disablities: social, learning ect.

[ZariusTwo]

Sorry to hear about your difficulties Leo. At least you'ree putting your foot forward and keeping yourself together with your work...it must take a load of discipline and energy to concentrate on your matches, but I'm sure feeding off the adulation of the crowd and being encircled by like-minded athleats helps settle you in rough patches. Chin up me lad

Originally Posted by Dawnatello Turtle Chick

I have dispraxia as well, was very frustrating for many, many years. Still is occasionally. I also had crippling panic attacks for about 5 years (not sure why they stopped exactly, but very thankful).

Did you get mood swings because of it? That happened to me for about three years, I was locked away in my room doing nothing but post online and leaving little time for real food and drink or relations. The attacks left me angry and dismissive of everyone that could have helped me cope with my exisiting bouts of depression and frustration much more quickly.

[Dawnatello Turtle Chick]

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

Did you get mood swings because of it? That happened to me for about three years, I was locked away in my room doing nothing but post online and leaving little time for real food and drink or relations. The attacks left me angry and dismissive of everyone that could have helped me cope with my exisiting bouts of depression and frustration much more quickly.

That's hard to say, since I'm bipolar too it's hard to know if things like you describe we're due to the panic attacks or the bipolar. But I would get so focused on doing projects that I would lose all track if time (5- hours sometimes. I'd start on something mid-day and look up and it was dark out. On days like that sometimes all I'd eat was 1 meal a day because I would just forget to eat. I was also fairly paranoid of many people/things, due to both the panic attacks and bipolar. My paranoia has greatly subsided, but I still have to fight myself to not be mistrustful of certain settings or people. Honestly right now one of my biggest issues is my misophonia. I worked such long hours for years and often ate all 3 meals alone, that once I quit my job to be at home more with my son I eat all 3 meals with my family and the chewing just drives me up the wall.

[Jester]

Yeah, blindturtle, I've always looked at you as proof positive that "disability' can almost be a state of mind. You may not be able to see, but that never stopped you from pursuing you dreams and interests. I'm glad to call you one of my best friends, and wish you and Becka all the bast.

[BubblyShell22]

I have to agree with Jester that you are definitely an inspiration, BT. My BF's the same way. He may have some limitations and will have more once he loses his sight entirely, but I know he'll still keep on trucking as long as I'm there to support him. He told me that it doesn't matter that he's going blind as long as the last thing he sees before he does is me, but even if that's not possible, it's okay.

And, BT, I'm glad that you got away from that father-in-law. Sounds like he was a real jerk and was discriminating against you for being blind. Wow, really? I would have hit him upside the head for that.

[Cure]

Originally Posted by blindturtle02

I'm totally blind as some of ya already know. It's funny really because when I mention this on other forums hardly anyone replies to pretty much anything I write. Cool forum, the technodrome. One thing that never ceases to frustrate me is that people often equate a physical disability with a behavioral etc. I have no idea why, but people associate blindness with mental/social/behavioral disibilities and all that jazz. My x's dad was just plain prejudiced period. He said she needed someone more than a nice guy to support her and all I'd ever be was a nice guy. Sounds pretty funny from a guy who does the door to door salesman thing and who's get rich quick schemes always went straight down the crapper. I'm really blessed to have a future father in law and bride to be who aren't that way at all.

Did you guys know that before 1975 or so that people with disabilities weren't allowed in public schools? I kid you not. And the Americans with Disabilities Act was only passed in 1990? I'm learning all kinds of interesting little factoids since deciding to become a teacher. Before that act went into motion, there was all kinds of discrimination. Still is actually. No elementary schools where I reside in a district that boasts 30 to 40 or so will allow me to come in and do my 40 hours of field based experience which is a part of the teaching certification process so I gotta go 30 or so miles to another town to do this. Oo fun. My fiancé's dad who worked in the special education field did say there were some pretty corrupt folks around here though. lol he was right.

Man, I thought that was just a username. I'm really curious, how do you browse the internet and junk? You don't need to answer or anything, but it fascinates me what people can do, disabled or not.

EDIT: Never mind, I just Googled it. Still, if you wanna give some more personal examples, I'll read it.

[Jester]

Google mention Jaws? That program be all sorts of freaky.

[Cure]

It did, actually. That no good?

[Jester]

Blind Turtle'd know much better at the pros and cons of Jaws. I just know that the voice they use for the program is very spooky.

