Have you ever felt like you didn’t “measure up”, didn’t quite “cut the grade”? Perhaps you felt “not good enough” or inadequate or worthless? Maybe a sense you just didn’t have it “all together” as you would like, or you dropped the bundle? This is how Michael White, the founder of Narrative Therapy, once described the way that people may feel if affected by a sense of “personal failure” ….
The idea of “normality” is fairly new. It is also very powerful. It provides us with the criteria check lists by which we measure and compare ourselves and our “success” in life. Normality can sometimes work for us and sometimes, against us. Ideas about what is “normal” can isolate people and groups of people and give power to those who live their lives within this idea of “normality”. It also leads to us picking up invitations to feel like “failures”. Guilt gets a big part to play as well when we feel we “should” be, act, think, a certain way “or else”.
These ideas can also be used to diminish people on the basis of cultural or spiritual practices, sexuality and physical and mental health and ability.
The idea of “normality” can be interesting to consider in the light of living with something like diabetes. What is a “normal diabetic”? How do we (and others) judge ourselves and the way we manage and sometimes don’t manage our diabetes. Sometimes it is just too hard so no wonder.
The word “normal” actually comes from the Latin or French word for the carpenter’s square, or normal angle! So we may ask ,what has that got to do with us? It was only in the 19th century that the word “normal” began to be used to in relation to people and their actions, rather than just to angles.
In recent times the idea of what is “normal” is applied to just about anything !- we are judged on our height, weight, clothes, body shape, child rearing, house and garden, time taken to grieve or adjust to something like diabetes, how angy and happy we are etc etc etc
There are many places in public arena such as our popular media for example, where ideas are created which are tempting for us to measure ourselves against. Just pick up any women’s magazine; home rennoavtion mag, or watch all the advertisements on tv.
Lists about what is “normal” also abound!
The idea of what is normal is also constantly changing – we have developed so many ways of measuring our “normality” and we then equate this to what we are worth – it means we are “worthwhile” or “worthless” depending on how “well” we are doing against all of these “lists”.
For example
1. finished school (oh and went to the right school)
2. got a good job and/or went to uni
3. got married
4. had kids
5. built a house
6. got a 4 wheel drive!
7. have lots of family holidays
8. Have an HbA1c of 6 % all the time and no diabetes complications
8. have a tidy house
9. kept my figure and regularly go to the gym
This may be one person’s list by which they measure their worth…and what a list!
This leads to a sense of not being “good enough” or being a “failure” being very easy to fall into – if not fitting into what is expected, we can be overwhelmed by what can be called the “normalising gaze”.
So have a think about what lists and ideas are in your life that may actually lead you to feeling bad about yourself and falling into the trap of “failure” –
In my mind – there is NO normal – we are all beautiful and all unique
