A place of possibility for neurodivergent creatives
Hi, I’m Emma Arbogast. I’m a writer and coder, and personal growth is my special interest. SLS is a fledgling online peer community for ADHD & autistic adults who want quest buddies in the work of building a life that fits and making things that matter.
What is self-liberation?
I think of self-liberation as reclaiming your mind, body, and life from all the ideas, beliefs, and judgements that were imposed on you. It is making your life your own and living on your own terms.
A lot of us adopted strategies to survive that limited us. Self-liberation is rediscovering your natural awesomeness and giving yourself permission to be who you already are, because there is nothing wrong with you. To this this requires rejecting conditioning and writing your own rules for life.
I started using this term because people sometimes associate “personal growth” with hustle culture, self-improvement, or “fixing” yourself. That’s the opposite of how I think of it—to me it is about reclaiming your natural joy, power, and freedom.
A place just for us
Neurodivergent people are often excluded in social settings, or learn to mask and do excessive emotional labor to understand and be understood.
We need places where we can just be ourselves, without fear or shame. This lets us recover our authentic way of connecting and release habits of people-pleasing and self-censoring.
This is a space where you can...
- Show up as yourself, unmasked 🌈
- Honor your own rhythms and nervous system needs
- Be your real self without feeling like you are being “too much”
- Share the things you are excited about, and be met with genuine curiosity and interest
- Swap support, commisseration, and strategies for dealing with the daily friction of living in a neurotypical world
- Work on creating a life you love without feeling pressured, judged, misunderstood, or told you “should” do things you have no genuine interest in doing
- Find your authentic path and place in the world that comes from inside you, not from the expectations that were placed on you
What makes SLS different?
- Co-created and non-hiearchical. We are all participants in creating the community we want.
- Feedback is encouraged. We aim for a high-feedback culture so we can adjust, accommodate, and truly care for each other.
- Experiments welcome. We are making this up as we go along, and we hope to figure out many awesome new things that improve our community and/or members’ lives as we go.
- Inspiration-based accountability. By being around other people who are pursuing their freedom and joy, we are naturally inspired and energized to pursue ours. This is the antidote to resistance and burnout from demand-based productivity patterns.
- No neurotypical expectations. There is no assumption of consistent motivation, linear progress, perfect emotional regulation, and high executive function. We own who we are and work to create a life that works for us and the ways that we naturally operate.
- No normative assumptions. Whatever you are working on is up to you. We each have unique lives and work on what interests us.
- No program or guru to follow. This is not about becoming someone else’s version of productive or enlightened. This is about leading your own life.
This could be a good fit for you if...
- You want to be around other people who take their joy and creativity seriously and work to optimize it
- You think being neurodivergent is awesome actually, even if it’s sometimes a struggle to live in a neurotypical world
- You are optimistic about your personal life (even if you may not be about the world in general)
- You enjoy text-based, asynchronous connection
- You value nuance, thoughtfulness, and interesting conversations
- You are ready to be engaged and participate in a group
What is the structure?
The main community space is an online forum that is built to encourage long-form communication. The forum is a space for asynchronous, in-depth conversation. You can share your thoughts, ask questions, and crowdsource solutions to anything in your life you are working on.
One common format we use is Progress Logs, where we share what we are working on including goals, obstacles, and celebrations.
The Lounge is an always-on Zoom room that makes it easy to have spontaneous meetings or body doubling sessions.
We are each working on our own projects and goals, and we meet every two weeks on Zoom to discuss where we are at and ask for whatever support would be useful right now.
SLS is a flexible container—feel free to suggest or create new structures that would suit your needs and preferences or help you reach your goals.
Answers to your questions...
It means the community is just getting started. I have built the structure, but this is a niche offering that is likely to grow slowly at first. So basically it means there will only be a small number of us at the beginning.
SLS is built using Discourse. (not Discord). Discourse is a very user-friendly and flexible forum and community platform. Discourse has apps for both iOS and Android, although it is probably easiest to use on a desktop computer.
Early Access is priced between $10-30/mo (sliding scale) with $20/mo being the standard price. Once we have a sizable number of people, I may raise the price for new members, but early members can retain this rate for life (even if they take breaks).
It’s just getting started, so it is small right now, more like a Mastermind group. Our members are a small group of thoughtful people who have spent their lives exploring who they are and how to create a good life.
