Where are you self-censoring and what is it costing you? Africa Brooke is on a mission to get us to ask these questions... and then cut it out! Hailing from Zimbabwe via London, Africa is a mindset coach who works with high profile individuals to navigate the world’s accelerating complexity. Laura came to know her a few years back as the enigmatic woman in the UK who talked about sex and pleasure (in sobriety). But then, in 2020, she started talking about self-censorship in a striking, clarifying way and the world stood up and said, “tell me more!” We love the nuance and grace towards others that she brings to tough subjects. Dig in. Enjoy! Africa Brooke’s site & her essay that has been read +3M times: An open letter: why I'm leaving the cult of wokeness Laura’s essay: Leaving The Bouncy House of Social Media Tell Me Something True is a 100% independent podcast. There are no corporations or advertisers backing this community. We are 100% funded by the TMST community. Support TMST and keep it ad-free: https://tmst.supercast.com/ Join our free on-line community (it’s NOT a Facebook group!): https://www.tmstpod.com/
Tell Me Something True
Africa Brooke on Freedom from Self-Censorship
Laura McKowen: [00:00:00] Hey, Laura here. A little while ago, I left the bouncy house of social media. I wrote about this and we'll link to it in the show notes, but something that was heavily on my mind and my heart leading up to that decision was the numbing weight of self-censorship. There's a sword of Damocles hanging over all of us today.
[00:00:28] Sometimes it's because someone has said or done something and there's a wave of accountability that hits. And sometimes it's because the algorithm that's attuned to find and stoke our rage simply found it's next target.
[00:00:44] So, rather than continue to live with the dread and craziness, I just opted out. Africa Brooke's views on the cost of self-censorship whether on the internet or in real life have been such a comfort to me in these months. And I know I'm not alone. A few months back, she dropped an essay on the internet that was read by over 3 million people.
[00:01:13] Africa is a mindset coach based in London, and I'm thrilled to have her on this episode of Tell Me Something True.
[00:01:29] Hi Africa. Welcome.
[00:01:31] Africa Brooke: [00:01:31] Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. I've been very, very excited about this conversation. So thank you.
[00:01:38] Laura McKowen: [00:01:38] Me as well. So I want to start by just talking about the work that you're doing today and how you got here.
[00:01:51] Africa Brooke: [00:01:51] So today in the present day, I'm a mindset coach. I'm a writer and I am a consultant as well.
[00:01:57] And I specialize in self-sabotage. It's been my area of focus, my area of research, my area of expertise for the past five years. And it's something that I fell into because I had tried getting sober for about three years. So my vice, if you will, was alcohol. Alcohol was my area of weakness. And I had a very, very, very destructive relationship with it from the age of 14, up until 24, which is when I got sober, so a decade. And the kind of style of drinking that I had was blackout drinking. So it was impossible for me to have one, you know, that was never my desire. It's not what I wanted. I wanted to have them all.
[00:02:43]Laura McKowen: [00:02:43] Me too!
[00:02:45] Africa Brooke: [00:02:45] Right, which is why I resonated with you and your voice and what you were putting out into the world. And I had tried seven times consciously to get sober.
[00:02:53] And I always say this, but this doesn't include all the other times of, "I'm never drinking again," all those kinds of declarations. Seven times, really, really trying to get sober. And I relapsed every single time. And in 2016 when I had come to that point of enough is enough and there was nothing really profound that happened that time that was any different. I was just done. And I know, you know, that feeling when you are just done, but it's no longer just an internal thing, you're also starting to see externally, your life falling apart, you know, and you can barely hold on. So by that time, it wasn't profound. I was forced to try one more time, the eighth time.
[00:03:34] And then what I realized was different was that, something was changing on an identity level, which is something that I had never tried before. I had always identified with being a drinker, party girl, being the one that is always available. And I tried something different and it was a very subconscious thing, but I decided that I was a non-drinker.
[00:03:54] And it sounds so simple, but I had never decided that before, before it was just, I'm not drinking anymore. I'm not drinking anymore because I'm losing people around me, because I'm getting fired from jobs, because I'm apologizing for things that I don't remember, because I'm waking up in strange locations, not knowing if I've had sex or not, you know, it was that kind of thing.
[00:04:16] It was never an identity piece of, I am a non-drinker and I'm going to find out what life is like as a non-drinker. And when I made that decision on an identity level and it stuck, even when it was uncomfortable, I became so fascinated with human behavior. I wanted to really find out what happens to us, not just in terms of behavioral change, but on a brain-based level.
[00:04:41] What happens? How does self-sabotage work? Do we sabotage ourselves because we truly hate ourselves and we just want to be cruel, or is it something else? And over time, five years later, I started to understand that it's all about self protection. And, so from the beginning 2016 to now 2021, what started as a personal journey then became a professional journey, then became training, then became research then became a wider curiosity.
