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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
[email protected]Shown: posts 1 to 16 of 16. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by sleepygirl2 on May 30, 2012, at 19:04:03
I'm "normal" I think.
I want to get off meds, and I think I'll be ok, but I think withdrawal can be tough. I know it's a subjective thing, but I don't want anyone to think... 'Uh oh, crazy girl', because I get bitchy about something stupid, or act too silly.It is what it is....
Posted by Raisinb on May 30, 2012, at 21:04:00
In reply to I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by sleepygirl2 on May 30, 2012, at 19:04:03
Screw normal, seriously, nobody is normal if you look at them closely enough. It's just a nonexistent ideal that people like to use to insulate themselves from the complexity of human experience. Plus if normality really was real? Boring,
Posted by sleepygirl2 on May 30, 2012, at 22:06:02
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means... » sleepygirl2, posted by Raisinb on May 30, 2012, at 21:04:00
Agreed
:-)Thanks
Posted by Phillipa on May 31, 2012, at 10:20:37
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means... » Raisinb, posted by sleepygirl2 on May 30, 2012, at 22:06:02
We meaning neighbors talk jokingly of normal all the time and always say we are all crazy and how boring it would be to be normal. So join the crowd. Phillipa
Posted by Willful on May 31, 2012, at 10:30:31
In reply to I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by sleepygirl2 on May 30, 2012, at 19:04:03
Funny how all the crazy people think there's no normal and all the normal people think they're the normal ones.
Probably normal means adhering superficially or publicly to certain conventions of dress, idiom, and decor-- and living in a certain type of community-- so it's probably at least part of a class system-- the normal people are apparently people who adhere to the tighter version of the conventions of the speaker's group. And the really normal people are middle class probably white people who live in small cities and act somewhat rigidly to the expectations of their middle class (probably) white people. This is--except for the community of crazy people, who define themselves at not-normal--where the crazy people are normal ie crazy, and the normal people are also crazy.
Posted by ron1953 on May 31, 2012, at 13:37:56
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by Willful on May 31, 2012, at 10:30:31
It's pretty easy to see what the prevailing definition of normal is. Just look at virtually anything in media (especially advestisements), and you'll notice that nearly everyone appears to be be gloriously happy, wearing big smiles whether buying a new car or scrubbing a filthy toilet. We're inundated with messages that depict normal as ecstatic.
Posted by sigismund on May 31, 2012, at 17:13:05
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by Willful on May 31, 2012, at 10:30:31
Then there are people in other countries.
Posted by Willful on May 31, 2012, at 17:36:20
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by sigismund on May 31, 2012, at 17:13:05
And they're so different?
Posted by Phillipa on May 31, 2012, at 20:34:32
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by ron1953 on May 31, 2012, at 13:37:56
Right on target. I just adore scrubbng toilets nothing I'd rather do. Isn't it fun? Phillipa
Posted by SLS on May 31, 2012, at 22:08:33
In reply to I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by sleepygirl2 on May 30, 2012, at 19:04:03
> I'm "normal" I think.
> I want to get off meds, and I think I'll be ok, but I think withdrawal can be tough. I know it's a subjective thing, but I don't want anyone to think... 'Uh oh, crazy girl', because I get bitchy about something stupid, or act too silly.
>
> It is what it is....
A question...What is it that is to be judged as being normal or abnormal? A thought? A feeling? A behavior? An opinion? A test score? A whole person?
If a whole person is normal in every way, doesn't that make him statisticaly abnormal?
What are some of the synonyms used to define the word "normal"?
1. Statistical calculation.
2. Common.
3. Healthy
4. Sane
5. Majority
6. Conventional
7. Right
8. Natural
9. GoodWhat are some of the synonyms used to define the word "abnormal"?
1. Statistical calculation.
2. Uncommon.
3. Unhealthy
4. Insane
5. Minority
6. Unconventional
7. Wrong
8. Weird
9. BadI'm sure there are many more words that people associate with these two terms. I think of the word "normal" as meaning:
1. A statistical assessment of the occurrence of a phenomenon.
2. In accord with nature.
3. Healthy.I'm still thinking...
How do you define the words "normal" and "abnormal"? What synonyms would you use in their place?
For some reason, I don't get hung up with these words anymore. I am normal in some ways and abnormal in others. I am a work in progress, and am very happy with the space that I currently occupy. It is abnormal (statistically) that I should have bipolar disorder. I guess it is normal (healthy) that I should not want to.
I guess I ramble here because I think many of us give too much power to the words "normal" and "abnormal", and thereby allow others to hurt us or define us. I have no intention of letting others' use of these words affect my sense of self. It took work to get to this point of self-acceptance. It is a work in progress.