We plan to expand in the future to become big enough that it is dynamic and active, but also to keep it small enough that people know each other. Life can be unpredictable and some members may not be able to engage as much as they’d like or had originally planned. So the goal is to grow the group until there is an active core group, even considering the natural ebb and flow of participation. Then it will periodically be closed to maintain that number.
I have spent a lot of time learning various methods of inner work. I have training in Nonviolent Communication (NVC), Hakomi (a mindfulness-based therapy method), Presence-Based Coaching, trauma healing, adult attachment styles, and group dynamics. But I never really wanted to be a therapist. I mostly just used it to heal my own CPTSD and trauma-based patterns.
I write about healing, personal growth, spirituality, neurodivergence, and self-liberation on Joy Ninja, Sparkly Dark, and Joy Is My Path.
Lately I am obsessed with astrology as a psycho-spiritual language to understand the Universe. I created a website with various free astrology reports at AstroLiberation.
What is welcome: diverse folks, including those who identify as queer, trans, genderqueer, non-binary, polyamorous, kinky, etc.
What is not welcome: sexism, racism, bigotry, hate speech, dehumanization, slurs, or people who genuinely support Trump’s deportation policies. No conspiracy theories or anti-vax content.
What is boundaried: Political discussions are limited to the World Events & Politics category (this lets people mute them), and need to remain civil and growth-oriented.
View the Community Guidelines.
Sure! What matters most for a good mutual fit is that you are self-regulated enough to show up in community in a mutually beneficial way.
SLS is not a therapy environment or a support group. If you are in crisis, severely dysregulated, or tend to get triggered frequently when interacting with other people, SLS is probably not the right container for you right now.
This doesn’t mean you have to be perfect or never get upset about anything to be in SLS—it's a matter of degree, and we all know emotional regulation is related to executive function. So, you will need to make a judgement call of whether this will be a supportive or overwhelming space for you.It really is up to you, but IMHO, SLS is a perfect place to explore this question.
Also, from my experience, truly neurotypical people do not spend a lot of time wondering if maybe they are neurodivergent.
On the other hand, people who are neurodivergent often feel a lot of angst about whether they are or not, and go through various stages of feeling like an imposter and like they are taking up space not meant for them.
So if you are in this space of wondering, please know it’s completely fine to join and try it out, and see if it feels like a fit for you.
Abso-frickin-lutely! Come on in! 😁
+ lock in early pricing
Not sure?
If you’re intrigued but not certain if joining is the right next step for you, here are a few ways to learn more:- Use this WhatsApp group or contact me if you have any questions I can answer.
- Read Sparkly Dark This is my Substack where I transparently share my process of growth as I live it. I generally post about 1–2x/month.
- Browse Joy Ninja for my longer-form content teaching healing, growth, and emotional skills.
- Visit my Instagram for insights on growth and healing.
Free gifts!
Thanks for checking us out! Even if you aren’t joining us, I didn’t want to leave you empty handed, so here are two gifts for you to keep.
#1 My favorite ChatGPT Prompt
I use this several times a week to help me process my thoughts and feelings. Think of it as AI-assisted journalling. I use it in a free account dedicated to this, rather than my normal "Plus" account so I can turn the memory off. (The memory tends to color its answers too much and ruin the pure reflection.)
For this conversation I would like you to act like a trained therapist. Your specialty is Rogerian therapy. Your task is to reflect back to me what you believe I am thinking and feeling without giving specific advice. OK?
"Rogerian" here refers to Carl Rogers, who pioneered this reflective type of therapy. I literally use this any time I’m stuck now. It just helps me work through whatever is in my brain.
#2 A short ebook: Liberate Your Weird
This is a fun little book with 10 reframes to help us “weirdos” with not just self-acceptance but truly knowing and owning our own value. The subtitle is: "10 Weirdo-Affirming Reframes to Help You Ditch Conventionality, Unleash Your Inner Maverick, and Become the Awesome Special Snowflake You Were Always Meant To Be".
I wrote this right when I was realizing I’m ADHD and autistic, and starting to embrace the things in myself that I had always judged and rejected and tried to “fix”. It is designed to change your perspective on what it means to be different, and what we really have to offer a world that is draining itself of its own vitality with conformity and judgement.
