#actuallydyspraxic

Being dyspraxic affects all my motor skills (any movement I make) and my motor planning (my ability to plan a movement out) both are below average for my age. It also impacts my spatial awareness and sensory processing. Meaning that all of my senses are sensitive, and I have low spatial awareness.

This manifests as executive dysfunction, slowness in my movement, fumbling objects I'm holding or trying to pick up. There's also the fact that I will just flat out forget how to do seemingly simple actions, like making a coffee or knocking on a door. It becomes something I have to manually talk myself through, e.g knocking on a door becomes: "okay, close hand, pull it back SLIGHTLY, knock on the door, OK well not that hard lol, stop knocking, put your hand down, I SAID PUT YOUR HAND DOWN ALREADY"

Everyday I need to concentrate on where my body is, how my hands are moving, how small or big a movement needs to be, etc. It's exhausting. I think the word to sum up dyspraxia is: Concentration.

And all these symptoms get harder to deal with if I'm stressed, there's a short time limit, and if I'm tired.

But I think being dyspraxic increases my empathy for those that are also slow learners, or when people fumble objects/struggle to unlock a door with keys, any number of "simple" actions I'm able to understand that NO it isn't as easy as it looks.

I'm relieved to get a diagnosis and finally have a name and terms for what I struggle with. I can find a community of people that understand what it's like to put a lot of effort into everyday actions.

dyspraxia flag

horizontal stripe variant | diagonal stripe variant

There’s been a dyspraxia flag going around and it inspired us to try making our own! We really tried to make it inclusive, especially since dyspraxia is often comorbid with things like autism which can cause sensory issues among other things. We like how all variants of the flag turned out, and there is no “true” or “original” variant. We just liked all of these different designs and decided to use all of them. Use whichever ones you prefer!

Stripe meanings under the cut:

A pilot study on the experiences of neurodivergent social workers has found that, of 60 responses, 34 participants reported they had received no specialist workplace support. Around 14 of those said this had been the result of a fear of speaking out and asking for help.

Solomon, who was diagnosed with ADHD in October 2020, attributed that fear to the stigma around the diagnosis of a disorder and the subsequent external and self-imposed doubt around the social worker’s ability to do their job. “[It’s a feeling of], ‘people are going to think that I’m now incapable, that I’ve got challenges, that I am less’,” she explained.

I made a dyspraxia pride flag! Let me know if you like it or not. Here are the meanings of the colors:

Turquoise : Creativity

Gray: Empathy

Purple: Determination