…and being negatively affected emotionally by negative occurrences considered some sort of pathology? It seems backwards to me.
Because it’s only a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of a human heart? Some facades are thick.
I am a rock, I am an Island.
And a rock feels no pain,
and an Island never cries
At least I prefer you to see that, while I’m raging inside.
See ‘Stoic’. I don’t think there is a ‘normal’. Not on this topic.
I also know people who fly into a rage and scream abuse if the toast isn’t buttered properly.
Is that more normal?
Can you elaborate? I’m especially unsure what you mean with the second question. In my experience, a person is expected to feel bad when bad things happen, but you’re saying that people who feel bad when bad things happen are considered pathological by somebody or other?
-FrL-
Well, yeah…I don’t mean not feel bad at all, just that there seems to be a sort of invisible cut off point at which others seem to think “OK, x days have gone by and he’s still not happy after his breakup/dog died/job loss; he needs Prozac”. Or someone who returns to work all normal-seeming 3 days after their spouse dies and that’s seen as some sort of normal triumphant emotional resilience.
I think that it’s chiefly a construct of people not wanting to deal with others’ pain and perhaps some sort of meme planted by the makers of Prozac or something (OK, that’s hyperbole), rather than any actual assessment of potential pathology. There seems to be a sort of societal pressure to not be emotionally affected by things that are most definitely emotionally affecting events/circumstances.
I agree. Think about when people say “How are you?” They don’t really want to hear about your troubles, they want reassurance that their world is OK. The last thing they want to hear is that there is crisis in the life of someone they know.
Maybe not so much “normal” vs “non-normal”.
Maybe more so pragmatic…
If you really care about stuff as much as a compassionate person should and are are emotionally devestated by truelly devastating events, you’ll end up as an action paralyzed individual, with a black hole where your heart should be, in a mental institution, unable to function in society or take of yourself.
Issues I am try to work through myself.
Blll
Yeah, and what I’m getting at is that it seems as though any dip below that expectation is considered pathological in social circles, and I’m wondering if that social construct is bleeding into the mental health profession. Of course, it behooves mental health professionals and drug companies for as many people as possible to think they’re crazy, so it perhaps goes hand in hand. But how accurate?
BTW, in case anyone’s wondering, no, I’m not going through anything like that, although I have been known to be less than dazzlingly effervescent in the face of actual negative occurrences.
People have an amazing fear of negative emotions. So strong they’re willing to turn a blind eye in response to their own negative emotions in pursuit of punishing the negative emotions of others.
(Example: You get angry about something. Person B can’t handle you being upset, so they get upset and use their anger to punish YOU for being angry, usually in entirely inappropriate ways because well, they’re angry. But they deny their own anger and declare that it is yours that is inappropriate and therefore deserves punishment. Silly and illogical, but it happens all the time. Especially in situations where person B holds a position of power over you.)
Exactly, as I said above. The other side of it is that there is a legitimate organizational need to minimize disruptions caused by outside forces and emotional instability. This results in a pressure to return to a state of normality as quickly as possible, which unfortunately, can result in an adverse reaction to more severe damage to members of that organization, depending on the remaining Humanity of the people in charge. People with dead hearts in positions of power can be really destructive toward subordinates who suffer damage.
(Hell, for that matter, people without character or integrity in positions of power can be destructive of everyone and anything that threatens their power.)
I’ve read that the people who are most realistic about their future prospects those who are slightly depressed. People who are considered normally happy tend to somewhat overestimate how well things will turn out for them. People who suffer from serious depression tend to somewhat overestimate how bad things will turn out for them. The people who best estimate how things will turn out are those who are slightly depressed.
Yeah; don’t I know it! 
From Viktor E Frankl’s ‘Man’s search for meaning’, an account of his time in concentration camps from an analytical point of view(Frankl was, before and after the war, a psychiatrist):
" I think it was Lessing that said ‘There are things which must cause you to lose your reason, or you have none to lose’. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour. Even we psychiatrists expect the reaction of a man to an abnormal situation, such as being committed to an asylum, to be abnormal in proportion to the degree of his normality. [My italics]
…
The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such commonplace sights to [the prisoners] after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move [the prisoners] any more."
Person X may react with great sensitivity to their dog dying because in context, it’s horrendous for them. Person Y may return to work 3 days after their spouse died because it’s just the latest in a long list of crap stuff that they’ve had in their life and they are fairly used to it. And anything else along that spectrum.
And what about the influence of culture - ethnic, workplace, blah blah - has on these situations?
This is why, when somebody says to me “How are you?” or “How’s it going?”, I answer, “Yes!” It’s interesting to watch the reactions - it throws some people completely out of their stride, while others just keep going as if they didn’t even notice my answer (because they probably didn’t, which illustrates your point).
People (and cultures) also have very different ideas of private/public. Just because someone isn’t showing their negative emotions to you doesn’t mean they aren’t feeling them and showing them at other times.
I think this happens just because it makes people feel uncomfortable and helpless when they see someone is grieving. Many people don’t know what to say in that situation. The ones who bring up Prozac are probably only doing so out of desperation for something to do/suggest to “help” or “fix” things. No reputable psychiatrist would actually prescribe Prozac for a normal grief (grief can truly become pathological if it is interfering with the person’s functioning for a prolonged period of time).
Some people do find comfort in trying to maintain their normal routine to the extent they can after a tragedy has interrupted things.
When my dad died (a devastating loss for me), I kept going to my college classes as if nothing had happened and did not divulge what happened to anyone there. I was grieving privately for a very long time afterwards, but I did not want or need to make a public scene over it.
Moral of the story: Everyone has their way of dealing with stuff. No need to hassle people over not “getting over it” fast enough, and no need to hassle those who don’t appear as broken up as you might expect.