Just like the dahlia flower in the photo above, I'm a little bit different to the normal ones. This flower has a splash of pink on one of it's petals. It's an anomaly in comparison with the other all yellow with red centre flowers.
My own anomaly is that I'm neurodiverse. I have a number of neurodiverse conditions and also a brain condition,along with a neurological condition, which can be challenging, but I manage to stay on top of them, to a greater or lesser extent.
My neurodiverse conditions are Autism (or Aspergers Syndrome in old money), Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD), Dyslexia (Word blindness), Dyscalculia (Number blindness) and Dyspraxia (Poor coordination).
I also have the slightest touch of Cerebral Palsy. My left leg is affected by this and is noticeably smaller than my right, which is unaffected. I also have slight balance issues. As I said, it's the slightest touch of the condition.
And finally I have been suffering from Fibromyalgia for the last few years, which causes me a lot of pain in my muscles and joints, fatigue and brain fog.
I was diagnosed with dyslexia and dyscalculia at school, when I was 14. I haven't formally been diagnosed with dyspraxia, but it often goes hand in hand with the other conditions I've just mentioned and it explains my poor hand/eye coordination and general clumsiness.
I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy when I was 39. I had a problem with my left knee, which was beginning to suffer from osteoarthritis. I was sent to a podiatrist who noticed that my left leg was smaller than my right. I was given exercises to correct the imbalance and they didn't work. Then it was discovered that I didn't have the full connection of motor neurons to those muscles in my brain due to brain damage caused at birth.
My autism and ADHD were diagnosed when I was 50 and suffering from anxiety and stress which was caused by these conditions.
I have suffered from Fibromyalgia since I was ill with Covid and flu in 2023. It was triggered by those viruses.
So how does all of this affect me? Well it's quite considerable but I manage to cope with all of these conditions, despite them being incredibly frustrating at times.
My autism surfaces if I am confronted by any sudden changes of plan, any change of routine and anything going wrong. Then I feel agitated and threatened and anxious. I often find myself pacing up and down incessantly. When I was a young child, I would flap my hands if I was excited or stressed, which is a feature of autism. I also need things to be exactly how I want them to be, or how they should be, and I can be very insistent that they are. I can be easily overwhelmed by things. I also have a problem integrating myself into social settings and prefer to stay on the edge of things. Sometimes that can be seen as being stand offish or weird. One thing I'm not affected by, which is a common trait of the condition is a lack of empathy or emotional connection with people. I work hard to try and challenge my condition and I have coping strategies to avoid any meltdowns although occasionally they happen. Sometimes I can get quite overwhelmed by things.
My dyslexia did affect my schooling, as did my autism in retrospect. But I learnt to overcome the dyslexia. I tend to misread some words and I also put the wrong version of a word in a sentence. To,too and two, or there, instead of their are common mistakes. As soon as i read it back, I spot my mistakes and I can correct them. It does throw up some amusing moments. I remember when I moved to Romsey, I was wondering what on earth they did in Alma Road Sugary. Was it a sweet factory? Or a sugar processing plant? It really didn't look like that kind of place. It turned out to be the local Doctors practice. Surgery not sugary. One thing that dyslexia does cause me problems with is reading a list of instructions. And it's because written instructions tend to be very matter of fact. "Insert A into B" rather than " Please take the part listed as A and insert it into the part listed as B". It's silly but I need a properly structured sentence in order to read it properly. I was very lucky with my ability to read, because my cousin, who was a few years older than me, suffered from severe dyslexia and my Mum taught him how to read and write, so she spotted my problems way before I went to school, and she knew how to overcome them. I struggled to be able to write, but I was reading the Sherlock Holmes books and Charles Dickens by the time I was 8. She constantly pushed to get me diagnosed but it wasn't until I was in secondary education that a teacher spotted that my ability to read to myself was way above my ability to read out loud or write. Then I was formally assessed and diagnosed. Pretty quickly it was found that I had more problems with numbers than letters and words, often mixing them up, and reading them the wrong way around. I also struggle with reading digital watches and prefer analogue watch faces.
