mid15cowboy,
I share your sentiment that we need to be active and work to change the accepted optometry practices. I have often thought about volunteering at a elementary school and teaching preventative Bates techniques. If I clear my vision to at least 20/40, I bet I could convince at least one alternative school in my metropolitan area to accept my services. Could fit a study into it as well (before and after Snellen readings).
As far as the effects of wearing glasses, I don't doubt they contribute negatively to the wearer's lives and personality. I tend to try to want to get away from a linear cause and effect model of health and personal development. I think reality is not linear. You may never know for sure if your prescriptive lenses caused you to veer down a road of unrewarding ways of being and acting or if maybe you weren't as solidly relaxed and self-confident before glasses as you remember. I'm not taking the onus off the optometrist, he or she was wrong, but I heartily recommend you take full responsibility for who you are and how your vision is presently. Accept the past, get to work on Bates and live in the present. Sorry if this sounds preachy but I'm actually reminding myself as much as I am responding to your story. I never had a period of childhood where I was acting confidently and being very successful socially, but I am changing in my adulthood because I choose to take control of my mind and my life.
I thank you for sharing some of your story. I takes guts to tell others what's grieving you. I look forward to hearing about your experience with the Bates Method if you choose to use it.
Cheers,
Otto
The truly BAD effect of the minus on the eye has been well-known
for the last 30 years. I am sorry that you were not provided
with the information when you needed it the most. :
Here is the second-opinion judgement about how you
have been "cheated" out of clear distant vision -- for life. ???
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.myopia.org/">http://www.myopia.org/</a><!-- m -->
But it seems that these majority-opinion ODs have "imagination-blindness"
and can not see a PREVENTIVE soluting by Bates and other methods.
The truly sad part is even the optometrists KNOW that the minus is
bad for you. The majority-opinion OD will tell you that is
hog-wash. The second-opinion OD knows how bad it is. :
Then I am told to, "prove it". Well, why not read
about it yourself.
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.chinamyopia.org/">http://www.chinamyopia.org/</a><!-- m -->
If there is a to be a better future, then we need to work WITH
the OD who will exlain (as Bated did) that the minus is
a very bad idea. But equally, then, your method must
WORK.
I know what you're talking about in the effects glasses and blur has had on you. I've thought about the personality issues myself some too, but I think people get confused in trying to identify themselves in their personality or feelings to define who they are. To me the main issue in terms of those kinds of effects is the suppression of expression. People under the chronic strain of things like myopia seem to be very susceptible to suppressing their self expression and fabricating false ones, so they remain detached and not really in alignment with what they say or do. It's confusing to me, the things that implies, but right now that's what I see.
I don't think capitalism is really to blame, or doctors. It's just the responsibility of each and every person involved, every person reading this, to make a change in how they go about treating vision problems. To change the world you have to start with yourself and be a living example in the world of what you expect it to be.
Dave
Site Administrator
"Half of our funny, heathen lives, we are bent double to gather things we have tossed away." - George Meredith
