What is it like to be 'Dyslexic'?

Article No. 2

“Tell me, what is it like to be dyslexic?”

That’s a good question and it makes me think – because being dyslexic is normal for me, I’ve always been dyslexic, and I don’t know any other way. I don’t know what ‘normal’ really is.

For years I thought I was ‘normal’- although perhaps a little stupid, or maybe just ‘dumb’. I knew I was always a little behind the eight-ball, I didn’t understand what the teacher was talking about, and couldn’t ‘pay attention’ to the classroom situation - but with enough effort, huge concentration, and a degree of canny strategizing I got through.

Being ‘dyslexic’ is usually associated with having reading and writing difficulties, and that is certainly the case for me. Eventually, somewhere round about my tenth birthday I figured I had mastered the art of ‘reading’ and became an avid reader - for the next three days. Finally I gave up exhausted, having read my first book five or six times – up to page six – and eventually realizing that although I could read, and say each word, I had no idea what they meant, or what the book was about. Now as an adult I will happily dig your garden or mow your lawn in preference to reading a book.

‘Dyslexia’ is about language, and about not being able to do language well. Difficulty with ‘reading’ is only one part of being dyslexic – but let’s explore that for a moment.

As a ‘dyslexic’, I know that words are the things that come out of your mouth – and into your ears. The things in books, or in the newspaper are not really words at all – they are just pictures of words, they are things to remind you of the words that you can say and hear. The really hard part is that they are made up of squiggles, black marks on white paper – and these things have no recognisable resemblance to anything real at all – and especially not to whatever it is that they are meant to be referring to.

What I mean is, whereas the Chinese symbol for ‘mountain’ actually looks like a mountain, the squiggles called ‘letters’ bear no similarity to a high hill at all. This might not be a problem to you, but I’m ‘dyslexic’, and that means that I think in pictures, and with these ‘letter’ things, I don’t get the picture at all.

I don’t know what you see when you open a book, but the first thing I see is flashes of lightening jumping all over the page. When my primary school teacher asked what I meant, I drew a line where the lightening went, and she said that it followed the gaps between the words down the page. I said ‘yes, this is the same as the ladders in ‘Snakes and Ladders’, and my eyes always slide to the bottom’.

The same teacher asked me why I like to draw a line around my page, and I told her it is not a line, but an electric fence – like on our farm – to stop the words, and my eyes, from wandering off the page. I was not allowed to draw my lines on school reading books, and that made reading too hard - the words wouldn’t stay still long enough for me to work them out, and they kept jumping from one line to another. The teacher put a blank card under the line I was reading, and that helped – but they wouldn’t let me do it at College.

Now as an adult with my laptop I can finally write (neatly what’s more) because the computer puts all the bits in the right place, the letters and the words in the right order. I know I can’t get a computer to read for me, but the interesting thing is, comics work really well for me, because all the pictures are there and I can see exactly what the message is. I can even ‘read’ the words in comics – and this is because they are all in square letters or capitals, which people like me find easier to understand.


What about ‘writing’ for the dyslexic?

Yes, this is hard too.

The first reason is because ‘writing’ always seems to involve words, but that is obvious. What is not obvious is that to write words you first have to choose words to write. What if you don’t have any words in your head? Yes I have plenty of ideas, memories, fantasies and creations – but I see them, in pictures, and I cannot readily find words to represent them. In my head my internal video screen might show a pack of frenzied Chihuahuas terrorizing the police in the city, and I write on my page “The little dog…” then give up in disgust and frustration.

The other main reason for writing being hard has got something to do with our tendency to carry what I call a ‘residual left-handed-orientation’. Normal people don’t often realize that most tools are designed for right-handers (most of our population), and don’t really suit left-handers. They certainly don’t realize that this is also the case with the letters of the alphabet, and with the direction we read and write in – which is all designed for right-handers. Apparently the Phoenicians designed all this – with no consideration for the lefties in the population. I’m not saying that all dyslexics are left-handed, but most that I have met can quickly identify a left-hander in their immediate family tree.

