Tuesday is usually a psychodrama day. On a Tuesday some time ago, I had an insight that I want to share with you:

One of our colleagues talked about joining a new university and, though being at a mature age with proven successes from a professional point of view, she described how she had panic attacks when thinking about the first session of exams. She started crying while telling us about it.

The group facilitator asked us to share similar experiences, how they had affected us and how we’d handled them.

We each shared how we had been through the same type of unpleasant feelings, ranging from anxiety to panic, and how we managed to push through with various tricks.

So, while listening to my group, I had a moment of insight that I want to share with you now.

I feel that the persistence and intensity of the anxiety I used to encounter before exams is actually a PTSD symptom.

I realize that we have been traumatized daily, for 15-20 years, by our various professors.

Maybe it was not a certain traumatic event, but the systematic influence of a system that daily exposes children to aggressive, authoritarian, disrespectful, indifferent, anxious, depressed, abusive persons, must have a traumatizing effect.

How many of the teachers you have met made you feel the love and respect for children and their vocation?

And how many of the teachers you have met acted in destructive and harmful ways?
Do you think that a child that sees the important things that he cares about (like acceptance and appreciation) being handled by abusive people for at least 15 years will remain unchanged?

That is the reason for the general hate and anguish that children express regarding school, education, professors.

Our teachers and parents’ attitudes are the biggest influences in our development into adults.

And if we can work with the relationships with our parents in order to heal them, we neglect the ones with the formal educational system and our teachers.

Look at all the online discussions about how to be a good parent versus how to change the current educational system.

In fact, most of us don’t realize that one of the main aggressors in our childhood and adolescence is the formal educational system.

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My learnings

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I just realized how extended this harmful impact of the current formal educational system has been in my life and my development as an adult.

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Did you have a similar experience? What did you learn?

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