Perception and reality

I asked a question in therapy today, to which I should not have expected an answer because I see now it is rather complicated. I saw the movie ‘Life of Pi’ a couple of days ago and after some initial, rather superficial thoughts about it, I have had the weekend to ponder it a little more deeply, and relate it to my life as I react to ‘stuff’ happening in the moment. I am also pondering it in a broader context, as well as in a 'lifetime memories' context.

So at first I asked, “Is it saner to make up a different reality so that you can live with an extremely traumatic situation or is it saner to face the true reality? “ He ventured to answer that with “To some extent we all make up some parts of our reality in order to feel better”. But that just led to more questions in my head…such as “Wouldn’t that be a rather dangerous thing for somebody ‘on the border’ to do?...Wouldn’t that just tip them over the edge?...Cause permanent inability to function in this world? Lose one’s grip on reality?...Is there such thing as a happy, fully functioning Schizophrenic?” Are psychotic individuals non-functioning only because they create an alternate reality of feared but not actually real events? Would they function, and perhaps even be considered normal and healthy if they instead made up a reality that worked FOR them instead of AGAINST them?

So, the next question I asked...to which I did not receive an answer was “Is it better to perceive a horrible situation differently or is that just a cop out?” So in my mind, I answered ‘Yes’. Of course answering an either/or question with a simple ‘yes’ means that ‘it depends’. It depends on the circumstances and whether it makes you feel better or makes you feel like you are giving up, that there is no hope and thus you are just convincing yourself to accept something awful as ‘not awful’ without really buying into it. The problem is how to tell one from the other. Maybe a few more questions would help. 1) Does your shift in perception simply allow somebody to walk all over you? 2) Does it suck all motivation out of you by causing you to ‘not want’ anything and therefore strive for nothing? 3) Does it simply bury the problem so it can fester at a subconscious level where you cannot tell it is eating at you? 4) Does it result in having no identity whatsoever? 5) Does it push you and your kids into poverty?, OR, in a more positive light 6) Does it make the problem cease to be a problem in your mind? 7) Does it stop attracting more of the same because it is no longer a focus? 8) Does it help you function on a living, earning, physical, emotional, intellectual and relating level?

Now this brings up a different kind of question “What if you can’t tell ahead of time whether it will be beneficial or harmful?” How long do you wait to find out if a perception change was ultimately a good or bad thing? How do you tell if it was healthy or unhealthy coping? How far do you ‘push’ reality? Ie: turn your memories into something completely different as in ‘Life of Pi’? Or does one do this on a more conscious level, picking metaphors that work without completely losing one’s memory of the real event? In essence, just remembering it differently. Either a ‘glass half full’ kind of thing OR a fantastical story that doesn’t hurt as much because it is so far removed from the true, painful reality? Certainly, for me, remembering the grim reality in all its real, horrible detail does not work for me. Pushing it out of my memory for it to simply show up over and over again in a never-ending pattern does not work for me. Does this idea of shifting one's perception enable one to find a middle ground that works?

And how does this apply to living in the present with an ongoing traumatic situation, whether it be bullying, spousal abuse, poverty, illness, isolation, unemployment or something else?

Wow!!!
I truly admire your thinking skills! I will venture to say that if all of humanity
were to apply such thorough examination before making assumptions and decisions, there would be far fewer problems in the world. Like war and poverty for instance.
The questions that you listed are amazing in my humble opinion.
I'm fairly certain that my particular problem is totally different than yours.
But I find that I am able to apply the questions you have shared here in this post to my situation also.

I don't have any answers that even approach the profundity of the questions that you're asking. I think they're fantastic questions. But I wonder too, if pondering perception vs. reality too much takes you (one) out of reality (whatever that might be), so that it's difficult to know what it really is.

That didn't make a lot of sense, did it?

I was watching some old clips of Bob Ross on YouTube with my son the other day. In his version of reality, "there are no mistakes, only happy accidents." Ergh. I'm too muddle-headed to convey my thoughts here. Think I'll just stop and offer support instead.

Actually, it makes a ton of sense. I spend a lot of time in my head and I know that these kinds of questions can send me into a dissociative state. Which, for me is a kind of 'non-existence'. Certainly not reality. Or at least a warped one. Or it has sent me into a basic 'animal like' state where I have no sense of identity or self awareness whatsoever. Fortunately (unfortunately?) this state does not last long.

Perception is a very strange beast. We all perceive things in a particular way, with a bias, in every situation. Perception is relative. There is nobody on the face of the planet that can perceive the actual reality of anything. Only perhaps a robot, but that is a bit different, lol. Not a therapist, not a client, not a PHD lecturer, not a scientist, nobody. If your perception changes, dont worry about it. It will still be incorrect because of the above reasons.

Wow indeed. What a beautifully clear concise and logical presentation of fundamental questions that aren’t only of philosophical interest, but to me at least, addressing stuff I’m specifically needing to work out for myself personally right now. Thank you for such an erudite and deeply insightful post.

