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Hidden Handedness - Not a site for the left-handed, or the right-handed, or the ambidexterous although all handedness types are welcome. Submergees (those whose handedness was reversed) and Emergees (those who return from this state to regain their innate handedness) are the focus.
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About Me
- Samuel
- Having lived for fourty plus years as a "right-handed" individual, I found my experience of awakening to left-handedness to be a huge surprise. Submergees and emergees are real people with real needs and serious issues and questions. My hope is that the answers to questions that submergees and emergees need will now begin to grow in number and relevance. I want to provide sources of help for those who are looking for it, and new meaning for those whose lives were forever changed by the simple childhood experience of becoming a submergee.
6 comments:
Hi
I read your book with great interest.
I am almost 40 now. I discovered a few years ago that I had been a left-handed child that was made to use my right hand by my grandmother, and after I started going to school (although I continued to use my left hand for a great many things, as it felt much more 'natural').
I thought nothing of it all until I was talking about this with a friend of mine, who has two small children. She remarked that it is never a good idea to switch a child's natural handedness. Her comment got me thinking, and I came across your book.
I decided quite soon into reading about your experiences to start writing with my left hand to see if it felt any different. I was absolutely gobsmacked at the difference in feeling...it felt like my writing arm was, for the first time, connected to the rest of my body. I could feel the energy and the fluidity from my hand, right up my arm, into my shoulders and moving across my body.
Quite soon into my writing experiment I began to get very strong headaches, and felt like I was sea sick. I'm sure that the two were connected, I never suffer from headaches normally (i can't remember the last time I had a headache before then).
I'm still writing with my right hand (mostly when I'm in the outside world, with strangers- my left hand writing still looks quite scratchy and I'm a bit self conscious about it). But I'm trying to use my left hand more and more.
I've been dyscalculiac for as long as I can remember, and after reading about your dyslexia I'm curious to see if my dyscalculia improves over the next few years.
Many thanks for your fascinating book, which has given me (and I'm sure a great many others) much food for thought.
Dear starry-eyed,
I hope your experiences continue to be positive. I can definitely relate to the comment about being connected to your body - I often use the expression that I am now "in" my body for the first time, be it my hand, arm or any other body part. An excellent resource that helps to explain this is THE BODY HAS A MIND OF IT'S OWN which deals with body maps. The author was recently interviewed on the brainscience podcast with Dr. Ginger Campbell. You may wish to listen to that as an alternative to reading the book.
On to the topic of dyscalculia, I think that you will find improvements in that zone too. I now do math in my head (something I never did before) same with dates of the week or almost any other task that takes maintaining mental placeholders, whether spelling, columns of figures etc. There is also the element of implicit memory performance that we aren't normally aware of which was also improved.
I too experienced some dizziness, especially in the first few months, but found that the handwriting exercises were very helpful in "anchoring" my mind back into a steady and peaceful state. The centering process that comes from mindful use of cursive handwriting is actually an ongoing need for emergees in my view.
Best wishes to you in your adventure! Please share further developments in the months to come, and, I like to encourage dated journaling so you have a record of experiences to return to in future years.
Hi,
I am very pleased to find this site and see that there is a book on this subject. I myself have just started to re-learn how to use my left hand for "conscious" (such as writing and throwing) tasks is something I have just started doing.
When I was very young (up to about age 6 or 7) I would start writing with my left hand, and switch to my right as I crossed the center line of my body. I can remember doing this while drawing, I am not sure if I did it while printing. My mom has told me that my teachers were all rather startled by this.
I, like many children, was very shy and did not want to be noticed excessively, and I idolized my older brother--in fact I remember wantning to be like him when he told me he was right handed--plus just the name "right" handed is sort of impressive to a young kid, isn't it?
At any rate, I didn't learn how to tell my left from my right until I was 8 or 9--and it wasn't by remembering which hand I wrote with--I just learned that I am strongly left eye dominant, so I knew that my good eye was on my left side. I wish I knew if that was I started exclusively using my right hand to write with.
Nobody ever "forced" me to switch, I think I just assumed I was right handed, and also wanted to fit in. Over the years my mom has told me that she thought I was supposed to be a lefty, and I still do a lot of activities with my left hand, such as eating, shaving, brushing my teeth, ironing etc. Shoot, it turns out that I can only use chopsticks competently with my left hand--I tried and failed with my right!
That experience with chopsticks has kind of planted a seed, and I am exploring my potential "leftiness." It's only taken two weeks and I can write very legible cursive, in fact it is almost indistinguishable from my right hand, but printing and numerals are kind of hard. I've even switched to cooking left handed.
The really hard part is that neither hand feels especially right or wrong for most activities. About the only thing that ius definitively not natural is brushing my teeth with my right hand. Not being sure is kind of driving me nuts. My gut hunch is that I am a natural lefty who was pretty flexible and with practice largely mastered the right hand, but I can not shake the feeling that I am merely cross dominant and this entire exercise is a fools' errand.
When I first started writing with my left hand 14 days ago, it felt more addictive than correct, if that conveys my impression. I just could not stop using my left hand, even when I could feel my tendons, muscles and ligaments tightening up from the unaccustomed use. In fairness, this is the same tightness I feel in my right shoulder when I work on the left margin of the whitebnoard or paper.
