Dyspraxia and Counter Empathy

A place to talk about your experience of living with Dyspraxia

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allesandro
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Dyspraxia and Counter Empathy

Post by allesandro »

I found out that I am dyspraxic less than a year ago (I'm 62) thanks to some lectures I'd listened to by an American psychiatrist who is trying to give it a new name and claim it as his discovery. A woman in the audience asked about the similarity between this and dyspraxia and he responded perfunctorily. That led me to Dyspraxia USA (headed by a Brit) and a lot of other English information on the subject including some of relevance to adults. None of the American information (where we call it DCD) had anything to say about dyspraxia and adults, except to say that the disorder is lifelong in duration. I wonder what they think becomes of all of those dyspraxic children when they grow up? Recently, I saw an Italian psychiatrist and neurologist (not someone who grew up in the US, but someone who came to the US after having finished med school in Italy.) I told him about my life experiences with dyspraxia, and not having known that any of them had anything to do with something called dyspraxia and feelings of being overwhelmed to think that I might not ever have known if not by chance(since most Americans have never heard of it), and just feelings of being overwhelmed in general with issues of grief and loss regarding those experiences, not knowing what they where about or how to go about connecting the dots so I might know how to adapt, what strengths to focus on, and what weaknesses to avoid. He looked at me like I had five heads and said that it was "a little late to begin to address it now." He even asked me what I meant by grief. He then told me this was an issue that didn't require the busy time of a psychiatrist and neurologist, and that any therapist could help me with these feelings. He even pretended to be unaware that most American therapists don't even know what dyspraxia (or DCD) even is unless they are neuropsychologists or neurologists (can't remember what you guys in the UK call them), and that it's very hard to find one in the City who accepts Medicare (retired and disabled people are eligible for Medicare in the US). As you know we have no NHS here.
This man's apathy went way beyond stoicism, to the point of being inconsiderate and humiliating.
By the way, after the first 15 minutes I gave the man three hand signals: one American, one Italian, and one international. The American hand signal means, 'shut up,' and the Italian hand signals my grandfather taught me, which indicates the intent to put a curse on someone(maloicchio), and the International signal that suggests that he should do to himself that which only an earthworm can do to himself. I then exited the office and wrote him an online review suggesting that he should remove the words,'specializing in psychiatry and neurology,' and replace them with 'specializing in indifference and counter empathy.' As someone who feels somewhat in the middle between America, England, and Italy, I was just wondering if anyone has ever heard of or experienced anything like this before.
Andrew_S_Hatton
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Re: Dyspraxia and Counter Empathy

Post by Andrew_S_Hatton »

EDITED.

It is reminding me of experiences with several UK medical NHS practitioners, including at consultant level who lacked compassion or empathy.

I realised, I probably had DCD/Dyspraxia interchangeably, when I was 50 in 1999 and had it confirmed by a non medically trained chartered psychologist in 2002, following which two consultant NHS, neurologists, one a professor, denied that diagnosis.

In 2014 an NHS, consultant psychiatrist confirmed the assessments from 2002 of both dyspraxia and dyslexia.


When writing here, it helps me if contributors use lots of white space.

I am also dyslexic and may not have this forums font set so that it is easily readable - can it be changed?


I plan to reflect and may comment some more here in due course.
Tom fod
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Re: Dyspraxia and Counter Empathy

Post by Tom fod »

Andrew_S_Hatton wrote: Thu Oct 18, 2018 3:21 am EDITED.

It is reminding me of experiences with several UK medical NHS practitioners, including at consultant level who lacked compassion or empathy.

I realised, I probably had DCD/Dyspraxia interchangeably, when I was 50 in 1999 and had it confirmed by a non medically trained chartered psychologist in 2002, following which two consultant NHS, neurologists, one a professor, denied that diagnosis.

In 2014 an NHS, consultant psychiatrist confirmed the assessments from 2002 of both dyspraxia and dyslexia.


When writing here, it helps me if contributors use lots of white space.

I am also dyslexic and may not have this forums font set so that it is easily readable - can it be changed?


I plan to reflect and may comment some more here in due course.
Andrew
Apologies as far has I can see there is no way to change font (sorry about that). you can always quote to get a copy of a post then increase text size, change colour or embolden and add returns to break it into manageable chunks.

If you choose to edit after submitting there is an option at bottom for an explanation of what/why if you so choose.
Last edited by Tom fod on Thu Oct 18, 2018 9:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: missing comma
Tom
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