A bit of a back story to my neurodiversities.

This is my first post in this blog, and is aimed at showing some of my life as a neurodivergent artist.

Being the first post, I had better give a little history and context as to my neurodiversity, because most people when they hear the term neurodivergent thing of autism, and technically I have never been diagnosed as autistic. Of course, in reality, neurodiversity covers various other conditions, several of which I will talk about below.

I was first diagnosed as ‘word blind’ around the age of 7 or 8. My teacher, at school, noticed a disparity between my academic and artistic skills, and I was put forward to be tested. At that time, there was a huge amount of stigma with being diagnosed with anything different. My father, got so angry with the head mistress at the school, that she had to write a letter apologising on his behalf.

Whilst in my middle school, I was offered two years support, going to a special school twice a week for 2 hours. This was when my mother was first told that I was dyslexic. At the time, support was very hard to get, and because I did so well in my first year, I did not do a second year, and when I went to my secondary school, I was put for the most part into average groups. Sadly, there was no support at my secondary school, and I soon fell behind. Eventually for all extensive purposes failing my GCSE’s.

It was not until 1991, that I officially received a dyslexia diagnosis, when I first went to college. If I was tested in 2024, I would probably be diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia and probably dyscalculia, but back in 1991, multiple diagnoses were not really a thing.

For much of my life, I just had the dyslexia diagnosis, but when ever I heard about ADD, I thought that a lot of the symptom, but never really thought about it much, until 2020, during Covid, when I listened to a documentary called ADHD and Me hosted by Rory Bremner, and so much of what was talked about resonated with me.

A couple of months later, after lockdown had finished, I was going through a lot of problems, and I wrote a email to my GP surgery in despair saying that I thought I had ADHD, giving various examples. Now, this was not the first time I had gone to the surgery thinking that I might have autism, but that was given very short shrift by the doctor. But fortunately, the person who saw my email was the nurse practitioner and after reading the email and the details of why I believed I had ADHD, she was very happy to refer me to the local council, so that I could then be put on the waiting list to be tested.

All in all, I was very fortunate, and was tested in March 2022, around 20 months after I first wrote to my doctor. The big issue I faced was showing that I had ADHD as a child, as well as an adult. As an adult I did show all the signs of both hyperactivity and inattentive, but because I couldn’t remember back to my childhood, I was only able to be diagnosied as inattentive. But the reality is I probably have combined ADHD.

Finally, we come to autism. Now, I have not been diagnosed as autistic, and in many ways it really is not practical for me to get a diagnosis, but because there is very little that can be done. Talking to my friends though, many of which who do have a autism diagnosis, most beleive I am autistic, and the various online tests I have done, say that I am.

So, there is a very good change that I have dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD and autism, but it is hard to say for certain.