Welcome to Things We Were Told
...Finding the things we thought were good for us, actually weren't. And vice versa
A big part of my work as a Clinical Psychologist has been helping people explore the ‘shoulds’ they have in their lives. The expectations that they hold, often unconsciously, that define how they feel about their daily lives. This comes up a lot in work with parents, especially those in heteronormative relationships, where the difference between the stories that we are told about parenting vs the reality of parenting in the modern world can be vast. In my book, Parenting For Humans, I talk a lot about these stories, and how we can figure out the story we want to create for ourselves and our families.
For those of us who are neurodivergent and unaware - I think that some of those ‘shoulds’ are what help us create masks. Is help the right word? No, because masks can be adaptive but they’re not always helpful and can even be harmful. But the unspoken rules of ‘shoulds’ can give us a guide. They help us fit in, help us feel more certain about what is expected of us, help us feel… normal.
Part of unmasking for me has been questioning a lot of those things - which are generally seen as socially expected - to figure out how I actually operate best. So this series - Things We Were Told - will look at some of those things that we were told were good for us that actually turned out to be not so great for me (like eating three meals a day, for example), as well as the things we were told were bad for us that turned out to be really good (like working with the TV on in the background).
And, the funny thing is, these aresocial norms that might turn out to be not so great for most people. Both the physician Gabor Mate - who speaks a lot about the links between trauma and neurodivergence - and clinical psychologist Dr Naomi Fisher - who is an expert in self directed learning - have referred to neurodivergent people as ‘canaries in the coalmine’. For a variety of different reasons or possibilities, it may be that those who think outside the norm, are more easily able to see how tricky some of those norms are.
So, whether you consider yourself neurodivergent or not, perhaps these are some should's we can all let go of together.