Posted by Dinah on September 17, 2004, at 10:56:02
In reply to Ah Hah? or Huh?, posted by Dinah on September 17, 2004, at 10:04:22
I was meditating on the meaning of my existance in the middle of the night last night after rushing my youngest dog to the vet, and came up with a startling insight. I think the seed of the insight was my therapist telling me (not at that moment - I didn't call him in the middle of the night, he told me this recently, but not for the dog thing) that everying would be ok (my standard question to him) because he had every confidence in my strength to deal with whatever came up. He couldn't say that external circumstances would be ok, but he had faith in me.
I'm used to thinking of myself as having disorders, but I was realizing how terribly functional some of those disorders are. And I started thinking of myself as just different. It's hard to reconstruct that middle of the night insight. But it was something along the lines of that I was a specialist, not a generalist. I was a very specialized and rather high maintenance tool in the toolchest of life, but no less valuable than the more versatile and sturdier tools. That many many eons ago, it was helpful in any given tribe of humans to have many generalists but a few specialists, and that allowances were made for the downside of being a specialist because the abilities were highly prized. But that in today's world of standardization, specialists don't offer quite as much of a value to cost ratio and so aren't as highly prized. It's not so much that I and others like me have a disorder, as that I have different strengths and weaknesses and that it is society that makes it a disorder.
I may be blabbering so a few examples.
My dissociative skills can at times be a problem, especially to me as a person. But they benefit society by letting me compartmentalize beautifully.
I can't believe my husband is the certified genius in the family. :) He may be great at spatial manipulations, but I am great at quickly assimilating information, seeing a broad range of possibilities, devising alternate routes to the same goal, and being flexible in getting there. While he needs a plan and is remarkably slow to see that the plan needs frequent adjustments to outside input. At my best I annoy the life out of many because I understand quickly what people are trying to convey, and at business meetings I tend to ping pong back and forth with the person trying to convey the information while not being as good at helping others grasp what's going on. My husband doesn't think much of my abilities and denigrates me and my disabilities (being constitutionally incapable of getting out of the house without forgetting a dozen things along the way for example). Work isn't crazy about my style either.
I either rev at 75 mph or 5 mph, and seem incapable of going a steady 35 mph. All the above things are true of me at my best. At my worst, I sleep for days at a time and can't remember my phone number.
I've been exploiting my ability to go 75 more and more and it's getting easier and easier. Now I don't do it just for work, I also use it for fun. To indulge my enthusiasms. It's getting easier and easier to go through periods where I just forget to eat and sleep, then crash into stupor. It's been getting progressively more and more that way since my son's birth, when a number of things may be singly responsible or might be working together to make it so. Hormones, stress, diabetes, decreased hours at work while maintaining the same work output, increased responsibilities at work which include scheduling myself. And I'm awful at prioritizing so I tend to get bogged down getting things right and let getting them out on time slide till the last minute. Then I pull an all nighter. Then crash. And it's getting easier and easier to do.
But I imagine that that quality was very useful to the tribe at times. For one or two members to be that way. It's not a disorder or illness. It's an adaptive variation.
Same with my obsessiveness. It can be a problem at times, but at other times it's very adaptive.
It all depends where it's focussed.Everything that is a weakness in me can also be seen as a strength. Well, almost everything. Hmmm...
I have finely stretched nerves that don't really take much to send me careening to over-activity or stupor or complete meltdown. I suppose.... hmmm... those nerves also make me highly attuned to my environment and thus aid in decision making. Although at other times I can be completely and totally oblivious to my environment. Hmmmm....
I'm trying to figure all of this out. I might run it by my therapist or even my medical psychiatrist since it is almost certainly a physical thing. But I wonder if it shouldn't be called a "disorder" but rather a "differently ordered".
poster:Dinah
thread:391920
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20040911/msgs/391943.html