Self-Care Tip #243 – See yourself as special rather than your pain and know that you will find your normal again.
What is your normal?
When we were kids, we all had a perspective of what normal was. Let’s say it was “here.” Let’s imagine we were lovely then, nurtured and emotionally bonded. We struggled through peer conflicts, social anxiety and rivalry. We wanted a bike.
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Then we got a little older. Maybe our parents divorced. Maybe, a sibling died. Maybe we were abused or in an accident and damaged. Damage changes normal. What we never would have thought would be acceptable in our lives became acceptable. We suffered. We lived. Life was indiscriminate and ignored our status. We think there must be a mistake.
What is our normal at one point, filtered through remaining hopes, grew into regenerating fantasies, through real potential and it moved again. We are older now and more suffering comes.
Where is our normal? We survive our child, our own dear perfect boy, hanging from a tree. Normal? No dear God! No! And we continue to live.
Two years. Two years are what it takes for our biology to catch up to the shock. Two years are what it takes for us to begin to accept and realize that in this new normal we care again. We choose it in fact.
People don’t remember his name or talk about him and we can’t remember his eyes. We are ashamed and lose our breath from panic just trying to see them. We want to bang our head because we know there is something wrong about feeling normal! Ever! Again! after that. But we do.
Our normal mutates over financial ruin, abandonment and a growing healthy list of disfiguring illnesses. We accept them and say yes please. Live. We want to live. This is acceptable. This is normal. Our friends die. Our memory. We can’t find our teeth. Our heart stops. We die and the world finds normal. The world chooses just like we did.
What we don’t think will ever be allowed to happen while we brush hair, clip our nails and microwave food, happens. We endure these changes. We find normal again.
What is your normal?
My brother, Vance Johnson MD, is a physical medicine and rehabilitation specialist. He said that during his residency, close to 100% of spinal cord injury paralysis survivors he worked with wanted to die after their injury. Many of them would beg him to let them die. They would cuss at him for keeping them alive.
I leaned very heavily on the studies and data during those times. It was very hard.
Vance said that what kept him faithful to his task was knowing that close to 100% of them after two years would be glad they were kept alive.
Even the ones who were basically breathing through a straw and that’s all that moved on them; even they wanted to live. These people found a new normal.
Where is our normal? We will want it. We will adapt. Biology will catch up to our reality.
Remember that your pain is not special. You are special. Not your pain. Pain is normal.
Question: When this happened to you, how did normal find you despite the rubble? How does this concept feel to you, that your pain is not special? Does it make you angry or what? Please tell me your story.