[00:05:14] So that's what leads me to do the work that I do now. And now it's at a point where I'm not just focusing on self-sabotage, I'm now very curious about collective sabotage, which I'm starting to see in the wider world, in our culture. That's the most condensed way that I could explain what I do and where I've come from.
[00:05:36] Laura McKowen: [00:05:36] It's perfect. So self-sabotage, how did that occur to you? I mean, it's kind of obvious, like, okay. I'm sabotaging myself with drinking. But as an area of focus, you said you discovered it was self protection. So say more about that.
[00:05:53] Africa Brooke: [00:05:53] Yes, self-sabotage to put it very simply it's when you get in your own way, it's when you stop yourself from progressing.
[00:06:01] It's when you put the spanner in the works. No one else does that, you do it. Right. So when I started to think, okay, I understand, you know, that we do it because we're afraid of something. I understand that it's because there's a discomfort that comes with growth, there's a discomfort that comes with doing something new or shifting into a new identity, but is there something more?
[00:06:22] And that's when through having conversations with other people and just revisiting my own experience, I've realized that actually for me, it was a lot about self protection. It's because I believed with alcohol, for example, I believed that who I am in a social setting is not enough unless I'm drinking. That I'm not funny enough, that I'm not desirable enough, that I can't be fluent in conversation enough.
[00:06:51] So I need something else. I need some kind of buffer. So I was protecting myself from the awkwardness that might come with me just needing to be me. I was protecting myself from possible rejection, but I wasn't protecting myself in the most helpful of ways. But when I really started to see it as self protection, instead of me just being cruel and punishing myself, it became easier to show compassion for me, right. Which meant that it was much easier to step into whatever identity I'm trying to carve out because I'm not holding any shame or resentment. And I find that approach, the self protection angle, helps people more than just hearing you're getting in your own way and now you need to do something about it.
[00:07:40] Laura McKowen: [00:07:40] Absolutely. I mean, that was a major shift for me too, seeing that even my worst behaviors came from a good place to put it very, basically. It came from a place of trying to get my needs met, which is, I suppose, another way of saying it, right. Self protection. We try to get our needs met. Would you say that's how you approach your coaching? That we are all generally just trying to get our needs met?
[00:08:11] Africa Brooke: [00:08:11] Absolutely and something that I also like to remind myself, my clients and the people around me is that we can easily convince ourselves that we're the only one that is doing this, right. I'm the only person in the world that is doing this to myself.
[00:08:28] Why? But we all experienced self-sabotaging behaviors. In so many different ways, so many different ways, regardless of what your social standing is, what your position is in the world, what your title is. We all have moments where we get in our own way, right? Whether it's through procrastination, lying about something when we don't really need to, cheating or manipulating or delaying or avoidance, so many different strategies that we use.
[00:08:56] So I always like to remind people that. You're not special in that sense that you're the only one that does this. We all do just in different ways.
[00:09:06] Laura McKowen: [00:09:06] Who do you work with and what are the sort of things they're faced with or they're encountering when they find you
[00:09:12] Africa Brooke: [00:09:12] so another aspect of the work that I do around self-sabotage is self-censorship because I realized that a big part of my patterns, for example, in the way that I got in my own way, sabotaged myself and the way that I drunk, in the way that I used sex, I was censoring something.
[00:09:32] I felt like there were parts of myself that I wasn't allowed to own. So I had to be very different. I felt that there was pain that I wasn't able to express because then that would make me damaged. And over time, even with my sexuality, I felt that there were ideas and desires that I couldn't explain or articulate because I would be judged for them.
[00:09:53] So self-censorship played a huge role in the way that then determined the relationship that I had with alcohol. So now, the people that tend to come to me on a one-to-one basis, I mainly work with people that are in the public eye on some level, people that are hyper-visible, which means that they have an added pressure where they feel that they have to censor themselves.
[00:10:17] Because if they really say what they think, or if they really own all of the parts of themselves, they are going to be rejected. And that rejection shows up in so many different ways now, especially in the digital age, right? You're not, you're not just worried anymore about being rejected by the people closest to you, your friendship group. Now you have to worry about thousands of nameless and faceless people.
[00:10:40]Laura McKowen: [00:10:40] Millions potentially because we know that, in the back of our minds, that anyone could see anything.
[00:10:46] Africa Brooke: [00:10:46] Yes, yes, exactly. So the people that come to me on a one-to-one basis are usually people that are in the public eye, people that are hyper-visible, that are struggling with self-censorship on a level that most people will never, ever experience.
[00:11:01] And then I also have people that are not necessarily in the public eye that are just struggling with different types of self-sabotage, but there's always an element of self-censorship there as well.
[00:11:12] Laura McKowen: [00:11:12] Where do you start with people? And I'm asking because I want to offer maybe a starting point for people to think about this.
