Outlook Insights

Robert · Site Admin

The Bates Method is based on some pretty simple and pretty easy to observe and verify concepts. To do a study to "prove" the Method is sort of meaningless, and much more important question for research is to ask, "why does the method fail?" A corollary question is, "Why do people develop these functional errors in the first place, if seeing blurry not only limits perception but is physically unpleasant?"

In this thread, I'd like to discuss point one and leave point two for another day.

I'm going to draw a composite of many people who have come to see me and have failed to improve or sustain improvements in their vision. We'll call our composite Alfred, since I happen to have an Alfred Hitchcock DVD on my desk and it's the first name I could think of. Some people might read this and say, "That's me he's referring to." But nothing I write below happened to one person. Many. many people will be able to say, "he's specifically referring to me" and they will all be right.

Alfred might be 21 or he might be 70. His current prescription could be -7 or -1. He might be Alfred or he might be Alice.

Alfred wants to improve his vision. Usually, he is fixed on fantasies of seeing perfectly clear and the slightest progress short of perfection is a devastating disappointment. He is unwilling to accept his vision improving incrementally, and when he sees improvements he dismisses them as "not enough."

He insists on seeing his way, not "my" way. For example, when I demonstrate that it is impossible to see all of the Big E, that shifting and central fixation are necessary, etc, he insists that "my" way will "take too long." Then I will demonstrate that it takes longer to stare at the whole picture than it does to get it with 2-3 shifts. At this point, our appointment becomes a debate if not a clash of egos where he is going to hold his ground come heck or highwater.

But I didn't design the eye and I didn't make up the rules for its proper function. IMO, Alfred wants it both ways: He wants to see clearly, and he wants to do it his way. He wants me to give him a series of exercises he can do to improve his vision as if he were building a bicep, but he didn't come to change how he sees. He never stops to consider that his way of seeing doesn't work, and as long as he insists on straining to see his vision will blur in proportion to the strain.

Seeing Alfred is upset, we might switch gears and palm. I'll ask Alfred to remember something pleasant from his childhood before he got glasses and he'll insist there was nothing pleasant. I understand where he's coming from, since I had the same problem several years ago. It's not that you can't remember, it's that you refuse to remember. And often when you try to remember, the memory has an unhappy ending. Fortunately, there are techniques to improve that situation but only if the client is willing.

Everyone has pleasant moments from their pre glasses life. I was three when I starteed wearing glasses, but once I breached the walls of my memory I remembered and continue to remember a lot. Again, though, you have to be willing to try. Alfred might even tell me, "I've spent the past twenty years trying NOT to remember!" Again, it can become a battle of wills so we might move to a pleasant memory from the past week. This is useful but not as useful, since the person experienced that recent pleasant memory under the full strain of eyeglasses. In this sense, Alfred has won a battle and lost the war.

After palming, I might ask Alfred to form a mental picture. I'll ask him to picture something by attempting to see only parts of it and then to picture it by seeing the whole object. So as to not prejudice his answer and let him discover the truth by himself, I won't tell him which is the correct way and which is the incorrect way. When he follows my instructions to see part of the object, it is clearer and feels more relaxing. When he follows my instruction to strain, he loses the picture and feels the physical discomfort of straining.

Some people are fascinated and even energized to observe their mental control over their eyesight and even anxiety, but others like Alfred tend to be the more "do as your told" type people. Alfred doesn't have as much self-confidence as others, and perhaps being asked to do something that is physically uncomfortable, even if only for a moment, brings back memories of other people, like teachers and bosses, who asked him to do uncomfortable things he was too inhibited to refuse to do. This frustration to realize his own needs transmutes into anger at me. At the same time, if I tell him in advance, "A will be relaxing and B will be a strain. We are doing B just to demonstrate what not to do," Alfred might insist B was a strain because I placed a mental suggestion in his head. Nevertheless, for people like Alfred advance warning and explanation of exactly what we are doing is necessary so that he feels comfortable and in control until such time as he is confident to risk losing control--a risk one must make to see better. No one who has ever taken that risk with me has actually lost control, but the fear is there and must be confronted if it is to be overcome.

