Perception

Perception:

• In philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information Wikipedia
• Psychology. a single unified awareness derived from sensoryprocesses while a stimulus is present.       Dictionary.com
• Perceptions vary from person to person. Different people perceive different things about the same situation. But more than that, we assign different meanings to what we perceive. And the meanings might change for a certain person. One might change one's perspective or simply make things mean something else.  Transformational Dialogues

This is a concept I have struggled with quite a lot over the last few years. I've actually always had problems with perception but have only begun to be aware of my issues and started to analyze them in the last 5 or 6 years. No two people perceive any situation in exactly the same way, but for those of us with mental and emotional issues, we tend to see things in unexpectedly different ways.

I'll start with a few of the most common types of perception differences: optical illusions.  We've all seen examples of an optical illusion,  the internet is littered with websites devoted to optical illusions.  Most people love the challenge of changing their visual perception of an object. Take this picture for example: Do you see a young woman looking away? Or do you see an old woman looking down?   Most of us can change our visual perception to see both pictures.

Here's another most of us have seen: Two faces or a vase?

Perception is all about how your individual mind processes what is going on around you. A prime example of differences in social perception is the classic question of "Do you see the glass as half empty or do you see the glass as half full?" This is a difference in how we interpret the world around us. Some see things in a positive light while others are pessimistic about things. Most of us are never constantly on one side or the other of this question, our attitude will vary depending on many factors. Have a multitude of things gone wrong that day? Are we just not feeling well? Did some good fortune come our way that day? People who are having a good day tend to see the glass half full until something comes along that shakes that belief. Usually, however, as soon as the situation changes we go right back to being a half full kind of person.

Less easily recognized and understood are mis-perceptions of interactions with others. This is where I run into most of my problems with perception. When I was a child I believed that my peers didn't really care for the fact that I always got good grades in school. My peers often teased and taunted me because I was smart. I got to the point where I wouldn't tell many people when I aced a test or got straight A's on my report card. I would just smile and tell people how great their grades were, I didn't want to draw more attention to my differences from other kids. I was in elementary school when that realization hit me. In a society that pushes children to do well in school,  those that do are often the butt of ridicule and mocking for doing better than others. It didn't help that I was a fat little butterball either! Yet another difference from most of my peers that brought shame and teasing. Because of these perceptions of how my peers viewed me I learned to draw as little attention to myself as possible.  It was painful, I liked being recognized by the teachers for my grades and achievements, but I hated the looks of scorn from the other kids. I hated being called the Teacher's Pet. What my peers perceived as "sucking up" and being a "goody two-shoes" was something quite different in my mind. I was simply doing what I was good at: learning.

Most of my perceptions of these early events in my school career didn't change for me as I got older. I still felt like I wasn't liked very much, like I was an outsider. Many people that I went to school with have told me that they didn't see me this way at all over the years,  but its hard to change your perception of events in your life. For me school was painful, I was smart, overweight, and shy, these are not things that help you fit in with the people around you. My perception of my school years has shaped much of my life and clouded my ability to feel at ease in pretty much any group of people. Of course this is also not helped by many of my mental and emotional problems!

Another example of what were incorrect perceptions of how others felt about me can be summed up in my relationship with my cousin Shasta. There were many things that I believed or was led to believe about how she thought of me when we were growing up. I honestly thought she hated me and didn't want me around. Shasta was all the things I wasn't: pretty, skinny, popular, outgoing, athletic... To me it always seemed we had nothing in common. When my older sister got a car and offered to drive us both to school, Shasta accepted and I didn't.  I don't remember my actual reasons why I didn't want to ride to school with my sister, it probably had something to do with having problems deviating from a set routine for me,  I honestly don't remember.  After reconnecting with Shasta over FB I found out that she thought I wasn't riding to school with them because of her and had offered to not ride with my sister so that I would. This was far from the truth and broke my heart that I had caused someone else that kind of doubt and hurt. We both had misconceptions about the other and our relationship suffered for it. Its a truly sad thing because now we are finding out that we have many more similarities than differences.

How much of the social misery I suffered (and still do really) was because of incorrect perceptions of how others saw me? How many people would be shocked if I told them how I had felt back then? How I still feel today? In my mind, most of the people that interacted with me in high school didn't do it out of friendship or because they liked me. As far as I could tell there were a couple of different reasons people would talk to me. If a guy was being friendly it was more than likely because he needed help with a class or wanted me to let him cheat off my test. Sometimes I worried that if a guy was even hinting around at flirting it was because I was being set up to be the butt of a joke,  after all I was in a school with some very beautiful girls who in my mind had so much more going for them than I did. I mean I was the fat nerd girl,  no guy was going to flirt with me. If they did it was because they wanted something,  not because they liked me. Even when I had slimmed up some I still never believed that guys would be flirting with me other than to get something from me or because they felt sorry for me and were trying to be nice. Most of the girls didn't really talk to me unless we were put into groups for a project or something. There were a few that would say hi or have an occasional conversation with me, most of the time I chalked these interaction up to having grown up with that person since basically first grade or pity. I saw a lot of pity when others looked at me. So for the majority of my school life I tried to be as invisible as possible. I didn't make a lot of eye contact,  tried to not be singled out in class for anything. It wasn't easy for me to not be an overachiever. It got easier after my mom and dad started separating and getting back together and then my mom was in the car wreck that forever changed our lives. I couldn't handle the emotional turmoil and my grades definitely suffered for it.

Over the years I did have one or two people at a time in my life that I would consider my friends. With the exception of one person, Angel Morris, these friendships never lasted long. Angel,  bless her heart, was my best friend up until some time in Jr High when her parents moved her from the DS school system to the Live Oak school system. As happens when you're that young, we grew apart. I've run into her several times throughout my life since then, she'll always, in my heart, be that one true friend that will never be forgotten and I'll always wish that we would have remained close over the years.

Looking back on my school years I now wonder how much was true and how much was just my own experiences coloring my view of the world and the people around me.  If I hadn't been so jaded and so scared of people,  would things have been different?  Would I have had the courage to simply insert myself into a group of people and not feel that I didn't fit in or belong? I've had several people reconnect with me via FB from my school days, many of which have told me they had absolutely no idea I felt the way I did back then. They tell me how much they liked me and thought I was funny or sweet or any number of other things. I'm always thrown for a loop by this information. How could I have been so wrong about what people thought of me? I know a lot of it has to do with my own perceptions of myself and that I have Asperger's Syndrome and all that goes with it. How do I change those perceptions and accept that not everyone was rejecting me?

I want to thank several people for telling me that I'm crazy to think some of the things that I believe about myself: Christy (Hayman) Neu, Kim (Thompson) Leblanc, and Shasta (Kelly) Looper. I'll never be able to express my appreciation for the kindness shown by these women.

There's more I want to discuss about perceptions, but I think I'll save it for another post since it focuses on other people's perceptions of the world and not my own.