It’s almost serendipitous what you’ve put forward because I’m currently pussyfooting around the idea of consciously and deliberately altering my perceptions of things (the past, myself, my world view – all of which are unrelentingly negative at the moment) in favour of seeing things in a light that is basically positive to, for and about me, and also positive in and of themselves.

The value of seeing things positively, regardless of the true ‘reality’ of the things being reinterpreted, is that I get to feel good. Relieved of a load of fear, relieved of having to live in threat/defensive mode all the time, relieved of having to ‘sort everything out’ in order to arrive at some higher level of understanding and healing. I just want to feel better and if changing my view of reality achieves that, I’m all for it!

The downside is everything you’ve mentioned in your post. My biggest fear would be, is ‘reality’ going to then sneak up behind me at some point in the future and get me bigtime, puncture my little bubble of positive perceiving and rub my face in the horror of my own wrong thinking, yet again? That scares the hell out of me and stops me being able to push ahead with making the conscious decision to train my brain to think in different ways, ultimately creating new pathways that will spontaneously and automatically make me perceive things in a positive light. The opposite of how I now think.

And always the niggling voice of doubt and uncertainty based on the need to KNOW. Am I just distorting reality and isn’t it healthier in the long run to face reality and truth (whatever that is) head on without shirking or avoiding. And if I take myself off and live in Pollyanna land, is that just going to incite others to anger and make them deliberately tear me and my happy little reality to pieces?

Great questions and thoughts Athena, thanks for starting this thread.

Torn

I have witnessed this "deliberate tearing to pieces" over and over again in many different situations. But have simply not been able to understand what
motivates a person to intentionally bring misery on another person.

For me, digging into the harsh reality in all its horrible detail is the only thing that has worked. Avoiding it has caused substantially more pain than acknowledging/speaking/writing about it. It's the only that that has stopped it from "showing up", as you say, over and over again. It is only as I have dug into it has it lessened its grip over me. And now I have come to a place in my memories where I am glad to have the memories, as I see them as belonging to me. I do not need to obsess about them and I do not need to avoid them. It is a very comfortable place for me and it feels like an authentic place.

But at the same time that I have acknowledged its terribleness, my perception of its impact on me has also shifted. I see the myriad of ways in which the trauma has messed me up, but I also see the ways in which it has led me to a life of incredible richness (I'm not talking money here) and meaning. I would not do the work that I love and I would not have the people in my life that I love had I not gone through this, and come out the other side. I also have a sense of mastery because I have survived and thrived through something difficult, and I think that recent challenges have seemed small in comparison. Without the experience and the healing from it, I would not parent in the way that I do, and one super amazing preteen kid wouldn't exist.

So I don't know if I am in the kind of "middle ground" that you were inquiring about. My perception has changed but the reality never has. I don't think you were setting them (perception, reality) to be orthogonal to each other, but they are not this way to me.

This is the million dollar question.

What is reality? Is it not another perception? We only ever see situations through our own heads and therefore our cognitive interpretations. Human beings put labels on situations to make them understandable but emotions are a different story. Different people react different and perceive situations in a unique way.

I believe it is up to us to decide how we will interpret what happened to us, whether we see it as positive or negative or a mixture of the two and the reasons why. This doesn;t mean neglecting emotional responses but using those to guide the way. With time it gets easier to put space around thoughts and then there's a clear choice how to look at what happened and how this impacts on the present.

I'm not sure I think the same way about various mental illnesses as you do (schizophrenia) and how they come about. I lived in a fantasy world for most of my teen and young adult years (roughly 15-35 years of age) but am not schizophrenic and was in therapy most of the time from 20-55 years of age. I don't think we "decide" to make up different worlds, they may happen or not, depending on our background and personal makeup and they may be helpful or can be hurtful, again depending on our own lives and personal situation. How we live our lives is always our reality; how other's see us and what we are doing and thinking is not as important, I don't think, as how we work with ourselves and what we want and what we are hoping for. I did not want to live in a fantasy world and felt stuck because of the time I did live in one, the habit of it, and my fear of the "outside" world. But a lot of therapy helped me learn to work through all that, the therapy and working through also being part of my life. One cannot "be" in another life besides one's own, no matter what one thinks.

Somehow this is quite comforting, thanks. And even tying perception to 'not worrying' about it reminds me that one of the major reasons I want(need?) to shift my perception is precisely to STOP WORRYING. There may be many roads to happiness, but the saying that is probably most famous is DON'T WORRY, BE HAPPY!

I like this - a nice concise statement about what we are trying to achieve. A positive take on something may feel risky but perhaps we need to have a more realistic view of the worst that can happen and try to at least tone it down. And then weigh that against the upside of being freed from fear and negativity.

Yes, I think you are in the 'middle ground'. Your post is very inspiring - I'm happy to see that this shift in perception IS possible.

Since writing my first post in this thread, I realize that my extreme wish to change actual 'reality' in my head is just simply not going to happen if I wish to remain sane. I simply cannot 'trick' my brain into believing something different and if somehow I managed to succeed, it probably wouldn't be all that healthy anyway. I will have to settle for the less extreme 'change in perception'. I will have to re-read your post when I need to remind myself that it can be done.

