Proprioception difficulties

As a child I lacked adequate proprioception, being uncoordinated, but being interested in cricket I practiced and significant skill is obtainable but a complex physical task can be more difficult initially.

"Proprioception" is the meta-sense of awareness of the location of body parts. You can see the effects of its lack of development when a baby struggles to put food into the mouth, missing the oriface. You can test yourself for proprioception difficulties by closing your eyes and trying to touch a particular part (fingertip, nose etc); difficulties will present in terms of accuracy and speed.

The cross stitch no doubt is helpful in developing and maintaining dexterity and no doubt serves you as hobby interest, but perhaps you could return to your martial arts practice both for the OT benefit of this activity as well as the improvement in your personal security, anxiety reduction and general fitness benefits. It might well have a positive effect on your depression also. I note that you find excersise difficult at the moment but martial arts can be trained without cardio/aerobic stress.

Can you tell us what promted the diagnosis of proprioception difficulties? Does lack of physical proficiency significantly impact your life?

proprioception is a minor issue, in my opinion, compared to your depression. If you are struggling to find some drugs that deal with this then it may be that there isn't a chemical issue to solve! CBT is currently favoured for dealing with depression

www.nhs.uk/.../Introduction.aspx

My own experience is that i was getting stressed and depressed before i got diagnosed with Aspergers. In hindsight, i kept getting into situations where i struggled to understand the world and the world didn't understand me. This resulted in repeated conflicts, disappointment and eventually depression as i couldn't get people to see things my way.

My depression has practically gone now. My approach has been to try to understand what makes me different to NT people and what makes them different to me. As I understand it, this is a cognitive approach as I am striving to deal with the root cause of the depression by working out why the stress situations were arising and then learning techniques to avoid those situations.

I was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum, & procrioception difficulties was given as one of the reasons for diagnosis.

The autism diagnosis came about after the shrink who's "treating" my depression "received some additional training" & realised that when I asked her a few years ago if I might be autistic, I may have been right.  I suspect that once she realised this, she also realised that getting me an ASD diagnosis would effectively make me someone elses problem, which is why she arranged it.

As I said, I don't really know where my difficulites are, which is why I need some clues as to what sort of things to consider.  Given that I do a lot of cross stitch, & I have in the past done martial arts either I've got no problems anywhere & they're wrong, or I've got mild problems in both areas.  Unfortunately my asthma symptoms are currently being made worse by medication, which puts any kind of physical exercise out.  And I'm not coming off the medication until it stops working, as it's the first thing they've found in over a year that even takes the edge off the depression.

You can do your own OT. Are your difficulties in fine or gross motor control? You might try modelling or sewing to train small scale physical skills, and sports drills to train larger scale skills. The practice of a martial art can assist both, as well as being helpful in managing anxiety if there are personal security elements, and in meltdown avoidance by stress relief and the development of self-discipline. Thai-Chi can also be helpful.

Haven't found anything on the homepage.  Submitted a query to the contact us link, which it turns out is mostly for administration related stuff but it's been passed to the helpline for me (& I've been warned about the wait as they're so busy).  

Also haven't tried searching specifically for books on proprioception difficulties, so I'll give that a try.  Although I don't hold out much hope, as if there's anything out there it's likely to be like everything else I've found - how to identify them in children & help them deal with them, & then a line to acknowledge that "adults may also have these problems"

OT referral is unlikely - the only thing that's really been established since diagnosis is that I'm not sufficiently imparied to be eligable for help.

LadyN

Hi, I don't know if there's any info via the home page or not?  There may be books on amazon etc.  Also you could check out whether you could get referred to an Occupational Therapist who might be able to help/advise you.