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thnk-golf
New member - welcome them!
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2020 10:43 pm

New to the forum

Post by thnk-golf »

Hello all,

My name is Ray and I believe I have been tolerating dyspraxia throughout all of my 70 years of existence and just became aware of the ramifications of the symptoms within the last year. This is somewhat of a joke on me because I have been involved in primary care in Northwest America for the last 40 years. I do not believe I had one patient that I referred for medical specialty or behavioral care to use this diagnosis.

Like others, I have asked myself many times why am I different or is there something wrong with me that prevents me from really feeling that I am connecting with anyone or anything. I am reasonably intelligent, but struggle with remembering and memorizing. I have always been clumsy with constantly dropping or spilling. I have poor hand eye coordination and did not excel with any sport. I socialize well for short periods of time and with any prolonged event I will basically pull back from interacting with a feeling of exhaustion.

The only term I would use to help me understand my personality would be what I call a social introvert which is a hard concept for others to understand much less using a term as dyspraxia. Even though I exhibit a lot of the dyspraxic traits, I still have misgivings about referring to myself as dyspraxic and would not publicly discuss this with friend or physician. So, I guess I am "testing the water" with this forum.

Thanks
Tom fod
Administrator
Posts: 2946
Joined: Thu May 12, 2011 9:05 pm
Location: SW UK

Re: New to the forum

Post by Tom fod »

Hi Ray and welcome. Glad you've found us. Where in the NW USA are you from? I've been to Seattle and some other places too as well as North of the border into BC, Ontario and Quebec a couple of times though not since 2012 and certainly not in 2020.

We do get a number of visitors from across the pond and indeed all over the world. While awareness and acceptance in the UK and Ireland is a degree more advanced, it's still far from perfect. Myths such as 'you'll grow out of it" still persist in many quarters. Equally it is often seen only as a bit of clumsiness and people don't appreciate the cognitive difficulties and emotional impact. Too many folk mistake our disorganised ways and assume we're a bit simple - We are not! We seem to have a definite tendency to be demanding of and super-hard on ourselves. We can become better at coping /masking but sometimes change catches us out and our often hard-won coping strategies can sometimes become redundant overnight.

While there is a Dyspraxia USA it isn't all that well understood or accepted a condition in the US. I believe people are more likely to get an Autism/Aspergers or ADHD diagnosis, if they have the insurance to cover it and can find a physician who understands it (Dyspraxia is generally termed DCD). A lot of people are understandably nervous about self-declaring (personally I'm not a fan of using the word 'diagnosis' though accept others do have differing opinions on that, dependent on how they perceive and cope with their condition and how it affects them.
Tom
Moderator/Administrator

With a foot full of bullets I tried to run faster but I just hobbled on to the next disaster.
(from Peter and the Test Tube Babies, Foot Full of Bullets)
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