Being a lefty (it used to be called ‘cack-hander’ which is an insult to the Indian people as well as to the lefties – you can work this out for yourselves) isn’t so bad in itself these days, except that lefties naturally go from right to left across the page, and we naturally draw our circles in a clockwise direction – and this is in reverse from what our reading system demands. So we spend all our educational life having to do our reading and writing in reverse-gear. Great.

So what is it like to be dyslexic? Well, we think in pictures, we chase words around the pages of books, and we have trouble finding any sensible connection between squiggles on paper and real things they are meant to refer to. And this all happens in perpetual reverse gear. For us,
school is not cool.

So you think in pictures?

Yes, I think in pictures. You say “dog”, and I get a picture of a dog in my head. You probably do the same – and that doesn’t make you ‘dyslexic’. You say “fiction” and you probably know what it means – but I just look at you funny because I can’t get a picture of that word. I can’t draw a simple picture of what it means. I also can’t get a picture of “respect”, or “tidy”, or “behave” or lots of other words that parents use, so I have only a very hazy idea of what these words might mean – but parents and teachers keep asking me to do these things. They probably don’t realize how hard this is for me. I want to please them, but they won’t or can’t understand – they just think I am being un-cooperative.

So dyslexia affects behaviour too?

Yes, it affects behaviour too. I often don’t understand instruction, or what people want of me. They know what they mean, but the words make no sense to me. It’s even worse when they say “Don’t…..” then put a picture of me doing something in my head. They do this with “Don’t slam the door”, and “Don’t spill your drink”, “Don’t be late” and lots of other hypnotic commands. When I comply with the pictures they give me, I get the blame, and I am told that I am bad and a trouble-maker. I see that there is no picture for “Don’t” – can you see this? Can you understand that they blame me for following their instruction as best I can? Really it would be better if they told me what they do want – not what they don’t want.

They think in words – I think in pictures. This is a bit like petrol (words) and diesel (pictures). They put petrol in my diesel tank and I can’t make it work – I can’t learn and I can’t cooperate.….but I get the blame.

Now let me go back to the question: What is it like to be dyslexic? What goes on inside my head? What do I think? Do I think? Really the answer has to be “No”. I’m not really sure what ‘think’ means. You have a petrol brain that uses words to think with. In my head there aren’t any words, and there aren’t really any thoughts. I have eyes inside my head that have lots of pictures going through them, like lots of videos, all at once. Some of these are now, some are from in the past – and some are from the future, all at once. Some are ‘true’ and some of them I create – but I can’t tell one from the other, they all look the same. You say I have a good memory, but really this is only for pictures.

When someone asks me what I am thinking I can’t answer. The first reason I can’t answer is that I can see about 6000 things in my videos at any one moment – so which bit shall I talk about? It is easier to just say “Nothing”. The second reason is that there are just pictures in my head – and feelings. ‘Telling you’ means using words, and I’m not good at that. I often end up wanting to share, but can’t find the words – or use lots of wrong words – or far too many words, too fast. And then I get growled at.

The worst is when I say words, and people hear them – but I used the wrong words that don’t say what I mean. But people say that that is what I said, so it must be what I meant. More than this, can I ask you, please, please don’t ask me how I feel – that is just too hard.

And while I’m on the subject, when you want me to learn something, or to understand something, telling me with words is not the best way to go – show me, walk me through it, and I will have a far better chance of understanding and giving you what you want.




So what is it like to be dyslexic?

It is like always getting it wrong. Being ‘bad’ when you are trying to be good. Being always in the dark and thinking that you must be dumb and stupid. Finding things hard when you are told that they are easy. Like working yourself to exhaustion, then being told you are not trying hard enough. Like wanting to please your parents and teachers, but just making them angry. Like being unable to share your ideas usefully with other people, and of not even knowing how you feel. Like being too scared to try, because you know it will only lead to failure – again. Like living a daily nightmare where everything is out of control, and being too scared to sleep at night because of the horrendous nightmares that haunt you under cover of dark. The anxiety, the fear and the insecurity is horrendous – it’s overpowering and depressing, and it doesn’t go away, even when you get older.

Thank you for your questions, and for your interest, but I almost wish you hadn’t asked.

Laughton King July 2008
Psychologist

www.natalieart.com/ontour.htm laughton.king@win.co.nz 0274.171.804