Recovering from -3.5 diopter

[Tedward]

When I was in third grade for some reason I decided that it was best for me to get glasses, not because I thought my eyes were bad and needed fixing, but more because I felt like glasses "fit my personality" and that people would like me better or think I was "cooler" if I got them, or whatever was running through my young, confused mind. So I did everything that I was told would damage my eyesight so that I could go receive my wonderful glasses blessing, which I didn't realize was actually a curse! I would stare at light bulbs until the image was so burned in my eye it would last for a ridiculously long time, and I would re-apply when it started to fade... or I would just blankly stare at something until the same effect happens to your whole field of vision in a different way... Up until I finally got fitted with my crippling eye crutches.

My eyes followed suit with exactly how every other persons eyes adapt to glasses: within a couple years my eyes were so bad that I could no longer function without wearing them all the time. I was young and didn't pay attention to my prescription then, but I know by the time I got contacts for the first time in sixth grade, I had a -3 diopter in both eyes.

Over the next eight years they slowly got worse until they reached where they are today at -3.5. Five years after I got contacts my eyes became so dry I couldn't handle wearing them anymore, and stuck to only wearing my glasses. I was also growing very tired of NEEDING these crutches in order to see anything.

It was then in my third year of college that I stumbled upon the Bates Method from a book I found in a friends garage: "Healthy Eyes Without Glasses and Health Without Drugs" by Dr. R.A. Richardson. I started reading more books on it and even found out that Aldous Huxley wrote his own book "The Art of Seeing" which I bought immediately.

I tried discarding my glasses at once but I wasn't doing the exercises with any sort of consistency and I was always allowing stresses to rule my life. I work at a pizza place and there is one person I work with who would always rip on me when I wasn't wearing my glasses because he knew I couldn't read the food tickets unless I was a foot away from them. Every time I ever talked to my dad about it he would always just tell me that eyes always get bad with age, and they can never be fixed (he was just trying to justify his addiction to his glasses) There was so much discouragement that I just couldn't handle it, and wore my glasses again for another two years.

Now here I am today, taking a year break from college, with my only obligation being my same pizza job, but I have been delivering a lot this summer. After I went on a three week trip to Europe I cleared my head a little and realized again that I don't want to be stuck with these stupid frames on my face for the rest of my life, so I again have stopped wearing them. And now I am doing the Bates exercises more consistently, for longer durations, and I'm learning how to be dynamically relaxed in everyday situations.

The thing that blows my mind is that I have astoundingly clear vision while I am driving. It seems to get better every time too. I can deliver about half of the deliveries I do without having to put my glasses on at all during the day, the only times I do need to put them on is for deliveries that are in town where the house numbers are always located on some arbitrary spot on the house and they always look different. The deliveries outside of town have blue signs by the mailbox that I can read while driving without glasses.

One thing I do find is that while I am on the way to drop off a delivery and I am consciously looking for a specific house number it seems that my clear vision range drops about 20 or 30 feet. But when I am on my way back after finding the house I can see the signs 20 or 30 feet further away than i did before.

I set up a snellen eye chart in my room now and I can pretty consistently read the 13 foot line at 5 feet, it is just amazing to see how variable the eyes can be depending on how much you are stressing them though. It seems like my eyes have three distinct modes of functioning now: the first being my bad glasses habit way of seeing, which is very blurry. The second being where I can feel myself consciously trying to relax my face, but I still feel a certain few tensions and I have to focus on blinking too much. The second mode is half clear, where it almost feels like it is fighting to go towards my third mode: the clear flashes where I can read road signs as if I had my glasses on!

I'm sorry this is very long-winded, but I have to say that after 13 years of suffering with my ill-fated decision to get those "cool" glasses that I am finally on my way to recovering. I don't care if it takes just as long as it did to get them wrecked to this point, I am going to keep working at it and I know I will restore my eye-sight that I purposely lost long ago.

[Nancy]

Congratulations! You are already a success story, and if you continue on this path you will become more of one. Don't spend your energy trying to "convert" family members -- you know what you're doing is working for you. Your proof is the clearer eyesight , the reduced eyestrain or headaches, all that uncomfortable "straining to see" feeling. Keep us posted on your progress, please.

[Michelle]

That's wild. I can't imagine WANTING to have bad vision! I always felt I was sort of defective because my vision was so bad. I'm glad to hear that your situation is reversing now though

[Tedward]

The longer I keep going with this the better my average vision is everyday. Everything used to be completely blurry blobs when I "tried" to see out in the world, but now they are becoming less blurry blobs with distinguishable features. I used to have to zoom in my computer screen and still sit forward to read it, now I leave it at standard zoom and can read it while sitting back in my chair. In just 3 months it feels like my eyes are on average almost back to the way they were how many years ago when I first got my glasses.

Words have now become my friends again without glasses. I can use them to remind me how I am supposed to see. I take up almost every free moment of my day just looking out at the world, enjoying every moment of it as it clears up more and more every day.

I also get and maintain incredible clear flashes when I am outside looking at the many trees around my yard and all the little details of the flowers in our beautiful garden. Watching the hummingbird wars taking place is great too, in fact just watching any birds helps so much. When I am outside my eyes feel alive, they have so many living things to observe that they don't have time to feel stressed

I am making incredible progress, and the people in my life before who were discouraging me can see the progress I am making, and now I can tell I am changing the hearts and minds of the people around me who thought so whole-heartily that eyes that "need" glasses will always "need" glasses. When I am completely back to 20/20 I want to help share this gift with the people around me!

[Nancy]

Thanks for posting -- what an inspiration you are!

