Syracusegrad2012
New Member
Two years ago a traumatic event really hindered my relationship with my parents. Growing up my entire life I had a very serious undiagnosed learnings called a visual processing disorder or a nonverbal learning disorder. This particular disorder is incredibly devastating. It is a perceptual disability that exists in deficits in the right side of the brain. Some of its symptoms are illegible handwriting, when I used to read everything was blurry and I reversed letters that look a lot alike. I had zero spatial intelligence, struggled picking up nonverbal cues, had horrendous hand to eye coordination, couldn't draw to save my life and got D in all of my math classes. When I was younger I would go up to people who looked like my parents because I couldn't recognizes faces well. This led to horrible self esteem growing up. Since I was 8 there were signs growing up all over the place that something was wrong. When I was 8 my parents were told that my eye weren't working well together and I struggled with spatial and motor stuff and my handwriting was illegible. They shrugged it off and said it was nothing. The disability only got worse and basiclly ruined my life growing up. I was terrible in school, and struggled socially. I desperately wanted to be good at sports and worked out hours every day and ran all the time but sucked at sports my whole life because I had no spatial intelligence or coordination because of my undiagnosed disability.
When I was in sixth grade again my parents were contacted that something again was wrong and that my handwriting and math abilities were really bad and but they once again said it was just puberty starting up and I would outgrow it. They would always give me a hard time about my grades especially math, geography, language, and my handwriting saying that it was all because I didn't try hard enough and that it was always my fault. My problems continued to get worse growing up. High school was stressful enough but throw an undiagnosed visual processing/motor-perceptual disability and it made it a much harder then it needed to be. I suffered horrible depression and got in trouble all the time and would try so hard and constantly failed.
Once again in 9th grade my Dad had a meeting with my principal guidance counselor and head of special education in which they said my handwriting, math skills, and other skills were severely lagging and that it's become a serious problem. Once again no action was taken and my parents merely said that I would just learn to type and that I just wouldn't pursue a career in the maths and sciences. This was the last discussion of a learning disability and I still went untreated. I was able to graduate high school which sucked because of the disability and got into a good college (Syracuse University.)
The only reason I was finally able to figure out I had a learning disability was because when I got to syracuse I always had an interest in the navy SEALs, marines, army ranger and I enrolled into marine officer candidate school platoon leaders course. An officer commissioning program for college students. I trained insanely hard to be sent to Marine Officer Candidate school but when I got there summer after my sophomore year I had problems that I couldn't even begin to explain.
I went into the marine officer program with a visual processing disorder to a place where visual learning was everything. I was the worst candidate there by far. I couldn't do anything that they asked me to do. I couldn't make my bed properly because of the attention to detail tasks, couldn't assemble my rifle because of the spatial disability, couldn't navigate because of the spatial demands. I could do nothing that they asked me to because everything had a visual component to it. I couldn't interpret any of the symbols for rank, couldn't figure out the combat formations, couldn't march because of the spatial component. In the marines if you make a mistake everyone get's punished and you are expected to swiftly fix it. See 99 percent of the time this works but the problem was I was making mistakes because Of my perceptual deficits and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't correct any of my mistakes. As a result everyone else was punished and I was ostracized and hated me for good reason. I was that guy in the marines the ****bag, the who not to be guy. After about three weeks I started to literally go insane. (If you have seen the movie "full metal Jacket" you can see how bad it gets if you constantly mess up and are "that guy") Marine officer candidate school is already really stressful throw in the undiagnosed learning disability its a living hell. Everyone hated me the instructors targeted me the most and I was an utter failure. The hardest part was watching sixty other kids grasp something I couldn't grasp. To watch sixth other kids succeed and do things you couldn't do and then get told that it's all your fault and others get punished for your mistakes and then you're helpless to do anything. It drove me to the brink and after the third week there I cracked because of the pressure and stress and was sent to the psychiatric ward at marine OCS and was sent home.
I never felt worse in my life. I had wanted to be this since I was 8 and just failed miserably and when I got home I experienced horrible nightmares. I would wake up screaming unable to sleep at night, and cried myself to sleep. But I started to think. Why had I struggled so much? Why could sixty kids do something I couldn't do? Why did I have so many problems growing up. The one symptom that stood out the most was my illegible handwriting so I started there. I started to realize at the end of my three weeks at marine OCS that there was something very wrong and that this wasn't because I wasn't trying. For the next month I collected a tremendous amount of data and figured out that I definitely had a learning disability. I went to get an IQ test and found a 21 point discrepancy between my verbal and performance. I was told this was enough to diagnose me and that I should follow up. I began doing more research and contacted an occupational therapist. She performed a ton of tests and found that my visual processing skills were incredibly weak. I had the spatial and motor skills as the average four year old and I was 20! I read at a second grade level and had very poor eye teaming skills, and had virtual no hand to eye coordination or gross motor skills. I had no observational skills. This was despite my 20/20 vision. I was officially diagnosed with a visual processing disorder and was so relieved. I finally figured out why I had so many problems and was prescribed a behavioral vision therapy program to work on my skills.
