The hardest part of my life, isn't cerebral palsy, it's not getting the help I needed when I have spent the majority of my life living with anxiety, panic and overwhelming fear.
Cerebral palsy doesn’t bother me, because I have understanding and am comfortable with it. There is no excuse, but it's my struggle with anxiety, panic and fear that I still have to deal with that bothers me, because those change how I physically feel. They also change the way I deal with and cope with everyday issues.
On a daily basis, where I pride myself on being able to cope with issues, anxiety and fear can leave me panicked and struggling to cope. Anxiety settles in my stomach like a lead weight, until I am able to find a resolve on it.
And around my disability and particular brain damage, where others expect me to have a normal response that can never happen. To the untrained eye I look and talk normally, but my brain processes are far from normal.
I am not able to interpret messages in the way they're given, and it’s the delayed reactions and interpretations on the information given that cites intolerance and impatience from those around me and that's enormously stressful.
People aren't very tolerant or patient when it comes to someone not always understanding or comprehending what it is they're saying, that's what I have found.
This has been proven to me countless times, especially in my current relationship where my girlfriend throws 100 different things at me in rapid download, and expects me to have a clue as to what she's talking about.
I would have to suspect that due to my head injuries and trauma history, it takes me longer to process information than it normally would, not to mention the ADHD factor.
She takes it personally and thinks I behave the way I do because I want to, without stopping to think about my level of comprehension which is vastly different from hers.
It just takes me longer to process information than her, seeing as I also grew up in a world where we so often didn't have time to process information, we had to take it all in and come back to it later.
It's a survival technique that was useful when we were going through what we did, but doesn't work very well in the normal world.
She doesn't have a clue, as other people don't what that is like, so it's no wonder that she treats me like I'm stupid when I am definitely not.
My favorite expression when dealing with this kind of treatment is that I may be numb, but I'm not stupid! which may sound harsh to some but it's the reality of what I have to deal with on a daily basis.
The best way to describe it, is how people will say things like 'you don't look sick' but obviously they can't see the problem, so they think it doesn't really exist.
You mentioned 'to the untrained eye' which is what most people have, if they don't have any experience with these issues. I can usually pick up on it fairly quickly, between noticing it instinctively and my experiences with my own daughter, which makes a big difference.
I have always been very empathic when dealing with people and their issues which became a deficit in the world I grew up in. I spent a long time trying to suppress those feelings that were so often not my own.
My parents also brainwashed me into thinking that I was only supposed to be caring and compassionate about them while totally ignoring my own feelings, which has led to so many toxic relationships now that I think about it. My point being that I can so relate to where you're coming from, since you had parents who did pretty much the same to you.
What kind of parents treat their own children this way? It really wasn't very fair how they discounted our issues and only focused on their feelings, while we were left to suffer and fend for ourselves.
This is why I usually say that we were 'thrown to the wolves' as kids. My siblings and I had to take care of each other since our parents weren't doing their job.
They never seemed to notice our anxiety or other issues, since they were so focused on what they wanted. We would have actually been better off in foster care, but that meant we would have been separated; so they kept moving us around so the authorities wouldn't have a chance to step in.
I have had to come to terms with what they did and didn't do and now have to learn how to finally live my own life, which I never had the chance to do.
Thanks Randy. I agree with you, but all you can do is make sure you're living the life you want to live now and put yourself emotionally first, instead of worrying about what others think, particularly your girlfriend.
That's not being selfish. That's being selfless. Sadly, without you coming to terms with the life you've lived and learning to deal with things like ADHD, you won't be able to help yourself, or other people and you want to help people.
It's important when anyone has been through abuse they come to understand their experiences, understand everything they need to know about the abuse and so they can put their experiences behind them.
I too cannot change my life, or my experiences particularly in my formative years, but I can learn to change the way I live with what I have to deal with, such as anxiety, fear and panic.
I know a lot more about all my symptoms now. I owe it to myself to continue to find everything out that I should have known as a child around my disability, so that I can continue in my quest for answers.
Without my experiences I couldn't or wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now with my website. That will never change what's been done, but I choose not to hone in on those things.
Those others are accountable, but it does allow me to grow and move on. You can too.