Living with Dyspraxia

When I tell people I have dyspraxia I normally get two types of reactions- ‘you mean dyslexia’ no I mean dyspraxia. Then they look at me quizzically and think I am crazy which is a fair observation because I am. But that is besides the point.

The other reaction I get is ‘so you’re really clumsy’, yes I have no hand eye coordination. Butter fingers is an understatement, I manage to drop things even when I’m holding onto them tightly. I’m that loopy character you see on TV who swings her arm and her phone lands in someone’s drink.

I’m not exaggerating, in the past three months I’ve dropped and cracked 2 personal phones and 3 work phone. I have the carcasses to prove it. My manager has a mini attack every time I mention I’ve broken my phone. I don’t do it on purpose.

I’m 22 years old and I work with online community. Now, those of you who know how dyspraxia works will know how hard it can be to get through a day when your memory is against you and your body does things on its own accord and when try as you might you just can’t help being the way that you are.

I am unapologetic for the way that I am, I cannot spell to save my life and I am unashamed by it. I use grammerly to proof everything and that is how I get on a day to day basis.

I did a degree in Literature and Creative Writing and I did really well. I’m not dumb. I’m dyspraxic.

This blog is just about the struggle of living with it. I wasn’t diagnosed until my second year of university which is quite late. I had a heap of support during my Uni life and didn’t realise that all that would change when I became employed.

You see I figured that the world we live in had changed and people understood these issues and were willing to work with staff.

Of course I mentioned my diagnosis and explained it as one of my challenges and explained the way I try to overcome it in my Interview. I was offered the job and no one mentioned it again, I thought I had been doing quite well, So you can imagine my surprise when 3-4 months into my probation my manager sits me down with a spreadsheet and tells me I’ve been doing everything wrong.

At first I was shocked but eager to make a change, we sat down and worked through possible changed that might help me. When retraining and going through some of the proposed changes to my work I mentioning that I had dyspraxia and dyslexia (shock number two) my managers said they had no recollection of me mentioning it.

Now this is where I had to learn the hard way that my managers had not listened to anything I had said. In fact it made me come to question if anything that I said was being listened to.

Spelling mistakes, missing out steps, losing concentration are all part of this condition of mine and no one seemed to understand that I wasn’t skiving, I can’t see grammatical errors the way other people might so I don’t know when I’ve made the mistake. In fact, it is harder for me to do things that other people find easy. Explaining myself verbally is easy for me. When I go to write down what it is I mean my thoughts are jumbled and often don’t make sense this is just one of the struggles that I face daily.

What it felt like was no matter what I did it wasn’t enough as I was being held to the same targets as everyone else, and apparently me constantly repeating myself that I needed extra time different targets didn’t matter.

This is what I learned, if I wanted anything to change I had to take that first step myself. I called Occupational Health – this seemed to catch my managers attention.

Secondly, I learned that you can’t always trust in the people who say they are there to help you.

While my managers were saying ‘we want to help you succeed’ I felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest.

I developed anxiety and stress, now being a 21 year old, at the time who can’t do anything right in her first ever job,  and dealing with what felt like bullying and torment when your bully is who you have to impress. It can get rough. I felt like flower who had been forced to strip its colour. I love my job but dealing with panic attacks continually for 3 months was not fun. It wasn’t fair.

Here is what a situation like this will do to you, even though you know you can do something you will second guess your ability. You feel scared to try because you are continuously told its wrong. You may stress you may get sick. In the end you may feel like I did – I had no good days; I had days in which bad things happened and days where I anxiously waited for bad things to happen.

I had been a star pupil who had written articles, novels and poetry that was published everywhere. Suddenly I was scared to do the one thing that I loved. My dyspraxia became my blocker – I became the artist with broken tools.

Of course I can’t tell you about it all in one post. I would love to say that all is well and the world is a better place. But while some things may have gotten better, there are still some things that need to change.

Tell me about you experiences and how you all dealt with them after the struggle is the struggle.

Thanks