Explaining it to my Boyfriend

[LeopardBella]

Hi I am an adult with dyspraxia I was diagnosed when I was young and it has affected my life and I suffer from severe anxiety which I am not sure whether it is due to my Dyspraxia we also think I am autistic but that is undiagnosed but I do have a boyfriend who tries his very best to understand what Dyspraxia is and how it affects me but he doesn't understand it and I try my best to make him understand but it doesn't work can anyone help me explain how i can make my boyfriend understand how Dyspraxia works. TIA.

[Tom fod]

Hi I am an adult with dyspraxia I was diagnosed when I was young and it has affected my life and I suffer from severe anxiety which I am not sure whether it is due to my Dyspraxia we also think I am autistic but that is undiagnosed but I do have a boyfriend who tries his very best to understand what Dyspraxia is and how it affects me but he doesn't understand it and I try my best to make him understand but it doesn't work can anyone help me explain how i can make my boyfriend understand how Dyspraxia works. TIA.

Hi Bella

Many people with Dyspraxia often also struggle with anxiety. We so often put an awful lot of pressure on ourselves to get things right and the strain of this often has the opposite effect. Explaining it to others who aren't affected can be tricky as a lot of the traits we have happen when other people slip up occasionally so they normalise these and don't always understand that we may have worn ourselves out trying to get stuff rightonly for some people to say well if you concentrated properly/took your time or worse 'worked harder' it would be fine. Dyspraxia doesn't work like that and if you've met one person who's dyspraxic, you've met one dyspraxic. Putting difficult things into words is never easy yet we so often feel we have to try to explain everything, which again heaps on the pressure . .

[MZNok2]

It is not easy to make anyone understand . My daughter is undiagnosed but she has Dyslexia and Dyspraxia was mentioned in her Dyslexia Assessment report that some of her symptoms posdibly fall under dyspraxia . She has not found one doctor who is interested in making a referral for further assessment.
I suggest you can honestly share your symptoms with your boyfriend and provide him with books where he can read and ùnderstand more about your dyspraxia symptoms and how it affects your daily living activities .
My daughter was not able to explain and she did not understand what is happening and why she is struggling
with doing simple tasks that others find easy doing .
I observed the symptoms and the impact it has on her functioning and did my research as a parent and i developed understanding as a result I'm supporting her to accept her limitations and focus on what she is able to do while getting support and uses wearable aids o help her cope with tasks she is finding difficult to do. It was not easy because she did not want to accept her condition but with time she has come to terms with it.
For instance she uses a a wrist brace and ankle brace when doing housework and doing tasks that needs walking/ standing for long .

[Tom fod]

It is not easy to make anyone understand . My daughter is undiagnosed but she has Dyslexia and Dyspraxia was mentioned in her Dyslexia Assessment report that some of her symptoms possibly fall under dyspraxia . She has not found one doctor who is interested in making a referral for further assessment.
I suggest you can honestly share your symptoms with your boyfriend and provide him with books where he can read and ùnderstand more about your dyspraxia symptoms and how it affects your daily living activities .
My daughter was not able to explain and she did not understand what is happening and why she is struggling
with doing simple tasks that others find easy doing .
I observed the symptoms and the impact it has on her functioning and did my research as a parent and i developed understanding as a result I'm supporting her to accept her limitations and focus on what she is able to do while getting support and uses wearable aids o help her cope with tasks she is finding difficult to do. It was not easy because she did not want to accept her condition but with time she has come to terms with it.
For instance she uses a a wrist brace and ankle brace when doing housework and doing tasks that needs walking/ standing for long .

It's very much a lottery and GPs (in the UK) themselves often don't have much awareness or (m)any options for referring adults who come to them for dyspraxia-related support. Sometimes people might be referred to non-specific Mental Health /counselling services and if the people they see don't or won't try to understand the underlying dyspraxia . . . Having that report from an OT or Educational Psychologist can help us to start on the journey of accepting our condition, what it means for us and how we can work around it, develop our own coping and avowal strategies. Sometimes we try to stick rigidly to these strategies which is not always workable in a dynamic world where everything is fast moving and the feeling of being 'lost' and lagging behind our peers. This exacerbates the anxiety and the feeling we're completely at odds with our peers. Getting the right support and avoiding the tendency to feel shame for being different and not conforming to both our own and others' ideals and expectations are a big part of the emotional impact/trauma we so often experience.

Conveying to others how we feel is so often difficult. Dyspraxic traits are often misunderstood and easily dismissed by those who have no first hand experience. Dyspraxia can affect who we process emotions making it more challenging to try to explain what is wrong/why we struggle. We're intelligent but dyspraxia so often undermines our confidence in ourselves and our abilities so we can (or be made to) feel stupid/ashamed, when we really should not.

Equally people with dyspraxia are unique, very often Dyspraxia is not the only condition we have. The prevalence and relationship with many co-occurring conditions is not well understood. Because everyone if different, it can be hard to determine what is directly or indirectly related to one's own dyspraxia experience as an individual.