I'll be publishing some short blogs about discovering one's own autism in adulthood and what comes next. This is part 2. (Read Part 1 Here.)
I have had doctors, psychologists, therapists, clergy, mentors, guardians, teachers, camp counsellors, bosses, professors, innumerable experts on the world and me, qualifications varying. I have been some of those things to other folks. Pastor. Dad. Boss. Counsellor. Friend.
What I am saying is I am deeply familar with the things we say to one another when there is pain and sadness. I have heard and have spoken the clichés. I consider to be among the most useless things humans can say to another, “It’s all in your head.”
We have our head, of course, but reality, in theory, is that which is beyond our head. What we feel is not real, argue the advocates of “It’s all in your head.” But they are hypocrites whose every opinion about your life dwells only in their heads.
There is much we can and do say in life that is not problematic because it is false, but is problematic because it is useless. I see this often as one who stands up for young people. “Teens are irrational,” I am told. “Millennials lack empathy,” I hear. Let’s imagine those statements are true. They can be. Those who say such things are usually implying “...unliked older folks!” And that part is where it falls apart. Teens can be irrational. I just think the evidence that their parents or teachers are not irrational is lacking. I felt that way as a teen. I am the dad of teens, and I feel that way now.
I remember once hearing a young, for a politician, politician was “arrogant,” for running for office, for thinking he could be the one to lead his country. I will never stop chuckling to myself when I imagine a candidate for a presidency or to be a prime minister is arrogant. Of course they are? By definition, so are their opponents.
We say things to dismiss people as if they are not true of ourselves. I hypothesise that “So are you!” is probably a statistically more valid come back than “I am not!” to nearly all things said in heated arguments. More true, not more useful.
It’s all in your head.
ALL of it is in your head. And we all have heads, we have brains. Just as I said in my last piece that all people who speak have an accent, we all have brains. We have mental health issues. Perhaps not a diagnosed illness with a label, but just as having a body makes pain and injury and illness inevitable, so does having a brain make some levels of struggles in your head inevitable.
And while it is peaceful and comforting to think there is a reality beyond what is in our head, as far as we can experience, there is not and never can be. Cold hard observations are seen through our organs and interpeted in our head. One can be blind with perfect eyes if the brain does not process the information correctly. We only feel pain in our head, regardless of whether or not someone can look at the what hurts and see why.
It’s all in your head. And it’s all in everyone else’s, too.
Pain is all in your head. Your happiness and sadness and religious beliefs and relationships are all in your head. “It’s all in your head” totally fails to be the dismissive comment of another’s experience it is often intended as. It is just true, and true of everyone.
And this is important to understand when we talk about how our brains experience the world around us. There is not an objective, correct way to be human. There is no more an “average” brain than there is someone speaking with “no” accent. We describe our mental health and our cognitive (dis)abilties in comparision and contrast to those around us.
Normal is at best a statistical trend, not an absolute, and not an ideal. Who is normal and who is weird is not inevitable, it is a choice, it is a decision.
I am autistic, a word the medical community of my culture in my time in history has chosen, to describe a spectrum of ways my brain experiences the world. The way I experience everything from fabrics to foods to lighting conditions to interpersonal relationships. Turtle necks shirts feel like I am being choked to death, beets make me gag, I can hear light bulbs and some hurt, and dropping hints feels more like lying than politeness. And it is indeed all in my head. I do not deny that. I just would say, if turtle necks are warm and beets are delicious and lamps are silent and subtlety is charming, that is all in your head too.
Your brain has its own “accent.” And because of the combination of your biology and family situation and local community, you may think it is unremarkable and normal, but it is not. And it is not innately right. So does mine.
People who think they have no accent are experiencing one of two things, or often a combination of them. 1. They are surrounded by people like themselves, 2. They are not paying very close attention to the people who are not like themselves. Having a normal brain is similar. You may not be autistic; I am. But you do have a brain. I have a brain. It’s all all in our heads. And if we are going to understand one another, we need to know that we have different accents. We will experience things differently, we will use different words to describe the same things, the same words to describe different things, we may have to slow down or repeat things or rephrase them.
But if you tell me I have an accent, if you tell me it’s all in my head, I am not going to deny it. All I have to say to that is, so do you.