Temporary Dyspraxia from Baby Loss Overwhelm

Do you also experience this?

Today, I tripped on the stairs, spilling coffee down the banister, and rinsed the wrong object while holding the correct one in my other hand, causing grounds to splatter over the sink, splashback, countertop, and the clean dishes of three housemates.

There was much on my mind, mundane things and more complex; I had a busy, long week; was very tired, which is something I try to avoid. If I tick down, become too exhausted, there is a point at which I meet an interior lake of sadness. Grief. Cold, dark, and forever. The reality that it will never get better whispers, also, screams, in my head. I don’t sleep. I have violent nightmares.

I drop things.

I looked up “temporary dyspraxia” today, and was surprised to find no term for the temporary lack of coordination that can occur with overwhelm. I found “dyspraxia”, the well-known developmental coordination disorder affecting movement, and “acquired aspraxia/dyspraxia” due to stroke, dementia, or tumour.

The internet had other offerings: a crossword answer, “butterfingered”; a made-up word “dropsy”; compression of the spinal cord, not temporary enough, cervical myelopathy; a forum where people with ADHD discussed the frequency of their… butterfingered tendencies.

Memory kicked in and I recalled reading, in The Body Keeps The Score, that the area of the brain that feels emotions also feels physical objects. Trauma survivors find it hard to tell objects apart, or notice when they are being touched.

I often describe carrying grief like being a computer with a background task running, lacking Random Access Memory, the short-term memory a computer uses to open applications and manage tasks. I can’t do as much as I used to. I can write now for three hours, uninterrupted, but not five or six, as I did when I wrote Golden Boy. I get tired more quickly. On the saddest days, it is impossible to get up. I don’t have the bandwidth to get involved in anything unnecessary or to sweat the small stuff.

The meaning of the word bandwidth is now very clear to me.

When overwhelmed, I drop things. I don’t type very well. I turn and hit my hip on corners. I walk into objects. I trip over.

This occurs only when I’m thinking and grieving and talking and working and replying and listening and considering and doing menial tasks and thinking about ambitious work and worrying and listing tasks in my head. At other times, I’m coordinated. I play football and score goals. I do close-work including crochet, knit, painting. When I tripped, I almost fell face-first down the stairs.

There should be a term for this.