Halfway Done with Psychology

So it's May 21st and I'm halfway done with my Psychology Maymester so far. I've had to give a group presentation on mood disorders and have already taken my midterm. As it stands, I'm relieved. Almost finished! Just another week or so to go, and then... LA!

Reading through the Psychology textbook though, I've gotten some interesting insights into myself and the lives of those around me. I'm not psychological professional, but the book is pretty straightforward about symptoms, what is required to diagnose someone, treatments, etc. I feel pretty confident saying now that about a year and a half to two years ago, I think I was suffering from major depression. My appetite disappeared and I lost about 25 pounds within the course of a month. During the day, all I wanted to do was sleep and at night, I was so restless that I couldn't sleep at all. I would end up taking long walks at 3:00 AM in the morning around campus just to clear my thoughts, even though the process of clearing my thoughts generally exacerbated them instead. I was generally sad, but in such a way that it was hard to function. I would wake up in the morning and find myself already morose upon opening my eyes. Sometimes during my walks at night, a car would drive by, and I'd find myself thinking that if that car happened to swerve off the road onto the sidewalk and hit me by some chance, I wouldn't really mind all that much. Yeah, I'd say that qualifies as Major Depressive Disorder.

Luckily, I was able to pull out of it. I had really good friends who stuck by me most of the way. I never got to the point where I just dropped life completely. I stayed in school. I kept working. I lived life and made new friends. All of these things really helped me to stay grounded in reality during a time of my life when I could have easily just let go and stop caring about anything.

So, in hindsight, I think I was pretty lucky. A lot of people who suffer through depression can't heal without some kind of professional help. They need either anti-depressive drug therapy or some form of talk therapy to help them work through their problems. Also, many of them suffer through recurring bouts of depression. That's something that has worried me about myself in a way, a fear that one day I may end up becoming depressed again like before. It scares me to a degree. But even so, I think I was pretty lucky.

I think ultimately, I wasn't willing to go see a professional because I didn't think my problem merited professional attention. I just thought I had a severe case of the blues. Furthermore, I am an independent individual, so independent that it really bugged me on a subconscious level that I couldn't just fix myself. I think this is true of a lot of Americans. We're trained from birth to be independent and not need anyone else so that when we truly face something we can't do alone, well, we're unable to seek the help that we need from sheer pride. We're afraid of seeming weak. More so, we're afraid of actually being weak.

There's a certain stigma about therapy that we hold as a society. We view people who go to therapy as the "really messed up" ones. Or the people who are so weak as individuals that they can't help themselves. Like I said, this is very much a part of our culture. But this belief just isn't accurate for psychological problems. So many psychological problems go beyond even what we would call our "self". There are some problems that are biological, things that we didn't even realize lurked in the backs of our brains.

For example, I think my family has a depressive tendency. I've known that from childhood, although no one has ever gone to a doctor to be diagnosed. We're too proud for that. But I never once believed that this had any bearing on who I was as an individual. That's my family, I thought. It won't affect me.

Also, there are certain traits and tendencies that are taught and learned on a subconscious level even when nothing is ever overtly said. How we receive and express anger seems to be a big one. No one will ever tell you how to have a tantrum or how to bottle up your emotions until it explodes with little provocation. We just learn it through observation, usually from our families it seems. (If you're a behavioral theorist reading this for some reason, careful. Don't jizz your pants.) For example, the way I express anger is very similar to my father's. Oftentimes, my girlfriend will say that she's never seen me angry. However, I know that she's seen me angry a number of times. It's just that the way I express anger does not register as anger to her through her own experiences with anger. Hence, I think it's important for us and everyone else to know and understand the basis for their actions and just what has influenced them. This is crucial for healthy communication.

So, as I press on in this class, I'm expecting to learn a whole lot more. However, I also expect to gain more insight into my life and those around me. Hopefully, I'll be able to use these insights to help others, to form a stronger community around me, and hopefully serve others as much as I have the tendency to serve myself. The biggest lesson I've learned though is that you can't forsake community. It's so important, not only to the well-being of the community, but also to the well-being of the individual. Human beings are communal creatures, and without community in some way, well, we flounder.

Graduation

Today, I graduated. Well, sort of. I went to the ceremony at least, donned the Carolina blue cap and gown, went to the Communications Studies Department Commencement, took pictures in front of the Old Well. The works. It was sort of off putting though. For one thing, I'm not officially done with "School" until August. For another, Carolina treats graduation very differently than did my high school. At Grimsley, if we so much as made a peep, the administration would pull us out of the graduation line and we wouldn't graduate. Simple as that. Today however, I saw a girl dressed in a Carolina blue bikini, a squad of students carrying foam swimming pool noodles, pink flamingo balloons, and more. The general graduation procedure seemed this ambiguous thing that no one had a complete grasp of and no one really cared about to begin with. Even Chancellor Thorpe seemed a little off his game. Like I said, off putting. Honestly, it didn't really feel like graduating.

Also, it was kind of sad that I wasn't there with all of my friends, my closest friends who've been with me since I first arrived at Carolina. This feeling was relieved somewhat by seeing my friends who are natural born '09ers, and even more so that I got to graduate with Liz. But it was still strange knowing that I won't be there when the sea of blue is populated by faces so familiar to me that they're almost family.

That's not to say that today wasn't a happy occasion. It was. I enjoyed it and I enjoyed being with my family and sharing that moment with them. I enjoyed sharing it with Liz. It was certainly a moment of triumph. Just a moment somewhat divorced from the feelings I know should exist in collaboration with it. I just didn't feel like I was graduating.

