What does it mean to be «normal»? Where are these average normal people? Maybe normality is just a myth?
I have long been occupied with the question: who are the so-called normal people, and do they exist at all? And those who say loudest that they’re okay, aren’t they swimming in the river of Denial? According to the National Institute of Mental Health (USA), every second of us has suffered at least once in a life with a personality disorder. By openly sharing my personal history (aka medical history), I began to receive thousands of letters. I was told about exhausting, hidden from all fears, painful conflicts and addictions. Many were talking about it for the first time, they needed to share it with someone.
A diagnosis is already a plan of action, and therefore most often it brings relief to a person.
It is widely believed that doctors today tend to «exceed their authority», turning everyone around them into people with disabilities: an ill-mannered child receives an indulgence in the form of «attention deficit hyperactivity disorder» (ADHD), natural experiences are called depression, introversion is interpreted as social phobia. Another reproach is that, out of overwhelm (and partly their own laziness), many doctors artificially narrow the boundaries of the norm, assigning a diagnosis and prescribing drugs to those who would be helped by a confidential conversation or psychotherapy.
But there is another way of looking at the situation, as outlined in an article by psychiatrist Peter Kramer*. He does not deny the danger of expanding the scale of clinical disorders and even admits that some people may be negatively affected by this. And yet, much more often, a diagnosis brings relief and entitles a person to help, without which his life can collapse.
Diagnosis is already a plan of action. Parents who previously considered their child to be slow and inattentive are beginning to realize that his condition is due to dyslexia. And this needs to be done. Is the diagnosis of dyslexia really worse than the laziness and stupidity that the child was unfairly accused of before? For those who felt themselves confused and rejected by others due to panic attacks or chronic depression, the diagnosis finally explains what is happening to them.
From now on, we are not left alone with our misfortune, and this gives us a chance to find inner wholeness. Are there people who are completely free from psychological scratches and scars? Maybe the so-called normality is just a myth in which we have long believed? It was replaced by the understanding that our mental nature is much more fragile than we presumptuously expected. As Peter Kramer writes, the norm can be understood in two ways: “as the absence of defects, or as that common to us human, which always involves deviations and flaws.”
Destroying the «myth of the norm», we acquire the right to individuality. And perhaps awareness of our vulnerability can make us more tolerant in dealing with each other.
* See Psychology Today website at psychologytoday.com/articles/200910/what-is-normal