[00:11:22] Africa Brooke: [00:11:22] Yes. So it always looks different for everyone, right? It always looks different for everyone because as you just said, self-censorship is not just about, for example, I have this really controversial opinion. And I really want to say it, but I'm worried about the repercussions of that. For some people they have had to censor themselves because they grew up in an abusive environment.
[00:11:46] So therefore they have to tread on eggshells, otherwise something is going to happen, right? So it shows up in so many different ways. So the, one of the first things that I do is to really get clarity on exactly what that individual means when they say I am self-censoring. What do they actually mean? So before I make an assumption of what that might look like, right, instead of me making an assumption that it's about an opinion, because that's where we could go straight away, right. It's really understanding, how would that individual articulate exactly what they're experiencing without necessarily using the terms self-sabotage or self-censorship? What are they actually struggling with internally?
[00:12:26] And then we always go from there. Because it looks very different for everyone.
[00:12:32] Laura McKowen: [00:12:32] I'm very interested in how you enter when someone says, I don't know what I think. I don't know how I feel. How do you respond to that?
[00:12:40] Africa Brooke: [00:12:40] I just ask, is that really true? Cause right, we always speak in absolutes, right, even when we haven't done much self-reflection to really interrogate that belief, to really interrogate that narrative that we keep on saying, I don't know what I think.
[00:12:56] You know, is that really true? What I also like to do is to just make that as objective as possible, right. To really dissect what has just been said. So I might ask something like, okay, so in your day to day basis, you go through 24 hours a day and you don't think anything and you don't make any kind of decision.
[00:13:20] Is that really true? And then it's like, well, no, Right. Yeah. And then you start to really get even more specific. What are some of the things that happen in your 24 hours where you are required to think, you're required to trust yourself on some level, because to make any kind of decision, even what you're going to eat, what you're going to drink, am I going to sleep now? Am I going to watch this now? Am I going to write, am I going to go to work? That requires you to make a decision and to be able to make that decision? There is some level of self-trust. So when someone says, for example, I don't know how to trust myself most of the time. They mean, I don't know how to trust myself when it comes to this specific thing, but they say it as if it's an absolute truth to absolutely everything.
[00:14:07] So again, I might ask something along the lines of, is that really true? So you're saying that you have never, ever trusted yourself to know when it's time to eat. And it's like, actually, well, no, right. And then it always goes from there. And then we go as deep as we need to, and really start to understand the psychology of that, really start to look at what is the belief system, what are the beliefs that they are taking as an absolute truth that need to be interrogated?
[00:14:35] Laura McKowen: [00:14:35] Something like, if I were to tell the truth about how I feel in this moment, this would happen. So it's dangerous to think what I think perhaps is another way of saying it.
[00:14:47] Africa Brooke: [00:14:47] Yes, exactly. And have you experienced that?
[00:14:49] Laura McKowen: [00:14:49] Yes. I'm thinking of it in two ways, you know, there's the, in my sort of personal life and then as a public person. In my personal life, that's where I had to learn first that it was not only okay to say what I think ,feel what I feel. That's one layer. Not that it's just okay to, meaning, there are shadow parts of me that I include everything that, that no emotion is wrong, no thought is on its face wrong. That alone was massive. For example, I don't like my husband. I'm disgusted by my friends. You know, all the ways that we're internally conflicted all the time, because that's what it means to be human. And that, that is the nature of humanity and not some error or some comment on our morality or that we are deprived because we have what we call icky thoughts, you know? So, so there's that level.
[00:15:56] And I had to go through that and what really brought me to that was my drinking and having to accept these really ugly difficult things that I had actually done and to go, does that mean I'm a terrible person or was I trying to get my needs met? And that was a whole layer. I found that I was not integrated until I could also express what was inside outwardly. There was just to me that pain was a big part of why I was drinking. I was inside feeling, thinking, living a certain way and outside doing something much different. There's tension in that that requires relief in my experience. So I literally had the thought Africa, many times, if I tell the truth about who I am and what I've done, well, I can't, I'd rather die. Like I really thought that that's not possible for me.
[00:16:53] Maybe it's possible for other people. Great. They aren't me and it will kill me and it will kill other people. Right. I wouldn't want to live in this world because I would be so ashamed. I wouldn't survive the repercussions of that. And that to me was it was the central part of sobriety. And still is.
[00:17:16] Right. And it's a process. And, and I have so much to say about that. I think what happens on an individual level always shows up collectively. And so what I see you doing is not calling it out, but bringing that to the surface and allowing people to think what they think and feel what they feel. So talk about that too. Like, how you, how you actually listened to yourself when you're taking in information, how, you know what intuition is versus the voice of say fear.
