly into each other. And it's really hard to separate one

from the other. And that is like the unbecoming of all of these things. That colonialism, that colonization, the conditioning, as we decolonize and decondition, what is happening is we are truly unbecoming everything that is not who we are everything that is not who we were created to be. Because friend, I'm just going to say it straight right here right now. You are a spark of divine love. That is what you are. And if you have any thoughts to the contrary, in terms of like, Oh,

I'm not good enough, I'm inadequate. Oh, I have to be perfect. All that is the bullshit that colonization and all of the conditioning has led you to believe you're wound up in these layers and layers, like I'm almost seeing it like a mummy wrapped up like a mummy and all these layers of things that are not you. So as you decolonize as you decondition.

As you see what messages your brain, your body, your nervous system is giving you as well as what your thoughts are about these things that are getting activated in you and working with them from a somatic place. That's how we unravel like I had talked about that ball of yarn at the beginning of the episode. That is how we on ravel. It's like the cloth. That is the mummies. That's like got you in bondage basically, that's all the stuff that is not you. And as you undo all of that, what

gets revealed is the version of you. That is the true version of you, who you really, truly fiercely, authentically are underneath all of the crap. That is not you. And so that to me, is what unbecoming is really about it is a sacred process. It truly is because it requires us to get into relationship with a

source of something greater than us. Because if I'm telling you that you're a divine spark of love, then that means there must be a higher power a Divine Creator Source of something that's there and not in the religious dogma kind of way but a personal relationship with something bigger and greater than you. So you have to have that relationship with source and then having a relationship with yourself, who are you? Who

are you not? And as that happens, then the way you show up in your relationship with others, and that's the way we do this work. And that's how, when we do the healing on an individual or microcosm level, we heal the collective, and we heal the macro level. And that's how each of us within these

bigger systems does our work. And you've probably heard me say it on the podcast, but I'll say it again, each and every single one of us has a responsibility to do this inner work of decolonizing deconditioning, dismantling, demolishing all of this internalized colonialism, the internalized supremacy, the internalized oppression, each and every single one of us has a responsibility no matter what the color of your skin, because we live in these systems, and each of us has been impacted by

it. Because a lot of times people will be like, Oh, that's white people's problem is for them to solve. Yes. On a systems and structures level. Absolutely. And each of us is responsible for doing our inner work. I also want to address how do we give ourselves grace, as we're in the process. Very early on in season one of the podcast when I first began, the fierce

authenticity podcast, I used to actually put out love notes. And the love notes were like, three to five minutes, they were permission slips, they were love notes, they were from my heart to yours. I mean, all of these are from my heart to yours. And there was like a more sacred quality to them, almost like a meditation. So very early on, I did one called permission to change. So add that to your list of episodes to go back and listen to. And I think that's like just a three to five minute

love note. And it's really, that we're going to mess this up. None of us is an expert or a pro at this. We're all learning and unlearning right here alongside each other. And it is super important for us to remember and recognize that because we're building the new world as we're still living in the old one. So we're constructing from the ruins of what we're deconstructing, it's important to just remember, we're going to mess it up, I'm going to mess it up, you're going to mess it up,

other people are going to mess it up. And the factor that matters the most in those moments is how do we repair when we have messed it up? Let's say in our messing it up, we truly did someone harm whether with our words or our actions, and we really didn't know and then it's brought to our attention. Well, am I going to be a douchebag? And be like, Oh, whatever make up all the excuses about justifying my behavior? Or am I going to say, "Wow, thank you so much for letting me know, I am

so sorry that I caused you that harm. Thank you for speaking up. I'm going to do it better next time. Is there anything else I can do this time to support you? Is there any way I can make it right right now?" This is what repair looks and sounds like. And under systems of supremacy and colonization. We have not been taught how to do repair. Maybe we'll do an episode on that how to do repair when we have caused harm. Because we live in such a culture of blame and shame and deferring

responsibility not taking accountability. And in order for repair to happen, we have to show up with humility, meaning we have to show up right sized we have to show up knowing that

I'm not better than you. I'm not worse than you. But I am the same as you when it comes to being a human and being a divine spark. Right. We are all the same as and it requires me really opening myself up to hear you and to create space. And sometimes it's going to be uncomfortable. It's not going to feel good. If someone's like hey, you know can I talk to you that thing that you said or that thing that you did that really

hurt me because of XYZ right? It can be really difficult sometimes to look at like oh shit, yeah, I really did do that right? And then again, it requires that humility to know that we're the same here and you're a human, and I'm a human. And we're just trying to do this wild thing called life together so that we can, like we're all working towards the same common shared goal. So that's like having grace for yourself, just know that you aren't going to mess it up, and grace for others

know that others are going to mess it up. Also, we're not perfect, our perfection is not required. It's our progress that we must be making and how we're showing up. Big breath. So with that, I think that is going to wrap up our main episode. Hangout with me friends, because we are going to be opening up to

