Chances are if you don’t think you are, you really are.  It’s the people who think they ARE normal that are frankly, wacky.  For years, I have conducted my own completely, unscientific research and found the above to be quite true.  Check it out yourself.  Ask a group of friends and most will likely tell you they aren’t exactly, ‘normal.’  Then ask a few who  are clearly off the radar and see what they say.  It will blow your mind.

Recently, I chatted with a friend who’s a psychiatrist.  He said that working with diseases of the mind is infinitely more difficult than dealing with those of the body.  Why?  Because with diseases of the body, say diabetes or high cholesterol, people take action.  Their doctors say, ‘You must take insulin or your liver will shut down,’ or ‘You must take statins to lower your cholesterol or you could have a heart attack.’  But when he makes a diagnosis of say, ‘ADHD,’ and suggests medication, often the patient, ‘feels they are just fine,’ so sees no need to follow his advice.

“It’s criminal, really,” he confides.  “Because if I were an MD and my patient had a broken leg and I did NOT set it and put it in a cast, I could be sued.  But as a psychiatrist, if I say, ‘You are in a cyclical depression and need to take medication to help you get out of it,’ they can’t really feel or even see the urgency of the problem.  Their thinking gets in the way.  With the mind, the problem itself is the problem.”

He makes an extraordinary point.  We do not think of the mind in the same way that we do the body.  Even with expanding technologies from MRI’s to mapping neural connections, the brain is still a complex and hidden mystery.  If we bleed, we reach for a bandage.  If we feel the pain of a broken bone, we get an x-ray.  If there are gaps in our thinking–well– there are gaps in our thinking. 

Many people live their entire lives with mental illness and do absolutely nothing to help themselves.  How can they?  They think they’re fine.  We’re the crazy ones to them.  Albert Camus said that, “Some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”  Guess that means it’s easy as pie to be out of your mind.