SPD Support Forum

Thank you so much for this forum... I'm so glad I found this, and the spdlife website. The "5 steps" was exactly what I needed to read.
I recently discovered that I have SPD... Well, better said, that there is such a thing as SPD, and that what I've been experiencing is really a thing. Sensory based motor disorder describes my issues best. I have really poor muscle tone.

It explains everything, all the struggle I've been through... I've tried so, so many things (none of which worked of course) just to be able to live... which I'm not.

I haven't accomplished absolutely anything... I'm 36 years old (female). I was in denial about how bad I was feeling. I simply thought, it cannot be... I cannot be so exhausted just by doing nothing, sitting, standing... moving the tiniest bit. Also, moving freaks me out. It always has, even as a child. But I just didn't aknowledge it. Instead, I hated myself every day...

What shocks me most is realizing that other people do not experience any of this... It's hard to explain, but I somehow assumed that everyone is like me, and they just cope with it better... How they are physically able to do certain things which are impossible for me, was always beyond me... I don't know what I was thinking... that they are just trying harder than I am, maybe? I don't know. I'm confused, and now that I know about all this, I wonder what I was thinking... (And what my parents were thinking back then.)

I've always had this vague idea that something is wrong, but... as it says on the web site, " I knew there was something wrong, but frantic Internet searches were getting me nowhere" - well, that's me! I've spend the last years trying to be a person.

(I hope I'm making sense... Sorry if I'm expressing myself weirdly.)

I realize this wasn't much of an introduction. I'm in a really bad place right now, and I need someone to understand me. Hope this is OK... Thank you so so much for reading this...

It's as if finding this website/forum has given me permission to vent (like it says in the "5 steps")... without hiding anything. Finally. I just need someone to know.

I hope things have gotten better for you. I don't know if you need this, but in case you do:

You say you haven't accomplished anything. I challenge you to reframe that. It looks to other people like you've accomplished nothing, but if you look hard enough at your life, I think you'll find things you've managed to do even though they were really hard. And then you might dismiss those things as being unimportant and not really counting. I did that for years.

I've been on disability for more than a decade (for mental illness), and I've struggled to see myself as valuable even if society maybe didn't. But recently I met someone who had a use for the expertise I've gained from lived experience, and it's made it much easier for me to think I have something to contribute.

It may be that after you get through this tough time, you'll discover a use for the strength and resilience you've been developing. There may be no one around you who can see how amazing you are and will become, but acknowledge it to yourself. And if you don't believe it, keep telling yourself until you do.