When you're sick

What I learned about studying the lives of famous personality psychologists these past few days is that their own theories were theorized based from their experiences, mostly tragic.

Is life like this? We only discover meaning of life when unfortunate things happen? When we experience heartaches, near-death experiences and misfortunes? Why?

Reminds me of the book I have yet to read "Against Happiness". It basically tells people to embrace the sad part of our lives because that's where we suddenly become wise.

Okay, before going further and misleading... there's nothing "tragic" happening to me recently but except I've been sick since Tuesday. It made me wonder about my decision to leave the house the night before, to get milk tea, was a huge mistake. I woke up Tuesday morning with a severe stomach pain and according to my mom's diagnosis (via FaceTime) it was Hyperacidity. I found it cool, by the way, that I just pointed out the location of the pain and she knew exactly what it was. And I believe her (aside from her being a medical doctor) because I also woke up vomiting some milk tea turned into acid.

In all honesty, I would rather have a hangover from drinking too much vodka the night before. Vomiting the next day would make you feel better, it's like vomiting the pain out of you. But unfortunately, my sickness isn't like that. I felt so much stomach pain the past few days that I just tried to sleep it over. Sleep sleep sleep. It's Thursday and I'm feeling much "better" but not yet my best because the pain comes back every now and then, which is why I force feed myself with a banana and white bread. 

To add to my misery, my stomach pain went up to my head and I'm having a huge migraine as I struggle to make this blog post. I've slept the whole day, hoping my migraine would be temporary and that as long as I don't fight it, I'll get better more quickly. But it's already night time, and I haven't done anything the whole day except sleep (and eat.. and take meds). I feel so helpless and useless. And now it's making me depressed. I wasted 3 days without doing anything but sleep. I am supposed to prepare myself for my board exam and now I feel so unprepared. 

I was supposed to have dinner tonight with my former colleagues. They've tried to schedule this since the month of May as my going away dinner. I had to cancel today because I'm sick. My former boss said, it must be stress related and I need to relax. Initially, my first reaction was, "What stress?". If anything that gave me stress was my previous work but now that I don't have work, I don't have any stressors. But then again I thought about it and she was right. I would say my stressor is a personal stressor which is myself. I've probably been stressing myself out with the exam that my body is already negatively reacting to it. 

Which brings me to my next point, when you're sick, sad, or anything unfortunate is happening in your life, you begin to reflect and ask yourself what have you been doing? Maybe these events are wake up calls or moments to allow ourselves to pause for a while and think about what we've been doing to our lives? Is it worth it? 

I began to think, why am I even taking this exam? None of my friends or people I know in my same degree is ever planning of taking this exam, why did I want to take this exam? This is for psychology majors, and we are educational psychology majors. We can take the exam, but most people I know in EducPsyc aren't even planning to. Considering they also have to take an additional psychology class which is Industrial Psychology and I went out of the way to enroll it last term just to be able to qualify for this exam. 

It's funny, because, I know I have fear of failure and yet I'm the one who always puts myself in situations that can make me feel susceptible to my fears. I've already applied for the exam. Paid for my review classes and already half way through it. I still don't know why I'm trying to go through this self-pressure and pain. I should be doing my thesis instead (ouch, another stressor).

Or maybe, I need an ice cold beer (or not as it might trigger the acid in my stomach again and I'll start with Day 1 of uselessness).

Why do we do the things that we do?

Edward Higgins developed this theory called "Self-discrepancy Theory" which pertains to the "gap" between our ideal self and actual self. The gap is said to be the cause of "emotional & psychological turmoil" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-discrepancy_theory).

I believe I am undergoing that turmoil right now because there is a huge gap between my ideal self and actual self. But because I'm sick, I've started to ask myself, is my ideal self even really ideal?

I am depressed right now because I feel so useless and helpless and unproductive the past few days. What worries me more is that I know it's just 3 days compared to the many months I've spent in my previous years slacking off playing yoville or antville. Or maybe I think I'm just really really worried because, I should be studying for the exam. Only six weeks to go.

Okay, I think I'm feeling a bit better know. Better use this energy to take practice exams so I know which parts of the topic I still don't know yet. #ANXIETY