Mental Profile

As I was laying in bed tonight I realized this needed to be written. I couldn’t go to sleep without waking up and writing down this latest idea of mine. The world has recently adopted the term mental health to include all of those who have some difference from the norm. It may be referred to as a disorder or it may be an illness, or it may be a deficit.

Whatever the case they chose the term mental health to try to reduce the negativity of the concept that some people don’t have good mental health. No matter how they describe it, it’s making people feel inferior or imperfect or at The very least, not normal.

Therapy has taught me one of the worst things I can do for my mental health is to continuously compare myself to normality. To strive to be better and more normal and perhaps even cure myself through therapy or medication.

The problem is, every single human being on this earth has a different mental profile. Everyone is different. There is no normal cuz we are unique and are mixture of mental issues is unique.

Your mental profile, or your mental health for that matter are you. You were born with it and you have lived your life up until this point being you. At some point along your timeline someone may have come along and named some of the symptoms you have. I was 27 when I first discovered the existence of the term attention deficit disorder. I was around 50 when I learned the term asexual. I was 56 when I learned I might have an anxiety disorder or a number of other named disorders or syndromes in my mental health profile.

Previous to these announcements I was me. Following the discovery of these named group of symptoms, I proceeded to obsess briefly, followed by the mental task of rewriting my entire life story backwards from today using this new perspective.

In the case of attention deficit disorder it explained so many things that previously were just explained by the term me. For the first time me had some answers, and excuses. I wasn’t just me I was part of a larger group of people who all experienced life with this disorder. I only use the word because attention deficit disorder uses the word. I prefer not to refer to it as a disorder but regroup it back into the term me.

for millions of people around the world they still live their existence believing that they are themselves. They do not think about mental health. They may have friends with attention deficit disorder or they may have friends with low self-esteem or they may even have a partner that doesn’t love themselves but to them they are still them, orr me, from their perspective.

When you try to tell someone as an adult that they might have a disorder or a condition, they may dismiss you and continue living their life, or they may think about it for some time and like me reestablish a new perspective on life with this new information

I have seen both examples has adults learn more about who they are and why they are. The thing is it’s still considered a negative. Something that therapy or medication can repair. Rather than learning to deal with it and work within its confines isn’t the normal treatment path. The issue that I’m writing about this evening is that every single human on Earth has some form of mental profile that differs from the textbook norm. If they don’t realize it they may think they are normal. Nobody is normal. Not one single person. Not even the fictional character of Ned Flanders is normal.

If this is the way we talk people to exist, then attention deficit disorder wouldn’t be called attention deficit disorder, but rather something else entirely. A group of symptoms and education might lead us into how this is an advantage rather than telling us all we’re broken. I sincerely believe that people with attention deficit disorder Excel beyond average in certain fields and certain careers and certain mindsets. It would not surprise me to learn that billionaires are all attention deficit disorder. I remember reading that Bill Gates said he was.

I have no facts to back that up and it could just as easily be incorrect, but the concept that certain mental profiles are good at some things and other mental profiles are good at other things makes logical sense. Society as a whole is a very complex machine and specific parts exist to make a complete whole.

The concept was better in my mind and I used to use the analogy of a jigsaw puzzle and the people with attention deficit disorder that has certain puzzle piece and people with low self-esteem fitter certain puzzle piece etc. Tonight as I was writing that I realized it’s not really a good analogy because puzzle pieces are all essentially the same. They’re not really different in the way that I was hoping to describe.

The point is we should stop thinking about disorders and syndromes and instead start thinking about the special uniqueness of each of us. I suppose in some ways this could be bordering on communism. When you’re born and refers to discover that you have a math issue or your autistic or you have the tension deficit disorder you’re immediately put into the path of the career choices that that particular brain profile matches best.

I’m not certain that’s a bad idea, but the world seems to believe it is and we have a history of fearing communism to the point of almost humorous black listing and worse. The near mention of communism or sympathy to that concept ruins lives in the 60s.

