Understanding Visible Differences by Vivienne Purcell

Author:Vivienne Purcell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030516550
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Sudden Changes in Appearance

Children who suddenly become visibly different can find that their previously reliable ways of interacting socially don’t work well any more, and they are confronted by a steep social learning curve on re-integration post-treatment. One commented ‘I came across as overconfident and brash. It’s overcompensation. If you are pretty you forget how much you use that as a form of communication. … Now I have to rely on my personality’ (Wheatley 1993, in Lansdown et al. 1997). It takes time for people to get to know your personality though, and a more nuanced understanding of how others react to you is needed, in addition to the toughness to manage rude and intrusive behaviour at times. The thoughtless or curious responses of strangers can mean the everyday privacy others take for granted is not afforded. This high visibility can lead to feelings of vulnerability and emotional harm, in turn causing social avoidance. Learning to cope requires a higher level of social awareness and skill, and paradoxically this can mean they have less shared experience in common with their ‘visibly normal’ peers. In most cases prejudice consists of a network of out-of-awareness, unchallenged assumptions, which just seem to be ‘the way things are’.

Shared interests and contributing to success in teams can be a way to overcome this, provided that the opportunities are created.

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