I saw a picture that I could relate to. It was a picture of a man lying on the couch of a psychologist. The psychologist said "I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that you have inferiority complex and I can help you to overcome that. The bad news is that you are inferior"
This post is taken from the draft that I wrote in 2010 for a book to be entitled "Blessed To Be A Blessing". The title I had used for the draft of the relevant chapter of that book is "Am I OKU?"
OKU is the acronym for Orang Kurang Upaya. The more politically correct term PWD is gaining ground in usage against OKU. PWD is Person With Disabilities whereas the English translation of OKU is Person Lacking Abilities.
PWD is a more accurate description of me rather than person lacking abilities. An even more politically correct term for people like me is how psychologists classify us as non neuro typical.
The brain of a non neuro typical is wired differently from that of typicals or ordinary people. Because our brains are wired differently, our interaction with people and our surroundings is different from that of typicals like you. Examples of non neuro typicals are people with autism or ADHD.
People often look down on people with autism. Isaac Newton and Einstein are geniuses who are on the Autism spectrum.
We have 5 senses which are sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. All 5 senses provide stimuli to our brain. The brain of most people can filter the stimuli from the 5 senses so that we are conscious of what is important. If the filtering is not working our brain gets over stimulated and we suffer from a sensory overload.
Typicals do not get sensory overloads. The following will give you a rough idea of how it feels to be sensory overloaded. Imagine you are standing bare foot on sharp stones. There are 10 bright flashing lights shining on you. There are also 10 loudspeakers blaring full blast. The room you are in with all these happening has various bad smelling substances giving off their obnoxious smells. Your senses are screaming at your brain and overloading it. That is how a person suffering a sensory overload may feel.
My filtering mechanism works but not as effectively as that of typicals. I very rarely get sensory overloads because of another compensating mechanism. My brain will not simultaneously process too many senses. This protects me from sensory overload. But the compensating mechanism has negative effects too.
Examples are:
1 ) Sight interferes with thinking so I think best with my eyes closed.
2 ) I am very poor at multi tasking. If I talk, other tasks that I am doing is affected.
3 ) If I am thinking, my writing slows down substantially.
4 ) I have poor hand and eye coordination so my typing speed is ridiculously slow around 5 words per minute compared with professional typists doing 120 wpm. It is not that I lack practice as I have been hitting keyboards for decades doing spreadsheets, word processing and input for accounting programs. There is no possibility of me being able to use multiple fingers of both hands for typing. I have tried but failed to do 2 fingers typing ie. Use 1 finger of each hand for typing. The only use of the left hand I can do is to press the shift key.
5) Writing does not need so much hand and eye coordination as typing and so is less affected. But my writing speed is still slower than that of most people. When taking tests that requires any 5 questions to be answered out of the 8 or 9 questions in the test paper, I can answer between 3 to 3.5 questions ie. 1 question will not be answered at all and another question will be partially answered. Not attempting the required number of questions is not because of long answers for the questions attempted. My answers of less than 1.5 pages are shorter than those of most people. It is just that I take so long to write my answers. I may have to close my eyes and stop writing to think of how I want to phrase my answer.
I close my eyes a lot of the time giving the impression that I am always sleeping. If you are speaking to me and my eyes are closed, do not get offended. I am not bored with you but am trying to listen to you more intently by shutting off distraction from the sense of sight. During Zoom meetings I prefer not to be visible as my eyes are shut most of the time.
If I am doing something while standing or squatting and stop doing what I was doing and stay still, I am trying to concentrate on thinking about something.
I am a slow worker who takes a long time to do things. Where housework is concerned, I accidentally cut myself quite often especially if I try to rush. I have broken or dented a lot of things that I drop.
Does the above make my brain inferior? I am not inferior but am different. I think that my brain is better than that of a lot of people. I can think very analytically and get a deeper understanding than most people. When I took an IQ test conducted by Mensa, the notification of my score says that I am in the top 8 percentile of the world.
So I am not mentally OKU but am mentally PWD.
Psychologists may call me a non neuro typical who has a certain degree of SPD or Sensory Processing Disorder