However I believe that people suffer immense disadvantage by not being able to find their own way to the past that would be best for them. I’ve had a much more sheltered and sold life than most of my peers and really only had one job for most of my life. I didn’t get the chance to try out five or six careers along the way. I was good at retail sales. In some ways, it is the ideal job for me. It offers minimum responsibility or decision making. It is essentially a job where you show up, and wait for things to happen in front of you. A customer appears and you make them smile and help them to decide what they wanted to buy when they arrived. I feel there is no better job in the world for me than helping someone make a decision easier. If I believe in the product it is an easy decision to help a customer buy it. My reward is there happiness, and a paycheck. Back in the early days of computing my paycheck grew quite well as I was such a good salesman People came back and people referred.

It was only when I didn’t believe in the project that it became difficult for me and practically I had to quit. I could not sell someone a product I did not believe was right for them.

That is the ideal career for me. Or at least the version of me that I live now. It may not be right for you but that’s because you’re mental profile is different than mine.

I suppose in some way there is an aptitude test that you take in school that is supposed to guide you towards things you might be good at. I don’t remember mine but I I suspect that this tries to do exactly that. It does not however take into effect the mental profile that doctors have diagnosed or people are unaware of. I find that there are a lot of people out there happily willing to claim they have attention deficit disorder without an official diagnosis merely because they forget what they went to the kitchen for or they lose their keys.

I assure you it’s a difference between saying you have attention deficit or because blah blah blah, and people who suffer greatly by this name to disorder is different. Likewise, it is impossible for a person with high confidence and high self-esteem to understand how disabling it is for those of us that never figured out how to like themselves. Self-hate, or even self-dislike is probably the biggest issue. Every aspect of every decision of everything I have done since I was young is based around the concept of! Please don’t yell at me. Everything. I have modeled my entire life around answering questions and trying to make you smile. I don’t know how to ask for things and my life motto, perhaps I might even call it my prime directive, is to not interrupt, annoy, or inconvenience. Three things that could get me yelled at. Three things that might make you disappointed in me.

The day I discovered how significant this was, I once again rewrote my entire life backwards with this new perspective understanding many of my life choices and decisions. Had I known this when I was 15 or even 7 might have made… No, would have made a substantial difference in who I am today.

Looking back that way serves no purpose. Looking forward with this new information has helped. I now like myself, and everything is different. However, I still don’t like being yelled at and much of my life is still living trying to get praise and trying to get people to respect me and my intelligence and like me.

There are many people who do not feel this way, and I believe it is incomprehensible to them. Even if you spend time describing the effect that low self-esteem yourself hate can have on someone, people who don’t live that life will not understand. They will also not understand that that in itself is a mental health issue.

I have found it confident people, often beautiful people, care less about others. Because they do not hate themselves, they do not experience the thought of unworthiness and they do not need to make you like them through their actions. They assume you do and therefore they may come across as arrogant or cold or in some cases mean. They will not understand this and argue that it is not true.

Of course I’m speaking in generalizations but conceptually it is very difficult to understand the mindset of anyone other than you. And since you have been you since birth, including the first 5 years when core values are often set, it is very difficult to get people to think otherwise.

In general I would say that nobody likes being told who they are. They know. Or at least they believe they know because it’s them. How could you possibly tell them something they don’t know about themselves. Especially as adults. Doctors do it by naming the symptoms and telling them they are faults that can be fixed. This doesn’t work on the positive side of the mental profile because self-confidence and self-love are not considered negatives.

I stayed again but none should be considered negatives. Even deeply autistic children or people on the spectrum as they call it, are not defective. They are not lesser human beings. They are each a vital part of the social landscape and given a different introduction and treatment, they could be hugely successful in some field

People without autism in their lives or their friends’ lives No very little about autism. They may have seen the movie Rain man or something similar. Even without that knowledge, it is clear to see that autism is just a different brain profile. Communication may be difficult, but autistic people are often extremely intelligent and capable of masterful feats of mental dexterity but the rest of us can’t even comprehend.

