Forget your car keys? A real butter fingers? It's all down to brain overload 

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Victoria Aitken has the neurodevelopmental disorder, dyspraxia

Until recently, if anyone asked me if I liked to cook I'd tell them the truth: yes, I loved to cook, but the problem was it was too dangerous to do so.

And I was only half-joking. Earlier this year I badly burnt my arms and wrists when taking something out of the oven.

I was wearing oven gloves but struggled to judge the distance between my arms and the side of the oven (I have the same difficulty parking the car) and singed myself. My arms became blistered and I still have the scars.

And I've lost count of the number of times I've cut my fingers rather than the vegetables or whatever it was I was trying to chop - controlling a knife is so hard. So I have tended to get a takeaway or restrict myself to a salad.

It's not just in the kitchen that I lack the coordination that others seem to find so easy.

A few months ago I was trying to shave my legs. Somehow, despite using a standard disposable razor, I cut myself - a huge slash across my leg. My hand just slipped and I shaved off the skin from the front of my shin.

The cut was so bad that a week later I was still bleeding, so I went to A&E, where the nurse asked me if I had done it on purpose.

I told her with an embarrassed shrug: 'Er, no, I just didn't feel what I was doing until it was too late. I looked down and saw all the blood.'

Coordinating hands or feet is bad enough but trying to do them all together is a nightmare. I tried an aerobics class years ago and left after one session as I just could not follow what should go where.

I have always been like this. At school I got called 'klutz' or 'butter fingers' as I was so clumsy. While I did fine academically - I speak five languages and did a degree in international relations at an Ivy League university in the U.S. - I could not dress myself properly or tie shoe laces until I was 11.

Teachers often shouted at me for being disorganised or lazy. I knew I was trying my best to bring the right book to the right class or to remember my pencil case, but nobody would believe me.

Until recently, I thought that however frustrating and difficult this was, it was just part and parcel of being me. Yes, things did just slip through my fingers, and, yes, despite writing lists I still could not organise myself to leave the house with everything I needed for meetings. I just reasoned there was nothing that could be done.

But I now know this not to be the case. In fact, this natural clumsiness and inability to coordinate my body or organise my thoughts stems from a neurodevelopmental disorder called dyspraxia.

I might have continued in ignorance were it not for the fact that my issues were causing problems in my career as a singer.

What took me to the edge was being told by other musicians that they could not work with me. I could not marry rhythm and singing together; I can't 'feel' or hear a rhythm, so I would for ever be missing my cue for songs.

I even considered tap-dancing to try to help me feel it a bit more, but felt too scared to do it - with my lack of co-ordination, I worried I might fall over. So one night last November I decided to Google 'people with rhythm issues' and came across an online forum that mentioned the Hopscotch Children's Therapy Centre in Harley Street, London, which treats children and adults with a range of developmental and emotional issues.

It means she has a natural clumsiness and inability to coordinate her body or organise her thoughts [file photo]

The following month I went there and met Dimitrios Mylonadis, an occupational therapy consultant.

I was asked about things I found hard, such as cooking and being forgetful (leaving the house without keys one day or papers for a meeting the next).

I was also asked to do various physical challenges such as a star jump. I couldn't do a single one, and it wasn't a case of not trying hard enough.

He also asked me to hop with my eyes closed. I fell over.

After analysing my results he diagnosed dyspraxia. I'd heard of it, but had thought it just referred to people who lacked coordination, so couldn't catch a ball, for instance. But I was on every sports team at school, every netball team, the tennis team.

In fact, I discovered dyspraxia is otherwise known as development coordinating disorder. This means that for unknown reasons, my brain does not send messages to the rest of my body as it should. As a result, people with dyspraxia can have problems with small motor skills, such as picking up little beads, or with larger motor skills such as being able to ride a bike.

But as well as causing difficulties coordinating movements, it can lead to problems with sequencing - knowing the right order in which to do things, for example, when preparing a meal; or trying to run through a list of things you need from the shops (I'd always found this incredibly hard).

People with dyspraxia typically come across as being disorganised and all over the place. I'm sure that's what people thought of me.

It's more common than you might think, affecting 6 per cent of the population in the UK - 2 per cent severely, according to the Dyspraxia Foundation, and boys more than girls, although why is not known.

But Dimitrios said I also had a neurological condition called sensory processing disorder (SPD). He said some experts think dyspraxia is, in fact, a sub-type of the lesser-known SPD.

I had never heard of this before but having SPD means my brain fails to process sensory information from my body and the environment correctly. He likened it to running an orchestra: in order for it to work, everything needs to be in tune; if one of the elements is wrong, the whole thing fails.

SPD can lead to a neurological 'traffic jam', so sufferers' brains find it difficult to process and act upon information received through the senses.

She started weekly therapy that involved various activities. After nine months, she is almost there

This can also create an over-sensitivity to messages sent from the senses, which explained why, when I did manage to get any cooking done in the battlefield of my kitchen, I was happy to eat the same bland food such a spaghetti without sauce, as anything else would taste too rich, and why wearing a jumper would drive me crazy with itchiness.

And forget relaxing - if even a bird was chirping outside my window, it would wake me no matter how exhausted I was.

This diagnosis made a lot of sense of my experiences.

Dimitrios was confident that he would help me not just with my poor rhythm, but also other elements of my dyspraxia and sensory processing disorder.

So I started weekly therapy that involved activities such as picking up tiny plasticine characters to improve my fine motor skills, swinging on trapezes with weights on my back or negotiating obstacle courses.

The point was to help me 'feel' my body, plan my movements and give me extra sensory information to help get the body used to interpreting this information.

Adding weights also helped improve my core muscle strength, which is often poor in those with dyspraxia, and helped coordinate my limb movement so things like using a knife became easier.

Some of the exercises, such as jumping off foam blocks, might seem easy to anyone else. But the idea scared me, because at the beginning I had no sense of my own space - jumping off a tiny block was like being asked to jump off a mountain - or how to coordinate the movement. But the more I did the better I got.

After nine months of therapy, I am almost there. I am no longer a danger to myself in the kitchen and I haven't cut myself once. I am bruise and blister-free, and I can sleep peacefully with birds chirping outside my window.

I haven't driven a car for a while, but I hope my parking will have improved. I can also now sing, and feel simple rhythms.

There is just one thing left to master - wearing a pair of jeans.

Because of my over-sensitivity, at the moment doing so feels like having Brillo Pads scratching at my legs.

Normally, I wear trousers in softer materials. But if I could wear jeans, I'd really think I was there.

For more information, visit dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk.