Psychology Student Syndrome

There's a major issue with being a psych student, especially one who's taken abnormal psychology. There's a tendency called psychology student syndrome, also known as"generalized disorder disorder." It goes basically like this: You learn about a disorder, you suddenly recognized parts of yourself in it. And you totally flip a shit.

For example, last year I learned about borderline personality disorder and what it consisted of. The definition in the DSM is as follows:

Pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, and affects, and marked impulsivity (5 or more):

• Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
• Pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships
• Alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation
• Identity disturbance; unstable sense of self
• Impulsivity in at least 2 self-damaging ways (sex, spending)
• Recurrent suicidal, self-mutilating behaviors (inc. gestures)
• Affective instability, reactivity of mood
• Chronic feelings of emptiness
• Inappropriate expressions of anger
• Transient, stress-related ideation, dissociative symptoms

I, of course, instantly starting if it could apply to me. Dumb, right? I don't really match the symptoms very well. But when you start looking at them loosely, it gets kind of scary. Have I ever frantically been worried about being abandoned? Well, yeah - that was like half of high school there, wondering why people actually wanted to be friends with me and wondering when they would leave (because, truthfully, I've never had friends that lasted very long. [uber gay] takes the prize - ten years, man. I can hardly believe it). My whole sudden extreme obsessions/crushes on people seemed to fit bullet number 2. Also, I've been known to totally love something, then hate it (Twilight, anyone? But I think that's a special case).

The unstable sense of self... that's the one that worries me. I remember talking about this in AP Psych, about how some people think Marilyn Monroe was borderline because she wanted to be like the characters she portrayed; she wanted to become who she was playing. Some theorize that she didn't have an actual sense of self, so she had to envelope herself in a fictional persona to ground herself in a personality.

This freaked me out as a teenager, mainly because I was changing so much. Who I was as a person changed from year to year (well, it still does in some ways) and nothing felt consistent. Also, it doesn't help that when people ask me to tell them something about myself, I sort of freeze (because the question is so ponderous - where to even begin?) I think I misinterpret this as NOT having a clear personality, when in fact I just have a slightly complex one - and that I'm not good at spontaneously giving personal answers (seriously adding in the new blog description up there took like half an hour tonight. Also, this blog has changed like ten million times... God, don't even start, [L Maga]... don't even start).

I could go on, describing how I've felt the semblance of all the other symptoms at some point in my life. But I'll spare you. But that's the key issue here - these are all things that people may feel at some point. We're all human and have similar experiences, after all. Having a disorder of this nature means these symptoms are experienced in the EXTREME, that totally interrupt your life and may be harmful to yourself and/or others. That's something my professor emphasized on the first day of Abnormal Psych. But it's easy to forget that when your reading your textbook and, suddenly, a description of a disorder sounds exactly like what happened to you last Thursday. It's a slippery, slippery slope. So be nice to psych majors - there's a reason why some of us are a little weird (but do stop freaking out that we're constantly psychoanalyzing you. Don't be silly - we aren't. We're just doing it to ourselves :p).