Unfortunately it’s difficult to teach a normal curriculum to people with communication issue so a lot of us as to people remain at home, sadly often hidden from society. They could be making enough income for the whole family to live off given the right conditions but our society considers them on the most defective of the scale of mental health.

I hide my mental profile quite well because I only learned that it was a thing as an adult. In my childhood I was considered a loser. Never living up to my potential and never holding my attention long enough to be a practical son. I failed it almost everything I tried and since it was no name for this syndrome I was the one to blame. I was the one to be yelled at.

I can’t imagine how difficult it is for autistic children and The parents of logistics children. At least they don’t blame the child. Or at least I would hope they don’t blame the child. Autism is a named symptom or group of symptoms. They’re not doing it on purpose as I was constantly accused of.

Society is starting to talk a lot more about mental health and countries like Canada are putting a lot of money into mental health but we’re all still doing it as if it’s something wrong and something that can be and should be fixed. If my previous example of all billionaires having attention deaths to disorder were true, then curing that could change the world in ways we can’t possibly predict. Imagine if we cured dyslexia or some other weeding disability or mass disability in children through medication or severe training and suddenly in 20 years time we realized there were no more violent players. Everyone who was good at streamed instruments happened to have this single condition in common that we eliminated.

If we eliminated low self-esteem, we might find that no one on earth would be willing to do some of the jobs currently held by people who don’t feel they’re worthy of anything better. My views on that one are a bit of a toss-up because I believe there are a few things worse than not liking yourself in the grand scheme of things. It is the single greatest difference in my life. The earliest people can burn to like themselves the better as far as I’m concerned because I have seen first hand and second hand and third hand the effects of people who don’t feel they are worthy and don’t really think anyone likes them. Including themselves

I have seen I’m standing in the intelligent people and gorgeous people who believe they are ugly and no one likes them. It is one of the most painful things to witness because I am on the other side and I remember all too well what that feeling was like. Not being able to help these people understand is painful enough to bring me to tears at times.

To know that a compliment to someone who doesn’t like themselves is often considered as an insult. You might say to someone you look great today, and they will think that you are lying to make them feel good because obviously they don’t look good in their own mind. That single concept affects the world. People who don’t like themselves and are not worthy will take the job that others won’t because they feel that’s the best that they should be able to do or are worthy of.

But that’s not to say all jobs that are disgusting are done by people who hate themselves. A great many jobs are done by people who have pride and just understand that work is work. I have great respect for the people who come to this country from foreign lands and work extremely hard at low end jobs and make enough money to pay their families. I just don’t know of many white Canadians that do that. Unless they hate themselves.

I spent too much time on this and I’m starting to wander off into different topics and off the main topic and this is about the point in my right that my joy and pride waivers. I look at what I’ve written and I think it’s not good enough. People will not like it. It needs to be rewritten so many times that I know I won’t, and this document goes into my archives never to be shared.

There are thousands of them there. Literally. Literally in the old sense of the word when it actually meant literally instead of new version of the word that means the opposite, but that’s another topic.

I do have pride in my writing style and my writing, but I don’t have pride in my writing as a whole. My blogs. I have pride in the paragraphs or the concept but after I written it the other part of my brain evaluates it and criticizes it and makes me not want to share.

I’ve always been a mixture in between confidence and self-confidence. I like myself and I’m proud of myself I just don’t think other people will be. I have confidence up into the point of sharing. Again, it stems back to please don’t yell at me. The best way to not be yelled at is to not do anything that will get you yelled at and my brain set a really low bar for that filter. I might believe I have invented the most amazing thing, but if I don’t share it it can remain perfect in my mind. The first share can destroy my confidence so I don’t. I don’t risk. I don’t interrupt, annoy, or inconvenience. Add to that I don’t share my genius in case it’s not genius.

It is indeed an odd thing to believe you are smart and have great ideas but not to believe it enough to put it to the test. I’m working on it.

Through therapy I have discovered many advancements to my mental health profile. I understand myself much better and I deal with people much better. But I’m still afraid to ask for anything and I still don’t want to interrupt annoy or inconvenience and those things are quite important in everyday life I’ve found. Avoiding them keeps me alone.

