“Why are you walking like that?”

Author: Amber Fieldgate (UK) (she/her) Counsellor and Psychotherapist, Mcouns, BA(Hons), MBACP. www.abcounsellingservices.co.uk

“Why are you walking like that?” My best friend laughed as we walked across the yard. I laughed back. “I don’t know, I’ve just forgotten how to walk!” I had just passed a group of boys and was overcome with the fear of being seen. My left leg went numb. I have no other way to describe it. I dragged myself across the quad and hid in the bathroom until it was safe to come out.

 

I was diagnosed with ADHD at age nine, but that didn’t account for why I was covered in bruises, struggled to express myself, needed extra time in exams, and had no idea what to do with my hands. I felt like two different people growing up. My life was characterised by consistent contradictions. I was “bright” but could not get my thoughts organised on the page. I loved being in groups but often struggled to find the words. I was musical but a terrible dancer. I loved being social, but I always felt awkward.

 

This impacted me in ways I didn’t realise at the time. I avoided social situations. I never partook in group sports, I could never catch the ball, and I did not dance at parties. I spent a lot of my time in social settings observing. What were other people doing with their hands in photographs? How were they holding their drinks? At what speed should a story or joke be told to achieve the best comic timing? How could I fit in?

 

I thought everyone else was just faking it, so I tried to fake it too.

 

Spilling your bottle of water down your shirt every second day can quietly send the message that you are not like everyone else. It wasn’t until I discovered dyspraxia that things changed.

 

Dyspraxia sneaks up on you. It is not loud or disruptive in the way ADHD can be. It is quiet, but over time it chips away. It makes you question yourself in small, almost invisible ways.

 

When I discovered the word, I felt relief. Real relief. There was nothing morally wrong with me. My verbal delays, my slower processing, the way my body never quite did what I asked of it, none of it was a character flaw. It was a brain difference. One I could not control.

 

Something softened in me after that. Slowly but surely, my confidence began to grow. With additional support and therapy centred around self-acceptance, I started loosening my grip on shame. I stopped trying so hard to hide. I began to feel proud of who I am. I began to own who I am.

 

When I later began training as a therapist, I came across the idea of unconditional positive regard, the belief that people deserve acceptance exactly as they are. Learning this allowed me to look back at my younger self differently. The girl who felt awkward, slow, and out of place was not broken. She was navigating a world that did not yet understand her.

 

I surrounded myself with people who gave me extra time to get my words out. I started fighting for accommodations and extensions at university.

 

I graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a Master’s degree in Counselling and Psychotherapy. All that observing as a teenager, watching hands, timing jokes, studying how people moved, it worked in my favour.

 

I now work in private practice as a registered therapist specialising in neurodiversity. I sit with people who feel awkward, split, ashamed, too much, not enough. I know that feeling intimately.

 

My dyspraxia and ADHD make me who I am. They force me to slow down and see the bigger picture. They make me think differently. They make me notice things others might miss. They make me patient in the therapy room. They make me someone who values difference.

 

The girl who didn’t know what to do with her hands now trusts herself to hold other people in them. I still don’t move through the world perfectly. I move through it as myself.