I look forward to hearing some of your thoughts on my experiences as well as reading your book
Dennis
Samuel Randolph to Anonymous
Jun 4
Dennis,
I wish the best for you in your emergee journey. Based on what you have shared, I am guessing that you will be very pleased with the outcome of your efforts to return to left-handedness.
I know the awkward moments you write about. I found that it takes years to really settle into one's new "neurological identity" as Dr Oliver Sacks put it.
It helped me to realize that the emergee shift is very much parallel to the developmental process that happens in our childhood. This growth cycle takes many years to transpire, and some parts of that journey to adulthood, such as feeling comfortable in one's hand, arm and body just can't be hurried. On the other hand (ha!) the rewards of making the shift back (what I refer as emerging from the submergee state) proved to be very rewarding because in essence it felt like coming home to myself and finally feeling at home and truly relaxed in my body for the first time.
The book details the process of discovery that I went through over a period of many years (13 plus at this time). I've come to the point now, that I think of my two hands as if each has in some sense a slightly different "personality" or "character" because of the different manner in which I have tended and still do tend to operate each hand. Even though the sensitivity and fine motor control of both hands are now far superior than they were when I was a submergee, I generally tend to use the right hand in a less sensitive and faster manner than the left. A classic example of this is in shaving, where I find that the left tends to be more useful for feeling the face while the right is better at operating the razor blade in an efficient manner.
The whole process is quite fascinating, and I have found that this experience represents an enchanting form of entertainment that will no doubt last a lifetime. We are marvellously made!
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I hope you find the book helpful.
Samuel
By the way, my father is a submergee. He reports that his teachers were equally amazed by his manner of crossing the midline while writing with both hands.
Thank you for your reply,
I thought I'd give a little bit of a progress report. The worst of my psychological trauma seems to have passed. I have seen a few comments on this site that refer to headaches and dizziniess--neither of which I've experienced, but I was very nervous for about a month or so. It seemed that I had a near perpetual stat of "butterflies in the stomach."
Here's a side note--which may be purely coincidental, but if so is truly astonsihing--most of my adult life I have had frequent bouts of fairly severe indigestion, they have been absent since I started really trying to re-connect with my left hand. If it is truly coincidental, well, I'm just happy to have the break! But if this streak continues for another few months, well, wouldn't that be something?
Here are a few tidbits, I have pretty much come to the conclusion that yes I am a natural lefty, most of the doubts I had in my last post are gone, there are just too many things I have caught myself always doing eith my left hand, but I am not extremely left handed.
Thinking back on my life I have realized that I ever took to any tasks smoothly or quickly, but with practice I can almost always become reasonably adept. I think that is how I wound up switching myself to my right hand in the first place. I just assumed it was supposed to be difficult and plowed ahead. I have started to light-heartedly refer to myself as being "too-handed!"
I have also noticed that when re-learning a task it often weems that the majoirty of the difficulty comes not from the dominant hand portion of the task, but the supporting hand's part. As an example, having my right hand hold the notebook was actually more awkward than learning to write with the left. However both functions are critical to actually produce useful text.
A last sdemi-connected bullet point--if I may! ;) From what I have been able to learn, the abilty to read and write mirror writing while not being exclusively a property of left handers, is neverthelss rare amongst right handed people. I was kind of surprised because I didn't think reading it was all that hard, and assumed it wasn't for too hard for anybody really. I had never even thought about giving mirror writing a try until after my first post, and while I don't foresee any practical applications, I was glad to find I had the ability to write backwards or forwards with either hand.
A by product of this process does seem to have been a sharpening of my motor skills with both hands--not just the left, this parallels your experience doesn't it? Even if my left hand writing never quite gets the speed to take notes during a meeting, my right hand script has improved remarkably, even without any real practice!
For the record, I generally relied on printing with my right hand all these years--I had no idea most poeple didn't! While slower than writing, I could at least usually go back and decipher what I had written down. At least at this stage in my emergence WRITING is easier, more comfortable and faster with my left hand than is printing. As a tip to anybody else who is taking this journey though, I have found speniding at least a portion of my practice time printing really seems to help my cursive.
Thank you for your site, and you r comments. As a deep submergee, who really had to grapple with whether or not to try and emerge, it was very nice to find at least something had been done to document experiences like mine.
Dennis Fox
PS I'm gonna apologize in advance for any typos I've missed!
I have just ordered your book and cant wait for it to arrive. I have a slightly different problem in so far as I am a natural rightie and around the age of 8 when I was mucking about with my father who thought it would be brilliant if I could be ambidextrous I switched to writing with the left!
Two years later I broke my left arm very badly and still managed not to convert back to the right. I do everything else with my right hand. This will sound strange, my problem all my life has been lack of direction, feeling of great blockage, building in to deep frustration ending up as a bout of depression. I seem to let life drive me usually in the direction of some mistake. I have been in and out of therapy to find the crucks of the matter and nothing has worked. Constantly trapped! For the first time ever I feel excited that I may have stumbled on the answer. Do you have any knowledge of this somewhat unusual conversion. I would be grateful for any advice or help. YP
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