[Leo656]

It's amazing to me how totally capable so many sightless people are. We live in such a visual world, so many of us take for granted how we receive and transmit so much information visually. It's inspiring and amazing how people can adapt when necessary and keep moving forward.

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I'd never actually kept any kind of record from one of my "bad moments" until that rant the other day - never kept a journal or anything like that when I was depressed - and I usually can't remember most or all of what was said, thought, and done in those periods of time. A lot of times it's like a black-out. So it's kind of surreal to look back at all that from a calmer perspective. It's surprising how we can compartmentalize things, isn't it? To be fully aware in the moment of things we say, do, and feel, and then later have no recollection? Kind of disturbing, too. Either way, it's been fairly calm for a few days.

[BubblyShell22]

Yep, a lot of us do take sight for granted and never really appreciate how easy it is to see things as we do. I have heard of Jaws, and I agree that the voice is pretty spooky as my friend Dennis once showed me it and how he used it. Dennis and his brother Keith were also blind, so they banded with me and Chris (my BF) when we all met in college. We would jokingly call ourselves The Blind Table because we always tended to sit together, though we always let others sit with us. If anyone asked to sit with us we'd say, "Sure, you can sit at the Blind Table." Good times.

[blindturtle02]

Thanks Jester and Bubbly. I'm glad I'm able to inspire people. It's very fulfilling to make a difference. haha, liked that blind table bit. There were folks who attended the same college as Jester and I who just didn't get the fact that we tend to joke around with it. That in itself was pretty funny. And Cure, if you have any questions about blindness at all just ask. I'm def not one of the adversarial types although there are a few of those out there I suppose. Yeah Jaws is a great program for navigating the net. Rather than using the mouse, I just use keyboard shortcut commands and such. Sorry I hadn't seen these posts before now, guys.

[BubblyShell22]

That's cool. Yeah, we banded together a lot in college, and I was glad to meet people who were a lot like me and knew what it was like to have a disability like blindness. I never had that in high school and was the only one in my class who was like that. Granted, I had a lot of good friends, but they just didn't understand the nature of my disability the way the guys at college did. And, of course, I was lucky enough to meet someone I've been with for ten years now, so that didn't hurt at all.

[Sage Ninja]

I keep coming back to this thread and everytime I have the intention of writing in it I lose my nerve. But after reading about 3 pages of people not only revealing their disablities but also bearing the darker areas of their soul i'm just gonna dive in.

I have a learning disablity called an information processing disorder, and boy does it affect me in almost every area of my life. It means I have a disablity with problem solving and my calculation skills are very poor. This affected me growing up because I trouble interperting nonverbal codes and facial expressions. I also have hard time undersrtanding people with accents at time, but I have gotten much better at this. The thing that sucks most about this is that I know that even close friends and family tend to look down on me just a little bit. They make off comments like "oh, if Pamela can do it, than means anyone can." or "It must be simple if pamela understood it." I had a I.E.P while in school and sometimes my friends would make off comments about how I must have it so easy. Some of my friends didin't really respect me on some level. I remember one instance where I commented about how I stressed about making all the things I had to do for a project and my friend looked me in the eye told me "I don't want to hear, do you have any idea what I have to do being in the honors program. I assure you your stuff is like elementary stuff." I learned not to complain about acedemics to my friends.

I grew up believing I was just stupid and even to this day sometimes I still think I am just stupid. I know I am an intelligent person but when it comes to actually learning something it possiably the hardest thing for me to do. It takes me forever to learn something and truth be told I don't actually learn anything from a class room setting. I almost always get the majority of my learning from sitting one on one with some who instructs me step by step on how to do something. Thats how I actually figured out I wasn't genuanly dumb growing up, because I found that if I had someone giving me extra intruction and giving me enough time to understand (even if it meant several hours to learn something everyone else learned in one class hour) I could get it and be on par with the other people who learned in an regular class.

