Navigating Neurodiversity: Dyspraxia & Me
I spent the first 20 of my 22 years, or 90% of my life, not knowing that I had a learning disability. It wasn’t until I’d finished my first year at Oxford University, bewildered and frustrated by my inability to finish an exam, hold a pen correctly, focus or even think in an exam room with 50 other students, when I was finally told I had dyspraxia with ADHD symptoms, and I almost cried with relief when I found out.
It took some coming to terms with, but getting diagnosed turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Developmental Co-ordination Disorder, or dyspraxia, is a neurological disorder affecting signals sent from the brain to the body, leading to an immaturity of motor skills, issues with planning and sequencing, sensitivity to external stimuli, and language impairments. Up to 50% of dyspraxics also experience ADHD, a neurodevelopmental disorder characterised by inattentiveness, and problems with information processing and short-term memory.
It’s an invisible disability, so sufferers often muddle through without realising what’s wrong with them. Institutions also don’t realise the impact they have on the neuro-diverse amongst us.
Until my diagnosis, I had no explanation for why I lost everything I owned, had a bad memory, and didn’t have the co-ordination to play sports with peers. Frustratingly, I felt I couldn’t live up to everything I felt capable of. It knocked my self-esteem, not having an explanation as to why simple skills were so confusing to me, and made me think I was a bit useless. My IQ tested at 145, but the balance required to ride a bike was beyond me.
Knowing there was something innately wrong with me growing up, and not being able to put my finger on why, affected my confidence. But it also made me intensely driven, and determined to find ways to get by that don’t rely on a knack for hand-eye co-ordination.
Understanding how to succeed in a world that is very much not designed for neuro-divergent individuals, is something I’m still figuring out. After all, it’s hard just to go about your daily business when some of the things that make me who I am, and seem normal to me, are just plain weird to everyone around me.
I freak out at some combinations of colours and sounds because of poor sensory integration, I get intensely anxious in supermarkets and department stores because my lack of spatial awareness makes the aisles and shapes overwhelming, and heightened sensitivities mean I can hardly focus in a crowded room. And it’s difficult to have faith in your own intelligence when on bad days you’re confused by the concept of handwriting, or can’t work out how to follow a line on a map.
But although I struggle with basic aspects of daily life, I’m convinced that my weird, haywire brain is still useful. And it’s made me appreciate how intelligence isn’t singular; it needs the right circumstances to flourish, and reach true potential. Beyond that, I’ve realised that a weakening in some areas, leads to a sharpening in others.
Something I did have, was persistence. I’ve always had this chip on my shoulder, and a desire to prove that my malfunctioning brain didn’t spell doom. I didn’t function particularly well at school. Concentrating in a room full of students and navigating my way around a set of buildings every other hour, was complicated for me, and teachers wrote me off as lazy and inattentive.
But the frustration of feeling that I was capable of more and knowing I was more intelligent than my teachers thought, was a big motivator. I performed unexpectedly well in exams, because I had the luxury of Easter holidays and study leave, and to revise away from external stimuli. I was told by teachers not to apply to Oxford, which made me all the more determined to get in. I loved the learning style at Oxford, I loved being able to hyper-focus on particular material and deep dive into it, to work in your own space. Once I found working conditions that worked for me, I loved working hard. When taking exams in the imposing Examination Schools didn’t work for me, I started doing them in a room alone, away from distractions, and found my grades increasing dramatically.
Even though I had to put extra effort into working out what made me tick, which didn’t seem an issue for my peers, I am grateful for it in a sense. It’s forced me to think much more clearly about who I am, where my limitations and strengths are, and where I actually can improve myself — things that a lot of people don’t think about until later in life.
My experiences left me with an emphatic belief that you’re only as intelligent as your environment enables you to be, and only as smart as the people around you. Smartness isn’t a static attribute that you’re born with. It’s a dynamic skill that you can optimise by surrounding yourself by the right circumstances, individuals, and environmental modifications.
And the right modifications can draw out the best in neurodiverse individuals, and highlight that whilst you might struggle in some aspects, your mind is better optimised for tasks that neurotypical types might not find easy.
