I am not,I hope, unintelligent. However at times I have difficulty co-ordinating my thoughts . It’s like there’s a mass of wires all tangled up in my brain .
Sometimes it’s easy to post and other times it’s so hard to structure a coherent reply to something. The desire is there but it just won’t come together in a well constructed and thought out manner.
I put this down to executive functioning difficulties.
When my brain is struggling to gather my thoughts then often anxiety comes to the fore and a feeling of being mentally overwhelmed.
Someone ,on a largely American based forum, mentioned doing college courses with a learning assistant in tow.
I am not even sure we have them for older adults in the UK(I’m 60). If we did I reckon you’d have to have an officially recognised learning difficulty.
I, in all probability have learning difficulties. However I come from a generation where if you were above average intelligence the idea of you have such difficulties was very much dismissed.
Hence no official confirmation.
The nearest I got to things being recognised was my prep school headmaster writing to my public school headmaster saying I was not very well coordinated and had problems with drawing and writing.
My public school report said I was disorganised and messy. Nowadays that would be a red flag for executive functioning problems but back then , in the 70s, it wasn’t. It was merely a blot on your academic record and something for teachers to pull you up on.
It’s a lot different nowadays, from what I know, but still far from perfect. If it was seen that you have spatial(or for others verbal) deficits, problems with executive functioning and slow processing speed,as I do, then those things would be flagged up for extra help and support.
I am not sure by itself it’s a cause of my social anxiety rather than it’s a part of the whole aspergic traits?/nonverbal learning disorder?/dysgraphia?/dyspraxia? , and resulting effects , that made me socially anxious through bullying and peer rejection.
I was always, very much, the odd person out.
A more holistic and intelligent psychiatry might well have picked up on my difficulties/issues and tailored support accordingly.
After the first week of my first admission they wanted to send me to make doll’s houses. I freaked out because I knew I couldn’t do it due to my poor constructional abilities.
Instead of someone looking into why I had freaked out, as an intelligent person would have done , the psychiatrist dismissed me as an awkward and troublesome teenager.
Thus an opportunity to get to know me as a whole person, and provide adequate support was lost.
With that callous and unintelligent dismissal relationships between me and the mental health professionals started to sour.
Instead of taking responsibility by the start of the 2000s I was being described as awkward,demanding and troublesome when seeking more help and support. Other phrases from quite frankly abusive and rather stupid people included that my illness was “Machiavellian in its complexity” and that I was a "very dependent narcissist"
The reason for the breakdown in communications was very much laid at my door with the mental health professionals taking no responsibility.
Relations are better now but I’ve learnt to keep things as much as possible to myself for fear of a return of the abusive and negative treatment.
It’s safer to say when asked "I’m not too bad or “so so” which really says very little.
Occasionally I bring things up but it usually falls on deaf ears. I don’t press the point as I don’t want a repeat of past nastiness ie to be branded "awkward,demanding and troublesome " again.
Given the above I’ve not done as well as I might have done ,but am doing as well as I can.