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Confidence Issues
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| Funk |
Posted on January 23 2009 04:09 PM
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Member
Location: Scotland
Posts: 6
Joined: 2009-01-21
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Since discovering dyscalculia and realsing that there is a very high chance that I am affected by it, I have begun to consider whether or not it is a contributing factor to my low confidence levels. I have an almost inbuilt sense that whatever I attempt, I am going to fail before I've even tried. It makes things that I once found enjoyment in: aside from my part-time "real job", I'm also a comic-book artist. I've won some national competitions for my comic art but I just can't muster the confidence to take it to the next level and do it full time. I find it hard to work on work for clients because I am terrified of failing to meet their expectations or doing something wrong/something they didn't ask for i.e misinterpriting their request. I also have problems doing simple things like perhaps asking a shop assistant how much something costs or phoning a stranger i.e. a company or client. Perhaps it is fear of looking stupid, but there is also a feeling of shame to it.
Having thought more about it recently, I wonder if it stems back to the lack of help in school. Knowing before you have even sat down and looked at the paper that you are going to fail is a terrible feeling, but as a child you are made to do it every single day of schooling. Being forced to do something that you just can't do, no matter how much you want to be able to or how much you try and study, and knowing what the outcome is going to be is difficult regardless of context or subject. At least, it was for me. I feel that when I was much younger and still at school, if I had been told that there was a reason why I couldn't do certain things I would not have been left with this constant feeling that I am about to do something wrong. Being constantly told that "you can do it" even though you can't brings confidence levels down because whoever is teaching you expects you to be able to do it and if you can't then you must be stupid. But, knowing that you weren't able to do it in the first place means that you know you are going to get a piece of paper with a "fail" written on it.
So, I am wondering if anyone else out there suffers from confidence problems, and if they feel that it is linked to their dyscalculia. Do any of you forum users feel that a lack of or a late diagnosis of dyscalculia has affected other aspects of your life? |
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| twistedxkiss |
Posted on January 23 2009 06:51 PM
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Member
Location: Michigan
Posts: 555
Joined: 2008-09-19
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I had major confidence problems as a student until I was diagnosed. I am in college and I actually stopped going to my first college math class because I had failed 5 out of 8 tests already and I couldn't take the daily reminder of what a failure I was. But then once I got diagnosed it was like a light flipped on, and I'm fine now. In high school I wasn't really a good enough student to care I guess, so it didn't affect me as much until college... in high school I remember once a teacher put a test in front of me and I just laughed, and she was like, "Do you really not know any of this? Would it help if I gave you an extra day?" and I was just like, "nooo, it won't help, I'll just do it." And then my last year of math, my teacher stopped even giving me tests because it was a waste of paper. If I had been mature enough then to care about how my grades would affect me down the road that would have been an absolute disaster for me emotionally, as it was in college.
I don't think the dyscalculia affected my confidence in other areas, but that's not to say it wouldn't have had I not had such a bad attitude before coming to college. XD But I did definitely have low self esteem regardless of what caused it, and finding out about dyscalculia helped a lot. Because having to fight through my math classes for my degree I guess just taught me that sometimes things are going to be really hard, maybe even impossible, but no one is going to care how hard you think it is so you had best do whatever you can to get by. And I've accomplished a lot through that. |
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| Funk |
Posted on January 24 2009 06:07 PM
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Member
Location: Scotland
Posts: 6
Joined: 2009-01-21
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TwistedxKiss wrote:
In high school I wasn't really a good enough student to care I guess, so it didn't affect me as much until college
I think the thing for me was that I wanted to be a good student, but it felt as though for some reason I couldn't be so yes, I developed an attitude too because it wasn't as though I wanted top grades in math - I just wanted it to be enough for me to be able to understand things. I loved graphics, but as soon as I went into the higher class I had to exclude myself from it because I was struggling so much with measurements (volume and distance are probably the two things I have the most trouble with, aside from everyday things like adding money) and I was getting results like 19 out of 100 for the mesurement tests. It made me think "Why am I putting myself through this? I want to be good at graphics as a subject but I just cannot understand this, so why bother?". It was the same in a lot of other classes; I knew that there was no way I was ever going to understand long division and other things like that which were taught in math class, but when it came to problem solving within other subjects, it completely brought the whole grade down. With things like biology, I'd get average-high marks in most tests until some element of calcualation came into it. It almost felt as though the only classes where it didn't matter were in subjects like English and History. Everything else became a waste of time because even if I understood all the other areas in the subject, as soon as there was something to do with numbers in there it became a total blank.
