My Dyspraxia Diagnosis
I was diagnosed with Dyspraxia in.. 2015? As with all my diagnoses, I have never been given a pamphlet explaining the extent of their impact. What is Dyspraxia?At the time I was told it was why I had difficulty with my co-ordination, why I was so 'clumsy'. But recently I looked into it further, and here are a few symptoms that I was surprised to find were... symptoms. Not something everybody deals with every day.
Poor Memory, may forget and lose things
Speech may have uncontrolled pitch, volume and rate
Hyper sensitive to light, noise, touch, smell, taste, temperature, and pain
Lack of awareness of body position in space and spatial relationships. Can result in bumping into and tripping over things and people, dropping and spilling things
Inadequate sense of direction. Difficulty distinguishing right from left means map reading skills are poor
Some of these things may also be traits in people who are not Dyspraxic, but add them all together without reasoning and quickly my childhood and teen years became exceptionally frustrating, a catalyst for self hatred. At school, I was punished for my forgetfulness and my hyper-sensitivity. Why couldn’t I cope as well as everybody else?! Why couldn’t I remember how to ride a bike and swim and use my cutlery ‘properly’?! Why couldn't I control myself?
I didn’t realise, until recently, that Dyspraxia made me neurodivergent.
I don’t know why that revelation made such a difference in how I view myself, but it has. It encouraged me to learn more about my own condition. It helped me understand the way my brain works. This is where labels are important, where diagnoses come in useful. Because understanding why we behave in the way we do means we can give ourselves more empathy. It has given me more space to be kind to myself. A gentle reminder that I shouldn’t hold myself to the same expectations as neurotypical people, because my body and mind are not the standard that society was designed for. I just wish someone had explained this to me earlier. Then maybe I wouldn’t have spent so long being so harsh with myself! Society needs to be more accommodating, I do not need to change.
