Serissa, whilst studying psychology, did you observe that a vast majority of people who get into psychology are actually psycho themselves?
I ask this question seriously. There is a chick at work who has majored in psychology and she is a major drama queen. I would have thought that she could have used her expertise to cope with pressure, but no, she is a whining cow.
I hesitate to make a statement on actual percentages, but I do believe that a fair amount of people in the field of psychology have some mental health issues. HOWEVER, to my understanding, a TECHNICAL (greater than 50%) majority of the NORMAL population (everyone) meets the criteria forat least one DSM-IV diagnosis. Further, as a psychology student, you become more aware of your own problems and might self-diagnose and think you're more messed up than you are.
I've also noticed that an unnerving amount of psychology majors don't know why they're majoring in psychology except that it's 'interesting.' At my school, psychology was either the #1 or #2 major at my graduation. It seems to have become a step up from 'undeclared' for a lot of people. I don't hesitate to give a percent there; I just hate to think about it because it's depressing.
I asked this woman what Myers Briggs personality type she is and she says "oh, I forget". Like fuck you would forget if you were into psychology. She is obviously either lying about completing the degree....or, she really has no self esteem to not give a fuck what people think of her.
People 'assume' that people who study psychology are level headed, I've found that to not be the case at all.
OR, she doesn't put this knowledge into high priority. We've only touched on MBTI types in a couple of my classes; there are a crapload of other personality tests out there. MBTI types are easy to understand, easy to find a self-test for, well-known, and people tend to think that they're more important than they are- they border on pop psychology at this point. Personally, I hate it when people think that their MBTI type explains them perfectly- especially since your type can change with time.
Speaking of pop psychology, you seem to harbor a lot of anger toward this woman. You say she isn't level-headed without presenting evidence to support it, and say she has low self-esteem (although you seem to be operationally defining having high self-esteem as putting a higher value on others' opinions than if you had low self-esteem, which is inaccurate). Is it possible you're projecting?