"I haven't been out of therapy for more than five years at a time since I was 16," remarks Hannah Kaplan, "and I've noticed that you reach plateaus where you can stop, but then other crises happen where you've got to go back again." For the last several years, these "other crises" have typically involved her interpersonal relationships at work, where her poor social skills annoy and anger her coworkers with frustrating and bewildering regularity. "You've got to have social skills when you work with three or four people in a small room (Hannah is a switchboard operator in a medium-sized company) and you interact for eight hours a day," says Hannah matter-of-factly. "There's no way to hide a problem when somebody works that close with you. Sooner or later you're going to do something that's going to throw them for a loop."
Crises and plateaus are not the only considerations behind Hannah's frequent
stopping and returning to therapy over the years. She has often found the
outcome less than satisfactory. Speaking of many counselors and therapists
she has known, Hannah says, "Most of them are. . . Well, just spill
your guts when you're unhappy during a crisis, and that's fine and good.
But these crises are going to keep reocurring if you don't learn to understand
where the basic problem is, where the LD is messing you up. But most therapists
will be totally oblivious to why this is happening. And I think most of
us who are LD float around from therapist to therapist our whole lives,
because the average therapist doesn't understand about us."
Historically, learning disabilities have often been misinterpreted as sensory or emotional problems. Many people with LD search for years for an explanation for their problems, and find that a diagnosis of sensory or emotional difficulties may be a partial explanation, but it is essentially unsatisfying in a way that they cannot explain. Something else is going on. And it is this "something else" that they legitimately persist in trying to identify.
Nonverbal learning disabilities (NLD) have been studied extensively by Byron Rourke (1989) and, although nonverbal perception problems were identified fairly early (Johnson & Myklebust, 1967; Strauss & Lehtinen, 1947), it is Rourke who has brought the concept of NLD to the attention of LD professionals.
Hannah's diagnosis is even more complex than her current therapist originally
thought . But when the nonverbal learning disability diagnosis was made,
the available information in her case history seemed to fit fairly well
with Rourke's model. For example, two related characteristics of nonverbal
LD cited by Rourke are extreme difficulty in adapting to novel and otherwise
complex situations, and an overreliance on prosaic, rote (and, in consequence,
inappropriate) behaviors in such situations. Here we touch the heart of
Hannah's difficulties. Complex social situations mystify her in daily life
as well as at work, so she relies on rote formulas. "My family was
invited to a wedding reception. I was talking to the sister of the bride,
and a guy walks over, maybe my age. And the sister did the proper thing
and introduced us. And then they went on talking to each other, and knowing
that I have social problems, I wasn't going to mix in the conversation.
So I decided I was going to be a listener. I wind up having to do that a
lot. I think to myself, ‘If I don't say anything, the silence is golden
routine will work.' So I kept on listening, and my mother calls me over.
And she says to me, ‘Come away from them and let them be.' Nobody told
me, ‘It's private.' Nobody shooed me away. Sometimes people say ‘This
is private,' which I've learned is really a polite way of saying they don't
want me. But this didn't even happen. I didn't pick it up, and I felt very
depressed by that."
In addition, Hannah says with much feeling in her voice, "I am a creature
of habit. Habit creates comfort for me. It creates predictability. It creates
structure." Change is particularly hard for her to deal with. "I
have trouble discerning when a change has taken place, so it catches me
by surprise. And it used to be written in my reviews at work. ‘She
does not adapt well to changing situations. She doesn't accept change.'
But I tell them, ‘I adapt well to change if you tell me. If you don't
tell me, how do I know change has occurred?'"