[00:17:55] Africa Brooke: [00:17:55] Ooh, that's good. This is something that I share quite often, and I will continue to share this to really emphasize that there is a difference between censoring yourself, which is always from a place of fear. It's very different from being mindful of your speech, being considerate with your words, right. And to be able to do that, to be mindful of your speech, to be considerate with your words, it requires you to be in a mode of self-reflection. It doesn't have to be an extended period of time. It doesn't have a timeframe, but you need to create space for self-reflection.
[00:18:33] So that is the difference. Whereas when you're censoring yourself, it's not really from a place of self-reflection because you're reacting to a pattern that has been in place for a long time. A pattern that is fear-based. Let's say, you know, that you have something to say and you still have this feeling that you're going to be in trouble.
[00:18:52] What if it goes wrong? What if I'm misunderstood? But because you've taken even just a moment to reflect and to assess the situation, then you make a conscious decision to say, actually, no, it's really important for me to say this right now. And you can still feel the fear. This is why I always also advocate for discomfort because I think it's an essential part of growth.
[00:19:15] Whether you want to accept it or not, it's always going to be there. So you can still be mindful of your speech. You could still be in a mode of self-reflection and know that it's really important and sometimes even right, for you to express this and still feel discomfort. Which I believe is very different from pain or fear.
[00:19:34] Laura McKowen: [00:19:34] Well, there's discomfort either way. Yeah. The bargain you're making or the, the options you're weighing are; not, no discomfort or discomfort they're discomfort in the direction of one thing versus discomfort in the direction of something else I've left. So many things that you say in, in how you say them.
[00:19:52] You've said basically that if the cost of telling the truth about how you feel means X, Y, Z, I'm okay with that. I'm letting go of the need to be liked. How did you get there to that point? Because that, I think that is like the crossroad of liberation for so many people.
[00:20:16] Africa Brooke: [00:20:16] Yeah. And it's really, really important as well to understand. That you never want to quote unquote, get rid of the need to be liked completely.
[00:20:27]Laura McKowen: [00:20:27] Well, you can't. That's I think the big lie, right? The give no fucks.
[00:20:32] Africa Brooke: [00:20:32] That's the nuance there, right? That we are hardwired to care. We want to belong. We want community. We want to be surrounded by people. We need connection.
[00:20:42] That is a vital thing in terms of human existence. However, relying on external validation or relying on the acceptance of others to feel whole within yourself is always going to leave you feeling less than, always.
[00:20:59] Laura McKowen: [00:20:59] Right. It's like drinking. It might get you there. It might get you a quick hit of it, but it doesn't, it's not sustaining.
[00:21:05] Africa Brooke: [00:21:05] Right. And for me, I would always say as well, that it's a constant practice, which is why I look at every situation as a case by case. I say to myself or say to people that I have officially let go of the need to be liked. And I have a certificate hanging behind me. You know, that's not how it fucking works.
[00:21:23] Laura McKowen: [00:21:23] It will never matter again,
[00:21:26] Africa Brooke: [00:21:26] It's always a case by case. There will be moments when someone says something or I read a comment, you know, and then before I can even intellectualize it and, you know, bring in logic and bring in reasoning and say, actually, this person has no idea who I am, I don't know who they are. Before that even happens I will feel it. I feel like, Ooh, that doesn't feel good. That doesn't feel nice. Why? Because I want to be liked, I do want to be accepted. Right. So I will allow myself to feel that oh, okay, that doesn't feel really nice, but then I won't over engage with it. I believe that's the way to really navigate that space.
[00:22:04] This is why I say I choose to let go of the need to be liked. And I choose in every single moment. It's not an overarching truth and it's final. I choose in every single moment, every single interaction when I need it. Right. So I allow myself to feel that moment of rejection, that moment of being misunderstood, then I don't over engage with it, and then I just move on and it's the next moment, the next moment. And I'll be doing that for the rest of my life. So that's how I view it.
[00:22:32] Laura McKowen: [00:22:32] So what is the cost of not telling the truth?
[00:22:38] Africa Brooke: [00:22:38] To me, the cost of not telling the truth looks different in so many different areas of life. It depends on what the topic is, or it depends on what we're talking about, but overall to me, it's all about denying reality.
[00:22:54] I did that for way too long, for way, way, way too long. And it's a very dangerous thing to do. It's a silent killer. So for me, the cost of self-censorship is really, really high because it will always lead me to denying the reality of what actually is. So I'm always willing, always willing to get uncomfortable or to even make people uncomfortable without meaning to in order to say, what is true, or at least what is true to me. And to still understand that even what I consider to be true is not the absolute truth and then make space for other truths, make, make space for other perspectives so that I can learn, so that I can be challenged, you know, so that I can experience other people's reality.
[00:23:41] But when I'm in a place of denying my own reality, It also means that I'm going to subconsciously deny other people's, which is a lot of what I'm seeing, kind of play out in the culture. Why I call it collective sabotage, because once you censor yourself, naturally, you are going to support the censorship of other people.
