"Normal" people

Normal is best defined as "what is true for the majority". Hardly the same thing as commonly used, in the "if you're not in the majority there's something wrong" mentality, but it is what it is. The term, imho, is too subjective for anything other than the definition I gave above... and in modern society, with the massive amounts of subcultures and subsets of groups and ideas... normal is rapidly losing any true meaning these days.

Imagine meeting the most "normal" person in the world. Wouldn't that be creepy? Lol

Normalcy even frightens basically "normal" people eg they make films like "stepford wives"

So as much as I have craved "normalcy" I'm aware it pretty much doesn't exist, alot of people find it creepy or boring and I had to accept, but still struggle with, I'm not conventionally normal. I'm normal for me, I'm normal in the sense that no one is "normal" but my brain does work differently from a majority I guess. After more or less acceptance I still get pangs now and again of "I wish I was normal" but I think even "normal" people get that sometimes? - Which even makes that normal I guess lol

One of the most amusing and helpful things a previous therapist said was "you're not normal". Amusing because I just sat and watched her shocked expression at what she'd said and her trying to spend the next several minutes walking it back. We embraced it and took it as permission to simply be "our normal" which has helped greatly.

Have you ever really looked at the DES-II questions and tried to imagine how and who the "normal" people are who score in single digits? That would be a very weird life.

IainEtc wrote:Host is like obsessed with looking NORMAL. Now he's realizing that normal doesn't mean perfect. Normal people don't lose time but they don't keep track of EVERYTHING either. It kind of rocked him.

Iain

I know that I have much higher standards for myself than most people seem to have, and I think it's because I don't have a core sense of being acceptable just as me. So missing an appointment, for example, doesn't mean that I'm an ok person who missed an appointment, it means I'm a failure at life, etc (slight exaggeration, but not really...). I was once TA'ing a class in college that I had taken the year before, and near the beginning of the semester a smart, responsible friend who was taking it asked me what the late policy was for assignments. I looked at her blankly and said, "I don't know," and she said, very surprised, "You didn't turn any assignments in late?" As if that was a common thing that most people did (I guess it was).

So it's framed in my mind as what other people will think of me--what they'll notice, how weird they will probably think I am--but it's really an internal critic judging me for everything that falls short of how I think I should be. Other people don't really notice, or if they do, then what I think has been a bad job, they think is pretty good.

Host thinks we go around screaming WE'RE MULTIPLE all the time. Really nobody much notices. If they do they don't think we're DID first thing. I kind of wish Host wasn't so strict about being SUPER NORMAL like all the time.

Iain

We've always been not-normal lol. Like as long as I'm aware...back into our teen years. We've always been wierd, odd, an outsider. And never really got too uptight about trying to be normal, instead at some point (in highschool I think) we decided heck with normal, be unique and embrace it.

We've always had sort of a 'code' though, that we follow. So like yeah, we aren't late for appointments. We're usually early, cos we get really paranoid about being late. I think rather than being worried about 'appearing normal' we worry about 'appearing competent".

When our previous host got upset about mental stuff, it was the idea of not being competent that worried her most I think. Like, losing her memory, losing her faculties, scared her. Tho the memory loss stuff she kinda started to get used to when she realized it was happening. She had ways to work around that. Ways to remain competent.

Like I don't care if people know we're multiple. I don't hide it so much, except with work stuff. And the only reason to hide it there, is cos people will probably not bother to understand, they might just automatically assume that means we're crazy or incompetent.

And anyways, I don't think anyone is actually 'normal'. Everyone's got their own 'wierd' stuff and most people are too busy worrying about keeping their own wierdness hidden, to really care about anyone else's.

V2

not sure we've ever thought of ourselves as 'normal'. throughout our live we have learned to act normal (for a given value of normal).