by Michelle Willson, Editor-in-Chief
My explaining neurodivergent experiences articles has a lot of positive feedback last week so I thought it might be a reoccurring thing that I do. So here is part two of explaining my own neurodivergent experiences.
When I was younger I would never understand it but I would get randomly angry. As I grew up I could directly see a correlation between getting overwhelmed and then angry It happened all the time. I thought I was crazy It took until my senior year of high school before I realized that that problem could probably be fixed. Getting my anxiety under control completely got rid of that problem. But I didn’t even know that that was a symptom of anxiety.
This one’s a little less of mental health but I struggled with spelling my entire life, finally in fourth grade my speech teacher told me that I had dyslexia. Just recently I figured out she was not medically trained to diagnose me but her giving what I had a name and giving me some coping mechanisms really helped me throughout the rest of my schooling. To this day I still have to make finger signs for B’s and D’s while I write. And I still sometimes struggle with right and left I really have to think about it before like my brain clicks it to be right. But I would have struggled a lot harder if she hadn’t taken the time to kind of explain to me what my brain was going through. Just recently I found out that my lack of direction, And the fact that I don’t have a map in my head when I’m driving could also be related to dyslexia… You are something new all the time… I really don’t know why I told you all that I don’t know if it would help anyone but keep an eye out don’t let your student or yourself struggle if you think there’s a problem.
Another one is over analyzing situations that would never happen but theoretically if they did happen I’d have a plan. like I’m in a room and I know my exits are because what if there’s an active shooter or I’m driving down the road I’m looking for ways out in case someone’s coming down my side of the road and it’s going to hit me. I imagine in-depth multiple different scenarios that might happen at this exact moment and how I would get out of it. A reoccurring situation that I had growing up was that a train had derailed was coming down my street it wasn’t going to hit my house but how would I react to that situation… The nearest train track was across town In no way could this train ever make it to go down my street and just keep going but I was prepared.
I think my over-analyzing situations also is one of the reasons I get anxious in Walmart. Because when you’re with a group you have more eyes out but if you’re by yourself in the clothes area there could be surprise ” attacks ” from any angle and that just freaks me out. I like to sit with my face towards the door… I started this after my Europe trip when a guy on the trip explained to me that he did that cuz he was a military person and he just like to be able to see who was coming in so there was no surprises and I’ve really adopted that. It’s just nice to know that they’re not going to surprise you. It kind of makes me feel like I’m on edge 24/7… But it also makes me a little more relieved cuz I know I’m prepared for almost any situation to happen.