This is my first post on here, but I'd like to share my story...
It was a tough choice for her to make, nobody would want to take their child to a psychologist. I�m not crazy. I never was. I just had problems with clothes and some other sense-related things. My mother, she called this clinic where there would be a number of psychologists and physicians who specify in different areas. After having briefly explained my �problem� to the secretary (or whatever her job is), this woman referred my mother to a learning difficulties psychologist. Everything was going fine, we arranged a meeting with this specialist whose name I forgot.
The dreaded day when I had to go to this psychologist arrived. I didn�t want to go to a psychologist; nobody wants to go to a psychologist. But I had to go to a psychologist, my mother was making me go to a psychologist. I was petrified before we even arrived there. It seemed as if I had just heard my mother turning on the engine when we arrived. It was too soon, I was not ready. Not knowing what to expect, I entered the unwelcoming building. The time I spent sitting down, waiting for my mother to finish talking to the professional, spanned longer than it should have. I nervously wriggled around my chair, innocent me, observing the adults as they led their busy life. I had never felt more alone.
The door of the room in which my mother had entered opened. My mother told me to step inside. I obeyed. Immediately, it was like stepping into a furnace. Thoughts and emotions sped through my mind. I looked at the psychologist, a woman. The rest of it, I can hardly remember, partially because I was so very young when this happened, and also because my thoughts clogged up all the parts of my brain, leaving no room for memory storage. I do remember leaving a sweat mark on her chair, it was summer, but the heat in there was not summer heat. I remember my mother, telling her everything. She told her, how I despised wearing socks because the seams would feel as if something is biting into my feet and I used to spend an amount of time trying to get the seams to stay exactly in the middle. I still do that sometimes. She told her, how I used to beg her to make my ponytail exactly in the middle (I had developed a way to measure) and I used to beg her to redo it if it weren�t exact. She told her, how after that, I had a �phase� where I would make her tie my ponytail so tight and keep it on so tight throughout the entire day ( I even used to sleep with it) that hair eventually started falling off. My mother made most emphasis on my fixation of that time, not being able to wear round neck t-shirts or long sleeved shirts because the collar would bug me to the point where I used to hunch. I had found ways to make this effect less, I used to wear a type of messenger bag which sort of re-placed the collar area so that it wouldn�t touch my skin. Nowadays, I usually wear tight shirts underneath so I�d feel pressure all around my torso region and that would direct my attention away from the collar. I still avoid wearing t-shirts, I only wear them if it�s an absolute necessity.
This learning difficulties psychologist, she didn�t know. She didn�t recognize the traits, the symptoms. She didn�t know. My mother had told her I was a straight A student. I guess that eliminates all the autism spectrum disorder possibilities then right? No, not really. One would expect a learning difficulties psychologist to know about, you know, giftedness, perhaps? I�m not saying she should�ve only used my tactile sensitivity as a diagnostic tool, but it would have rung a bell for any decent psychologist. What did this �professional� do? She referred me to another kind of psychologist who specializes in something else, after charging my mother 60 euros, of course. I felt the same kind of trauma post-entering. Again, the same process, my mother went in first, leaving me to have to endure about half an hour of silent reflection and to get acquainted with my fear. I say half an hour, but I do not know, time is relative. Once again, my mother beckoned me to go inside and once again, the temperature was not ideal inside the office. The offices just feel so unwelcoming, so harsh. I was not meant to be there. I had nothing wrong with me. This time, the psychologist was a man. I do not remember his name, nor do I remember what he specialized in, what I do remember is that he did not know what �was wrong with me�. But, he was the first person to believe me, he believed I was actually feeling the t-shirt rubbing like sandpaper on my skin, he knew I wasn�t imagining, it wasn�t madness. After a few sessions, he finally realized it was 'tactile sensitivity', but that was just the end of the story. We didn't go to another psychologist, nobody told me that I might be gifted.
Nobody diagnosed me with it, yet I just feel it. I feel different. I may be wrong, but I have been doing research and �Giftedness� was how I could explain everything that I used to and still feel and think. It just, makes me find out about who I am and what I'm here for.It made me recognize my strengths and weaknesses.I do not believe 'giftedness' is a label, it's a way of life. More importantly, it's a way of seeing life..With the psychologists not realizing what I had and how I felt, I think that it's not possible that I am gifted, but a good friend of mine told me " It's their lack of intelligence, not yours." Perhaps one day I will find out whether she was right...