[00:24:03] And you're going to think that that's just the norm. It's what I have accepted as an absolute truth for myself. So therefore it's the truth. That that is the truth. And then it just becomes a ripple effect. And then collectively, we just don't really say anything.
[00:24:19] Laura McKowen: [00:24:19] Yeah. We don't really say anything. I read this interesting passage the other day that said forcing people to talk about things in a certain way does not change their attitudes, or the idea that forcing them to talk about things in a certain way changes the attitudes is a myth.
[00:24:42] Africa Brooke: [00:24:42] Ooh, that's powerful.
[00:24:45] Laura McKowen: [00:24:45] I mean, very simple example would be Laura, you have to call yourself an alcoholic because that's what you are. And that never felt right to me.
[00:24:55] It doesn't feel true to me. Okay. Every time. I said it, I like lost a little bit of me. I was supposed to speak about myself in this certain way so that I showed that I accepted who I am so that I, you know, if I didn't, I was in denial, so on and so forth. I see a lot of that going on. If you say this, it means this.
[00:25:23] If you, if you don't say this, it means this. So talk about that. What your experience was of maybe believing you were doing the right thing or saying the right thing, talking about things in the right way. What was the process within you that changed?
[00:25:45]Africa Brooke: [00:25:45] For me, so when we talk about self-censorship right, it's silencing yourself out of fear of, you know, the repercussions, what will happen to me? Will I be rejected? Will I be excommunicated from the community? Will I be disposed of, whatever it might be, but then it's also interesting how the other side of that can be. Forcing yourself to say things that you don't actually believe, things that you don't actually agree with, following a script that someone else has decided.
[00:26:16] Right. And I found myself so deep in that I would say in the summer of 2020, even the year before that, where, because of my identities. So for example, me being a woman, I felt that I had to say certain things or believe certain things or because everyone else around me says, this is the truth. Then surely this must be the truth.
[00:26:41] Laura McKowen: [00:26:41] I heard you just, sorry, you just reminded me of when you posted, I'm not a feminist and this is why. Is that what you mean? Like the language around that.
[00:26:50] Africa Brooke: [00:26:50] Exactly. And I first actually shared that post in 2019, when I started to think, you know what? I really want to reject all of the labels that are really stopping me from being what I need to be, not doing what I need to do, being who I need to be. And I would say even just with the label feminist, for example, of course I absolutely love women. I will always fight for us. I will always speak up for us. And it's a big part of the work that I do, because I believe that it's not even just a belief, even just the data and research that I've done,
[00:27:26] it's usually women that end up locked into self-censorship, varying levels of self-censorship. Right. But something that I realized was that a lot of the terminology and a lot of the, what I would call scripts and a lot of the theories didn't really make space for me to be able to ask questions. And because I felt as if, if I have questions.
[00:27:47] There must be something wrong with me. And because all of the people I admire, all of the loudest voices are saying, this is the absolute truth. So it must be. And because of there's always a kernel of truth or more than a kernel of truth, it's, you know, right. It's much easier to make yourself think that this is the only right way.
[00:28:07] And I started to find myself in depressive states a lot of the time. And it's because I was suppressing a lot of things. I was suppressing how I really feel it was also self surveillance. If I had certain thoughts that would maybe be seen as bad or wrong.
[00:28:23]Laura McKowen: [00:28:23] Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yes.
[00:28:26] Africa Brooke: [00:28:26] So you're in this internal battle with yourself and it makes you very, very unwell and it makes you see the world through a very frustrated lens. You know, I don't think there's anything wrong with anger. I don't think there's anything wrong with outrage. I just believe that sometimes it's very, very misplaced. You know, and sometimes we just put it in the wrong places, but I would find myself in this perpetual state of outrage, looking for things that would piss me off, looking for things that would feed that outrage and confirm-
[00:28:55] Laura McKowen: [00:28:55] and you can find it.
[00:28:56] Africa Brooke: [00:28:56] You can always find it.
[00:28:57] Laura McKowen: [00:28:57] Cause you need to confirm. You have to find evidence to confirm this thing. You're trying to hold this Axiom you're trying to live in. Right. But you don't live there.
[00:29:09] Africa Brooke: [00:29:09] And you will always, always, always find it. You will always find it. So when I started to get unwell and I realized that it was also affecting not just me internally, but it was also starting to affect the way that I work.
[00:29:22] It was me just feeling that what I have to say is too much. What I have to say is not okay. What I have to say is wrong, which ultimately meant who I am is wrong, who I need to be is wrong. So it created a cycle of shame that was very familiar because of what I had experienced with sobriety and relapsing, et cetera.
[00:29:44] So again, the very same patterns that I had seen in my journey to getting sober, I was starting to see them show up in the spaces that I was occupying. And another truth is that I was in a lot of echo chambers, whether they were sobriety echo chambers or social justice echo chambers, not allowing any new thoughts, not allowing me to expand my way of thinking, not allowing myself to be challenged, which is really important for growth.
