Thoughts Triggered By Something More

After a lot of pondering about what I want to do with the rest of my life I finally decided that I wanted to be a psychologist. I've always wanted to do something that would help people in some way. I can't picture myself doing something that didn't help someone else, someplace, even in the slightest bit. I've always, weirdly enough, been attracted to people who need to be fixed in some way. My mind works in a very different way from a lot of people, I can take a problem or situation and break it down so that its easy for me to understand and solve. Also, in high school I took a psychology class and I found it to be one of the most interesting things ever. It put a lot of things into perspective for me and I learned a lot about myself. This semester at Salem State I took "Intro to Psych" and although it is almost the same as high school, it is a lot more in depth.

Like I said before I learned a lot about myself just from high school psychology and every time I walk into my new psych class I learn even more. About a week and a half ago we started to talk about Pavlov's dog. Now, as anyone can tell you from Peabody High, Pavlov & his dog is the only thing 99.9% of people who took the class remember. This time in class, we went more indepth and started talking about how Pavlov's discovery can be related to our own lives. For anyone who doesn't know what Pavlov did I'll let you know in the shortest explaination I can: Pavlov had a dog and he would set the dog up next to a bowl. He would ring a bell and then give the dog food. After a while of doing that he rang the bell but didn't give the dog food. He realized that eventhough he didn't feed the dog, the dog still salivated. It showed that after a while the dog got used to getting food whenever the bell was rang so it became something that happened without the dog actually thinking about it. After talking about Pavlov my professor gave us some examples of the situation and one of them was, "A man who used to do cocaine in his younger days hears a certain song and he gets the same euphoric feeling again." He also said that most people will subconsiously notice it, but not really make it a big deal. That tiny little sentence explained so much of my life it was actually very scary.

The first thing I will start out with is smoking. I smoke cigarettes 24/7 and when I'm driving in a car or just in a car in general it is a lot worse. I greatly enjoy driving around and listening to music whether it be by myself or with friends. Never the less, when I'm listening to certain songs I immediately reach for a cigarette. It's kind of like Pavlov's dog. There are between 20-30 songs that I almost always listen to and I'm always smoking a cigarette when I do. When one of them comes on and I don't have a cigarette in my hand I feel incomplete without one. My mind relates smoking a cigarette to certan songs. About a month ago I kind of realized what I was doing but never could figure out why I was doing it. It completely blew my mind after I found out that there was a real explaination for what was going on with me.

Not only is it with cigarettes and music, but events in my life and music. I deal with things in my own way like everyone else does. It usually has to do with me working my thoughts out while listening to music. There are certain events in my life that I relate to particular songs. Whether it be fighting with one of my friends, or relationship issues, ect ect. Every song has a certain place in my mind and heart. Whenever one of those songs plays I'm aware of what is going on around me but my mind is going back to whatever situation I was in when I listened to that song. For example: "Heard the World" by OAR reminds me of last summer driving around with my friends just having a good time. It doesn't seem like a big deal at all, but it is all the emotions that come along with it that really get to me. (Like I've said in previous blog posts, its easy for people to tell where my head is or where I want it to be depending on what music I listen to.)

I found this to be a very interesting subject and I really wanted to maybe let other people know about this to see if they can catch themselves in one of these moments. Everytime it happens to me now I'm totally aware of what's going on and it's nice to just have an explaination to it. That is another reason why I like taking psychology. Not only do I learn how to help other people and read them (better than I already can now!), but it also gives me answers for my own life! :]