Have I or Haven't I?

[MDS]

For many years I have pondered over why I get things wrong when I tried to understand and speak to other people. Then I analysed the comments people made on this forum, and I felt that having Dyspraxia was my problem.

I was clumsy as a child, I was not very agile and always slowest in running, and now I still have difficulties in hand writing.

Over the years I have had great difficulty in reading people and understanding the situation. I feel I exhibit social and emotional disconnection, always used to be on the outer perimeter with people.

I am very slow to process information, with a frequent lack of spontaneous reaction. I used to have, until recently, problems with long term time management, perception and processing to make the right things happen. Let alone think of things i should do or say.

I do not always properly translate my thoughts into speech, particularly when caught unawares, as I often have to have time to plan what I am going to say. I have to concentrate when speaking in a strange environment, as I have been frequently known to mess up conversations particularly in groups - I speak out of turn or across the room, which to me always seems to be perfectly right to me. So I feel I end up sounding feeble or daft.

All this tended to make me very anxious. So I went to the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, had many tests - particularly hand movement and coordination - where the end result was that there was nothing wrong with me at all, just a bit far towards one end of the spectrum

Yet the way I have felt throughout my life together with all my experiences of life which strongly echo your experiences, made me feel I have Dyspraxia. SO, have I or haven't I got Dyspraxia? Or are there two types of Dyspraxia? Any ideas!!!!

[Tom fod]

Hello again

I'm sorry to hear you still have not been able to get the definitive answers you are looking for. There is a very wide spectrum in terms of how people are affected and also in terms of how well they cope in both the physical and emotional sense. It's good though that the neurologists have ruled out other problems. I sense that you are seeking professional confirmation of your self diagnosis of Dyspraxia but I feel that as non-professional experts it's probably inappropriate for us to categorically say yes or no over the internet.

However as a self diagnosed dyspraxic you are of course welcome to consider yourself a member of our community. I think it is quite common to feel we have to 'justify the air we breathe' but we shouldn't have to apologise for our own existence. We can and do contribute. we tend to have to work harder but others have no more right, if any, to dismiss us out of hand. (Hell they can do so at their peril!)

I know you've talked about support for your long suffering wife and I could see myself thinking exactly the same were I ever to manage to find a life partner myself. However she's stuck by you and vice versa for 45 years. Are we of the younger generation better off with our throwaway society and expectations of instant gratification or move on? I think you can only truly know by living it oneself. People will always have opinions but are their answers from their own perspective necessarily right for the people in the situations on which they choose to comment?

Would it be fair to say your biggest critic is yourself? Personally I'm a bit of a perfectionist and always set myself impossibly high standards and been ready with my personal big stick for not always being able to uphold them. I've been lucky enough to recognise that there are people who appreciate me for what I'm good at but I do struggle to accept myself for the things they choose not to notice or point out, probably (or hopefully) because they are appreciating the positives rather than the negatives.

[screengreen]

To me you sound like you do have dyspraxia, its hard to diagnose and easily missed even by professionals unless you have the proper training. Did they ask you to do novel movements? If they did not then they may have missed key issues for you