However, that is not always possiable. Sometimes I had teachers who would try to help one on one get very impatient with me and give up me before I could have a chance to get it. And worse sometimes being accused of "not paying attention" or "being lazy" or I was wasting their time "pretending to be stupid." That really did something to me because I always thought "if you think I'm pretending to be stupid, does that mean if I genuanily don't get it I am stupid?" I didn't know what was worse getting yelled at and punished because they thought I was not trying or being lazy or the them actually believing I was stupid. I always hated the moment where their expression kind of freezes when they realized I genunienly was not understanding the concepts. And then the tight expression and patronizing manner they would have afterwards explaining "oh, it's ok. If you don't understand that doesn't really make you dumb." And when I pointed out that a few minutes ago when they thought I was pretending "to be stupid/dumb" that they said if I didin't I was dumb. Sometimes they would get angry and turn it around on me saying "if you think your stupid then everyone will think you are." I had one teacher who tried her hardest to get me out of her class room in elementary school because she didn't want to deal with me.

I hate how my learning disablity makes me inflexiable. I'm very routine oriented and if I get of my routine it screws me up. For example I tend to simplfying things into a series of steps to be acomplished to reach the completion. If I miss a step it doesn't completely throw me but people have commented that I have a moment of pause where I'm processing this new unexpectede change. Sometimes no one notices this slight pause on my part and others do. I also have crappy short term memory. I can litterly forget where I put somthing almost imediately after I set it down.

[BubblyShell22]

Wow. That's pretty tough, Sage. I would go crazy if I had something like that, and it's horrible how teachers responded to you at times, too. But I'm glad you're brave enough to share it, and that's always a good thing.

[Leo656]

Yeah, that's the worst, when you're genuinely trying your best at something and "They" don't seem to "get it". Like a person WANTS to be confused or something.

[BubblyShell22]

Exactly, and the fact that they figured you were just lazy and pretending to have trouble. No one just pretends to have trouble when it comes to things, and the way those teachers handled it was awful.

[Dawnatello Turtle Chick]

Originally Posted by Sage Ninja

I keep coming back to this thread and everytime I have the intention of writing in it I lose my nerve. But after reading about 3 pages of people not only revealing their disablities but also bearing the darker areas of their soul i'm just gonna dive in.

Isn't it sort of liberating to let it out. And there's always a chance your words will give someone else some comfort! It's so sad that educators that are there to help students to their best can be so dense on the fact that everyone learns differently. And if someone was lazy, then why do they keep trying to learn... some teachers (like many doctors I know) shouldn't be allowed to act the way they do. As I learned years ago, just because you have a degree, doesn't mean you aren't an idiot! I'm glad to hear that you muscled through it anyhow. Congrats on not listening to them!

[blindturtle02]

I can tell you guys some pretty horrifying stuff about idiotic teachers being given degrees. There are some that are training up-coming teachers who have no business teaching. We had to do quite a bit related to the special education field in my teachers' certification course last semester. One person with a recently acquired doctorate compared students with severe mental disabilities to those little bobblehead dogs people used to put on their dashboards back in the 50's or so. She was saying you could train those guys to nod after everything that is said in order to make it appear as if they're understanding topics. And get this, this person was pretty high up in the special education field. I was very disgusted when hearing this. It wasn't amusing at all. I think she started that class period off by telling us this sob story about no students being left out of the education experience. I hope it eventually comes back to bite her in the butt. She's about the same age as my parents, but she doesn't deserve such a degree in my opinion. I hope to go into the special education field eventually. Possibly after teaching in a regular classroom for a few years. There need to be teachers out there who practice what they preach. So yeah, it's amazing who they give degrees to these days.

[Whatswiththeheadbands?]

Originally Posted by blindturtle02

I can tell you guys some pretty horrifying stuff about idiotic teachers being given degrees. There are some that are training up-coming teachers who have no business teaching. One compared students with severe mental disabilities to those little bobblehead dogs people used to put on their dashboards back in the 50's or so. She even laughed about it. She was saying you could train those guys to nod after everything that is said in order to make it appear as if they're understanding topics. And get this, this person was pretty high up in the special education field. I was very disgusted when hearing this. It wasn't amusing at all. I think she started that class period off by telling us this sob story about no students being left out of the education experience. I hope it eventually comes back to bite her in the butt.

That's just wrong on so many levels. This isn't something that people can just shrug off. It's almost as though she has a sick twisted sense that those people WANT to be like that. Someone really needs to slap her in the face right now. In many ways, i actually prefer disabled people over other people. One of the reasons being that they don't have this kind of thing in their minds. She should have gotten fired for that. Really awful.

[blindturtle02]

Well, my mom always says,"You reap what you sow." Some day someone will find her out.