[00:30:12] You have to be challenged. You have to interrogate your beliefs constantly.
[00:30:16] Laura McKowen: [00:30:16] My experience is we figure out how we feel and what we think by talking about it. I get asked all the time, how are you still comfortable with publishing a book that said so much about your past and all these shameful things? I mean, to open up with saying this the most shameful thing about my daughter, you know, the darkest experience I had with my drinking and my daughter, and this idea that you can tell your story in this sort of holistic way.
[00:30:42] And it's like, I talked about it for thousands of hours, with friends in private, with family in private, with some sober people in private and publicly too. I had the space to play with those ideas and that's how I learned my story. And then of course my quiet own reflection, reading, writing. Writing is major for me to really understand what's true, but that's how I learned.
[00:31:10] And when you can't do that, When the idea that there's anything to talk about is shut down and there's just this truth and this absolute truth that say, if you are a woman and you're a feminist, this is the truth, right? Just as an example, and any dissent to that opinion bounces you out. I don't even think we can imagine the cost of that.
[00:31:39] Africa Brooke: [00:31:39] And I, I see it. I see it not just online and when I engage with people, but I see it in my clients, the fear that so many people have that if I say anything, my whole life is going to fall over. People being on the brink of suicide, because they said the quote unquote, wrong thing and not being shown any grace being treated as if they are subhuman in front of an audience, whether it's in a comment section or whether it's, you know, they've been misrepresented in some kind of way, because they've asked a question, not because they've done anything vile. They have simply asked a question because they don't understand something.
[00:32:21]Ah, Laura, I get so many messages from parents. So many messages from parents that are talking about what is happening in schools. You know, um, talking about how afraid and paranoid that children are of being quote unquote canceled, because that is the language that is used. That's what their child would tell them.
[00:32:41] Laura McKowen: [00:32:41] It's a common language. I mean, my daughter's 12. She talks that way.
[00:32:45] Africa Brooke: [00:32:45] And also, you know, that they're worried that their school friends or their teachers are going to find out that, you know, they vote politically in a certain way and what is going to happen to them. So, I speak in the way that I do about collective sabotage about creating space to ask questions about really just showing each other more grace, because I am seeing, and it's probably just on a very small scale, even though it's thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, the real life repercussions of this, you know, the real life repercussions of self censorship, which then becomes collective censorship.
[00:33:23] Yes.
[00:33:24] Laura McKowen: [00:33:24] I mean, I see it too. What was the experience for you when you have, say, expressed what you saw as an unpopular opinion or something you weren't supposed to say?
[00:33:37] Africa Brooke: [00:33:37] My experience has been incredibly liberating. I have never felt more sure of myself apart from making the decision to get sober and really seeing that I can actually do this. This is one of the first times where I've really felt free within myself. And I, I, I've never actually used that word free in terms of me saying I feel free or I am free. I'm just, it's just language that has never really come up. But now, as I say it it's never felt more true. It doesn't feel false.
[00:34:14] It doesn't feel, um, like fluff. It feels very, very true. I no longer feel like I'm holding something back. I no longer feel like I'm hiding a secret. I no longer feel that I'm betraying someone or a movement or a cause or a group or some anonymous people somewhere on the internet or off the internet. And I feel a new found sense of curiosity, which I love.
[00:34:43] So I'm just very curious, very curious. I'm not over attached to being right. I always make space for the possibility that I will be wrong. And I welcome that. I want to know, where am I wrong? What am I not seeing here? What am I not understanding? So I'm very, very curious and it's such a beautiful place to be in and believe it or not, I really haven't received much pushback.
[00:35:08] And, you know, I know we're not really talking about this in this conversation, but a big part of this is a letter that I wrote to really express that I'm done with self-censoring, you know, a letter that was only supposed to be for a small group of people on my little newsletter. Now it's reached over 3 million people last time that I checked and I don't know how many more people now.
[00:35:31] Laura McKowen: [00:35:31] Wow.
[00:35:31] Africa Brooke: [00:35:31] Right. And the fact that it's reached so many people all over the world, and I really haven't received much pushback. I must be saying something that is not just my subjective truth. Right.
[00:36:02] Mikel Ellcessor: [00:36:02] Hi, I'm Mikel I'm the executive producer of the podcast. At TMST we're passionate about having conversations that bring us together and help us stoke our love of life. That's why we created a dedicated site for them. It's free, it's not a Facebook group and we aren't mining your data to target you with ads.
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[00:37:39] Laura McKowen: [00:37:39] You know how the truth has this expansive quality when you hear it and you feel it it's a relief, even when it's painful. It's like when you're a kid or I was, you know, a kid and my parents were getting divorced and I knew it. I knew it, but no one would say. And finally this pretty horrible night, it all blew up.
