new thread
Just wanted to post a quick FYI in response to the replies I got to Otaku's last post.
I'm actually quite content with my eyesight, and have been very happily married for the last 12 years now. Mind you, being a full-time caregiver to my wife isn't easy, but my marriage has many more positives to counter the negatives, and I can't imagine spending my life with anyone else.
What I was trying to do was respond to Otaku's message using a form of "tough love". It's a psychological technique more commonly used on drug addicts. Addicts don't deny that they're using, they just deny that they're hurting others. With it, the addict is caught off guard and emotionally disarmed. Everyone he cares about explicitly spells out how they've been hurt. While expressing love and concern, the interveners also outline concrete repercussions should he refuse treatment.
While Otaku is certainly no drug addict, I thought I'd try a variation on the technique on him which included resorting to name-calling, something I generally never do. I'm just sorry no one else got the point of what I was trying to do, save for Urban Cowboy.
Otaku, I'm if my post was particularly jarring to you. I would, however, strongly recommend you seek counseling. You have issues that go far deeper than anything surgery will ever be able to help fix. And counseling is much, much cheaper.
Good luck.
I have a college background in psychology/counseling along with some clinical experience and I know several other people around here probably do as well, and tough love in general is considered a very risky tactic to use because it often drives people away more than helping them. In relation to drug users, there has even been a steady increase in suicide rates in tough love programs. Thus it really is a questionable and highly confrontational technique to employ and in many cases has a negative effect.
Also I am glad that you are content with your situation and I wish you the best and I'm happy that you are your wife found each other.
Oh. Um... oops. Sorry, didn't know that.
Hopefully, I haven't scarred him too much.
No problem, I'm sure everything is fine. No need to worry.
Yeah, sometime between birth and 5 years of age, the muscles in my eyes began malfunctioning, forcing me to train myself to see out of just one eye. Whichever eye I chose, it would straighten out and the other would relax and turn in. I just learned to ignore the other image. My parents tried subjecting me to corrective surgery, but the experience proved too emotionally traumatic for them to want to continue treatments, so they opted for a less costly approach and got me glasses with special corrective lenses. They weren't designed to train me to use both eyes, but to create an optical illusion that made both eyes appear straight.
I can see fine out of either eye, I just can't use them in tandum. Early in childhood, I decided against wearing corrective lenses in favor of regular glasses, to correct an issue I had developed with near-sightedness. I stopped wearing glasses, altogether, during my 20's, as I found I didn't need them anymore. A couple of years ago, I developed a mild astigmatism, and I've worn glasses again since.
I've read that it's a condition that only develops among infants, and must be treated as early in childhood as possible, when the brain is still learning how to process images. Otherwise, the brain can never be re-trained.
My left eye is the one I use, predominantly, but I frequently switch to the right eye, either instinctively, or depending on what I'm doing.
Nyghtfall, Nyghtfall! I totally "got" whatcha said to Otaku earlier; your technique DID ring true to the Interventionist Schhol, me havin' been in an Outpatient Recovery Program, havin' been the first wave of freebase (reeead: crack!) cocaine addicts in the 1980's! Shwew! That post of yours sure brought back memories, man.
Unfortunately, as you must know, this technique, "tough love", sometimes only serves to inspire the subject to whom it is directed to recoil further and further into their shell of Japanese animation worship -er, uhm!- I mean drug addiction.
Yes, Nyghtfall, Otaku needs counseling. I needed (and received!) good counseling, too, but I'd reached such a level of personal dissolution that I finally WANTED to get well, not dehumanise further and further 'til I was living on skid row, or within an anime or manga cult classic.
Your acceptance of your and your wife's disabilities are nothing short of valorous; you are truly to be lauded with the kudos as unflinching a strong soul such as you deserves. I would only wish that there were more people like you populating this planet.
Yours in Recovery,
Quenyan (+:-)}
Don't apologise for it.
This is a hair board to talk about hair and hair related topics, not about some little kid thinking he is ''ugly'' when he is just low on confidence.
I think what you said it right.
I certainly read your response as 'caring' if in a unusual way. Maybe the abruptness of the f**k you's were a little strong, but yeah I think most here saw where you were coming from.
I do agree that many people have genuinely tough lives and Otaku's post may have seemed trivial in comparison, but in his own way and in his own world he is most probably suffering too.
Cheers Dave