‘Dyspraxia and Depression: my blessing and my curse’     by Audrey Bailey

‘Are you thick?’, ‘Pick your feet up!’, ‘Away with the fairies again, Audrey?’ Comments such as these have come at me from different sources almost daily since childhood. School reports contained frequent references to my daydreaming, reluctance to take part in class discussions, or the stock phrase ‘must try harder’. It was mostly an endurance test which I left gladly with scant qualifications. This has been followed by countless jobs of short to medium duration, none of them well paid and all at the bottom of the heap. The reasons are the same: my short-term memory loss, clumsiness, and an inclination to be butter-fingered, tongue-tied and scatter-brained. The directions of left and right confounds me, and I gave up trying to drive. An attempt at a science degree lasted one year (failed) which I repeated only to fail again, mostly due to my problems with mathematics. It’s enough to make a person depressed, and I have been, numerous times.

Depression began to show itself in my teenage years but was dismissed by my parents as emotional growing pains which would eventually go away. Strong believers in the stiff upper lip, they regarded psychological disorders as fantasies dreamed up by greedy American doctors. Having lived during the 1930’s austerity followed by years of war and rationing as well as having been in the armed forces, they took the attitude ‘we endured very hard times and coped, you have it easy’. Learning difficulties were yet to get any attention by educational bodies, I was just regarded as clumsy and inattentive which would disappear if only I would make an effort! My feelings of being a bit strange persisted into adulthood but without any name to attach to this strangeness, I simply got on with life although with some difficulty and recurrent depression. Being told repeatedly ‘it’s all in your mind’ had me thinking that I was responsible for the problem so it was down to me to overcome it.

When work performance issues began to mount up in yet another job last year, someone suggested I might have dyspraxia, a Specific Learning Difficulty so I underwent tests with an educational psychologist. This showed that I have a moderate level of dyspraxia, enough to cause problems with the everyday things that most people manage with ease. It came as both a revelation and a vindication, firm proof that my weirdness was caused by an incurable neurological disorder that has been present since birth, and not me being wilfully awkward. I am one of about ten per cent of the population with a brain that ‘misfires’ so that some messages become garbled or not transmitted at all. Thus, motor-skills such as dexterity and co-ordination are affected, also perception and communication. It’s like being permanently tipsy. So to discover in my mid-fifties that dyspraxia has been behind so many of my troubles came as a huge relief and identified some of the reasons for my depression too. On the plus side, dyspraxics are noted for creativity, innovation, originality and compassion. I gained an OU Honours degree in the Arts, so it clearly doesn’t hamper intelligence!

Treatment for my depression has involved drugs and talking therapies, both with varying results but I keep trying. A network of loving family and friends helps enormously, though there are days when even getting out of bed is arduous. With my self-esteem and morale very low at times and with such a poor track record it makes me question what work might be suitable for me, but am hoping Job Centre Plus will be able to help.

My self-help mechanisms include getting outdoors every day, keeping in touch with loved ones, listening to cheerful music and having a wacky sense of humour. I am also learning more about how to manage dyspraxia and trying to focus on the many positive aspects.