Dyspraxia, Paradoxes and Creativity
Dyspraxia Awareness Week
I was formally diagnosed as Dyspraxic as a child, below are some thoughts and ideas that I’ve been having about it recently.
I remember the first time I was told I had dyspraxia, I remember thinking “Oh my god I can read people’s minds” I had of course gotten dyspraxia and telepathy mixed up, the mixing up of words would be something that would haunt my childhood, one Sunday upon leaving church I asked my parents if I could be crucified, they looked confused and horrified, “I’m going to church anyway I might as well” after a short discussion it was conclude that I wished to be confirmed not crucified.
I once heard someone describe dyspraxia as a Pandora’s box of development coordination issues, in Greek Myth Pandora opens a box that contains all the evil things in the world, plague, famine, people playing music through their phones on public transport without headphones — basically it’s a bad thing. Dyspraxia is a disorder affecting fine and/or gross motor coordination in children and adults. It may also affect speech. DCD (as it’s also referred to) is a lifelong condition thought to be caused by a disruption in the way messages from the brain are transmitted to the body. This affects a person’s ability to perform movements in a smooth, coordinated way. I would learn this the hard way by trying and failing to perform tasks and activities my peers took for granted.
Diagnosing neurodiverse conditions such as dyspraxia can be difficult, a lack of support, expertise and government investment means many can go through their entire educational life without being diagnosed and many only being formally identified whilst at University or after entering the workplace. So I’m luckier than most that I was not only diagnosed but also received support throughout my life with my disability.
Looking back though I wonder on how supportive the support was being placed in bottom set with all the other academic and behavioural challenged students is a cocktail of unproductively, a word processor with no battery life at time when half my classrooms do not have easily accessible plug sockets, resulting in being separated from the rest of the class often in a corner — don’t worry the word processor doesn’t have a spell check system (that would be cheating). And of course no learning support students life is complete without the extra time in written exams, a bonus 15 minutes for every 60 minute written examination, amongst other support. An extra 15 minutes in written exams, then when you get your results an extra 5 minutes of been told by classmates that they could have got that grade as well if they’d had extra time. The ultimate result of this process is simple dyspraxic students are made to feel different and stupid, even though there is no link between dyspraxia and IQ. To often the conversation is about how can we adapt to society, and never how can society adapt to us. Rather than trying to fix a broken system we double down on a one size fits all approach.
DISABILITY
For many years I had a complicated relationship with my disability, at times denying it was a disability, leaving it off equal monitoring forms, our society and education system make it easy to feel like you are not good enough, paradoxically though I was also starting to feel pride in my dyspraxia, I became aware in 6th form that dyspraxic students often excelled in drama, theatre is my chosen vocation and passion and I deep down I knew the condition that often held me back also affected my creative thinking, but I struggled to put this into words Whilst there’s much research, talk and support for children with dyspraxia it is a lifelong condition and there’s barely any conversation about adults with the condition it’s a real Pandora’s box of issues. Except, recently I’ve been looking at the story of Pandora for a project I’m working on and the way we’ve been telling the story of Pandora’s Box is wrong (it’s actually a jar not box), and whilst it’s true bad stuff is unleashed by the opening of said jar, there’s also something else in the jar — hope. Pandora closes the lid trapping hope inside, so yeah dyspraxia has its problems but it’s also got positives. And for me those positives come in my creativity.
How does dyspraxia inform my creativity and how does my creativity express my dyspraxia?
I’ve known for a long time that dyspraxia has affected by creativity, but I’ve also struggled to admit this, I rarely admit this to myself and I’ve never done so publicly, so here it is I wouldn’t be the artist I am without my dyspraxia, it’s not something I want to wish away, it’s not something I’ve overcome it’s a fundamental part of who I am, and how I think. For some time I’ve wanted to write about the experience of dyspraxia but I’ve struggled to find a way to talk about it, actually that’s not true talking about dyspraxia is easy, but showing dyspraxia, making an audience understand what the world is to a dyspraxic person I’ve always struggled, talking about this without lecturing, informing without boring I want to explore how dyspraxia impacts on my creative process and I know its a major factor but how?
“Paradox is just truth standing on its head to gain attention.” —
G K Chesterton
GK Chesterton is one of those figures from history that is rumoured to be dyspraxic, a prolific writer, best known for his Father Brown series and his novel The Man Who Would be Thursday, but also a prominent essayist in religion. Chesterton favourite literary device was the paradox, his interest in paradoxes can be seen in both his fiction and non fiction writing even been dubbed the prince of paradoxes. We’ll never know for sure if Chesterton did suffer from DCD but biographers have speculated based on him showing some prominent symptoms, but his love of paradox got me thinking about my own practice and dyspraxia, I think a fundamental element is paradox.
I’ve always been attracted to stories that focus on paradox, the first film I ever loved was Monty Python and the Holy Grail, released in 1975 the film is the sketches troupe first proper outing into feature films (I don’t really count And Now for Something Completely Different because it’s just a remake of the sketch show). It’s a film filled with paradoxes from coconuts mysteriously appearing in Medieval England, to women weighing the same as a duck, and thus being guilty of witchcraft.
These paradoxes repeat themselves in many films, books and plays I love — Theatre of the Absurd, Kafka, Catch 22, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy but what has this got to do with my dyspraxia? Well I think paradoxes make a lot of sense to anyone who’s ever had to navigate the world of special educational needs. To be dyspraxic today is to live a paradoxical life
BUREAUCRACY
You need help with your the bureaucracy of education that is holding you back, well first you must complete extra bureaucracy to prove that you can’t cope with the levels of bureaucracy that is holding you back. If you fail to complete this additional bureaucracy then you won’t be given the help. We all experience this type of thing in one way or another, but for the neurodiverse it seems to have become a fundamental building block of our identity.
One way of looking at it is — Everyone is travelling to work across a bridge, but you can’t use that bridge, it just doesn’t work for you in fact none of the traditional bridges work, so you had to build your own, it’s much harder, you spend twice maybe three times as long as everybody else, but when you’ve finished building the bridge it works just as well as the other bridges, just as sturdy as the one you can’t use but also completely unique. And whilst everyone else has been travelling across the bridge with little to no thought, you’re painfully aware of every single brick and stone. Other people see your bridge and they realise it works just as well as the more traditional bridges, but its also new and exciting, because it’s different — the bridge is a metaphor for creativity and dyspraxia I’m not a 100% sure it works but, I’ve committed to it now and I can’t think of a better one so I’m stuck with it.
I’m embracing my dyspraxia, celebrating that I think differently to my peers and challenging myself to articulate this in my work.
By Expect Typos
We would like to welcome Expect Typos to our publication and are very excited to see more of their work here. If you identify as a Neurodivergent Creative, please consider writing for us too.
