I found out after getting a BSc and MSc in engineering that the vast majority of the problems I had with math was due to being “taught” math by idiots who didn’t actually understand the subject they were tasked with teaching.

I came to believe all my life that I had some math-learning disability where even though I could explain the theory of the parts I understood, there was so much I didn’t and thus kept getting failing or barely passing grades. Whenever I asked questions to understand, I would get replies that wouldn’t help with anything, which I attributed to my inability to imagine something most other classmates could.

Turns out, none of them “understood” anything, including the teachers. They were just better than me at learning and recalling steps in a mechanical fashion. I still can’t “do math” as in a math test, but I can model physical systems like a motherfucker.