My Life As A....(Student; specific-ly a Psych Major)

Well this post will be a little different than my regular post. I choose to just talk about some observation I saw today and also bring up some old experiences I had.

My Life as a student
Lesson One (Knowledge does not solve problems)

Here, I am referring to people. So I will start off by telling you what I saw today. Of course, I mention that I am a psychology major and I guess this mean that I should be able to recognize certain problems. Today I saw a bunch of marks on someone's forearm. It wasn't random marks, and it definitely looked as if the person had done this to themselve on purpose. (hence the title for this disorder, 'self-injury'.) Now people self injure for many reason, maybe because they are stress out and have no other outlet or maybe to punish themselve among many other reason. So back to the person. This person marks were just below the sleeves and were heal.(it looked like it had been months since the person had done it.) So I just thought that the person did this during the winter when they thought they could hide it. Okay, in this situation, I didn't talk to the person because I didnt know them. But what happens when you do know them..........

Story two. (these are actually true stories) Well I had this friend, a skinny friend, a very skinny friend. Uppermiddle class, white, female (stereotypical image of an 'ana'; slang/short for anorexic person) Well she never admitted anorexia as a current problem, she actually said it was a old problem. She said she used to suffer from bulimia. When we ate together she always ate salad and had alot of vegetable. In fact, her plate was always more full compared to my plate. She had her own room. (which was okay if bulimia was an 'old' problem and not a current problem.) Although she tried to hide it from me, ( her ana prob) by admitting that it was an 'old' problem, I knew she was lying. Why, u might ask. First of all, because as a psych major, you get real familiar with the DSM-IV book(which is the official book for diagnosic of mental disorders). Okay, okay, what I am saying is that I am fimiliar with symptoms other than the most recogniable one of "being underweight." She was taking medicine for amenorrhea and she only did cardio when she exercised. After exercising, she would pass out for up to hours.

In the end, I chose not to confront her about it, one reason is because her medicine was prescribe which meant that the doctor knew, and the second reason was because she still was telling me that she didnt have a problem.

So what if the situation is your friend that you care about who have a problem and admits it, what do you do. This answer is not always an common sense/easy one. First of all, we all live on the same planet meaning that basicly everyone understand what is culturally right and wrong to do. So here is the problem. Knowledge doesnot solve the problem. Someone admitted casually that they cut themselve on their foot ( on their foot to avoid getting caught) They actually said this to me because I was talking about another person's problem. So the person that I was ,currently, talking to decided to share this with me and they actually said it as tho there was nothing wrong with it. ( like making the point that this was a way better option than doing drugs, for example) I couldn't tell her anything she haven't heard before. I wrongfully felt that if I told her why she shouldn't do it that then she would stop. WRONG, back to my pervious story, I am sure my friend fighting against anorexia knows that it is not healthy for her body. And the girl I was talking to now, probably understood the problems of self-mutilation better than I. So, even in this situation I decided to do nothing
...Alyeah, the reason she was doing it was because she needed to stay focus on her studies, when she didn't stay on track, she would just punish herself....( if that makes sense)

My whole point in this blog, is for people to understand that knowledge doesn't solve all problems. I am pretty sure, for example, that drug addicts understand that drugs are bad. So what do you do to convince another person to change????? I don't know, but what I can say is to start with your problem. Admit to yourself your flaws and maybe one day you can testify what you over came..... for me, I am a person who drink too much, eat too much/too little(depend actually on what part of the year it is, or even what part of the month).................So yeah

*Sometimes on Life's "test", we have similiar problems....