Still processing school after leaving for good

INFODUMP ALERT!!!

Studies have been done on the placebo effect and some have had almost amusing results. Generally, if you give a bunch of people each a pill and say, "This will help," then a significant number of people will find it does help. It doesn't matter what's in the pill. This works particularly well for IBS, for some reason. So, another study decided to tell the IBS sufferers that the pill was a placebo, "Here, take this pill. There's nothing in it. It shouldn't help," and ... it helped surprisingly well. People were asking for more placebo pills, as their IBS got worse when they stopped taking them, even when they knew there was nothing in them. Why was this? Nobody has any idea. Maybe something to do with the brain-gut link?

The trouble with giving homeopathic remedies to animals is that the placebo effect works on the owner. The owner believes the animal to be improving, but the animal is not, so its suffering is extended unnecessarily.

BTW, homeopathic pills are essentially little balls of lactose. There is nothing else in them. There is HUGE money in pushing those overpriced sugar pills, though.

Uni was where I was first diagnosed with learning difficulties and given help., so my experience was very different to yours.

I'd have to disagree with you on homeopathy though, I know it makes no sense, but I've seen it work to many times on animals to think there's nothing in it. I had a treatment as somebodies guineapig, It didn't work in the way I expected, but I can't say it was a bad thing, I totally went off meat and fish and stopped eating them, I knew my body didn't get on with them, but I had sort of caved into peer pressure and started eating them again after many year of being vegetarian. I get on much better as a vegetarian than as a meat eater, very little colic, IBS and I feel so much better and sort of unclogged. I think it also helped me get out of a bad relationship. as all of this happened with a few weeks of taking it.

I've no idea what statistics are about, I just know I don't understand them very well.

TheCatWoman said:

I took me a while to take my power back with regards to education and learning, now I enjoy learning, but go back to school, I'd rather stick wasps up my bum!

I scraped through my degree with undiagnosed ADHD kicking in hard in the last couple of years. My dreams of being Dr. X died in those years and I never went back to formal education. Sitting in front of a book on a topic I am not 100% interested in is something I think of as a kind of trauma. 30 years after graduating and I still shudder at the thought.

OTOH, if I don't learn something new every day, I feel a little dead inside. Yesterday, it was Bayesian statistics, today it was refresher course on how stupid Homeopathy is, tomorrow?—who knows.

School is something I still struggle with, it put me off of education for years, I believed myself useless and I stil hear remarks from teachers in my head at times.

I did get past it, finding that going to college and then uni were so totally different, I think school puts more people off education than it encourages.

If I have to go into a school I still feel sick, the smell of the places, the only other place I feel like this is a swimming pool.

I took me a while to take my power back with regards to education and learning, now I enjoy learning, but go back to school, I'd rather stick wasps up my bum!

Actually they found me through my sister's social media account, I have a very unusual surname.

They haven't tracked me down yet. I think it might be one of the reasons I don't use any social media. I feel like I'm in witness protection!

rory.doctor07 said:

how long does it take to get over that nightmare?

In my case never. One class held a formal reunion twenty years after school finished.  I was tracked down on a social website and invited.  I told them to stuff it.

rory.doctor07 said:

So, like, how long does it take to get over that nightmare? How has everyone else dealt with it??

My guess is that most people on here will have had a somewhat similar experience and that most of us are still dealing with it. I finished the equivalent of 6th form in 1989 and only yesterday I posted here wondering if I was still sufficiently damaged to qualify for a complex PTSD (cPTSD) diagnosis!

On the upside, though, I also think it was pretty much the most distressing time of my life (barring episodes of depression later), so if you've survived this long, the worst is probably behind you. It is a testament to your resilience. Well done you!

I agree with Bunny: talk to your GP. You may be at a stage where a referral for some counselling could be highly effective in setting you up for a much brighter and happier future. 

I went straight to university after 6th form, so didn't really get much in the way of down-time. University was both easier and worse than school, the fear of failure and the stress of exams in large crowded halls were worse in many ways, but living away from home made me much more self-reliant and somewhat more confident. I did not know that I was autistic until very late in life. The quick transition to university meant that I had no time to ruminate greatly over my school career. I even got the best A-level results in the school, but I hated school from starting infants' school onwards. I had a recurrent dream for years that I was back in school just before A-levels, with everything to do again. It was the most disheartening dream.

Hi Rory and welcome to the community! 

I’m sorry to hear of your struggles in respect of what sounds like a very traumatic experience.

I suggest seeking support from your GP - and also discussing the other concerns that you mentioned in your bio (“I also suspect that I have ADHD, ARFID and OCD”).

Hello rory.doctor07,

Thank you for you post. I am really sorry to hear the difficulties you are experiencing at the moment. I do hope you begin to feel better soon. I hope members of the community have some helpful advice for you but I wanted to reply to say I wish you well and hope that you begin to see positives very soon.

Best wishes, 

Anna Mod