Yes, and...too bad...it would appear that in the face of past or continuing traumatic events, changing one's perception is THE ONLY OPTION.

This is so interesting to me, because I am going through this shift in perception right now. I bet my therapist struggled for a long time with whether or not to tell me what he saw was ACTUALLY going on vs. what I perceived.

I fell in love with my husband mainly through email, and he omitted a lot of information because he didn't want conflict. We've had an extremely difficult marriage, and for a long time I tried to protect him and adapt to his ways, but I wound up just feeling completely overwhelmed and frustrated. It turns out that my husband has Asperger's (or whatever the DSMV is going to call it now). So now I have to deal with the reality of my situation - the man I fell in love with never actually existed (which is true in most romantic relationship as time goes on, but in my case it's more pronounced).

So I don't have a clear-cut answer, but I know how devastating that perception shift can be.

I also wanted to add that I think a lot of abuse situations continue and escalate because people ignore the reality and cling to their own warped perceptions. If we don't want to deal with abuse, we pretend it isn't happening or we try to convince ourselves that our intuition is wrong.

Ignoring reality can be particularly devastating when kids/vulnerable people are involved. If you're just taking care of yourself and not really hurting anyone else with your self-protective, skewed worldview, I think it can work okay in a lot of cases.

I think the hardest perception shift is to find a middle ground instead of going from one extreme to the other. You seem to have shifted from an 'idealization' stage (due to him being on his best behaviour at the beginning) to feeling like this person you fell in love with 'never existed'. I think that the person you fell in love with did and does exist - it's just that it is only a part of him. Now that you've seen the whole person you seem to be denying the existence of the part that you first met. I struggle with this because for me, those I am closest to go from 'all good' to 'all bad' but they are in fact a mix. I have to force myself to remember (and nurture) the good parts. It does seem to be starting to work for me.

These are wise words - thank you for the reminder. I'm just at such a low place right now after years and years of trying so hard and not having any form of emotional reciprocity. We have three small children, and I will always have to be the main source of parenting and nurturing for them, all while dealing with a man who signed up to be my life partner but treats his family members largely with anger, negativity and irritability. Neurological baggage is pervasive, and our marriage will always be marked by difficulties in communication and emotional connection.

I JUST emailed my T about this same thing. I told her that I realize that in order for me to not feel crappy, I create a perception of how things are... I create a happier story that allows me to not feel lonely, not feel scared... not feel whatever it is... but then it just makes it SO much harder when reality smacks me in the face... It happened this weekend.. most of my stuff is regarding relationships. And my T and I are going to have the same conversation. Unfortunately, I've been working on some rough stuff with my mom and dealing with a shifting perception with that... and understanding who she really is as her defining identity is clearly no longer mother. So that reality keeps hitting me in the face. And that middle ground is so hard to deal with. so I'm hoping that now T can give me some thoughts to help me learn to cope healthily so I can face reality in a way that isn't so painful and damaging... because trying to escape it doesn't work for long.

I can so empathize with you here. I married a Narcissist. That sounds pretty horrible. But remember what he was like when you first met him. Do you believe that it is possible to get that guy back? If you don't believe it is possible, then have you considered that you have a choice to stay with him or leave him? Admittedly, not a fun prospect to consider or go through, but personally, I wish I hadn't waited 20 years to see that I had a choice. His manipulative anger and guilt trips as well as my fear of loneliness, misguided hope that someday he would change and my avoidance of conflict at all costs kept me in the marriage. This sounds very depressing, and again, unfortunately I know exactly what that feels like. The fact that you used the word "always" doesn't sound like you have much hope for positive change. But it also sounds like you are resigned to continue in a state of endless suffering. You deserve a better life than that. I think you need some 'out of the box' thinking. What are your choices? What is the worst case scenario if you stay? or if you leave? The best case?

Your post reminds me of an article I just read. It's an interview with the author of the new book 'The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking.' This quote from the book really spoke to me: "Positive thinking is about actually trying to make your mental state something that it isn't, trying to fill your mind with happy thoughts and feelings...sometimes the real skill you need is a not-doing skill, sort of learning to resist the urge to always try to do everything right." My urge is to go the positive thinking route because I like the idea of wiping out all the negative (a make believe alternate reality). But it simply does not work, because the negative situation exists, it does not go away just because you 'will it' to. It comes right back to 'hit you in the face' as you said. It seems that we simply need a calmer and more balanced way of reacting to bad situations. We need to recognize that it is not a sabre tooth tiger about to eat us...that we can have the emotion, sit with it and tell ourselves to deal with it later when we've calmed down because thinking with an emotional brain usually doesn't work very well. It only gives us two options - fight or flee. Our intellectual brain will come up with way more options than that. Get professional help, negotiate, gather emotional support, figure out a way to make the situation/person tolerable to us, reduce frequency of contact to the minimum required, etc, etc.

Yeah athens.. totally.. I think that is completely it. I have to learn to look at the positive parts of my life but not paint them positive without warrant. Great post.. I'll let you know what my T says when she responds.