Dyspraxics, like myself, tend to be resilient and resourceful, have innate empathy, and can grasp the conceptual bigger picture with ease. Dyslexics tend to be excellent communicators. Individuals with ADHD or Asperger’s often become crazy-skilled in areas that excite them, due to a capacity to hyper-focus once they find a topic they’re engaged by — the arts, entrepreneurship, and computer programming being some of the more commonly known examples.
But just as environmental or personal modifications can optimise your difference for success, circumstantial barriers can be exacerbated by disabilities. Gender is a glaring example. Women are chronically under-diagnosed in comparison to men, and although there’s no conclusive answer as to why, the explanations tend to be a) research, and therefore diagnostic criteria, is over-focused on males, and b) women are more inclined to attempt to fit in socially, even if it doesn’t come naturally to them. As a result, women either aren’t recognised as neuro-diverse, or teach themselves to mask their neurological differences, at the expense of great mental energy, and a perpetual confusion as to why what seems to come so simply to some, is a huge effort for themselves.
I felt this experience first-hand. I’d been tested before. When I was 15, my inability to cope in a classroom environment and seeming lack of interest in socialising with my peers led me to being tested for dyspraxia and Asperger’s Syndrome. The psychologist said I had neither, and considering my male peers were struggling with the same challenges I did, yet they received diagnoses and I did not, it was hard not to be reminded the multitude of studies highlighting how gendered expectations played a significant role in the under-diagnosis of women with SpLDs. (SpLDs stand for Specific Learning Disorders, the umbrella category for dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD, and autism.) Especially when I found out 5 years later, that I did have a disability, I did wonder if my misdiagnosis had anything to do with the fact I didn’t always manifest as expected. I was determined to try and act normal, do what was expected, and look other people in the eye no matter how unnatural it was for me.
Lack of trust in professionals to understand how I experienced my differences echoed throughout my life. It made me uncomfortable to ask for help, and instead I buried my head in the sand about my learning problems, thinking that if I just avoided the problem and worked hard, it would go away. When I told an academic tutor that I’d been diagnosed with a learning difficulty, his response was, “Well, don’t use it as an excuse for being disorganised.” In the run up to my university finals, I mentioned to another academic tutor that I was concerned about how my struggle to sequence information would affect my exams, she told me that “the consensus is that it’s too late to do anything about it.” For a long time then, I saw disability as a shortcoming, and something to be embarrassed by, so I didn’t bring it up in situations where adjustments could have made a difference.
Being completely honest about the ways the normal world didn’t make sense to me wasn’t easy, and neither was trusting people not to laugh or write me off when I told them about my weird particularities. But telling people has proved to be very valuable.
It was only after I came out the other side of my university exams, burned out and realising that the formula “work in the same way as neurotypical people, just 2x harder” was ineffective and unhealthy, that I started to be more vocal about my differences and how I might need adjustments. It’s taken me a long time to realise it’s not about making excuses, but about figuring out what I need so I can do well. Being completely honest about the ways the normal world didn’t make sense to me didn’t come naturally, and neither did trusting people not to laugh or write me off when I told them about my weird particularities. But telling people has proved to be very valuable (academia being the exception.)
I’ve got a long way to go, in knowing what I’m good at, and how to best optimise myself and my surroundings for success. But I’ve learned so much about myself since my diagnosis, and become happier and more confident ever since at such a rate that it’s almost impossible to measure. Identifying how I’m different has been so valuable, and it’s made me able to target myself and my expectations so much more effectively. Different is good, it’s just about knowing how to utilise it in a way that works for you — a lot of the most ridiculously intelligent people I’ve met in my life have had dyslexia, ADHD, Asperger’s Syndrome, or dyspraxia. And if we’re not thinking about how our surroundings and attitudes impact those different from us, the world could be losing out on some of its highest potential individuals. It’s on both organisations, to listen and make adjustments, and individuals to take agency and be clear about their needs. We’ll all be richer for it.
Please hit me up if you have similar experiences, or want to chat about it! I’m very keen on expanding my network of young professionals with learning disorders, and a big advocate of sharing what works for you.
