Healing from educational trauma
Beware the bad ground and the rocky patch. (British Library)
A common lament of people in the healing profession is that people ascribe aches and pains to “getting older” instead of investigating and addressing the root of the issue with a professional.
This “Oh well!” attitude is mirrored by the way many of us approach kids’ difficulty in school.
The sentiment, unexamined, is that “school sucked for me, too,” or “that’s just the way it is.”
A physical pain that will get worse if the root cause not treated. Meanwhile, we become habituated to it. The pain, along with the inconveniences it causes, becomes an accepted part of our daily reality.
Likewise, the emotional pain stimulated by a difficult school experience will get worse. This trauma becomes part of our identity — part of who we are. We lose the ability to see a world without it.
I see this all the time in my work. I see students as young as ten, eleven, and twelve who believe that they should already know everything that they are being taught or that they have fallen behind and will never catch up. They believe asking for help means you are stupid. They think they already are stupid, and it’s hopeless to try anymore. They think no one likes them, no one can be trusted, and that they can’t be successful.
Once we get to the point where things feel so dire, it’s not exactly an easy fix. If your body is already damaged, you run the risk of making the injury worse when you do exercises to strengthen it.
Likewise, a teacher’s well-meaning efforts to strengthen a student’s skills may result in reinforcing, once again, the student’s belief that it’s not possible, causing further damage.
If I stretch my shoulder, it should be a little uncomfortable; however, if my shoulder is injured, it will be painful.
If I face a challenging question, I will feel a bit of discomfort as my brain works to think through the options and formulate a response. But if I’m convinced I can’t do it and the teacher is trying to prove I’m stupid, I will panic, blurt out the first answer that comes to mind, and again suffer the pain of failure.
Therefore, whether our trauma is physical or emotional, the first thing we have to do is heal. However, that doesn’t mean that we should stop all activity. If we do, we become even weaker and actually impair our healing. Instead, we need to do small, doable tasks that keep us going and build our confidence without triggering a pain response.
The exact map of what is comfortable, uncomfortable, and painful will vary from person to person. It takes an experienced healer (or teacher) to navigate it and find what works, gradually coaxing their patient (or student) to tolerate a bit of salutary discomfort and build their capacity.
This mindset works well alongside frameworks like the indigo ring and letting the water run clear. Instead of constantly pushing forward, we work outward from what is already comfortable and established. As progress is made, the student can be encouraged to take note of it and reflect on it.
It would normally be a lot of work for a teacher in a traditional classroom to present one math problem at a time to a student, or to give them a writing assignment that requires only three or four sentences to complete (and another, and another…). Therefore, this type of “school trauma recovery program” is best administered through homeschooling, tutoring, or our own The Rulerless School, in which it can be very efficient.
I have seen many students successfully through the process of healing from traumatic educational experiences. It is a joy to watch someone rediscover their interests, capabilities, and confidence. Sometimes, it is “two steps forward and a step back,” but a determined partnership of student and teacher will always get there in the end.