A thought about perceptions..

 Howdy again my friends! A lot has been on my mind lately, but one of the thoughts that keeps reoccurring is on the topic of perception. As I have learned about perception, I have learned that we have actual physiological responses to things according to how we perceive them. The issue here is that sometimes what we perceive is not what has actually happened, and there is a disparity between what we perceive as truth, and what really is true. This leads to my question – How can we find truth beyond our perceptions without also discrediting our experiences?

To explore this, I actually went down a little rabbit hole and actually found myself looking at a study in the National Library of Medicine titled "How our bodies influence our perception of the world". Part of the study delved into how where we are standing affects how we perceive something. They found that how you are angled affects the distance you perceive. Now it's all well and good to know that where we stand impacts how we perceive things, but how does that help us? That is the "meat" of what I'd like to talk about.

I would like to propose that where we stand internally – including where we stand in our convictions and ideologies – influences how we perceive what we encounter. An example I would like to use is one from personal experience. I have had many encounters where yelling indicated violence because that is often what occurred during or immediately following it, so inside my perception was that all instances of yelling indicated violence. One day I encountered a couple yelling at each other and my instant perception was "this is going to get violent". What I didn't realize was that they were yelling because the husband played a prank on his wife. The yelling was because they were having fun, and it wasn't actually hostile – it was just loud.

After this experience, I was left to wonder if my perception of yelling was really accurate, or if my perception was actually tied to the loudness. This led me to understand that perception at its roots has two perspectives. First there is the perception of the conscious – this is where we perceive things conscientiously and outright – in my case it was the conscious perception of yelling equaling anger from experiences. Second, there is the perception of the subconscious – this is the perceptions we obtain that we don't notice. In my instance, loudness indicated violence according to my subconscious perception rather than yelling. Often the conscious observes the literal surface, and the subconscious observes the roots, or emotions.

With these things in mind, I'd like to broaden my scope to relationships and how we perceive them. If you're anything like me, you've probably had lots of bad experiences with relationships, and it has damaged your perception of relationships as a whole. It's easy to fall into the cognitive distortion of "all or nothing" thinking – a type of thinking pattern where we feel that since something has happened before, that will remain the "new normal". Don't beat yourself up for doing this – it's only natural to look for patterns to prevent future pain, but consider something a wise therapist once told me. He said, "You may be right ten out of ten times, but that is not to say that the eleventh time won't be different."

Now, I am not saying that you should keep throwing yourself into unhealthy relationships with reckless abandon, rather I am suggesting you question perceptions and explore them. That is the root concept here – to challenge your thinking and perceptions. We assume the worst as a kneejerk response to similar situations. You aren't evil for doing this – it is just important to remember that what you are perceiving might not actually be the case. You won't always do perfectly, but that's okay as well – we are all growing and learning, so keep at it my friends.