Today's rambling: Results say...I'm normal?!
Written on Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2002 at 4:31 p.m.
while feeling a bit

Hmm.

I just came back from that screening thing, and all I was told was that I'm borderline on having generalized anxiety disorder. I'm left questioning the validity of little "check yes or no" tests, because while I was told that I really don't have a problem, I still feel innately that I do. That test was actually kind of difficult to answer, because as I sat there reading each question, I thought, "Well yes, that applies to me, but.." blah blah. I wanted to explain myself after half of them, just because the questions were so black and white and didn't really account for middle areas.

It's not that I want to have a problem. I'd love it if I was a perfectly normal adult. But if there actually is a problem--and I think there is a mild one--I would like to finally be able to get help for it. The woman didn't even talk about the post-traumatic section, which I guess is because I only checked 'yes' for one of them. The thing is, the instructions asked if I'd been having these symptoms in the past week, and all the deaths and losses that have occurred in my life have occurred months and years ago. Maybe they assumed that I had moved past those problems in a healthy manner. And yes, I've pushed down all those emotions, but the thing is, I haven't dealt with them. The one question (that I answered yes to) had something to do about getting upset if the subject is brought up, and just that question alone brought tears up to my eyes. I've never dealt with the deaths of my grandmothers and my great-grandmother. I've never dealt with my parents' divorce. I've just pushed them all down to some place where I don't think of them on a regular basis, but bringing it up, oftentimes, is enough to really upset me. I'm not saying that's post-traumatic stuff, because I'm sure it's not. But it's definitely something that needs to be helped. I know it's unhealthy for me to keep these things all tied back, but I feel like no one wants to listen to me go on about my personal life. And besides that, I wouldn't even know where to begin to talk about them.

So that's why I'm not so confident in those tests. The little consultation period was said to last between 5 and 10 minutes, but I was out of there in 3 (after waiting for an hour...). The woman who spoke to me knows nothing about what I just wrote, and maybe if she did, my results would have been different. Granted, this wasn't supposed to be an actual counseling session, but you'd think she should have known a little bit more, right?

The whole thing has just made me feel very blah, and now I don't want to go eat dinner with Lauren and Kevin, I don't want to start on my Writing homework...I just want to get my Earth Science class over with and go to bed! :P It's alright, though, I think I'll start on Writing just as soon as I post this, so that I can't start procrastinating in some other way.