racheH
Well-known member
OK I've only ever explained this to my mum. Never seen it described anywhere so I'm not sure if anyone will be able relate. Maybe people have just been as scared as I have of admitting it. Deep breath, this is hard for me:
The reason I was so terrified of school was not just the disapproval of peers. The thing that eventually got me down the most was… fear that staff would disapprove of anyone I was associated with. That’s the best way I can put it. From my nursery days I would sit and hope that no one would be naughty, because I couldn’t bear to see adults thinking we were bad.
For most of my school years, the most absolutely dreaded experience was school assembly. The staff seemed so stressed when people wouldn't stop talking on their way in and out... and I know how ridiculous this sounds. To take myself seriously as I'm typing I'm having to recall how I felt. It was all very real.
It's not just in school either. If I was watching a performance and the audience wasn't to my mind 'well behaved', as they often aren't when you're on holiday, I got extremely anxious. I feel the need to escape. Just occasionally I get that fear again - it was the hardest of my social phobias to lose.
I’ve recently considered that the cause of this was teachers who said: “Everybody!” when some people were disobedient. It sounds nuts, but until this year I thought they meant, “I strongly disapprove of everybody whom I just gave instructions to.” I guess because the other kids weren’t scared of disapproval anyway, they didn’t interpret things in that paranoid way. They knew as I now do, that those teachers meant that they expected everybody to be good, and that the implication was that those who weren't compliant were not exempt from the rules. From then on, anger at my class/group was almost as painful as anger at me. The only difference was that I had no control over the situation. I could only sit, do nothing, say nothing like a good child and silently pray to God that everyone would just SHUT UP AND BE GOOD. :evil: I sound like a lunatic...
Even though I’ve accepted that most people will always think I’m weird, the habit of keeping this thing secret is hard to break. I can’t explain it… That thread about being ashamed of fear made me think… Out of everything, I was more scared of anyone realising how I felt about this than I was scared of the prospect of living the rest of my childhood with it. That’s a lot of fear.
*sigh* Well, even if you all think I'm crazy now, at least no-one will be ashamed to tell me anything about themselves anymore... :roll:
The reason I was so terrified of school was not just the disapproval of peers. The thing that eventually got me down the most was… fear that staff would disapprove of anyone I was associated with. That’s the best way I can put it. From my nursery days I would sit and hope that no one would be naughty, because I couldn’t bear to see adults thinking we were bad.
For most of my school years, the most absolutely dreaded experience was school assembly. The staff seemed so stressed when people wouldn't stop talking on their way in and out... and I know how ridiculous this sounds. To take myself seriously as I'm typing I'm having to recall how I felt. It was all very real.
It's not just in school either. If I was watching a performance and the audience wasn't to my mind 'well behaved', as they often aren't when you're on holiday, I got extremely anxious. I feel the need to escape. Just occasionally I get that fear again - it was the hardest of my social phobias to lose.
I’ve recently considered that the cause of this was teachers who said: “Everybody!” when some people were disobedient. It sounds nuts, but until this year I thought they meant, “I strongly disapprove of everybody whom I just gave instructions to.” I guess because the other kids weren’t scared of disapproval anyway, they didn’t interpret things in that paranoid way. They knew as I now do, that those teachers meant that they expected everybody to be good, and that the implication was that those who weren't compliant were not exempt from the rules. From then on, anger at my class/group was almost as painful as anger at me. The only difference was that I had no control over the situation. I could only sit, do nothing, say nothing like a good child and silently pray to God that everyone would just SHUT UP AND BE GOOD. :evil: I sound like a lunatic...
Even though I’ve accepted that most people will always think I’m weird, the habit of keeping this thing secret is hard to break. I can’t explain it… That thread about being ashamed of fear made me think… Out of everything, I was more scared of anyone realising how I felt about this than I was scared of the prospect of living the rest of my childhood with it. That’s a lot of fear.
*sigh* Well, even if you all think I'm crazy now, at least no-one will be ashamed to tell me anything about themselves anymore... :roll: