How did you feel in grade school when you did not understand something?

I never understood anything except social studies because it was actually sort of interesting. from 1st to 12th grade I was just always counting down the days to the next report card and beating I was sure to get when I came home. Those walks from the bus to the house were terrible, it felt like walking to my own execution. My brothers were all B students, but me I barely got by D's and a few C's if I was lucky. My dad would give them a few dollars a piece and then he would just beat the hell out of me. I hated school.

 

I always did well in school. I was pretty lucky in that things came pretty naturally to me. I loved to learn and luckily never got too overwhelmed (even when I waited until 10 pm to start reading the novel that was due for class the next morning- note to current self- get back to work now and stop lingering on EC).

But math...ah math...that never came easy to me. I was blessed with a teacher in high school that took extra time with me, even when I was no longer in her class. She worked with me after school and even into college, helping me work through Algebra and Calculus until the problems started to make sense in my mind.

But, inevitably on test day everything we had worked on left me. I would just stare at the paper, not able to make sense of anything the problem was asking me to do. I was no longer able to sort the equation into smaller steps, it just remained one large task that was too much to take on. I would sit there feeling completely overwhelmed, staring at the blank paper and then at the clock getting more frustrated as time dwindled. Then, I would force myself to try and tackle the problem and would be unable to remember the formulas needed and when I finally thought I had an answer to the equation I could not for the life of me figure out how I arrived at that point.

When time was up- I would leave relieved that it was finally over, but disappointed in myself that once again I was beaten by math.

 

I always felt ashamed!

 

@Soundofmusic why?

 

Like a worthless piece of garbage that had a learning disability and got bullied so he didn't focus on learning. Instead he focused on who was going to bully him next. Someone who would throw his life away and become a failure. PTSD would rule his life and nobody would really care. Someone who would be jobless at 50 with nothing.

 

I learned how to disassociate from my emotions quite young. I didn't start learning to connect and evaluate until I started therapy, and even now I sometimes disconnect and have to be reminded by Gideon or my sister that it's important to feel even the negative feelings.

So, that said....

1) Not understanding something. A moment of confusion followed by a moment of frustration, followed by numbness to emotion, and then action (usually in the form of requesting an explanation or help).

2) A bad grade... A momentary flash of disappointment and displeasure, followed by numbness to emotion, and then problem solving thoughts (such as, how can I resolve this, how can I keep this from my father's purview, etc).

 

I'm in college and I still don't understand algebra. I'd be excited to get even a D since I get nothing but straight F's on my papers. I just got my 7th F in a row yesterday.

 

Awful. Terrible. Like a failure.