The therapy turned out to be more than I could possibly imagine. I vastly improved all of my deficits that had once plagued me so bad. I went from no hand to eye coordination begin able to juggle and from a terrible athlete to an above average athlete. I was able to go from illegible handwriting to being a decent artist even picking up a minor in it my last year of college. My spatial intelligence improved vastly I no longer got lost when I went somewhere, never had problems recognizing people. My observational skills went way up and I no longer struggled with math at all. Pretty much all my symptoms had went away. It was not easy and took about two years of about 10-15 hours a week of hard work to remediate the deficits because I was 20 at the time of my diagnosis. At this point I no longer have a visual processing disorder, the only symptom that still remains is at times I have trouble with nonverbal cues but that is the last thing I am working on it and I know I can greatly improve in that too. I am so much more confident, happy, assertive person that I ever was. I truly value these new skills and take nothing for granted. I am so happy that I finally figured it out and got helped.
Here lies my problem. As awesome it is to basically fix my disability I still have a tremendous amount of resentment about the situation. I had to endure a really horrible experience to find out I had a learning disability. I still wake up screaming form nightmares from marine OCS. And I can't help to think now what if I had diagnosed earlier? There were so many opportunities and so many clues that something was amiss. I see the skills I have now and wonder how much different and most likely better my educational experience would have been if I had just gotten the help that I needed when I was younger. I also have to cope with the fact that my dream to be a special forces soldier is effectively dead and that if I had gotten diagnosed earlier and treated I probably would not have failed. It is just so hard to not think about what could have been. I know this is incredibly unhealthy behavior but I can't help it. I did the best and worst thing I could do after the situation I worked so hard to fix the disability and never looked back no matter how impossible and hard it would be to fix it, but at the same time dwelled on the situation and felt sorry for myself and let the disability still consume me despite the fact that it's over. I will never again fail because of this disability.
This brings me to my last point I can't help but blame my parents for this situation. They were told so many times that something was wrong and blew it off, and said it was all my fault. I feel that if they paid more attention and listened they could have figured something was wrong got me diagnosed and I could have averted so many bad things in my life and my life would be totally different. This has put a huge strain on my relationship with them. When I am around them I am irritable, and rude because something deep down is bugging me because I can't help but feel that they are largely responsible for those events by not getting me diagnosed earlier. The problem is the minute I try to talk to them about it they immediately get defensive saying how its all their fault in a condescending tone and that shut me down and never allow me to talk about the situation. They are really nice people but can be really hard to talk to at times and they won't let me discuss some of the issues and it's put such a strain on our relationship. I love my parents their amazing people but at the same time, their very distant and hard to reach. I want to stop being mad at them, stop resenting them for this. I want to treat them better but when I am around them I can't help holding them responsible for the events that happened and it makes me bitter inside and I hate it. What's done is done but the negative feelings of the situation won't leave me and I need help?
When I was in sixth grade again my parents were contacted that something again was wrong and that my handwriting and math abilities were really bad and but they once again said it was just puberty starting up and I would outgrow it. They would always give me a hard time about my grades especially math, geography, language, and my handwriting saying that it was all because I didn't try hard enough and that it was always my fault. My problems continued to get worse growing up. High school was stressful enough but throw an undiagnosed visual processing/motor-perceptual disability and it made it a much harder then it needed to be. I suffered horrible depression and got in trouble all the time and would try so hard and constantly failed.
Once again in 9th grade my Dad had a meeting with my principal guidance counselor and head of special education in which they said my handwriting, math skills, and other skills were severely lagging and that it's become a serious problem. Once again no action was taken and my parents merely said that I would just learn to type and that I just wouldn't pursue a career in the maths and sciences. This was the last discussion of a learning disability and I still went untreated. I was able to graduate high school which sucked because of the disability and got into a good college (Syracuse University.)
The only reason I was finally able to figure out I had a learning disability was because when I got to syracuse I always had an interest in the navy SEALs, marines, army ranger and I enrolled into marine officer candidate school platoon leaders course. An officer commissioning program for college students. I trained insanely hard to be sent to Marine Officer Candidate school but when I got there summer after my sophomore year I had problems that I couldn't even begin to explain.