[clarknight]

Very similar experience that Dr. Bates writes about in his Better Eyesight Magazines;
when you look at those 'UNFAMILIAR', difficult to find numbers on the house it cause effort to see, some tension and this causes the temporary blur. Read about familiar and unfamiliar objects; its normal for a unfamiliar object; strange writing on a blackboard in school by a teacher... to be unclear until the eyes, brain get familiar with it, store a clear picture of it.
It is also normal for vision to fluctuate; clear best, less clear, back to clear. Avoiding glasses prevents the vision from remaining less clear. Glasses lock in tension, maintain and increase the blur.

[Tedward]

Hey guys!

It's been a while since I posted anything here, I thought I would fill you in on my progress so far. Let me start off by saying I passed my last drivers license exam without any glasses, I am no longer bound by that restriction on my license =D.

I haven't been doing many exercises at all, but I still never wear my glasses anymore. I know that I am still making progress, it is just slow without me putting the effort in to do exercises in. Whenever I have sustained clear flashes for more than 5 minutes or so, my eyes will begin twitching and burning, and my mind will take control of my eyes again and mess the whole thing up. Palming does help tremendously at this point, but it's rather hard to palm when you are driving!!!

I started working construction towards the beginning of fixing my eyes. When I first started I couldn't read the numbers on the tape measure when the tape was on the ground right in front of me, now I can see 10-15 ft on it pretty well without trying!

After experiencing so many sustained clear flashes, I know for certain that my eyes are fully capable of seeing 20/20, the only thing getting in the way is my mind, with its uncontrollable urge to take over already automated processes

[sleepmaster]

Good news on your drivers license vision restriction removal. If you don't pass it, do you have to wait a minimum amount of time before taking the test again? I'm fixing to take my driving vision test any day now.

[Nancy]

Not quite sure where to post this, as it doesn't seem worhty of a new thread. I got a PM overnight asking what my diopters are now, when I wore -10 with -1.75 cylinder for decades, and now don't wear glasses (unless I drive at nght which I am not doing). Simple answer: I don't know. I choose to do without glasses, since I can feel myself instantly strain when I put them on. I sometimes lean into the computer to see, or get closer to objects to read them, but mostly can function fine, and am still improving. People are often surprised when I tell them I'm still a bit nearsighted, as I don't act like it.

I realize if I didn't spend so much time alone and work for myself at home, I probably couldn't get away without glasses, if only because of social pressure. Sorry to not give you an answer as to what my diopters are now, but I don't know, I don't really care, they vary a lot given the circumstances, and they're decreasing. I do have a "needs glasses" vision restriction on my drivers license, and many pairs of different strengths in my car in case I need them, but honestly, I often don't even think about using them, just slow down and start consciously shifting if I feel I can't see well enough.

Please don't send me PMs about questions i can answer on the forum, so everyone else can benefit from my answer too.

[sleepmaster]

Do you use plus lenses at all or do you mainly do the bates stuff?

If you're able to drive without your glasses during the day but not at night, and from some other stuff you described, I'd guess you're probably in the -3 diopter range, which is pretty impressive considering you were once at -10.

I go to an optometrist every month for an eye exam to keep me honest since I tend to overestimate my visual acuity since I'm a good blur interpreter. The last time I was really glad I went because I doing some eye stuff on bridges and I thought looking through a chain link fence into the distance one way would erase my astigmatism and it turned out it increased it, so I looked through the another part of the chain link fence which had the opposite angle and my eye's astigmatism seems like it's gone now, but we'll see at my next eye exam.

I also once thought my left eye and right eye were closer to each other in visual acuity than they were. It turned out the natural light coming through the window favored one eye over the other when looking at the eyechart. If it weren't for the optometrist I might not have figured that out. Since then I've checked my visual acuity at night looking at the glow of traffic lights. I like the the night because it reminds me of how crappy my vision is and how there's still a lot of work I have to do.

[adawe]

hey op what were your best exercises? did ypu do print pushing on the pc?

[sleepmaster]

hey op what were your best exercises? did ypu do print pushing on the pc?

Anyone try pushing print you type as opposed to pushing print you read? You can "push" a little more since you are the author and know what the characters being typed are in advance.

FOr example, typing out one-two-three-four-five etc when it's too blurry to read but you know what the blurs are so you are "imagining" that the blur is a "one" in a more interactive unconscious way.

[Aethersky]

push print on paper not computer. i do it with a plus, but people here don't support the plus, so just move the book at the distance it just blurs and read there.

[sleepmaster]

I use a +1.0 lens to push with since I cant make my arms any longer than thtey are and my keyboard is attached to my monitor.

I have the monitor on the least brightest setting when I do this, and never do this in the dark, always natural light, next to a windwo.

I don't like pushing print with bookr or paper because it's harder to cover up parts of my peripheral vision from seeing distance at the same time as pushing print. Your periphery being 10-20 feet out while using plus lenses dulutes the pull of the plus lens, as it's halfway to using plus lenses for distance. which is bad

I see these videos of people using plus lenses reading a book without theirr periphery covered up and I'm horrified. With a computer monitor, you can border up the sides of your periphery with cardboard stands easier.

If you're using a really powerful plus lens, you dont need to worrky about diluting the pull of course, but using such a llens has its drawbacks. Anyway, I believe in using the weakest plus lenses that give your eyes a pull. I also think plus lenses should not be used to reduce ciliary myopia, only axial myopia after the first 1-1.6 diopter improvement I also dont think plus lensess for eyes -3 diopters or worse is a good idea because its too big of a pull and just stresses your eyes, and for -3 eyes and worse, the outdoor enviornments with lots of distance are more than enough plus.