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Well spoken...er, written.

I recall a client of mine, a woman in her early 20s, who had been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. She also had mood swings, depression, a learning disability, a history of suicidal "gestures" and severe anger management problems. It was abundantly clear to me from our first session that she was very invested in her diagnoses, and in fact, had adopted them as a significant part of her identity. I asked her to describe her OCD rituals to me, and then I asked her if they were "getting in the way of her life." She said "no, not really", and I said, "Ok, let me know if and when they do." She then asked "Do you think I'm a freak?" I said, "nope."  Then I moved on.  It never came up again in session.

True, not everything needs to be fixed, at least not in the way we may think it does...and "normal" doesn't necessarily mean, um, "normal." :)

Like you, I have also gone through times of emotional "sickness", and have often described it as "not feeling like myself" (this is a common complaint of individuals with depression). As I have said elsewhere in this forum, I believe most individuals to have some sense of what normal is for them...I just recalled another Gestalt term, which is homeostasis...the desire of a system to reach a state of equillibrium. Might this be included in a definition of "mental health"?

Sarah