Last night, Em and I went into Oxford with David, Lucy and Katie from the vets to a talk in Wadham College about emotions and depression and meditation. It was very interesting. The guy giving a talk had such a nice, gentle voice, it was just so interesting. One of the things that struck me particularly, was that apparently the reason why deaf people sometimes have a problem remembering things is that the way that we listen, is that we hear certain key phrases and fill in the gaps (eg. if I talk about someone knocking a glass off the table and someone else getting a broom, then later on if asked to tell me what words I said, you will usually say I said ‘broken’ because you have thought you’ve said that), however for the deaf person who has had to ‘listen’ to every word there is so much more to remember.
This put me in mind to my own listening difficulties. With my aspergers, something I have difficulty with doing is answering the question that’s actually being asked. Upon listening to something, instead of hearing key words and ifferring the correct meaning, my mind has a tendancy to hear the wrong words or only the first few before going off and ‘understanding’ the wrong meaning. It all makes interviews just that little more challenging…
Another particularly interesting thing that was said, which I’m not sure if I can remember completely correctly is this: whilst it is important to be able to ‘turn off’ negative emotions to allow you to not sink into depression, it is also necessary to ‘turn off’ the happy emotions. Happiness, as a constant high is not actually an achievable (or desirable state) to be in. There will always be something in life that knocks you down, so if you desire constant happiness and you don’t, as you won’t, get it then you will enter into feelings of disappointment and sadness, even anger for not getting it. Better to accept some healthy state of contentment with your life and experience short bouts of both happiness and sadness. These things do come in booms and busts (a bit like the economy) and to strive for anything different will end in disappointment.
