NLD Information and Support Thread

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Holy cow. I am really, really wondering if this is me.

The one confusing part is that I see comments about loving language and having it come naturally, but having difficulty writing...my handwriting itself is almost unreadable, but I write for a living. HOWEVER...I AM pretty disorganized in my writing. I've wanted to write a book for 30 years, but I CAN NOT organize it...I don't know where to start, where to stop...I've read countless books on the subject but still can't...round it out. I don't know. The things I write professionally are always much shorter than books...way way shorter. That's because I can only "zing" with a quick beginning, middle and ending in a very formulaic way. Give me more freedom than that with a longer piece and I'm seriously lost.

I love words so much. I spoke very early and was using, at minimum, phrases at a year and full sentences at 14 months. I love learning, and then saying, bits and phrases from other languages. When I took Spanish in school, I excelled in Year One because it was all vocabulary memorization and short phrases; I don't remember ever getting below a 95 on a Spanish test. Once I hit Spanish II, though, with verb conjugation, I was lost and did much less well. But I still love saying words and phrases in Spanish...in French...I even know one Japanese phrase that I love to use, but I don't know how to spell it. I have also recently taken an interest in learning Norwegian.

As for the other stuff...as an adult, I used to joke in retrospect that perhaps I'd had a learning disability in school, since I heard over and over, "NW can do so much better. She must just be lazy," yet I KNEW that I simply could not take a test. It was horrible. When I tried to study, the harder I stared at the book, the less the words made sense. Homework was torture for me. But it's odd--when something sparked my interest, if I listened naturally and without anxiety, I would remember the details forever (and still do). I am big on details; people used to call me Ms. Dictionary sometimes, and Ms. Trivial Pursuit other times.

As for math...holy cow. If only I were a boy, I could unzip and count to 21, but sadly, as a woman, I can only count to 20. (An old joke I made up...doesn't flow so well on paper, though...) Seriously. TORTURE. I remember third grade and learning "sets" (we grouped the numbers with circles around them as an introduction to multiplication). I knew AT THAT MOMENT that I was not "such a smart girl!" like everyone had been saying--instead, it was the opposite; I was a moron.

I've been a moron ever since.

Physically, I have always thought there was something "wrong with" me. I am very nearsighted, but it's not just that. Even with my glasses on, during baseball, the ball would be coming toward me and I'd KNOW, I'd SEE where it was going to fall so I'd lift up my glove and...the ball would fall down a few feet away from me. (Much to the screaming, angry jeers of my teammates. I was always the last person picked for a team.) So many times I was singled out by the gym teacher--"You know, girls can do these things too." (Yeah, I know they're SUPPOSED to be able to do these things too)--to my horrified embarrassment. "NW, here, I'll put my hands over yours and SHOW you how to throw a basketball..." Idiot, I know how to throw. I just don't know how to throw...and have the ball land where I want it to.

My mother and sister were wonderful dancers. I sucked and I still do, and it's so sad because I would LOVE to be able to dance. I am horrified at weddings and that sort of thing because I know I'm going to have to get up and dance and I'll lose the plot of where my body is and my hands will be doing...something...I don't know. I'm uncomfortable in my own skin...I never know where to put my hands, or how to stand (straighter? Less straight? Turn to the side?).

I do get deep interests. So I'm not sure about that part. I've been interested in the middle ages for over ten years now and have been to the library countless times, own my own home library collection basically on this subject, and am constantly online about various intricate details.

It's hard to have been told as a very young child that you're brilliant...then have it ALL change a few years later and to live the rest of your life feeling like the world's leading idiot...like there is just something really, really wrong with you to be so stupid, and worse, to have always been told you "could" do better...but not understanding how you "can" possibly do that. To try and be told "You're not trying!" And to be a social misfit and physically inept.

Last edited by NowhereWoman on 04 Jul 2009, 10:12 am, edited 2 times in total.

Oh...I also have some weirdness about...remembering things visually. I don't necessarily recognize a person's face the next time I see him or her...or, I sort of do but can't be sure it's the same person. And when I try to recall the way something looks, it's a blur in my mind. I usually "see" shadows mentally rather than full pictures. I hear my memories instead.

When I first moved to my new house four years ago, I immediately said to myself over and over again, "Beige house with brown shutters. Beige house with brown shutters" to memorize it, because if not, it could have been 10 years later and somebody could say, "What color is your house?" and I wouldn't know. And you know, you have an experience or two like that and you get tired of people giving you that "Is she crazy, or is she ret*d?" stare.

well--keep in mind that, at this point, i'm self-diagnosed. but anyway: howdy, sister.

it's weird, isn't it? finding out there's actually a category for all those "highly personal quirks?" i have wondered for years if there wasn't something a little different about my wiring--largely because some things came so easily, whereas simple addition, simple directions, social skills, etc.--forget it.

i write too. i love to write anyway--fiction. but it takes me forever, and i have to edit obsessively. otherwise, it makes little sense.

Hello, my sister in freakinesss! Yes, it's very odd, and lifting, to go from "well, I've always just been a freak" to "oh...you mean there's a name for that?"

Me too on math and directions. At the age of 28, I once called my sister SOBBING--actually, my oldest son and I were both sobbing--from having worked on a homework word problem for ONE HOUR; something about trains and speed and...and...I don't know. She gave us the answer in about four seconds. Thank God. We can laugh about it now.

As for directions, I always tell people I could get lost on the way to the bathroom and that I wish those Ronald McDonald feet led me to and from everywhere...and they always laugh...not realizing it's not a joke.