Sometimes I feel that if I say to someone that I find maths hard, they go "you can learn to do it", but it's not like that for me. I don't imagine I will ever be able to get beyond a certain level, and what annoys me no end is when someone says "It's not that hard". Yeah, it might not be hard. It probably is very simple, but I can't process what I'm supposed to do with numbers, regardless of lthe difficulty of the question. It's like, if I read a question in biology that said "30% of the solution remains after osmosis has taken place in the alotted time frame - what is the volume in millilitres?". I can understand that I'm meant to figure out what 30% is, but I cannot work out percentages. Most of the time I end up doing something like taking 30 away from the starting volume, even though I know it's wrong, and then I do nothing because I don't know how to get the answer. And then I find that I've lost a lot of marks because I've not been able to answer the questions in the exam that are written like that. Now, if the question had told me to write a long-winded answer on what osmosis is, I would be able to no problem, but I felt as though at school because I could grasp the math angle of a question like that where I had to calculate something then it was just assumed that I knew nothing about it at all. |
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| RottieWoman |
Posted on January 24 2009 08:50 PM
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Member
Location: No value
Posts: 3044
Joined: 2008-12-31
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I never have understood math word problems of really any kind. |
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| eoffg |
Posted on January 25 2009 01:00 PM
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 of clu[26].jpg)
Administrator
Location: Australia
Posts: 1262
Joined: 2005-03-20
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Funk, one benefit of having had a diagnosis and developed some understanding of Dyscalculia. Is that one can start to identify what things one might have difficulties with.
But without this understanding, every new task is a mystery?
Will I have difficulties with this?
So everything is then left to trial and error?
So a diagnosis does bring some clarity, about what sort of things one may have difficulties with.
As well as areas of strengths. |
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| justfoundout |
Posted on January 25 2009 02:00 PM
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Member
Location: Texas USA
Posts: 6103
Joined: 2008-05-25
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1/25/09
Dear Funk,
I especially liked how you expressed the problem when you wrote it this way:
Funk wrote:
"Being constantly told that "you can do it" even though you can't brings confidence levels down because whoever is teaching you expects you to be able to do it and if you can't then you must be stupid."
And sometimes, rather than 'stupid', other unpleasant things are implied. For example, I had a teacher who would ask me how I was doing in math just because she loved to imply that I wasn't "setting priorities". After about the third time that she "set me up" to admit to her that I wasn't doing well in math, evidently just so that she could again gloat about how well she sets priorities, I decided to either stay away from her or else find a polite way to let her know that we weren't going to keep having this 'conversation'. It was then that I found out about dyscalculia, and this was one of the reasons that my new knowledge made me feel so much better.
I really enjoyed reading your post, and I'm glad you found the forum. - justfoundout
Edited by justfoundout on January 25 2009 02:08 PM |
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| reverend blamo |
Posted on January 26 2009 01:35 AM
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Member
Location: Island of Misfit Toys
Posts: 620
Joined: 2007-10-25
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I rarely can bring myself to take chances. After being told directly or indirectly that I am no good, not-too-smart and will not accomplish much, it tends to become true.
"I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused..."
Elvis Costello |
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| justfoundout |
Posted on January 26 2009 05:43 AM
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Member
Location: Texas USA
Posts: 6103
Joined: 2008-05-25
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1/25/09
Dear Blamo,
I chuckled at your above post. For almost 15 years I didn't drive a car in South America where I lived. I thought that someone might honk at me. Then I noticed that many drivers, even truck drivers, couldn't read, drove without a driver's license, and drove without insurance. There was a German language class that I wanted to attend, but it let out too late at night to catch a bus or a taxi. The only way that I could attend was to begin driving again. I decided that being that I was literate, licensed, and insured, there was no reason I shouldn't be at least as competent to drive as they were. So that's what I did. I started driving again. And I attended my German class.
It takes something that really matters to us to overcome all the 'put downs', doesn't it? - jus'
Edited by justfoundout on January 26 2009 05:47 AM |
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| CheshireKat |
Posted on January 26 2009 06:51 AM
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Member
Location: United States
Posts: 1860
Joined: 2008-11-14
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My confidence issues were and are almost 100% related to math exclusively, and do very little "bleeding over" into other aspects of my life. Especially with school, I was always at the top of my game in everything except for math, so I had no reason not to be confident... until I walked into the math classroom. In English, Science, and History I found the material easy, boring even, so I was never afraid to put myself out there.
