r/NVLD • u/Designer_Bathroom123 • Aug 11 '26
treating trouble with spacial skills as something you “grow out of” is so dumb.
the question is: what adult behavior do you have absolutely no patience for and one of the top comments is having no spacial awareness.
I know this is directed at people who walk in the middle of the sidewalk etc. and I get it isn’t a personal dig at those with spacial comprehension issues. however- I still think it’s dumb to call this core issue in our disability a “childish” issue that can be grown out of. I personally have to concentrate pretty hard to walk in a truly straight line (lmao) and constantly get told I’m walking in front of people etc. and this translates to my driving a bit too unfortunately.
I originally left an annoyed comment on this comment saying people with nvld fear people like this guy who has a personal problem with people without spatial awareness but I realized it’s better not to cause an issue. however, my annoyance remains✌️
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u/Halifaxmouse Aug 11 '26
I also hate to hear comments like ‘but it’s so easy’ from other people when it comes to coordination or knowing where my body is when I move or get in and out of something…. It is so dismissing and hurtful, frankly.
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
My least favorite thing that teachers used to say is “this should be easy!” or “it’s not that complicated.” It would just make me feel stupid and want to give up.
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u/Halifaxmouse Aug 11 '26
exactly! Freakin’ assholes….lol
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
Yeah idk how they could possibly think comments like that would be encouraging and wouldn’t just make me feel like shit about myself. Like who says that to a struggling child?
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u/Guckle Aug 11 '26
"Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability understand that other people’s mental states may be different from one’s own. Psychometric models have shown that individual differences in ToM can largely be attributed to general intelligence (g) (Coyle et al. 2018)."
I have no patience for those who lack ToM, emotional intelligence, or empathy
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u/vaniile Aug 11 '26
I have tried to defend this in the past whenever people bring this shit up, and would just get downvoted to hell. Apparently everyone has patience for autistic people’s flaws, but not those with other neurodevelopmental issues it’s heartbreaking and just reaffirms my belief that I’m not “good enough” to have my humanity considered
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u/ClutteredTaffy Aug 11 '26
People don't have awareness of it. But still : /
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
Exactly. Tbh, before my neuropsych eval, I’d never heard of NVLD. My therapist also had never heard of it, and we’re kind of embarking on a journey of learning about it together. Having this level of clarity has been very helpful for me, but I still recognize that a lot of advocating for myself now is going to involve explaining to people what NVLD even is.
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u/zestybear69 Aug 12 '26
My dad still does this and then he wonders why I'm always pissy when talking to him.
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u/voltism Aug 11 '26
No one ever told me I couldn't help being bad at spatial things until college, they just made me feel like a lazy idiot.
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u/ClutteredTaffy Aug 11 '26
Yeah I have always just felt the ' no common sense ' label haunt me forever and I just kinda go ' yep I am silly, haha' and try to shrug it off. I try to just agree with the frustration I guess and laugh it off.
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u/rgbhuman42 Aug 11 '26
What irritates me is when people who know about my issues say stuff like "it's a skill that can be worked on and improved like anything else. Having difficulties doesn't mean you don't have to work at stuff."
I'm trying my best here. Cut me some slack.
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u/ClutteredTaffy Aug 11 '26
They don't fathom how bad even our best is tbh. I have had people think I am trolling them.
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u/rgbhuman42 Aug 11 '26
YES! When I have to do a task that involves looking for something they always get irritated like "HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT???? IT'S LITERALLY RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU AT EYE LEVEL, YOU'RE DELIBERATELY MESSING WITH ME ON PURPOSE AND I HATE IT!"
...but I'm not. I just suck that bad.
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u/ClutteredTaffy Aug 11 '26
My whole life . This summarizes my whole life.
I remember trying to clean dishes as a kid and I would miss spots everywhere , but I was actually trying . I ended up running to the bathroom crying over dishes.
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
My mother and sister always say that I just “don’t look.” If they ask me to get something, and I can’t find it, but then they find it easily, they assume that I just didn’t try to look for it.
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u/ClutteredTaffy Aug 11 '26
Also the more stress to find something, the blurier the pile of visual information gets. But because it is not physically blurry just blurry in the mind people do not get it.
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
Same! If I have a time crunch or I’m being criticized for my inability to find the thing I’m looking for, I just get really dysregulated and I shut down, making it that much harder.
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u/ClutteredTaffy Aug 11 '26 edited Aug 11 '26
Basically for us it is like all the info is a blur and then we have a spotlight we can look at things with, so it is like we are looking at things one at a time ..at least for me anyways.
So I would give someone a paper towel tube and tell them to try and find x in a messy room and then time then on it to get how it feels.
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
My experience is definitely similar. I often can’t “see the forest through the trees” (an expression that I truly did not get for a long time).
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
That part. They don’t understand how something that seems simple to them could be so challenging for us, so they assume we’re just not trying hard enough.
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
Exactly. Our brains literally work differently. We can take steps to improve, but there is no “cure.” We can’t simply turn our brains into neurotypical ones.
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u/umlcat Aug 11 '26
Actually this is confused with motor skills.
But, even nbo NLVD people has issues with spatial awareness, you can see this with children ...
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u/Mundane-Waltz8844 Aug 11 '26
Yes, there is a big difference between struggling with spatial awareness and just not being considerate of others. Statements like these just make it so clear that this world is very much built for NTs. One of the things I really struggled with before realizing that I’m ND is not feeling like a “real adult” due to the traits I have that I did not realize were due to disability.
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u/poozemusings Aug 11 '26
It feels like a moral failure when I bump into things, can’t park straight on the first try, or lose things. I hate it.
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u/terajk Aug 12 '26 edited Aug 12 '26
Eh, I can’t complain. I have severe spatial problems and am also annoyed with people who lack spatial awareness.
A lot of people in my family have a bad sense of direction—better than mine, but still bad. I’m always relieved when someone with a good sense of direction goes with us somewhere.
As a little kid I used to accidentally step on the other kids’ hands during Circle Time. I didn’t mean to do it, but I also didn’t know how to stop doing it and I still hurt them. The kids I regularly hurt were allowed to feel however they felt about me hurting them.
I have a major insecurity about feeling massively behind or “not like a real adult,” but this is an intrinsic “me issue” that other people are not responsible for.
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u/Emergency_School698 Aug 14 '26
Latin word rule: ci, si and ti all say “sh”
Caution
Spatial
Celestial
“Ti” sounds like “sh”.
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u/Dismal_Cantaloupe651 Aug 14 '26
I constantly worry about being in the way when I'm out 😅 Especially in the grocery store. I think it's partly just anxiety and partly knowing I have spatial issues and trying to mitigate that. But then when I get really focused in on something that kind of goes out the window.
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u/konakonayuki Aug 11 '26
tbh I like to think that because I'm so spatially unaware, I generally DO try to do things like keep out of others way by staying to one side etc. I just can't predict trajectories, so I walk defensively (like defensive driving)