I’m not a fan of being alone. I work best interactively not only for my attention deficit disorder, but because alone, I have no reason to do anything. Pretty much everything I do in my entire life is in reaction or for someone. If you’re not coming into my store to buy something I stand around doing nothing.

It’s why I was fired from my first two retail jobs. I was almost fired from my third but I cried and they changed the position just enough for me to excel. When you sell enough, you can get away with not vacuuming the floor.

Tell it to 11:30 p.m. and in conclusion before I go to sleep I’d like to believe that I do post this somewhere and I get a fan and understands what I was trying to say. One day I will write their blogs it uses these ideas and is more concise short but I like to ramble in the first draft The problem is I never got the second draft because that’s work. We reading it editing these effort. Writing is creativity. The way my brain profile works, I only do things as long as they’re interesting or educational or fun. Chores are nearly impossible.

I tried proofreading and what ends up happening is when I’m changing a word or a paragraph I end up rewriting a whole new blog often about something completely different. I can’t edit my own work. I can edit someone else’s work because that’s new and it’s almost like writing but I can’t edit my own work. That’s a chore and an excuse because an unedited version of my blog can accept criticism better. You can only fail a finished product. A product in process can’t be a failure. My loophole around being perfect.

Not sharing is a 100% method of not being criticized but not finishing as a close second. For years now I’ve ended my blogs with the tagline end of part 1. I used to do it because I thought I might edit more as I try to go to sleep or as I try to do something else I’ll come back and blog some additional content but in reality it just makes the bog look unfinished and therefore anything that isn’t perfect is still fixable.

I am like that person. I don’t quite know how to take a compliment yet because I fear the compliment won’t come and if it does, especially if the company that comes from someone I know, I may not trust or believe it because in my head it’s either perfect or it’s a piece of total crap. Frequently both. Everything is perfect until I think about it from the second person or share

This happens to me and I suspect it happens to other people so you may be able to relate. Have you ever been a fan of something and then try to share it with someone outside that fandom world? The easiest example is TV. Almost every time I am a huge fan of some TV show and I introduce it to someone who hasn’t seen it previously, I become instantly judgmental and critical of the episode I’m sharing with them. Suddenly I see it’s flaws and I project my disappointment onto my friend. I make it difficult for them to like it because if they don’t liike it I feel it might reflect on me. Something that I like is part of me and if my friend doesn’t like it, maybe they don’t like me. This is not an exaggeration and if you never experienced it you may think it is. But it’s more common I suspect than that. Anything I like I am cautious to share with people who might not. If I tell you I love Star Trek and you say you hate Star Trek I take that as a personal attack. I may have difficulty comprehending how you can’t like something that I like. It doesn’t make sense. If I like it everyone should. I understand this to be a complete fault statement but it doesn’t necessarily lessen the feeling.

I need to be liked. For the most part I’m good at it and I am liked, but it took a long time to understand that. And still today, I will try harder than I need to to be liked and sometimes when I think you don’t like me I either run away or I try to hard.

Through this I have learned one very important lesson I passed it on to you as I end this document. Never ever tell someone somebody else doesn’t like them. It’s not your emotion to tell, and you may not understand it fully because you can’t comprehend the feelings of someone else but you can definitely see the effect the telling someone they are not liked has on them. It affects everyone including those with higher self-esteem, although they may not obsess about it for the rest of their life like I would.

There are few greater joys than finding someone you like that likes you back at the same level. For many that is impossible because if you don’t like yourself you can’t be liked or loved without eventually feeling guilt and sabotaging that relationship. That is the biggest life lesson I have ever had. I have no idea whether I am capable of being loved at this point but I would like to think that I have crossed that threshold and like myself enough to not feel guilty about liking someone else. It is a huge deal that unfortunately not everyone comprehends.

Maybe one day the system will change just enough that becomes the priority of parenting and of school and of therapy and of the entire universe. You don’t suck. People don’t hate you.

“All it takes to change a life, are a few good fans.

Bit only of you’re the first one.”

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