Optometrists can be huge bullies, if you say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Shannon reveals in the forum:
I started endmyopia while I was ordering new glasses, which sucks so much because I have to keep talking to the optometrist. It’s extremely emotionally draining. I said my glasses were too strong, so they did a retest, and he only changed it by .25 in one eye and then upped the astigmatism to make it the same. It’s hard to even tell what the reading was because he was training another person, so obviously wanted to look good in front of everyone and prove me wrong. I was so frustrated that I cried, and they were like it’s ok everyone has glasses.”
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(whole thread, here)
You think you stop being bullied after you are no longer a kid in school?
Nope. Adults aren’t exactly any more kind than children, especially when you question their authority, or their beliefs, or get in the way of their methods and habits. Believe the best, and yet expect the worst.
This is a particularly hard lesson I had to learn about optometrists.
You will notice that I’m still not very good at it, from the first draft of the child myopia book.
Let’s consider some helpful psychology.
Attacking those with beliefs different from your own never has any beneficial results for anyone. We are tempted to, it feels so, so good, but we have to resist the urge even so. The only way forward is to agree and amplify, as I like to call the strategy. For example:
Them: “Your eyes suck. We are going to increase your prescription to a -8. Totally normal, don’t worry.”
You: “Yes, I understand. You are right! My eyes do suck. It’s a great idea to increase my prescription to a -8. And also because yes I agree, let’s also increase my prescription to a -6.75 so I can use that for the computer. Or I get huge headaches. I know you guys agree, perfectly all right, just for the computer. Never for anything else. And let’s make those -6.75 glasses today and then let’s also make those -8 glasses which I totally agree with, next time I come by.”
Of course next time you come by, you won’t have any -8 glasses made. Or probably the best thing is to just not go to that optometrist again altogether.
Because you are smarter than yours truly, you’d use something like above as agree and amplify instead of getting into an argument that nobody can win. Even as you disagree, you don’t say “but, …”. Instead you say “yes, and …”. Even if you are totally disagreeing and you want a -6.75 instead of a -8, you want to avoid all the ego buttons. Find ways to agree, say yes, even if your actually aiming at a -1.25 reduction rather than accepting the increase.
“Yes, and …”. It’s good stuff. ;-)
Or, just go buy some quality lenses online. Or find a behavioral optometrist who is willing to buck the status quo and actually give you a lower prescription. Let you have one, without you having to whip out the Jedi mind tricks.
Let’s quickly cover again the meaning of prescriptions.
One, the optometrist is legally obligated in most places to juice up your eyes till the retina pops out of the back of your skull (it’s Saturday, please forgive the embellishments). That and most people want a quick fix, and besides all of that, prevention or otherwise open-to-interpretation therapy approaches are not suitable for much of the general public.
In reality though, a prescription does just one thing. Understand this and you understand it all.
The higher the prescription, relative to your myopia, the further you can see clearly.
So you want to ask yourself, how far do I need to see clearly? And in all reality you want to see clearly as far as you need to look, and build in just a little bit of blur horizon at the far end of that. That’s it, really. For close-up that might mean about -1.5 diopters less than your “full” correction to 20/20 would be (approximately). For distance, it’s up to you. You want to see clearly, it’s really much better for your brain and emotional well being. Clearly, but with a distance where you signs get blurred enough to really work on some active focus.
You might call it the “clear bubble”. Higher prescription, larger bubble. Optometrist prescription, giant bubble. Realistic computer prescription, small bubble. Good distance prescription, bubble-relative-to-your-needs.
If I were to finish an optometry degree, I could no longer say this to you.
I’d be flushing my degree down the toilet, and also incurring the wrath of the high priests of optometry. As non practicing professional, saying this strictly theoretically and philosophically, and not at all advice-specifically, I can tell you about diopters as relative to your needs.
Of course as always, wear what is required by law or personal safety. Lens prescriptions are no joke. They may cause progressive myopia, or for you to trip and fall into a manhole cover. Make informed choices.
Cheers,
– Jake
