"Normal" people

Hi,

Yesterday our T said this thing - 'normal people' (she doesn't say 'normal' but that's what she meant) don't remember everything they do either. Host was like WTF!!!! He ALWAYS fakes knowing EVERYTHING and is SUPER paranoid about looking like he forgot anything at all EVER. 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.

Just wondered what other hosts think about normal (but don't really know what it's like and kind of mess it up).

Iain

last month we missed a doc appointment because of untimely switching.
when we said we were sorry the doc assistant lady said that it's no problem, people miss their appointments all the time.
like WHAT? we have never missed one in our life, not while conscious and walking. but obviously normal people totally do. and they don't even worry about it.

I don't like the word normal. Im just me, and we're just us. And that's ok.

People can do their thing and we'll do ours

It doesnt matter to me if some things are common or whatever, if it affects you it affects you

Hi birdsong,

Yeah. It's the 'they don't even worry about it' that really gets to Host. He worries about it ALL THE TIME.

Iain

We think about appearing normal all the time. To us normal is the most common value so basically average. And average people are well let's just say we don't think very highly of them. Our doctors surgery has signs all over the place saying about how many appointments are missed and how much of the doctors time is wasted and that if you miss to many the will remove you from the practice. And WTF you have to phone that morning for an appointment how do so may people miss them like seriously how?

Great topic - I've tried to replace use of the word normal with things like what's common... because everyone, even DIDers falls into the "normal" spectrum for some things and lies on the periphery for other things.

I think developing a good relationship with yourselves and accepting who you are and what is good for you and what is important for you, and for each part, helps to find a place in the world. It would be a terrible place if we all were the same, or "normal".

As for worrying about it - you cannot control what other people thing, including whether or not they think you are "normal" or "average". Think of plucking someone from suburbia into an inner city community with different concentrated races in each. What again is "normal"?

I can understand not wanting to seem weird or off but I guarantee for everyone who thinks someone is weird or off, someone else finds you neat and likes you for being real.

I had two VERY BIG life changing discoveries about life in general, which have had huge impact on my life since I realized them. They are intellectually very easy to understand, and if anyone had told them to me, I would've been insulted, like do they really think I don't get that.. But I really didn't until they got me big time, and my life has changed a lot since understanding these two basics of existence.

Number one: Everything that starts, also ends. Since my teens it has been a struggle for me to do ANYTHING. It's because in order to do things that needs to be done, I need to change into someone else, you know, to be the one who does all things needed, and it felt exhausting to begin even thinking about it. Like going to work. So, on Monday I went to work, and after I got out of there, I started counting hours how much time I still have before I have to change again to go back there on Tuesday. Everything extra, someone coming to visit, me needing to visit someone, I was just keeping track of everything I need to do and when, and there was no rest, if I didn't know I don't have to do ANYTHING. Keeping in track with how many hours before work kept me so alarmed all the time, no wonder why I was many times way too exhausted to actually manage to go to work. Until I realized the big reveal of my life: if it starts, it also ends. And some how I understood it better and stopped counting hours for next thing that needs to be done, and learned not to stress so much about them, because they will be over. All them will be over, and I will be back home. I started counting how long till I get home, and doing stuff just wasn't as exhausting anymore, cause I finally found the way out of them I never had before.

Number two: The second big break trough was to understand I can exist at the same time when I do something. For my whole life I stopped BEING as I did anything. And it was way too hard to not be at all for so many hours of every day, I couldn't do many things normal and easy to those normal people. But then I suddenly realized I can exist while doing things, and another big stress why everything was so hard for me before was achieved. It was news to me I can go to work and then BE in there.

It has changed my life to realize things do have an ending, and now I don't have to even worry about that since I can exist even when they are on. How different it would have been to live all these years with that information, so obvious, but totally out of my understanding.

