‘Normal’ has always been one of my least favourite words.
It can hang out in Doctors surgeries and hospitals when we need to talk about normal heart rates and blood pressure etc… but in my view, we really need to give it less power everywhere else.
I DO understand why people seek it - it stems from a desire to be accepted into a community in some way. It’s in our DNA that being outcast and alone is unsafe; we need a community we fit into, where we have a role. If we aren’t seen as useful, we will be shunned.
The problem with ‘normal’ is that it assumes that we need to be the same as one another in order to be accepted into a group. But a community full of the same people wouldn’t achieve very much would it? A tribe full of only cooks? A tribe full of only mechanics? We NEED variety; a collective of different strengths and skills make a community thrive.
I'm in a rare situation where I've felt safe to express myself for who I am my whole life and that is thanks to my blissful upbringing. I grew up safe and loved, accepted and supported. Far too few people experience that safety in their formative years. But in today's world, even if you have been given an upbringing like mine was, it is increasingly difficult to feel truly safe to discover and be true to yourself. I feel so much for the young people growing up today in the world of social media where everything they say and do can be recorded and scrutinised.
What if they ‘like’ a post that none of their friends ‘liked’?
What if they comment with an angry response to something their friends find funny?
Judgement and ridicule are such vast weapons now that it’s created a culture where way too many people are terrified of being true to themselves, free with their opinions and passions and of expressing themselves for fear not only of judgement and rejection at the time but in the realm of the online world; maybe forever!
Thanks to social media, a huge amount of our lives are in some way performative. We cultivate our online persona and share the pieces of our lives we believe will make us more accepted and popular. There is a yearning to have people say "Yes, I agree! You're right! I feel the same way!" It's something that historically we would have experienced a lot more in person in our communities and families but in our modern world we spend more and more time needing to try to make those connections through a screen and for many of us it can be a lot harder and more complicated to do that.
The pull to present as ‘normal’ is huge. It takes such courage though to get to the point where it feels worth the risk to be true to who you are in order to find your own group of accepting and supportive friends. And finding that courage as a young person growing up when so much of being alive is already so tumultuous?!
But there WILL be people who speak your language; who are attracted to the same things you are. Who laugh at the same things you do, who get passionate about the same things, who yearn to express themselves honestly.
Another incredibly important point regarding the concept of ‘normal’ is how it affects our neurodiverse people. You may have heard of the term ‘masking’ but in case it’s new to you, masking is essentially the attempt to make oneself act in a more neurotypical way. It’s born of a need to fit in; to be perceived as ‘normal’. The action of masking is exhausting. Many people have written about how it feels to them. I urge you to type in ‘what masking feels like’ to your search engine and have a read. It’s truly eye-opening for those of us who don’t feel the need to do it every day. Suffice it to say, it is an exhausting and sometimes painful way to live!
You’ll know already, I imagine, that Autism is incredibly complicated and difficult to define. There is a saying that ‘if you’ve met one person with Autism, you’ve met one person with Autism,’ meaning that each of them can present in very different ways. The same as all of us, each Autistic person is unique. What I have found in many of the wonderful Autistic people I’ve met, is that when given the safety to express themselves naturally, they know themselves better than any of us neurotypicals. They know how to move their body to self-soothe or express excitement. They know that repeating an action, or a sentence or a meal, or a section of a video is worth doing over and over because it feels great every time! But when they are being themselves and behaving in this way, there are many situations where they’d feel compelled to mask, or forced to by someone who deemed their behaviour to be ‘abnormal’ and embarrassing.
I write a lot here in my blogs, in my emails and social media posts about how creativity and play are amazing tools for regulation, and I hold to that. But it is important to remember too that our mission in life should not be ‘to be as regulated as possible’ at all times. It's also worth saying here that the term 'regulation' gets used a lot these days and there is a difference between how neurotypicals tend to use the word versus neurodivergent people. I have read in a few places in writing by neurodivergent people - but most recently by Em from @NeuroWild - that "being regulated means your energy levels matches the task", and not simply being in a calm state. Which makes a lot of sense when you think about it, because not every activity requires a calm state! Most of the time, when neurotypicals use the word 'regulated' we think of being calm/balanced.
We have to question who we are making ourselves calm and balanced for?
Who are we asking our children to be calm and balanced for?
Because if the answer is in order to make them more tolerable and palatable to other people, then that is not a good reason is it?
We should not be living our lives in order to make the lives of others easier.
As the brilliant psychotherapist Pat Duggan (@pat.radical.therapist on Instagram) says: “The truth is, some of us will never be ‘regulated’... Some of us… are meant to pulse, to tremble, to rage, to oscillate between grief and joy, between stillness and chaos. Our dysregulation is not always a problem to be solved. Sometimes it is an expression of aliveness.”
I love so much how she phrases this. When we see an Autistic person stimming, yes, they could be trying to regulate themselves - and crucially FOR themselves - or they may simply be expressing their aliveness! Stimming very often is for the purpose of expressing excitement and joy! I’ve seen too many times a parent/carer/random stranger on the street (yes, really!) get embarrassed over stimming, over their expressions of joy or upset. Yes of course, if they or others are in danger in some way, then you do need to take steps to ensure safety. But if there’s no risk of danger to anyone, and the ‘abnormal’ behaviour is just embarrassing for you? Really question your next actions there. Really ask yourself who you are asking them to be ‘normal’ for.
Don’t be ashamed of how they express themselves.
Don’t ask them to fit a mould that hurts them.
And for those of us here who are neurotypical, maybe we can learn something from our freely-expressive, neurodiverse companions. I can tell you as a mother to 2 children who express themselves naturally, in safety, it is an inspiring thing to behold.
If all of us embraced who we are; our physical and emotional needs, how we like to move in response to things, how we like to create conversation, sound, art, we would be in a much gentler, more joyful, more connected world.
Let's encourage expressing ourselves naturally rather than normally.
I wish you peace, health, love and joy.
Amy xx
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