Math, though, was totally different... being routinely at the bottom of my class turned me into the biggest slacker, loudmouth type you could find. Because I am a generally outgoing person, my poor confidence with math didn't manifest itself in shyness or lurking in the back of the room... instead, I took that confusion and frustration and turned it into being loud, distracting, obnoxious, sassy, and generally the kind of student that got tossed out for preventing everyone else from learning. I spent the majority of my days in math class being yelled at, especially the last 2 years of high school math. At that point I had essentially given up, and I figured it was better to get yelled at for being a pain in the ass than it was to get yelled at for being stupid.
"The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings." - Eric Hoffer |
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| RottieWoman |
Posted on January 26 2009 02:17 PM
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Member
Location: No value
Posts: 3044
Joined: 2008-12-31
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Prior to diagnosis in college I was pretty anxious about math in general and was more shy than I am now - am still not a "party person" but I do like to try new things and I was forced to learn to drive for my at-the-time new case manger job out of college, which required the Home Visits; it also required sometimes taking people to appointments and on errands if they were not involved in the Paratransit program and were not yet able to access public transportation by themselves <I worked with folks with mental retardation, much more severe LD than mine and autism and "dual diagnosis" - mental illness/dd - for newbies on here reading>. So for that job I had to learn to drive and help folks learn things and my having LD really helped. I also helped folks write checks and got payees for people - and writing checks and dealing w/accounts was pretty new for me and in college my accounts were a mess and I had the bank balance my statements. So my clients and I learned from each other.
I also found that trying martial arts again after a required sample class in high school - where I imagine I wasn't great but it was just me as opposed to a team sport or competition so no one cared - helped me a lot; in the last 3 or 4 years I have been taking Tai Chi, a soft martial art and meditative system which improves flexibility and balance also; I've also tried Krav Maga and Sytema and "Women's" Self Defense. These attempts led me to start working out routinely at a gym which I do about 5 times a week for about an hour. But it's taken me this long to learn what is called a kind of form for the style of Tai Chi that I have been taking -I've just in the last year or so finally been able to memorize the first portion of the form, of which there is more which I can follow when seeing someone else do it but which I cannot do by myself. Each week I have been practicing w/a kind classmate who has been doing Tai Chi - including Swords - for 20 years and I still have difficulty imitating some of his movements even if he shows me and we're standing side by side so that we're both facing the same way. But my point was, I think time and being forced to do something and then trying other things on one's own can all improve confidence. |
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| smithross |
Posted on February 09 2009 03:27 PM
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Member
Location: No value
Posts: 2
Joined: 2009-01-29
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There are some good resources out there. One I came across recently was on a lot of topics related to better living with hypnosis. You can sure give it a try. Here is the link http://www.better...romo.html. I also noticed that they are offering a free mp3. |
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| Funk |
Posted on February 09 2009 06:10 PM
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Member
Location: Scotland
Posts: 6
Joined: 2009-01-21
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justfoundout wrote:
And sometimes, rather than 'stupid', other unpleasant things are implied. For example, I had a teacher who would ask me how I was doing in math just because she loved to imply that I wasn't "setting priorities".
I had a teacher once for a mathematical-related subject who kept saying "My five year old son can do this!". It made me feel even worse, so I eventually stopped going to the class. It wasn't worth being patronised over.
It's been interesting to read other people's views on how dyscalculia has or has not had a bearing on their confidence levels. I do feel that diagnosis would help, not just me, but also help other adults who for years have felt that there's just something "not right", but have no idea why. |
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| Laura |
Posted on February 09 2009 07:09 PM
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Member
Location: Scotland
Posts: 1229
Joined: 2006-11-16
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Hey Funk,
Oh god ye I think a part of me is still the 10 year old in Primary School who just "didn't get it". I am a naturally low in the self esteem department. I always put myself down no matter what situation i am in. I constantly try and compare myself to my friends and this has caused me a lot of heart ache. I use to have a teacher who would constantly tell me to stop comparing myself. Especially compaing myself to my peers who are smarter than me. She was always telling me I am smartier than my mates in more ways than I think. I think it depends on how you see yourself. And how you feel about your ability in Maths. I know that I am still very self-consice when I am having to deal with Maths and Maths related stuff. But then I am more talented than soem of my mates who CAN do Maths. If you see yourself as "stupid" then you will react and feel like your stupid. But if you think you "CAN" do things and do these things well then you will mentally be prepared and in that "I CAN" frame of mind. Obviously a diagnoisises helps. But feel confidant in yourself and you will succeed
Hope this kinda helps
BEEN THERE DONE THAT, GOT THE T-SHIRT |
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