- Scott
Posted by Beckett on May 31, 2012, at 22:48:26
In reply to I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by sleepygirl2 on May 30, 2012, at 19:04:03
>I get bitchy about something stupid, or act too silly.
This could be a definition of normal.
Posted by sigismund on June 1, 2012, at 23:21:53
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by Willful on May 31, 2012, at 17:36:20
>And they're so different?
Umm, what are we talking about here exactly? Normal? Well, yes in some ways I think they are. Even the world I grew up in here was very different from today with a whole stack of different assumptions of what was reasonable, right and proper.
I often worry that in our condescension toward the past, our provinciality and our assumptions that science has discovered this and that for which cures have been found that we slip into some kind of naive state. How unfortunate for all the people living before now that they did not know how to diagnose and treat bipolar 4, that sort of thing.
Posted by sigismund on June 2, 2012, at 15:54:03
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by sigismund on June 1, 2012, at 23:21:53
This brings to mind Alan Bennett's account of his mother's depression. Both parents were good simple people, he had a scholarship to Cambridge (?), his mother decides that she needs to 'branch out a bit' and, having consulted some women's magazines about what is normal, gets in some sherry and biscuits and asks the vicar round for this after church. Her subsequent history was tragic. I attribute Bennett's loathing of many politicians to his affection for his parents innocence.
I rather liked this in yesterday's paper about Roland Barthes.......
Mythologies is often an angry book, and what angered Barthes more than anything was common-sense, which he identified as the philosophy of the bourgeoisie, a mode of thought that systematically pretends that complex things are simple, that puzzling things are obvious, that local things are universal - in short that cultural fantasies shaped by all the dirty contingencies of power and money and history are in fact just the natural order of the universe. The critics job, in Barthes view, was not to revel in these commonsensical myths but to expose them as fraudulent. The critic had to side with history, not with culture. And history, Barthes insisted, 'is not a good bourgeois'.
Bit of a feel of the early 60s there.
Posted by sleepygirl2 on June 6, 2012, at 16:24:23
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means..., posted by sigismund on June 1, 2012, at 23:21:53
I used to daydream about living in an earlier time, kind of back to basics, log cabin type of living, somewhere I could take up some sort of craft.
When I compare myself to others, I usually come up short.
It's annoying really.
Posted by sigismund on June 7, 2012, at 15:22:54
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means... » sigismund, posted by sleepygirl2 on June 6, 2012, at 16:24:23
I was reading that the the Caspian sea, 18,000 years ago was a grassy basin and then the climate changed and ice caps melted and the fresh water filled it, rising at the rate of an inch a day for some periods.
There have been so many different pasts and we know so little of them. Usually it's just some version of medieval Europe and the noble savage to accept or reject. And it's not as if history has been going that long, no more than 100,000 years.
When we compare ourselves to others we always seem to come up short. When I see photos of myself from my 20s I think I look pretty good now, but then I just felt I wasn't as good as other people my own age.
Posted by anacarin on September 19, 2012, at 0:01:28
In reply to Re: I'm having trouble with what normal means... » sleepygirl2, posted by sigismund on June 7, 2012, at 15:22:54
OK, then. I'm holding my nose and jumping in. I feel like I'm really deep in the rabbit hole tho I've never read the book nor seen the movie. I am having the strangest experience! It doesn't feel at all outer body, more way aged body with only a vestige of a mind left, but I could swear (assuming that was anything I found interesting) I came to this site SEARCHing bipolar + forum, and I'm pretty positive I was on a page where several folks on one topic spread across the page while neatly stacked one atop another (my mind may be fixated on seeing other forums set up that way), I am about as positive as I can be that I pressed a hyperlink under someone's name and was able to get (eventually) to Dr. Bob and his ideas about how the site was different from any other, but now when I want to know more about someone I just get to anonymously email that person. Does it sound like I'm complaining? I'm seriously questioning if I can accurately remember where I just was and what I was doing which takes me to sleepy girl -- another puzzle. All summer I have fought with a fatigue unbelievable and often after awakening from a brief (say 20 minute nap), I lie there thinking where am I and how did I get here. I don't recall ever experiencing that before. It's literally like I cannot keep track of myself. Well, I am pretty aged, somehow I thought I might be able to bypass that. AND, I've been diagnosed over 25 years as a bipolar (then Manic Depressive) and I am learning it's not getting any easier. If I can fit in somewhere and someone would be kind enough to outline the simplest of directions for me as to where to find myself doing so, I would love it. Thank You!
This is the end of the thread.
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