Steve Andreas > Books Authored > Six Blind Elephants > Chapter 12

Normalization

People often categorize their problems (and sometimes also themselves) as “weird” or “abnormal,” very different from most other people. Their preoccupation with this self-judgment diverts their attention from the problem, and that makes it hard to work toward a solution. If you respond, “I think that most people in your situation would probably feel that way,” or “I have often felt that way in that kind of situation,” that can change their thinking about it from “weird” to “normal,” and that shifts attention from despair to problem-solving. Since people can think of any problem as weird or abnormal, normalization is a recategorization that can be useful with a wide variety of problems.

Many years ago, a friend of mine who was a career air force psychiatrist was telling me of his dissatisfaction with his life. On the one hand were the security and many benefits of his air force life; on the other was the regimentation and lack of choice, and the lack of time to explore other interests. At one point he said, “I pay a terrible price for all that security.” I responded, “Well, I guess we all have our price,” meaning that we all have to make choices in an imperfect world, and some of them are quite difficult. Some time later I found out that my simple comment made it possible for him to examine the price that he was paying, and he decided he would rather do something different. He faked a psychotic depression, got discharged from the air force, and did something else with his life—with a different price. In this case, normalization was all that he needed. My sentence probably took about five seconds to say, which ought to qualify for the term “brief therapy.”