The picture I'm beginning to get is that you aren't immature or lazy, but rather there seems to be alot of external pressures (i.e. family) on you, and that is never good.
IMO this isn't an issue of professional help either; I know of a few people who have a natural disposition to worry--not in a normal, cautious manner but in an expect-the-worst in every circumstance manner.
This is me. The minute something does not go according to plan, I don't just worry like a normal person might worry, but rather my mind blows everything completely out of proportion! But that was typical of everyone in my family, so I never realized other people thought differently until it was too late to change my ingrained mental responses.
I had hoped these external pressures would vanish when I got to college, seeing as my family is now farther away.
🙁 What can I do to make sure these external pressures
don't bug me so much? My parents call me every week complaining about my eating/social budget, asking about my grades, telling me I better not have gained weight from quitting swimming from high school, and criticizing my aspirations to become a physician. But it can't just be
my parents doing this, so why is it only me who's so affected by this?
Have you heard of behavioral conditioning before? Short example of a study done in the 70's (unethical now): they took a baby in a high chair and brought it different items of different colors...every time they would bring something white (rabbit or whatever) to the baby, someone behind the baby would bang a pot really loud and terrify the kid. It only took 3 or 4 times but the baby would freak out every time something white approached it (even the clinician) because the brain associated the color white with something terrifying. It seems possible that your brain is associating exams with something negative...maybe failure, maybe family, who knows. Bottom line: i think its in your mind--not imaginary, just caused by your own thinking.
Wow! You're absolutely right. I have probably unconsciously associated taking tests with the potential for failure, and thus with the potential for everything such failure may ultimately entail--blown completely out of proportion, of course. And thus, by extension, I've also associated
studying with failure. Instead of enjoying it, I am constantly worried about the consequences of not doing it in the first place. Which, in an annoying twist, prevents me from focusing and studying and leads into a cycle of failure.
🙁 If only I could break it off somewhere. Wow. That sounded complicated.
Maybe that's why I focus on simply finishing tests and assignments instead of doing them correctly--it's less about the material involved and more about the fact that I fear not getting done, because it equates to failure in my mind.
Thanks, Global Warming, your post did help.