Alfred will often insist that he is different from the other people I worked with, that my methods won't work for him. And when he sees improvements, say with the Snellen chart, he will find alternative explanations for the improvement--what he had for breakfast, erroneously claim the light is different in the office, anything is responsible except practicng what he's been taught. Alfred does this because he wants the result of the change (ie better vision) without having to go through the process of change (ie change how he sees).

Finally, Alfred might overcome all these mental hurdles and start to see an improvement in his vision. This causes a new anxiety. He might fear that he cannot focus without straining, and so seeing clearer would mean professional setbacks. He might "realize" if he were ever to become more assertive, the first thing he'd have to do would be quit his awful job or get a divorce, as happened to Jacob Liberman. He might associate good vision with self-confidence and relate self-confidence as a trait of people he dislikes, people who have persecuted him throughout life.

Improving vision seems to carry the risk of becoming "one of them." Similarly, many people feel a surge of power and possibility when their vision improves. Some people have a fear of pleasure, and this surge of power and possibility is very quickly followed by a fear of punishment, as if Heaven has decreed Alfred's place in Creation is to see blurry and feel lousy. He might just be immovably convinced that he's "not one of those guys" who sees clearly. Or Alfred might be one of my clients who somehow manages to have a serious accident everytime he starts to get a little confidence. He might fear his eye will fall out of the socket if he relaxes it, or fear losing control. He might even believe if he doesn't practice eccentric fixation, he will be in a fatal accident. The fact that millions of people drive very safely with normal eyesight doesn't sway him. He is, after all, different. What he seems to want more than anything else is to convince me that what worked for others won't work for him because he's special. Special, yes, but unique? No. His eyes and visual system are no different than thos of billions of other people.

My working with Alfred ends when, confronted with self imposed limitations and the opportunity to transdcend them, tells me "I see what you mean, but all I want is to improve my eyesight." While I don't know if these limitations cause his poor eyesight, I do know they sustain his poor eyesight. I'm afraid I don't know how to help him, and if he truly just wants to not wear glasses without removing the barriers to seeing better, his best option might be LASIK.

Max · Last edited by Max on Mon Sep 10, 2007 1:06 am; edited 1 time in total

If working through ego defenses and muscular tensions can threaten even the security structures of people with "normal" vision, imagine how much MORE threatening these sensations must be to myopes who have dissociated from sensations of their own vitality for many years. Imagine suddenly being confronted with feelings of self-confidence and value in the face of a lifetime of physical habits and emotions totally in opposition to these ideas. Personally, I wouldn't trust - or even want any of it, as it would likely conflict with the well-established structures of my life at the time.

In addition, to come to true emotional understanding that we are responsible for our own mess-ups, including in some way our blurry eyesight, is pretty uncomfortable. But to have the opportunity to change how our bodies are wired energetically - our capacity to freely experience our deepest emotions without rocking the boat - and to gain the strength of character to live our own philosophies - then that understanding, for me, is a step most definitely worth working towards. These folks need to understand that often the most worthy and valuable steps we make here have nothing to do with improvements in the clarity of our physical vision! Twisted Evil

Robert · Site Admin

It's true, Max, the steps to clear vision are, physically, pretty simple. But people overcomplicate it. The person who wants nothing less than the quickest result is usually the person least able to handle the result.

However, all of these fears are irrational. They never play out. For example, being confronted with feelings of self confidence after a lifetime of something else is only frightening if you irrationally choose to interpret it as frightening. Objectively, it is actually a more physically secure and safer state. But no one will know that until they summon the courage to overcome their own irrationality and find out for themselves.

As Pat Paulson, the comedian who ran for President in 1968 said, "We have nothing to fear except fear itself. And the Boogieman."

For those non Americans, the Boogieman is a mythical creature that only frightens young children, and then only when they are supposed to go to sleep.