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Unconscious Othering

When you encounter someone, whether you know them or not, you notice things about them, and you aren't always aware of everything you notice.  The things we notice about other people help us decide how to behave around them and what we might expect from them.

Everybody has differences.  We allow others to have a certain amount of differences from ourselves before we consider them outsiders.  The case-by-case process by which we set that difference threshold is largely subconscious most of the time.  We can other people without knowing we're doing it.  We can be unaware that we're rejecting someone.  Identifying outsiders is as important to humans as avoiding mortal peril, and it's often just as automatic.

You may not know who you're othering.  Being around a certain person could make you feel stress that you aren't even aware of.  The only way to begin to be aware is to be totally honest and totally attentive.  Take your time and think about the people in your life.  How do you prioritize your relationships?  How do you put the people you know into tribes? 

Now to me.  I'm neither overtly offensive nor conspicuously different.  Most of the people who reject me don't even know they're doing it.  They notice subtle differences in me they aren't aware of noticing.  These might be pitch excursions in my voice, unusual muscle movements related to balance and sensory integration, or aspects of my appearance like my ptotic left eyebrow.  People can excuse, ignore, or accept obvious differences that they consciously notice, like my spotty eye contact, but little differences add up on a subconscious scorecard.  Thus, even people who intend to accept me can end up rejecting me.  Unfortunately, this unconscious rejection is much more obvious on my end.

Othering often happens whether you want it to or not, and it may seem to you that you're not doing it when you are.  This has been a very difficult thing to explain for most of my life.

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