our live Q&A slash coaching portion of today's episode. And as a reminder, if you have not signed up to get these email invites to join us, what are you doing, visit the link in the show notes and get in on these emails that are going to be invitations for you to join, and also Fierce Authenticity: Unbecoming, we begin on January 27, 2023, this is what we're going to be doing, we're going to be doing all of this. So

check out the link in the show notes. Come on over, check it out. And see if you're meant to be there feeling to it, get into relationship with your body, and see if it calls you to be there. And so with that, my friends, we are going to take a quick water break, and then be back for the community portion. Alright, thank you, thank you, we are back. And we do have our community member with us. Would you care to say any words or ask any questions? I mean, I know these questions came from you

originally. And I definitely want to give you an opportunity to ask or even add your commentary, because I do value your knowledge in this area as well. So feel free to unmute and

really helpful. Another thing I wanted to mention was I really liked how you said, right size relationship. I don't think I've ever heard of that before. And or just being right sized. Like when you said that I was like, oh, to me when I heard that. I thought meeting myself where I'm at, but I wasn't sure if you could expand on that a little more.

about being right sized. And like you said, that in this, like, with the meritocracy, and the hierarchies, and all of these things that systems of supremacy and oppression have put in place, we start to think either bigger than so we're more inflated, or we start to you know, Terry Real, I'm trained with him, he calls it grandiosity where we're like overly inflated, and like, I'm bigger than you. It's a total defense mechanism. Actually, he says, sometimes it's not a

defense mechanism. But I digress. We're gonna call it grandiosity, the bigger, you know, overly inflated, I'm holier than thou type scenario. And then there's like shame, where we shrink and we think we're less than or we think that we are below or beneath or that that's where the inadequacy starts to come in. Right. So if you're relating from grandiosity

up here, or shame down here, you're not here, where health is and where the rest of us are. And that's a big part of the problem is that the dehumanization of some and the superiority of others also puts us into that being bigger or

being smaller. So to me being right sized means remembering, oh, let me disarm any part of me that wants to show up all big and overly inflated. And let me pull myself up from shame. Right. Let me remember that I have every right to be here, every right to speak up, every right to have myself heard. So that brings us to an even playing field, where now I'm not bigger than, I'm not better than I'm not less than, but I'm truly showing up as someone who is equal to you, in our shared

humanity. So to me, that's what being right sized means. And I'm remembering when I shared with my mentor one time, about how much I love going to Big Sur, there's this park on a cliff, and just walking out onto the cliff and being confronted with these massive waves that just come like Big Sur is such a gorgeous place. And how it always reminds me that, oh, nature is so much bigger and great. Like I am just this tiny part of this great big world, and of this great big cosmos. So

I remember sharing that with her one day. And she's like, Yeah, sounds like going there helps you get right sized. Because sometimes it can also be easy for me to go into all of my problems, and then I'm the center of it all. And then I get so wrapped up in the Me, me me that I forget that there's something bigger and greater and that I am merely a part of it. So there's different ways of looking at this right sizing. Some people would say it's to knock you down, right, bring you

back to where you belong. And we don't play that here. But it's really just to bring us back on an equal playing field that you're human. I'm a human, we're not better than we're not less than how can we show up and engage together human to human?

Q&A, you get your questions answered. You can get live coaching, and also that you get to hear these episodes before anyone else does. Come on in join us. We're here, we're

waiting for you. And remember, we are getting ready to launch the January 2023 cohort of unbecoming, and I truly do hope to see you in the space with me. Because this is the space where we are going to bust all this shit out of the water, we're going to decolonize we're going to decondition and we're going to be pulling on all those threads and unraveling everything that is not you so that we can reveal everything that is you who you were created to be your thoughts, your

dreams, your desires, your wishes, the love that is your inherent birthright, the joy, the happiness, all of that we are going to be doing and accessing in fierce authenticity unbecoming. So come on over. Join me in that registrations will be closing soon, and we begin January 27, 2023. I truly hope to see you there my friend, and until we meet again take really good care. I want to take a moment to honor the amazing team that helps make

this podcast possible for you. Starting with our audio editor Diego Velazquez; graphic designer and behind the scenes admin Anna Olvina; transcript proofreader and editor Vani Pathak; show notes and blog posts by Biljana Sandic; photography by Lauren at Radiance Studio; the musical track "Tropical Summer Beach" by Alex Make Music on Pixabay; my

husband, my family, my community, my higher power. And last but not least, I want to thank you, my loyal listener and friend so much for tuning in. Ways that you can further support the podcast are by rating and reviewing fierce authenticity on Apple; sharing it with everyone you know, screenshotting it posting it on social media and be sure to tag me @ShiraniPathak when you do; and making a one time or recurring financial contribution through the link in the show

notes. And remember, be sure to sign up for my emails and check out my current services, offerings, and ways to work with me over at fierceauthenticity.com. I am sending you so much love friend and I cannot wait until we are together again soon.