Being diagnosed with dyslexia has made me happier
Discovering that I have dyslexia, and most probably dyscalculia, later in my life has raised many questions for me, not least whether a childhood diagnosis would have changed the trajectory of my life, both personally and professionally.
Over the years I’d suspected that I might be dyslexic. I also thought that I was making excuses for myself when met with certain challenges. It wasn’t until last year that I decided to seek an assessment to confirm either way. I was relieved to read, in the first paragraph of my diagnostic report, that my literacy difficulties are consistent with the specific learning difficulty dyslexia.
Growing up in the late 1970s, like most of us I knew nothing of educational classifications. I had never heard of dyslexia, dyscalculia or neurodiversity. I struggled throughout my school years. I was a daydreamer and a slow learner, although I masked these with my vivacious and bubbly personality. I was the class clown and spent considerable amounts of time on the outside the classroom door, banished for distracting my friends and talking too much. At the time, I put my poor spelling, difficulties in remembering words and stumbling in my reading down to the fact that really I was a “thicko”.
How different would my life have been if I’d known about dyslexia?
Would this knowledge have liberated me, reduced the pressure I put myself under to prove that I could succeed? Alternatively, would I have used the information to limit myself – would I have given up, stopped striving? In other words, where is the line between a label that constrains and an understanding that sets us free?
Fortunately, I love questions. As a story trainer, I urge participants to sit with the questions they have about a story, however insignificant, because as soon as we have an answer, we stop our inquiries and move on. I believe the treasure lies, not in the answers, but in our questions, our curiosity to find deeper understanding.
I’m curious to explore whether or not a diagnosis of neurodiversity is liberating or whether these labels can restrict and prohibit us. Certainly I know that the stories we tell ourselves, and those that are imposed upon us by others, have a powerful effect on how we define ourselves and how we live our lives.
Recently I met a woman who confided in me that, after 35 years of marriage and with four grown-up children, she had been diagnosed with ADHD/ ASD and dyslexia. After a lifetime of being angry with herself, she said, “I can’t explain it, it all just fell away in an instant. All the disgust I felt about myself has gone.”
With the benefit of hindsight, I’m also beginning to understand how my lifelong questions – such as why I seem incapable of learning certain things, of processing and remembering dates, names, directions, instructions – have morphed into statements. Have I turned these inquiries into a story that I’ve imposed on myself and that others have reflected back at me?
As a child I took piano lessons, which I hated. I could never remember the notes, even when I developed a convoluted system for myself, repeating, “Every Good Boy Deserves Favours” as I counted on my fingers. My teachers were exasperated. I felt like a failure, struggling to read music when others seemed to find it easy.
Many years later, determined to learn an instrument, I found a kind and patient recorder teacher. Slowly, slowly, practising every day, I began to play a range of tunes, delighted, relishing this tiny win. One day I casually mentioned my method of remembering the notes on the page linked to the fingering on the recorder.
“That’s not how you should do it”, my teacher said, explaining how I could “correct” this. I was confused, unable to take in what was so obvious to her. I put the recorder down and made excuses, to myself as well as her, about why I had to cancel my upcoming lessons. I confirmed my own story that day, that I can’t learn to read music.
While I might struggle with music, I’ve always loved words. I love to communicate. I’m a self-confessed