To work within the psych field I loose touch with what socially acceptable behaviors look like . It can come off kind of morbid, when seeing a person with open wounds covering their forearms, an individual is expressing clearly delusional thinking, and your response is appearing with a genuine understanding affect. These are usually situations most people would hope to never cross. But for me and many of the nurses, doctors, therapists and techs that assist in treating individuals that reach this point, this is a regular occurrence.
Most are rarely educated on behavioral health and how someone becomes depressed, or psychotic. They say: “they must be on drugs”, or “they are just seeking attention”. This could be the case, not all the time, but every action is for some sort of reason… people react to different stimuli through their own eyes.
“The Reason I Jump”, is a book written by Naoki Higashida, a thirteen year-old boy with autism allows you to gaze into his thoughts. He immaculately depicts his perception on how he reacts to stimuli and it’s differences from ‘society’s’. Highly recommended and inspiring.
But what trends do we set with in a society and why are they important? Our set social expectations resemble the same empty motives. They are just our conditioned stimulus. Within a crowd we made judgements and accusations only skimming over a person. How certain situations or experiences are received through our senses, then how our stimuli react. Just like the infamous conditioning experiment Pavlov ran, where the dog resulted in salivating when he rang the bell. Sparky did not always salivate when bells went off, he put two and two together. After the bell rang he would receive food, leading him to anticipate being fed before even seeing his meal. He knew what to expect.
As humans, do we think we know what to expect in every circumstance? Whether we have dealt with a similar situation, or heard about Susie’s cousin have the same thing happen. We basically start mentally preparing ourselves. Anxiety starts fueling our mind and body. You can think of it as we all start the salivating process.
The real question is, why does it matter whats socially acceptable? Why have we come up with ‘appropriate behaviors’, such as eye contact
, shaking hands, laughing when a joke is said. We have learned from our initial reactions as an infant. Whether a child was naturally delivered, or associates a rabbit with a frightening bang, as seen in the classical conditioning from Watson.
Think of the word ‘normal’. What is the definition of normal? We are all individuals, we perceive everything differently. Colors are only an illusion, as for your green is seen differently than my green, (not because you are color blind either).
So we only begin to make judgements after we realize, you don’t think ‘normally’. And what I subconsciously don’t realize is that ‘normal’ is not the right word, its just different. Its your individuality, your personality, your likes/dislikes, your DNA.
When an individual with Autism is not understood, a person with depression sinks into withdrawal, a lesbian couple cannot share their devotion with the world, an interracial family feels lasers soaring through their backs as stares never end. Your normal is my normal, because normal is your own definition, as is mine…
the.broke.sisters 