Definitions of dyspraxia too negative?

[BlueSky]

Hi all

I've just joined the forum as I am re-assessing my relationship with my dyspraxia (too boring to get into the details of why here!)

I was going through some of the big websites that outlines the symptoms of dyspraxia and ended up just feeling bad - and then I remembered back to when I was first diagnosed - which was a mixture of relief (to have some sort of 'external' validation of my experience) and upset. The latter because I think it made me feel like so much of my life was going to be controlled by something I could not fix, and that is so problematic it needs a diagnosis.

I've largely made my peace with it all - that said, going back to lists made me feel worse because it such a long list of things that I am actively crap at. I wondered if this was common?

x

[Tom fod]

I'd definitely agree, though some might call me ableist. It's something of a hot potato. If you're interested here are some musings I wrote back in 2019. http://www.dyspraxialifemagazine.co.uk/ ... landscape/

Personally I'm not all that keen on the use of 'diagnosed' though I accept there needs to be some clinical input to rule out other potential causes. The aftercare after people are given the news, in terms of: What next? What does this mean? who should I tell and how? etc is generally woeful. Finding this forum 10 years ago really helped as did my friend reminding me that it did not change who I was

The other thing that does people an immense disservice is the notion that we should have 'grown out of it. It can be all too easy to become overly focussed on all that we find difficult and are criticised for (including our often strong in-built tendency to self-criticism) and clean forget that there are things we can and do excel at.

In my opinion there is a lot of misinformation about Dyspraxia out there on the web and some individuals need censuring!

[BlueSky]

Thanks Tom, your post was really interesting and I hadn't thought at all about the social/diagnostic angles to this.

Do you know any examples of accessible support/guides or is it more p2p?

[Tom fod]

There's a directory of useful links here
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=7385

The best thing I've found is talking to others with similar/different experiences,. but also not trying to compare myself to others too much.

A lot of iseful help is non specific to Dyspraxia eg CBT but even that doesn't necessarily work for everyone.

[BlueSky]

That's helpful, thank you. There are some great resources there, it's just a shame that it feels so ad hoc in some places. It feels sort of ridiculous that there is a relatively high prevalence of dyspraxia in the population, but many of the issues that are associated with it - not least mental health difficulties - are driven by a sense of isolation and feeling useless. Obviously why so important that forums like this exist

[Tom fod]

Apologies for tardy response

You're very welcome. It is regrettably really ad-hoc and very much a lottery. Things have slowly improved but it is sadly still the case that many are struggling terribly with dyspraxia and its emotional/mental health impact.

[Avarice]

Its also people in fields like educational/ developmental psychology who develop buzzwords to try to categorise things they only partially understand; if they really understand anything. One once diagnosed me as having "Dyscalculia" when, apart for in time pressured numeracy tests for a job, I can now do /understand mathematics well enough but that was in spite of incompetent school education that was the REAL RUB of the problem. Dyscalculia!! What an idiot.