I think all of this really boils down to the knowledge that I'm leaving, and the expectation of life in North Carolina coming to a close. It seems like I'm at a point of waiting, and this waiting tends to water down the exuberance of my days remaining in Chapel Hill and North Carolina. But I'm not really satisfied to leave it like that. I want my last two weeks here to be bold and full of life and adventure. That's my goal for my life and for those around me. If I can inject some boldness and adventure into the lives of others, then I think my last moments on the east coast will be a success.

Thoughts of the Day

A few thoughts before bed...

Why is it that the poor seem so much more generous than the rich? Even though they can't afford it, they freely give and desire to give to others while those who are much more financially secure tend to flinch at the very notion. Why? Jesus talked a little about this I think at the beginning of Luke 21, but even that was a slightly different situation. I want to know why those who have little are more willing to sacrifice a lot for others than those who have much already?

Today, my mom and I saw saw baby geese. Baby geese are beautiful. Just a reminder of how beautiful life is and how ingenious its creator. Although the thought of those baby geese growing up to be adult geese walking annoyingly across the road makes me cringe. I wonder if a similar thought ever went through my parents' heads when I was a baby? "Oh &%*#! What if he gets a tattoo?" :P

Yesterday, I didn't know how to change a tire. Today I do. I wasn't exactly thrilled by the fact that I needed to know how to change a tire, but I'm thankful that I've learned a new skill, and I'd rather learn it here than out in LA when there's no one else there to help.

Today, my friend Zac Allard fell in love with my feature film screenplay idea. Do you have any idea how surreal I feel? Zac is one of the hardest writers' to please that I know, and he loves my idea. That's high praise right there. He's never liked one of my ideas before. Yup, I think this one's a winner.

Today, I almost finished moving out of my dorm, and I did it without the aid of my parents. Dad helped some yesterday, but today was all me. Yeah. I'm an adult :)

Confession: Tonight, I picked up Wendy's on the way home from Chapel Hill around 12. I know. See my previous post. Stress and late nights. So here you go non-existent blogosphere audience - my confession of wrong doing. Maybe this will help keep me accountable.

Sleep now. Bye.

Coming Soon: The pros and cons of Night vs. Day

Insomnia and Overeating

So tonight, I've realized something: When I'm feeling more intense emotions than normal, I tend to eat more. That seems to be my body's immediate reaction. Maybe it's a calming mechanism? Like my body is trying to distract my mind somehow?

My mind gets very industrious. I find it hard to sleep. It keeps running until it's made every connection it can. Not that it finds answers. It just makes connections and keeps going and going. I can't shut it off.

So I end up staying up late and munching. And I do this until I'm too tired to do anything but sleep.

And I'm not OK with this. This year has been particularly stressful on an emotional level, and I can tell because my late night eating habits have gotten worse and worse. Furthermore, my regular eating habits have declined as well. Meals have been one of the few times I've had to sit down, breathe, and collect my thoughts this past semester. And my weight shows it. Again, not OK with this. Why do I make dumb choices when it comes to what food I allow to enter my body and in what quantity? I've gained so much weight this semester which I didn't have to gain. And now starts the arduous process of losing it.

So now that I've realized this, what do I do? Figure out a better way to organize my thoughts? I used to avoid buying food for my dorm room so there was nothing around to eat late at night, but that doesn't really help much more either. I feel very trapped sometimes. My emotions allow me to be extremely creative. That's why I'm moving in the first place, to make use of my creativity and find employment that allows me to be creative like God made me to be. But sometimes I really don't like my emotions. I feel like I experience them too strongly sometimes, and then my body reacts negatively to compensate. I'm not all emotion, although sometimes it may seem like it. I've got a strong sense of reason as well, rationality, logic, etc. Hence this blog post. I tend to experience emotions and then hyper-analyze why I'm experiencing them the way I do.

And honestly, I just want to sleep. I don't want to eat anything. I don't want to wade through a web of mental associations, idea networks, and feelings. I just want to sleep.

And for anyone who's listening, as I've been typing this, I just made another mental association. Randomly. Chaotically. It'll probably end up as a blog post sometime soon. Great.

The end and the beginning

So today, I'm home. The Spring semester has ended, all of my grades are in, and for the first time, I know that I'm not going back to UNC in the Fall. It worries me. Haha, that's funny. I wasn't even thinking when I wrote that, but yeah, I guess it worries me, and the reason it does is that, sitting here at home, I feel lonely. I miss the closeness and fellowship of the dorm. I miss my friends, because frankly, I'm not sure when I'll see them again or how often.

I'm graduating at the end of August. I have one last class to take before I'm done, Abnormal Psychology, which I'm taking in the space of only two weeks during the month of May. My final exam is May 29th. My flight to Los Angeles takes off on May 30th. My internship begins on June 1st. May 30th I say goodbye to my family. The following Tuesday, my dad gets on a plane back to Greensboro and I say goodbye to him too.

That's a lot of goodbyes. So yeah, I'm worried and I feel lonely... in advance. Weird, huh? And it makes me wonder, why do I feel lonely? What am I worried about? You know, honestly, I don't think I'm that worried about getting a job. I seem strangely optimistic about that. I think I can do it. I really do. I think I'm just worried about being lonely out in Los Angeles. I'm worried about lacking the support of friends and family that I've had here at home and at school.

And ultimately, I think I'm just nervous about taking that next huge step in life. I mean, I'm moving across the country for crying out loud! It's ok to be nervous. But I have to have faith that despite any loneliness that I may feel, God will provide in Los Angeles just like he provided in Chapel Hill. It may not look the same, but He is.