Psychology 101 - The Self Experiment

My senior year of high school I took Introductory Psychology for a Social Studies credit.  It was a one semester class with a young, energetic teacher who was eager to help us learn to think.  I remember several things about her class but the most useful is the value of a “self-experiment”. 

We each had to choose something in our lives that we wanted to understand better, have control data, and choose variables to modify.  I cannot remember what a single other student did as their self experiment.  But I remember mine. 

I used to have dizzy spells, similar to the head rush that one might get when standing up too fast.  The difference was that I could have been standing for 5 minutes already.  Sometimes my vision would narrow with it and things would go black.  A few times I almost passed out in the shower.

I don’t remember ever talking to my parents about it.  I had learned by experience that some things would not be believed so I usually didn’t bring anything up unless it was noticed.  This was never really noticed. 

Somehow I got the idea that the cause should be my self experiment.  I’m sure I had a lot of coaching on variables from the teacher.  The end result was that too much sugar, caffeine, or sugar (candy) on an empty stomach pretty much caused the head rushes.  The older me is sure that they were blood sugar spikes and drops but that doesn’t much matter now. 

From that time on, I have been careful about drinking soda and eating candy…. most of the time. 

I remember receiving a care package containing crazy amounts of candy during my freshman year of college.  It had been so long since I had a head rush that I forgot about them until after I ate a bunch of that candy.  I was quite surprised when I had a few of episodes and I had to stop and evaluate why the would come back.  Candy on an empty stomach = too much sugar.

What I really learned is that evaluating my own responses (biological or otherwise) gives me the power to change, which puts me in control of my own life.  No victim status needed when I can say, “That happened because I ate candy” or “That situation went downhill because of my attitude” and follow it up with conscious change.