[00:38:03] And someone finally said it to me. It was awful and I was young, you know, there was all kinds of things going on, but it's such a relief to hear the truth. That's what I read in your letter. So I'm not surprised.
[00:38:17] Africa Brooke: [00:38:17] Thank you. And because I've never, not just in my lesser even now as I sit with you today and regardless of who I walk with and who my work is reaching of never positioned myself as superior to anyone.
[00:38:31] I'm not. I'm walking alongside anyone and everyone, and I will get it wrong. You know, when I get messages of people saying, I 100% agree with everything you're saying, thank you so much. I always say, thank you. I completely understand where you're coming from. And I receive it. I appreciate it. But please make space for the fact that one day I will get it wrong.
[00:38:53] And when that day comes, it's going to be okay. It's going to be okay because that, that is real life. And I want us to all talk about it. If you will give me the grace and you give me the space, please let's have a conversation so I can learn and find out something that I didn't know. And that's the energy of which I wrote my letter.
[00:39:13] That's the energy in which I have conversations, which is why I believe I haven't really received any pushback from it because I'm not presenting anything as an absolute truth. I'm saying, Hey, the awesome things that we haven't been talking about, can we talk about it? And I always say this too, that I have more questions than answers. I do.
[00:39:36] Laura McKowen: [00:39:36] Yeah, we all do. That's the thing, if we could just say that, if we could admit it, you know, we want people, we want other people to have the answers for us, right. I mean, anytime I've put someone on a pedestal they've betrayed me, you know, eventually, because of course. Man, if we could only say that I have questions, I have questions.
[00:40:02] Africa Brooke: [00:40:02] That's that's it that's it. But can we make space for those questions to be asked? I really hope we can. I think we're starting to realize that. It's it's urgent. It's urgent for that space to be made. And that's the most beautiful thing about, you know, even the conversation you and I are having right now that it, it starts to create space for that to happen.
[00:40:29] And it can encourage someone else to have a conversation that maybe they didn't think they could have, you know? So it's that ripple effect again, because there's several other ripple effects happening, but are they useful?
[00:40:42] Laura McKowen: [00:40:42] Oh my goodness. Yes. Well, we could talk about that for a really long time and I suspect it's always yes and no, you know, I don't know that remains to be seen.
[00:40:53] It seems to me, one of the reasons we are suffering so much culturally is we haven't-- and I talked to a young Pueblo I don't know if you're familiar with his work-- he said something so beautiful that we forget that what unites us is actually our ignorance.
[00:41:16] Africa Brooke: [00:41:16] Full body chills.
[00:41:18]Laura McKowen: [00:41:18] That we have put on morality or made it a character assassination if someone doesn't operate in the same axiomatic beliefs that we do. And we cudgel people into this space if they haven't adopted those things, but you can't. As we know from getting sober, it took me seven years to be able to articulate one essay about how I felt about AA. 10,000 words and probably 50,000 that I never used, maybe more.
[00:41:51] It took me seven years to articulate the complexity and nuance and paradox of how I felt about AA. One thing. And we expect people to be able to do that around all kinds of things. And the only reason I could do that about AA is because I had lived through that experience.
[00:42:19] Africa Brooke: [00:42:19] Thank you so, so much for saying that, that really, yeah, that gives so much perspective.
[00:42:27] So so much perspective, and I know that it's going to be so useful for some more than a few people, but I really needed to hear that. And I couldn't even tell you exactly why, but I just really needed to hear that. And it affirms and validates so much of what I am saying and where I'm at right now and where I hope to continue to be.
[00:42:53] So thank you.
[00:42:55]Laura McKowen: [00:42:55] You're welcome. I think it can be really hard to name what it is that's so upsetting, that's so frustrating. It can be really hard to name what's happening. And I would love to end with knowing how you sort of manage your, what you take in and consume and the types of interactions you have offline that sort of fortify you.
[00:43:23] My experience was on social media specifically, and really Instagram, I couldn't hear myself. I really couldn't. There was too much noise. And like when I would go on, I would feel, my body would feel different. I would feel anxious and it could be about something that I posted or it could be about just what I was consuming.
[00:43:46] So that's why I left. I still don't really have the words for all of it, but I know that so much of it has to do with what you're talking about, which is self-sabotage. So, what do you do to fortify yourself against that? How do you manage what you consume? How do you make sure you're connected to your own intuition and voice?
[00:44:14] Africa Brooke: [00:44:14] I such a good question again, and I resonate. I mean, I resonate with the whole fucking thing, but I resonate with what you just said around the performing aspect of it, because it's something that I would say, I felt a few years ago. And then I made the decision that I am not going to allow a platform or an audience or a perceived community to determine who I'm going to be, because I felt this at a point where I was becoming very comfortable in my sobriety, the online space that I occupy, the only one is Instagram. It's a platform that I've always enjoyed. You know, I started my profile and platform there as a journal, just sharing. No intention to build any kind of audience, nothing of the sort. By the time I started to gain an audience and my work started to reach people.
