I’m starting to realise how much my childhood medical professionals screwed over my self esteem

I was born with a congenital disorder that causes pretty major facial differences due to bone abnormalities, as well as ehlers danlos syndrome which causes problems with your muscles. Due to my skull, I had to see a speech therapist because my jaw was abnormally narrow so I struggled to make sounds that require putting the tongue behind the teeth at the roof of the mouth ( eg. “th”) because there was nowhere for the tongue to physically go until I had pretty extensive work done to widen my pallet when I was a teenager. I also struggled with basically all body coordination, and was very physically weak, had poor vision ( again, the skull abnormalities, I had to have multiple major eye and reconstructive surgeries), couldn’t throw and catch etc. I saw a range of different professionals but my speech and occupational therapists are the ones I’ll focus on in this story.

I have always been good academically, and did well at school as a child. However, because of my difficulties, both of these professionals talked to me like they automatically assumed I was stupid. For instance, I remember when I was about ten - eleven and starting to prepare for high school, both gave me a big talk where instead of asking IF I was struggling at school etc. they said “ You ARE struggling at school” as though it was a fact, which created weird dissonance because I was a straight A student ( aside from sport!). The worst, which I still vividly remember, was my occupational therapist saying that my slow handwriting speed reflected below average verbal processing, and she genuinely started to question if I could read, and acted like she thought I was lying when I showed her the copy of Jane Eyre I was part way through. Another banger was when I asked to look at some novelty erasers my speech therapist had on her desk and she handed me one and told me not to put it in my mouth. I cannot stress this enough, I had interactions like this with them pretty much every session for about two years.

I stopped seeing them in high school because my speech improved to a normal level overnight literally as soon as I had teeth removed from the roof of my mouth, and the OT specialised in younger kids and by the time I needed to move to a new one, I’d got to a point where I was staying physically strong and mobile with swimming lessons instead and had mastered all my fine motor skills anyway.

I genuinely did well at high school, and having always been very shy and insecure in primary school ( I was picked on for my appearance, speech and the fact I couldn’t throw a ball etc, I’m from Australia so lots of netball and cricket!!), I became a lot more confident when I got into public speaking and amateur theatre age 15 and won the state debate competition 2 years running. My teammates and I are still such close friends, and it was amazing to be able to stand up in front of people and be so focused on the debate I didn’t worry what they thought of my appearance, and know I was able to speak clearly and be understood. Like high school debate was probably the single biggest turning point for my self confidence.

I am now in my final year of uni, and have not thought about my experiences with childhood medical professionals in a long time. However, I am now in this weird place where I am doing very well grades wise, have won multiple achievement awards and am getting lots of opportunities eg mentoring and internships, but I have started to think of myself as so dumb and incompetent despite external success markers, and almost feel the awards, grades etc are undeserved/ are being given based on a false idea of my skills or because people feel sorry for me ( which is obviously bullshit, that’s not how the world works!). I’ve developed a fear that someone is going to “unmask me” by showing everyone how I don’t understand anything, am somehow faking my writing skills etc. Until about a year ago, I had never thought about myself like this and had always been very secure in my intelligence and achievements. It’s really started to come to a head when I write research papers because I always get good grades on them, but when I don’t feel I’m working hard enough, I have an inner voice tell me I’m lazy and don’t deserve to do well because I’m cruising through on natural intelligence but then I think I don’t even have that and it’s just dumb luck that I’ve got to this point. I sat there and asked myself one day why I don’t think I’m smart enough, and was really unpleasantly surprised when I IMMEDIATELY remembered how my childhood specialists spoke to me, particularly when they implied I couldn’t understand things or express an idea by writing or even make other people understand me in any way. It really unsettled me because i genuinely wonder how much they’ve impacted me without me realising it.

Disclaimer: I know it’s pretty normal to have imposter syndrome, struggle with self esteem especially coming up to a big change like graduating. However, I think being a kid and having adults undermine me when I said I could read well, was doing fine at school etc and then imply I was inarticulate and stupid genuinely has played a role in how I talk to myself/ see myself now. For the first time since I stopped seeing them, I have this deep anger towards my therapists, made even stronger by the fact I now work not one but two jobs with kids ( swim instructor and academic tutor) and I wouldn’t dream of speaking to my students anywhere even close to the way they spoke to me. I am not even saying this to try and make myself look superior, I just genuinely cannot imagine looking at a child and telling them they won’t ever be good at something/ telling them they’re naturally not good at things. The fact that someone voluntarily chose to work as a therapist for kids with medical conditions that already give them reason enough to be secure, and couldn’t speak to an 11 year old child without insulting them makes me genuinely livid to think about. The worst part is that I knew the things they said to me wasn’t true, even at the time, but I have now started to hear their negative view of me when I put myself down as an adult.

Part of me feels like it is quite good to have it resurface so I can process it, unpack how I feel etc rather than just shove it away and move on like I did the first time, but at the moment, I’m still at a stage where I’m feeling nothing but anger when I think about them. I don’t really know where to begin with working through this.