I do relate a lot, how the most simple things can have significant changes in your thinking. I still don't miss appointments, I keep track of time. Or if I do, I do it because I simply couldn't make it, not because I forgot. I do realize it still takes a lot of energy to keep track of things which needs to be done, and somehow I live still a little bit too much in future, and not right where I am. It is also hard for me to remember things afterwards as a general big picture of what happened and when. My energy goes to get them done and then I don't need to think them anymore, and they disappear from my brain. I wouldn't know what I did last week, but I know I did everything I was supposed to.

I don't count hours at all anymore. Instead I use phone alarms when I need to pay attention and start to do something. I have to say it has increased the quality of my life and my ability to do things significantly. so much, people around me notice the difference. You know, usually people learn things like that after they stop being babies. I didn't.

i get hung up a lot on what's seen as "normal". my family repeatedly told me that i'm both "boring" and doing/saying things purely to look interesting, and that i'm "abnormal" and that i'm not like other people in a bad way, which is contradictory bullsh*t. still internalised that tho, which means i go from obsessing about presenting as "normal" and constantly feeling like everything about me is "fake", to feeling like i can never get better because there's something "wrong" with me that can never be fixed. it's exhausting.

i'm trying to get better with it. i need a balance between not labelling every aspect of myself as either "normal" or "not normal", but also being aware of the things that do fall outside of common experience for most people so i can recognise unhealthy behaviour and what stuff comes from trauma and stuff like that.

a lot of my childhood was spent calling what i went through "normal" (as in "this is okay, this should be happening to me, i don't need to tell anyone, this is fine") when it wasn't, so i do need to unlearn that. i know the wording of that is bad but i can't think of how else to word it, sorry.

The more I study psychology, the more I tend to think that "normal" doesn't exist.
What is normal isn't the same for everybody and the concept can change a lot from one person to another depending of their exeperiences.

Someone who never met anyone with mental health issues and doesn't have any issue of that kind (it exists, I've met some of them, it's weird to talk with them) will easily find everything "not normal", while somone who's familiar with them will find it totally normal.

Aside of that, I think that the trauma and abuses lead us to think that we're not normal, and also to think that it's the opposite of what we are and what we do that is normal.
But that's not true : DID is a normal answer to the trauma. So we're normal. People find it weird because they don't know anything about it.

I've readed something really interesting about normality when you're multiple (it also talks about various other things such as being treated as "special" by singleton people, or the "not being multiple enough" feeling people can have when talking with other multiples) : Parts of me are only part of the problem

hmmm. thought provoking.

I view normal people like a bell curve and try to stay just within the curve and not be a huge outlier. that's how nature is. some people are tall and some people are short. and that's fine. it when people are really tiny or really huge that you notice. if you try to shoot for the dead center of normal it will be an impossible target and you will also most likely suck, so just stay somewhere in the curve.

the other thought I have is that yes - there is that huge generalized nebulous "normal people". but we don't go around judging individual people all the time against that. you accept normal as WHATS NORMAL FOR THEM. like there's a dude at work who is spastic and hyper and sucks on mountain dew and Skittles all day and he is definately not normal. but he's kind and good at his job and every one still likes him amd accepts him the way he is because that's normal for him. and honestly that's what everybody is really like. special in their own way and as you get to know them you accept what's normal for them as "normal".

bottom line - just do you. I mean, wear clothes and try not to dance down the hallway at work singing and talking to yourself our loud and that's enough to blend in. seriously. people are so wrapped up in their own lives and #######4...... like one of my cube neighbors saw me one morning and said, "Good Morning. You are a completely different person from yesterday." with a big old smile on his face completely oblivious to anything! bottom line - seriously, don't give so many ###$ and you will be way happier. because none of those shits give two ###$ about anyone but themselves anyway.

I think the most surprising thing for me was getting my nightmares under control and I was like......"wait a minute.... other people don't rip up sheets all the time? I seriously had no idea how disordered my sleep was and that chronic thrashing nightmares was unusual. I mean everybody has nightmares, right? lol. had that totally wrong in my head. they only have a nightmare every once in a while. it's unusual.