There’s no such thing as “normal”
July 28th, 2006 by duff
When I first started working on my shyness (back before there was a DSM name for it), my goal was to become “normal.” In fact, when I was a little kid I desperately wanted to be of average height (I’m super tall), have straight brown hair instead of my curly locks, and be named “Michael” because I thought that was the most normal name I could think of. Maybe then I wouldn’t be made fun of or feel weird and awkward all the time.
At one point during my journey with social anxiety I realized that my path wasn’t headed towards normal–as if normal was in Florida and I started in California on a trajectory towards Maine. I was headed somewhere, but I just wasn’t ever going to get to this “normal” place.
What I began to notice is that while I had been limited socially by anxiety, those who didn’t have social anxiety often had “being alone anxiety.” This came as a huge shock to me, because previously I thought there was “something wrong with me,” which implied that other people didn’t have something wrong with them! Now I realize that the whole frame was flawed–yes I had social anxiety, but no there wasn’t anything wrong with me. I didn’t consider the “painfully extroverted” to have a fundamental design flaw, so why did I judge myself so harshly?
When I became relatively free from social anxiety, since I never had “being alone anxiety,” I was now even more abnormal than before. It actually became even harder to relate to people for a while, because now I was so free I couldn’t relate to many of the fear-filled “normal” people I had desperately wanted to connect with!
The point of all of this is that it is important to let go of your fantasies of what “normal” people are like socially, and to honor your work with your social anxiety as an amazing act of courage. You are taking on your biggest fears and overcoming them bit by bit–most people cover over their fears and anxiety with drugs, alcohol, and tv.
Celebrate your efforts! And know that there is nothing fundamentally “wrong with you” because you currently experience social anxiety in some contexts. In fact, there is something fundamentally right with you because you have the courage to face it and overcome it.
Posted in Social Anxiety|Subscribe |
Comments Feed|
4 Responses to “There’s no such thing as “normal””
Leave a Reply
- Feeds
- Site feed
- Comments Feed
Fatal error: Call to undefined function utw_showweightedtagsetalphabetical() in /home/.offbeat/roelke/anxiousliving.com/wp-content/themes/WhiteClear/sidebar.php on line 106
Dreamer wrote on 08/8/06 at 5:43 am :
amen…
nicely put,
i totally agree.
This is big, i have the greatest respect to people stepping up and facing these fears.
to some people this might be weird and they might think ”well thats not very courageous”
but what they fail to see is that this particular thing were adressing might not be fearfull to him, but to us its our greatest fear.. and were stepping up and looking it in the eye.
That takes a lot of balls, determination and courage.
I had to laugh about the normal ”myth”
truth is most people are zombies..
and once you begin to get real progression in this anxiety thing, you dont ever wanna be a zombie again. its like your awake and you discovered you have a choice.. and you can never go back to just accepting fears and unproductive emotions and just live in reaction.
Were fighters and il take this to hell and back !! i declared war 2 years ago and i fell many times, but i always got up ! this journey has brought up my true character and strength and i really begin to wonder if not all this is somekinda test,
maybe its even a good experience, i dont think i would trade it. It has made me the person i am right now. and hell if there wasnt a social anxiety and the low self esteemstuff i had, well i wouldve had some other problem im sure.
thanks for an exellent peace of writing, i enjoyed reading it.
-Dreamer
duff wrote on 08/12/06 at 10:45 am :
Yea Dreamer!! You sound like you are kickin’ butt at this anxiety thing. In my experience it takes that kind of passion and persistence to make a dent, but anybody can do it!
Cynthia Blue wrote on 08/18/06 at 10:11 am :
I think I never really wanted to be ‘normal’. Shows like Harry Potter have always appealed to me, or X-Men, where the mutants were the cool ones. I always wanted to extra special like that. Different, magical.. whatever. Stand out. I never was able to stand out though. Not in a good way. Intead I was the nerd, the geek, the idiot. I felt like I stood out in those ways.
And Dreamer, yes, once you wake up and see the sky, you can’t go back to living in a cave anymore. I have had that revelation a number of times in my life. First one really twisted my world around back in 1992. Now I am better at handling them, and I actually welcome them. I like being awake. I want to be awake.. I MUST be awake. Dammit!
I wonder, though, what I’m still blind too. And what will happen when I finally see the light.
Ryan Oelke wrote on 09/4/06 at 3:53 pm :
great post, Duff. So strange, particulary when during childhood and adolesence I had a desire to be more “normal” and yet, like you, noticed that the only examples of “normal” I saw weren’t all that “normal”! I didn’t have the realization of “what’s normal anyways?!!” until grad school, but it’s interesting to notice that we don’t want to become “normal” just to experience the world differently, as ourselves. Part of me wishes I had worked with my SAD experience a long time ago, yet I’m glad it was only a year ago because I understood so much more about what it means to work with my emoitions and relationships, and what change really means.
In my counseling grad program we made a t-shirt with our top ten phrases. One of these was “Normal is a setting on a washing machine.”:)