Hugs to you, friend and fellow writer.

This sounds like me. I have to try very hard to picture even the face of someone in my family, and usually the best I can do is to picture it in a vague way for just a split second. When I picture things, it is usually just parts of them that I can see, and they fade in and out. I certainly can't get any information from what I picture in my head- if I didn't encode it verbally when I first saw it (like "this person has wavy hair"), I will not be remember it through picturing it. Pretty much the opposite of Cam Jansen (who has a photographic memory), who pictures things and then can notice new details based on her mental picture.

Remembering something by reading it is more "verbal" than "visual". I have NLD and actually don't have a good auditory memory because of problems with sustained attention to auditory information (although my visual memory is far worse). I can remember anything I read though. Yes, technically reading something should be visual, but when you are reading, you are taking in information which is encoded verbally rather than just remembering a picture. Especially when you consider that most people "hear" the words in their head as they are reading. Unless you are actually creating a visual memory of the page which you then read off later, the information is being encoded verbally in your head. Having the lyrics written down rather than listening to them just let you process the words at your own rate- you don't need the constant attention and rapid, sequential auditory processing to decode and then encode written words as you do for spoken words.

You're welcome! I enjoyed writing it- NLD is a major interest for me so I wrote it mainly from memory based on different things I've read over the years. Don't worry about crediting me. If you want to, you can just call me "LostInSpace" though. I'm glad you found it helpful, and I'll have to check out your livejournal!

That's basically what I've read about NLD. I know it sounds weird to say that writing can be a weakness with NLD (and it isn't for me), but there is quite a bit out there that suggests that NLDers have difficulty with organization of writing, transitions, being cohesive, etc. I do have difficulty with writing transitional sentences (same with speaking- I tend to introduce new topics abruptly) and with staying all in the same tense (I tend to skip between past and present if I'm not careful), but overall I don't have the typical NLD writing problems.

This is totally me. I will meet someone, and the next time I see them I will think they look sort of familiar, but it will be ages before I can consistently know that this is the same person without confusing them with someone else. I've been working at my current job for 6 months now, and there are still some of my co-workers that I can't consistently tell apart (it's not like they look like each other either). It helps if you can focus on one particular feature of the person to remember. That is a strategy that I have been trying to use lately.



This is called "verbal mediation" and it is a lifeline for NLDers (also for people who have had a right hemisphere stroke, interestingly enough). This is how I function in life. I have to deliberately encode things verbally in order to remember them. Especially when it comes to remembering directions, and especially in nightmarish places like parking garages or parking lots where there are no good landmarks.

Honestly, it's no wonder NLDers have problems with anxiety. So many little things in everyday life are just so ridiculously difficult. How many people dread parking in a parking lot because they know how much difficulty they will have finding their car? Or even just getting it into the parking spot? I just feel like so much of what is around me, both my in my physical environment and in social situations, is information that I can't process. It's like walking through a fog- you get individual fragments of clarity as something becomes visible through the fog, but most of what it is going on you are just not privy to because you can't "see" (process) it.

I dont get anxiety from the parking itself (unless it is an awkward space) but if I pull into a parking lot and there are one or more cars circling around with me I become frozen and dont know what to do because a car could stop, or more cars could appear, and then I might try to pull into a space but I do it at a wrong angle and have to back out again but another car has appeared behind me and I cant back so I freeze again... you get the idea...

Hi,

I hope this doesn't sound pedantic, specially for a first post, but after browsing this topic I have the feeling most of you people have the wrong idea of NLD.
To put it short, NLD doesn't exist anymore.

In order to avoid confusion among neurologists and psychiatrists around the world, there is booklet called: 'DSM' (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders)
Currently they are (or should be) using version 4 'DSM-IV', containing the standard definition of every disorder currently diagnosed. (sorry, I hate to use the ugly word disorder in this context, but whatever...)

In this version you will NOT find the definition of NLD; while in the older versions you did.
Why? Because people with NLD actually fit in other phenotypes like ADD, Aspergers and Dyssemia with greater accurancy.

People diagnosed with NLD in the past, probably have Aspergers or something else related.
So, there is no such thing as having NLD and Aspergers at the same time... besides you probably have neither of them, because the term of what you have doesn't exist yet, neurologists are just n00bs.

Hope this puts an end to the confusion.

Forget parking lots... I had a hard time figuring out where my desk was in class when I was in elementary school.

Erm. No. NLD is not a current diagnostic category in the DSM-IV. It wasn't in the DSM-III either. Yes, there's a high incidence of co-morbidity for AS in people with NLD (or the other way around). The most current research on NLD doesn't appear to support your claims, however.

Here is an interesting website talking about some differences between NLD and AS:

http://www.aane.org/asperger_resources/ ... rning.html

Actually, NLD has never been included in the DSM, although it was first identified in the 1960s. It is expected to be included in the next version of the DSM however (estimated to be published in 2012), as it has been studied in much more detail since the last revision and much more is known about it. Are you sure you are not confusing NLD with something else, like PDD-NOS? (the term "Pervasive Developmental Disorder" probably *won't* be in the next DSM)

I read the whole NLD (or NVLD) topic on Wikipedia and that is me exactly. Explained a lot of my standardized test scores when I was in school. I did brilliantly on Language Mechanics and Spelling, but Reading Comprehension was dismal (I won't mention math because, well, it's hard being math's friend). Currently, I am AS/NLD--and darn proud of it!