Hello,
I do not usually do this forum thing, but this SPD thing is the closest I have felt to finding a solution to problems that have dogged my life, and landed me up feeling like I am absolutely no where with my life, tired, career-less, single, washed up and struggling to get through in spite of being ostensibly intelligent, ambitious out-going and gregarious person.

For years I have struggled through, unable to explain to people why life is such a struggle, because I look so 'normal' on the outside. It is still difficult to put a finger on what is such a problem and why I struggle to 'get on with life,' organise myself and keep on top of even the most mundane aspects of existence, let alone actually do something with my life, like have a career and a social life.

The most tangible aspect is tiredness, deep, dragging tiredness.

Been plodding on feeling that I sometimes see glimpses of a better me, a more capable me, and then it slips and I can never quite get a handle on what it is that makes me function better - and others see it and then are like 'there, you are good when you put your mind to it'.... I always put my mind to it, it just doesn't work. Searching for the key for years, but in recent years been on a 'survival treadmill,' struggling, ostensibly nothing wrong, feeling ghastly.

Landed up finally last year in a slightly round-about way in secondary mental health care, have been through a gamut of diagnoses, ADD, Bipolar 2, and a particularly nasty bout of depression, and through the mental health services met an OT who recognised symptoms of SPD and suddenly it all fitted into place, all my hopes are resting on the sensory integration therapy that they are about to start with me.

It is the biggest relief in the world ever to find a reason why I am as I am that makes sense to me and has actual solutions. It is a relief to be in secondary mental health care: whatever the NHS shortcomings are, once in the system, beyond the GP, they have been brilliant trying to help me, as I have been pretty much at the end of the line at some points. I wish I had been at this point years ago.

Supposedly intelligent at school but, the short way of putting it is that I was a rebel, tried to really knuckle down at uni, decided I was so not cut out for academics, all I was Worked with horses all my working life, struggled with slowness in my work and find the more technical aspects of riding a severe limitation on my ambitions, let alone the organisation it takes to run a yard etc, to actually be more than a work-rider/shit-shoveller, but able to connect with youngsters/difficult horses.

Makes sense that, as OT suggest, in my quest to ride well and my need for horses, I have been naturally drawn to something that helps me, as I have been quite sure for years that somewhere along the line something gets to a point where I click and things are better for a while, but never been quite sure of what is going on to fully make it work for me. I have been trying to fit this puzzle for years, hope upon hope that this is the missing piece of the jigsaw. If it is, I hope one day maybe I can help other people to use learning to ride and care for and train horses as a way to overcome the sort of difficulties, be they learning difficulties or mental health difficulties. Not to mention the emotional succour that horses can provide (some ancient greek bloke, or it could have been churchill, said, 'there is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man.' Nothing truer) My horses are frankly the only thing that has kept me from the most utterly final giving up on life.