Apophenia

 I learned a new word today: apophenia. 

Apophenia is not a recognized word in the spell checker of whatever platform I am using to type this, but a quick google search will tell you that apophenia "In psychology, [is] the perception of connections and meaningfulness in unrelated things. Apophenia can be a normal phenomenon or an abnormal one, as in paranoid schizophrenia when the patient sees ominous patterns where there are none" as explained by https://www.medicinenet.com/apophenia/definition.htm. 

This is an interesting thing to me. 

...

How do I explain this?

Clearly I make connections. It is my favorite thing about neuroplasticity. "My TBI brain can make connections that your brain does not even know exists," I like to joke.

So are they meaningful or meaningless and are they between things that really are connected or not? 

The answer is, Yes. 

When your brain starts down the manic slope (or is it up?) you are seeing all kinds of meaningful connections between unrelated things... It is part of how I knew. How I knew I was not quite right. How I knew he was not quite right in his missing or misdiagnosing. But I wanted to believe him. He was, after all the professional. But if these seemingly meaningful connections, that I am suspecting mean I am loosing stability more than they mean any of the other connections my mind is making, are then said to be something else, something other than apophenia, what then? That means the connections are real AND those connections were diagnosed to be real by the expert.

Another thing about connections and meaningful connections; who gets to decide if they are meaningful or not? Who decides who is crazy, anyway? Remember Semmelweis? Einstein? Galileo? and many many others; scientists, who made seemingly meaningless connections between unrelated things. 

It's tricky and very open to interpretation. 

One thing I have noticed is that when you are making connections that threaten what people know, or believe they know to be true, they want to make you wrong. It is so common and happens so quick that it almost seems to be an instinctive reaction. If this happens with people, or institutions, in power and they feel it threatens their practices and policies they will take it even farther. They will silence you. They will blacklist you. They also react this way if you are connecting things they are trying to hide, or are using to deceive people. 

Right now I am making connections. Are they real or are they not??

Connections. Meaningless connections. That is what they will say. But, what if they opted to listen? What if they listened when I told them I think part of the connection was that I validated his chosen career path, his research, his very life's work? What if they considered the connections I was making when I suggested the "concussion" was worse than I was manifesting? What if they considered the connections between how I have been treated and the attorneys that are advising them? What if they considered these connections and the reasons for them instead of writing them off as some form of apophenia?

...Too many of my connections are not apophenia. That is why they want me silenced. But do they actually realize this about themselves? Or are they doing the opposite; not making connections when connections do exist? According to this little article featured on Psych Central https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/reality-play/201207/being-amused-apophenia, that mistake is can be much more dangerous. 

...This is also true of transference and countertransference, which are ultimately forms of meaningful connections between things that are supposedly unrelated. 

I believe the solution likely lies in the problem: recognizing that these connections are not unrelated and not meaningless. These connections should not be discarded and ignored nor treated as a threat that we instinctively try to destroy. 

I believe that humanity is the ability to overcome primal instincts and the only way we can overcome those primal instincts is by first recognizing them and making connections. 

Now you decide, is this apophenia or intelligence? Or is it just plan common sense?