The dyspraxia hasn't been diagnosed, but I have always had poor hand/eye coordination and spatial awareness, and given it is very often present with dyslexia, I know that I have it. It hasn't really hindered me much. I found that with practice I could make it better, so I played sports and became a fairly decent goalkeeper and played rugby at college too. I tried my hand at cricket, but it requires more hand/eye finesse than I could manage, because of the small ball. I gave it up after several injuries. I just accept that I am clumsy at times. And I struggle putting fiddly necklaces on, but usually manage it in the end.
ADHD is a big problem for me. I have always struggled to concentrate and my brain skips tracks in a heartbeat. I have an incredibly detailed long term memory, but I have always had a very poor short term memory. And I often start a task and get sidetracked on to another task leaving the first task unfinished. I also forget to do things. I rely on lists and reminders to help me. I'm not especially Hyperactive. But I have always found my mind wandering in bouts of daydreaming.
The cerebral palsy is not much of a problem apart from some balance issues sometimes and my leg sometimes gets tired. But I have run a marathon, so it's not a big thing.
And then there is the new kid on the block. Fibromyalgia. It is a big problem. It causes me pain all over my body sometimes. It causes me fatigue which needs to be managed. If I have a physically busy day and I am very active, then I need to be prepared for a reaction and the need to rest up on the following day. Otherwise I will have a lot of fatigue and pain. One of the most difficult parts of this condition is brain fog. When I can't put my thoughts together or articulate them properly. It's a frustrating condition, but it comes and goes, with periods when it's barely there.
So how does all of this affect me? Well I generally do quite well controlling my moods and emotions, but there are still times when I get overwhelmed and I can be very anxious and frightened during these times. I don't deal with stress or setbacks very well. But I have learned to control and minimise my conditions, so it is very rarely noticeable to anyone else who doesn't know me well.
Sometimes I can be a bit of a drama queen, and make a big thing out of something that is fairly insignificant or unimportant.
One big thing that I've noticed is that, usually, if I'm dressed en-femme, and enjoying being Deeanna, then I am much more in control of all of my conditions. I'm not sure why that is. I have much more confidence when I'm Deeanna and I'm much more outgoing when I'm dressed as a woman.
There has been some suggestion that there is a link between autism and being transgendered or crossdressing. If so that would beg the question, Am I transgendered because of my neurodiversity or is it just something that happens to exist alongside it?
I know quite a few neurodiverse transgendered people as well as myself. But I also know a lot more who aren't.
I was aware of feminine feelings and desires, from a very early age. Certainly just out of my toddling stage, so it's unlikely that any outside factors influenced my strong desire to be femme. I'm pretty sure that I am a product of nature, not nurture and I was born this way. However, given there are far more non- neurodiverse than neurodiverse transgendered people then I think that the actual neurodiversity numbers among the trans community is probably in line with the general population. And if it is a little higher, then that probably reflects the fact that transgendered people are more likely to seek counselling and psychiatric help for their gender issues, which would probably mean those who are neurodiverse, but undiagnosed, are likely to be identified as being neurodiverse during their counselling. So I don't think my trans femme gender is connected to my neurodiversity.
In general I am a perfectly normal functioning person who just happens to be a little different from what is defined as normal, both in neuro and gender. And I'm ok with that. It can be difficult. But I think life is difficult in general.
There is a perception that there is a neurodiversity epidemic occurring in the world. So many more people are being affected by neuro conditions. The fact is that there isn’t? Robert F Kennedy Jr might think there is a massive upsurge in autism, and declare he will get to the bottom of what autism is, and begin actions to eradicate it, but he's completely wrong. There is no neurodiverse epidemic. What there is, is a much better understanding of neurodiversity and therefore much more diagnosis of the conditions taking place. Hence you get people like me being diagnosed late in life
And when a diagnosis is made, suddenly everything seems to fit. All the feeling of being different. Of not quite fitting into certain situations. All of the anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed, suddenly make sense. And when you realise that it's all because of neurodiversity, you feel a sense of relief. Because now you know there's a reason that you behave in a certain way. And it's ok to be that way. And you can work to minimise the negative impact that neurodiversity brings and also to embrace the positives it brings. And there are positives. I am very creative, and I have a thirst for knowledge that I'm sure comes from my being autistic.
So like that unusual dahlia flower, I'm a little different to the others. But very beautiful.
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