By Leonard Citron, M.A.
How often do we ask ourselves if our behavior or the behavior of others is normal? The more important question is what does one infer by the idea of “normal”? What exactly is normal, and if we are not normal then what are we?
Normal has become a very loaded concept; if we are not normal than we are abnormal, and if we are abnormal than there is something wrong with us. This is a very black and white way of thinking about this concept, which can have a negative impact; heaven forbid in some areas of your life you don’t conform, this can be the trigger for an array of negative emotions including anxiety and depression. So let’s break normal down and see what it actually means.
My definition of normal (and shared by Wikipedia) is that it is conforming to an average. So let’s suppose the majority of people sleep 8 hours per night, the average therefore is 8. If you are someone that sleeps 5 hours or 10 hours a night, you are not conforming to the average. Does that mean there is anything wrong with you? If we have trained ourselves to think in “either/or” terms then we have a problem. This style of rigid thinking is fertile ground for the breeding of our irrational beliefs. For some, it can seem like the end of the world if they do not fit the norm, because they are driven by a firm conviction that of course they “should”, and if they don’t they must be flawed.
If you think back, we are force fed this hogwash from the beginning of our time here, perhaps nowhere more viciously than in school. There was always one kid who did not conform, cruelly labeled as the weirdo, taunted for being different, which all too-often translated into “wrong”. . This message is reinforced repeatedly in our society (think advertising, Hollywood, social media, etc.) and, frankly speaking, is a big part of what keeps us therapists in business – at some point or another, we all likely find ourselves worrying that we aren’t adhering to the “norm”.
So let’s suppose, and I know this is going to sound daft, but what if normal really is just conforming to an average and it means nothing more than that? There are always going to be outliers, some people will sleep 5 hours and other 10. Some people will be 5”0 tall and others 6”0 tall. But if you don’t conform to the average, it really does not mean that there is anything wrong with you. Many would argue the opposite, in fact. Can you accept that in some areas of your life you are not the average and that is OK?
Often in therapy, many roads lead back to accepting yourself in your entirety. This idea of normal is an external gauge to rate ourselves, but to what end? I’d bet that if we gathered data on the impact of measuring ourselves against the average, we would learn that doing so causes more distress, not less. So you have a choice: do you want to be “normal” and have ongoing worries about maintaining your normality, or free yourself from the pointless statistical and harmful exercise of trying to align yourself with the majority by being yourself, and leaving those concerns to the rest of the lemmings?