I went into the marine officer program with a visual processing disorder to a place where visual learning was everything. I was the worst candidate there by far. I couldn't do anything that they asked me to do. I couldn't make my bed properly because of the attention to detail tasks, couldn't assemble my rifle because of the spatial disability, couldn't navigate because of the spatial demands. I could do nothing that they asked me to because everything had a visual component to it. I couldn't interpret any of the symbols for rank, couldn't figure out the combat formations, couldn't march because of the spatial component. In the marines if you make a mistake everyone get's punished and you are expected to swiftly fix it. See 99 percent of the time this works but the problem was I was making mistakes because Of my perceptual deficits and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't correct any of my mistakes. As a result everyone else was punished and I was ostracized and hated me for good reason. I was that guy in the marines the ****bag, the who not to be guy. After about three weeks I started to literally go insane. (If you have seen the movie "full metal Jacket" you can see how bad it gets if you constantly mess up and are "that guy") Marine officer candidate school is already really stressful throw in the undiagnosed learning disability its a living hell. Everyone hated me the instructors targeted me the most and I was an utter failure. The hardest part was watching sixty other kids grasp something I couldn't grasp. To watch sixth other kids succeed and do things you couldn't do and then get told that it's all your fault and others get punished for your mistakes and then you're helpless to do anything. It drove me to the brink and after the third week there I cracked because of the pressure and stress and was sent to the psychiatric ward at marine OCS and was sent home.
I never felt worse in my life. I had wanted to be this since I was 8 and just failed miserably and when I got home I experienced horrible nightmares. I would wake up screaming unable to sleep at night, and cried myself to sleep. But I started to think. Why had I struggled so much? Why could sixty kids do something I couldn't do? Why did I have so many problems growing up. The one symptom that stood out the most was my illegible handwriting so I started there. I started to realize at the end of my three weeks at marine OCS that there was something very wrong and that this wasn't because I wasn't trying. For the next month I collected a tremendous amount of data and figured out that I definitely had a learning disability. I went to get an IQ test and found a 21 point discrepancy between my verbal and performance. I was told this was enough to diagnose me and that I should follow up. I began doing more research and contacted an occupational therapist. She performed a ton of tests and found that my visual processing skills were incredibly weak. I had the spatial and motor skills as the average four year old and I was 20! I read at a second grade level and had very poor eye teaming skills, and had virtual no hand to eye coordination or gross motor skills. I had no observational skills. This was despite my 20/20 vision. I was officially diagnosed with a visual processing disorder and was so relieved. I finally figured out why I had so many problems and was prescribed a behavioral vision therapy program to work on my skills.
The therapy turned out to be more than I could possibly imagine. I vastly improved all of my deficits that had once plagued me so bad. I went from no hand to eye coordination begin able to juggle and from a terrible athlete to an above average athlete. I was able to go from illegible handwriting to being a decent artist even picking up a minor in it my last year of college. My spatial intelligence improved vastly I no longer got lost when I went somewhere, never had problems recognizing people. My observational skills went way up and I no longer struggled with math at all. Pretty much all my symptoms had went away. It was not easy and took about two years of about 10-15 hours a week of hard work to remediate the deficits because I was 20 at the time of my diagnosis. At this point I no longer have a visual processing disorder, the only symptom that still remains is at times I have trouble with nonverbal cues but that is the last thing I am working on it and I know I can greatly improve in that too. I am so much more confident, happy, assertive person that I ever was. I truly value these new skills and take nothing for granted. I am so happy that I finally figured it out and got helped.
Here lies my problem. As awesome it is to basically fix my disability I still have a tremendous amount of resentment about the situation. I had to endure a really horrible experience to find out I had a learning disability. I still wake up screaming form nightmares from marine OCS. And I can't help to think now what if I had diagnosed earlier? There were so many opportunities and so many clues that something was amiss. I see the skills I have now and wonder how much different and most likely better my educational experience would have been if I had just gotten the help that I needed when I was younger. I also have to cope with the fact that my dream to be a special forces soldier is effectively dead and that if I had gotten diagnosed earlier and treated I probably would not have failed. It is just so hard to not think about what could have been. I know this is incredibly unhealthy behavior but I can't help it. I did the best and worst thing I could do after the situation I worked so hard to fix the disability and never looked back no matter how impossible and hard it would be to fix it, but at the same time dwelled on the situation and felt sorry for myself and let the disability still consume me despite the fact that it's over. I will never again fail because of this disability.
This brings me to my last point I can't help but blame my parents for this situation. They were told so many times that something was wrong and blew it off, and said it was all my fault. I feel that if they paid more attention and listened they could have figured something was wrong got me diagnosed and I could have averted so many bad things in my life and my life would be totally different. This has put a huge strain on my relationship with them. When I am around them I am irritable, and rude because something deep down is bugging me because I can't help but feel that they are largely responsible for those events by not getting me diagnosed earlier. The problem is the minute I try to talk to them about it they immediately get defensive saying how its all their fault in a condescending tone and that shut me down and never allow me to talk about the situation. They are really nice people but can be really hard to talk to at times and they won't let me discuss some of the issues and it's put such a strain on our relationship. I love my parents their amazing people but at the same time, their very distant and hard to reach. I want to stop being mad at them, stop resenting them for this. I want to treat them better but when I am around them I can't help holding them responsible for the events that happened and it makes me bitter inside and I hate it. What's done is done but the negative feelings of the situation won't leave me and I need help?