[00:45:11] I started to be connected to other things and to share my voice in other ways, I did come to a point of feeling, am I going to have to talk about sobriety forever? Because this is what's expected of me. Am I going to have to talk about this forever? Even when I am a few years in, five years in, 10 years in, is that who I am, what I do? And then I was like, no, no, no, because by the time I was even two and a half or three years sober, I'm changing. So I'm so comfortable in my sobriety now that I don't even think about it as much. So I don't want to force myself to talk about it that much. I decided that whoever's going to stay is going to grow with me because I'm growing behind the scenes and becoming curious when it comes to other things.
[00:46:04] There's an element of this becoming my professional work that is now more important to me than me just sharing my personal anecdotes and my story and my journey and using it as a journal, it's becoming different. And I decided that I wasn't going to allow an audience to determine what I do. Because ultimately I do get to decide.
[00:46:25] And I also, at the same time, realize that there was so much noise. There was so much noise, but I was treating myself as if I didn't get to choose what noise, but that's how it is. Right.
[00:46:36]Laura McKowen: [00:46:36] Absolutely. I have to follow this person. I have to do this because if I don't, you know, there's so much posturing and manipulation around.
[00:46:44] Africa Brooke: [00:46:44] Oh, for sure. If I unfollow them, but we've had some kind of exchange. So what does that mean? Will they notice, do I have to do, and then I was like, no, I'm not doing that anymore. I'm starting to spend a lot of time in this space. So I need to curate it in a way that is actually adding to my mental wellbeing.
[00:47:02] So on a very practical level, I don't really follow any coaches or people that are speakers or thinkers, et cetera, because it's too much. It's too much because there is such a thing as overdoing it with self-development. That is, it's a real fucking thing. I mean, you could only be inspired. Sometimes I don't want to be inspired.
[00:47:21] I don't want to be better.
[00:47:23] Laura McKowen: [00:47:23] No, sometimes I don't, right. I just, yeah. I want to have an unexamined moment or just have fucking fun or look at a picture of a cat yet. No, I know.
[00:47:31]Africa Brooke: [00:47:31] The moment I realized that I'm not a business, I'm not a business. I don't need a strategy to be me. That's when things started working. And that's, that's the way that I approach things.
[00:47:43] Laura McKowen: [00:47:43] That's so huge. I'm not a strategy. I'm not a business.
[00:47:47] Africa Brooke: [00:47:47] I am not over attached to what happens on social media. I'm not, I'm truly grateful that my work is reaching the people that it's reaching, but also I remembered that it's not luck. It's not luck. I have been consistently doing what I do for five years.
[00:48:03] And what people see online is just a tiny little glimpse of what this past five years has been like. So I don't call it like, I don't think, oh my goodness, this has happened so quick. It's not so quickly. It's not so quickly at all. You know? And that's my real life. That's my real life. And I have beautiful relationships where I've never needed to censor myself. Because of my sobriety,
[00:48:29] it's allowed me to form relationships where actually I've never needed to censor myself. Do you see that? Have you had that too?
[00:48:37] Laura McKowen: [00:48:37] That is the gift. The, one of the major gifts of sobriety is I can actually be known and I can know other people. No one really knew what was going on with me when I was drinking.
[00:48:49] I couldn't allow that. And so, yes, that has been my experience too. And I'm still learning how to be in actual relationship with people. I don't want to end this conversation. I could talk to you for so much longer. I do want to say I'm so grateful that you are the person that you are, I'm so grateful that you are expressing the things that you're expressing.
[00:49:14] I don't think we can place an importance on people who are willing to do what you're doing right now. And it's not even about your opinions. It's about your willingness to express them. Yeah. I feel so strongly. The themes that you talk about and the essence of your work, the questions you're trying to answer are things that I have thought about.
[00:49:38] I think about all the time and have for 5, 6, 7 years, but really in the past few years. So I just appreciate you so much. I'm so grateful that you're doing the work you're doing.
[00:49:49] Africa Brooke: [00:49:49] Thank you. Thank you so so much. And this feels like a full circle moment because on my very first post on Instagram, which is still up right now where I was asking for help, I was just throwing it out into the void, seeing what happens, is anyone else out there, someone tagged you on that very first post, and you commented on that very first post and it's still there.
[00:50:17] So this would be nearly five years ago. So this feels very, very profound. And just thank you so much for creating space. So this could take place. Thank you.
[00:50:29] Laura McKowen: [00:50:29] Welcome. And thank you.
[00:50:38] I come away from my time with Africa. My feet just felt a little more firmly planted. My shoulders are a bit more squared off. She is such a clarifying grounding force. You can connect with her online. Instagram is her main platform. And we'll have the link at TMSTPod.com.
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