Trauma Healing, Tutoring, and Finding My Footing at University

I mentioned in a recent post how challenging I was finding my statistics course in University, as well as an update on how I did last semester as well as how I was doing in social psychology, and I wanted to follow up on that.

In therapy, I was talking about my stress in statistics, how I got brain fog whenever I tried to do it. I went into panic mode and didn’t manage to focus or get things done; my mind went blank. My therapist and I realized that this was a trauma response that I was having.

The last time I’d tried doing math in a serious way was when I was 15, in university, learning Calculus 2. I was really struggling, and there were so many emotions involved that it put me off ever wanting to do math again. That led me to feel like my math brain was broken, something I’ve felt for years and years.

My therapist and I did a very effective and emotional EMDR session, an evidence-based trauma healing method targeting a specific memory to help reprocess it. By the end of the session, I went from feeling like my math brain was broken to “I can do math.” This huge block got lifted, and it’s because I was willing to give EMDR a chance.

EMDR is a little weird. Since it involves letting your brain make seemingly random associations while you tap yourself rhythmically, use clickers, or move your eyes from side to side after targeting a traumatic memory, it felt like my brain was “too ADHD” to allow that to work. But I’ve done a few targeted EMDR sessions on specific things, and after I gave it a chance, it really helped.

But back to the statistics.

Once I did that EMDR session, the next session in my statistics class went great, to the point where the teacher said to me that I should also give other people a chance to answer, since she noticed how quickly I got it. I’m not sure if it’s just because it was a topic I’d been a little familiar with (probability) or because it was after the EMDR session, but it was great. Since then, I’ve understood everything going on in class.

But it wasn’t enough to understand what was going on from that point on. There were all the previous classes that I hadn’t understood well enough to do the assignments on my own. So I decided to bite the bullet and get myself a tutor.

I asked around and found a tutor for statistics who speaks both English and the local language, so that I could get things explained to me in English but using the terms in the local language, and it has been great.

We started back from the beginning of what was taught, because I hadn’t understood the concept of standard deviation, one of the first things that everything else is based on. From there, I was stuck, because without the base you can’t do the higher levels. Another big issue was that I’d look at the sheets with our formulas on them and I’d just see squiggles and didn’t know how to apply them.

This teacher, combined with the EMDR session, has been magic. I now understand standard deviation. I can look at formulas and not just see squiggles, but instead see directions for what I need to do.

I have been meeting with the tutor a few times a week to catch up on things from the beginning of the semester, going through assignments to practice them. Then yesterday, I was able to go ahead of where we’d learned together and figure out a problem using something called the Pearson correlation coefficient, something the tutor hadn’t taught me yet. I was able to do it and get the correct answer because I followed what I remembered from class, read the formula written on the sheet, followed the directions from it, and used the standard deviation that I finally understand. I took a picture of that page I’d worked on, and that is what the image for this blog post is.

A big thing I realized is that I needed to let go of the shame of using a tutor. I’m not stupid or slow for needing one. I’m able to follow along in class with what is going on, usually, but not well enough to do things on my own. Things go quickly in class, and I understand it just barely. I needed to remind myself that I’m not just learning statistics, I’m also doing it in a foreign language. That means that in addition to understanding the concepts the teacher is teaching, I’m first doing the work of translating everything into a language I understand in my brain. That makes things slower and makes it harder to keep up.

Once I have a tutor explaining things to me in English, I usually understand things on the first try, with one or two exceptions. When I think of it this way, I’m basically expected to do two things at once in class, which means it is twice as hard for me as it is for everyone else. There is no shame whatsoever in needing extra help outside of class in my mother tongue.

I got back my first assignment that I did together with my tutor. It was a 100. I already submitted the next assignment, and I think I’ll get 100 on that one as well.

I’m a lot less panicky about statistics and a lot less worried that I’ll fail it. I’m still stressed about the language of the word problems on the statistics test, and almost all of them are word problems. But I will have a dictionary, and I have extra time on my exam, so I’ll be able to use that time to translate things as needed. My tutor is also showing me that many times I can misunderstand some of the words in the question as long as I get the numbers correct, and he’s showing me which words I need to understand 100%.

So that’s it for statistics.

For social psychology, I also have a blockage around memorizing names, again connected to a traumatic memory from school. We did another EMDR session on that, and afterwards it was really helpful. My therapist also helped me come up with some mnemonics to remember names and what they’re connected to, and the ones I’ve learned so far have helped.

We just had our second assignment due last night, and everyone else in the class seemed to be struggling with it, but I think I did really well on it. Now it’s time to just wait and see.

Some of my kids are having a hard time with how much time I’m spending on learning and homework, especially with all my tutoring. But my other kids are trying to explain to them the importance of what I’m doing and why.

And that’s all the updates for now.