When I was 9 or 10, my Mum took me to the opticians, after my teacher had said that I had asked to sit at the front of the class to see the blackboard better. The teacher thought my eyes might need testing.
Turns out I was really short-sighted. No-one had noticed, including me.
Mum was horrified. And I was to blame.
“How come you didn’t know?” She said. “Why didn’t you say that you were struggling to read the blackboard?”
It seemed so obvious to her that I should have somehow known that my eyesight wasn’t what everyone else was experiencing.
But how was I to know? I can’t see through someone else’s eyes. They belong to someone else, after all.
I was compensating by moving to the front. I was finding a solution, a workaround. I was getting by – and I’d never heard anyone else say that words were pin-sharp, rather than the blurred mess I must have seen. So I had no reference point. How was I to know that what I saw was not what everyone else saw?
Even to this day, I don’t remember the blurry blackboard. But I do remember my Mum’s reaction. I’m sure she never meant to blame me. Sadly, I don’t take criticism lightly. I don’t like being wrong, or at fault.
The same goes then for, say, feelings or thought processes. We rely heavily on the stories and experiences of others to guide how we might interpret our own, but never, ever, can we see with other people’s eyes.
I had a similar experience later on in life with my daughter’s psychiatrist. It was the first session – an assessment of her difficulties – and I was asked whether I’d had any mental health difficulties, particularly with anxiety. (There were other questions asked, but that’s for another time. To note – make sure you have a complete history of yourself and your child, as you’ll need it…)
So, I proceeded to recall how, as a teenager, I wouldn’t answer the phone. I would talk on the phone to friends. After all, I knew them. But what if I picked up the phone and it was someone I didn’t know? What if they asked me questions that I didn’t know the answers to?
Ah. What if – the cornerstone of anxiety…
The psychiatrist then challenged me… well, didn’t you ask other people? Didn’t you know this wasn’t normal?
Hmm, more blame, then. More assumptions that I should know what other people think, how other people feel. How was I to know that not everyone fears picking up the phone?
Back to the present. Or at least, the not too distant past.
My daughter realised when she was 12 that perhaps the way she was feeling wasn’t normal. That someone else might feel the way she did. And so, she told me one day that she’d done some research online and knew with some certainty what was wrong with her.
“I’ve got anxiety, Mum. I’m sure of it.”
The beauty of the modern age is that you can ask those sorts of questions anonymously. Well, sort of. And find stories to relate to. The experiences of others you can accept as common to your own or reject as alien.
You can sympathise. If the experience is shared, you can empathise. But you can never see with someone else’s eyes.