Making Normal

Most of the practical suggestions that psycho-hyphenates make are for people who are a) usually okay, but having a bad time, or, b) can remember a time when they were okay, but then something happened to mess that up.

Then there are people who, c) cannot remember being “okay”, and in fact wonder what the hell you’re all talking about.

Which is me. A long time ago, when I was in early recovery, my GP referred me to some NHS therapy sessions (those were the days): the therapist who triaged me asked if I could remember a time when I felt happy or “all right”, I said I couldn’t, and an expression flickered across her face. I didn’t understand what and why at the time, but it didn’t look like an “oh goody” expression.

C-type people, who can’t remember ever feeling “okay”, have to do something Dr Scott Eilers calls “making normal”. They need to define for themselves what “being okay” means, arrange their lives to fit that definition, monitor themselves for how well they are living up to it, praise themselves for doing well, and be gentle with themselves when they slip and need to get back on track.

Regular people, by contrast, just live. They don’t need to put any effort into maintaining their idea of how they should be living, of what’s “normal”. They don’t have any sense that how they live is a choice, whereas for C-types, everything they do is a choice, and nothing is natural. It’s all conscious. A construction. It has to be kept up by habit and effort. “Making normal” imposes a lot of overhead load.

How do you spot us? We're the ones who make lists of how we should live, even if it’s reduced to a slogan like Work hard, exercise, eat right, don’t drink too much, stay away from drugs, avoid losers users and abusers, and don’t buy things you don’t need with money you don’t have to impress people you don’t like.