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Understanding Dyslexia: A Journey of Challenges and Strengths
As a psychologist, I often encounter clients young and old grappling with the complexities of dyslexia. It’s important for these clients to understand that dyslexia isn't a measure of real intelligence; rather, it’s a neurodevelopmental difference that primarily affects the ability to learn to read and spell, despite conventional teaching, adequate intelligence, and sociocultural opportunity. It’s rooted in the neurological wiring of the brain, and has nothing to do with being lazy or stupid.
The School Experience: More Than Just Reading
For young people, the school environment can present significant hurdles. When a student struggles with reading fluency and accuracy, it impacts nearly every subject they study, from language, arts, and history, to mathematics, and science.
Academic Stress: Constant difficulty with core tasks can lead to intense academic stress and anxiety. Students may spend hours on homework that their peers complete quickly, leading to fatigue and a loss of extracurricular time.
Avoidance and Disengagement: To cope with repeated failure or embarrassment, some students may resort to avoidance strategies, such as acting out or withdrawing, which can mask the underlying difficulty. This can lead to them being mislabeled as "lazy" or "unmotivated," further damaging their self-esteem.
Impact on Comprehension: While many dyslexic students are excellent thinkers and listeners, the energy required to decode text can reduce the cognitive resources available for comprehension. This means they may read the words but miss the deeper meaning, hindering their ability to demonstrate their true knowledge.
The Silent Burden of Shame and Secrecy
Beyond the academic struggles, dyslexia typically carries an emotional and social burden rooted in shame and secrecy. For many, the disorder is viewed not as a neurological difference, but as a personal failure or a sign of being "less than."
Internalized Stigma: When a child's struggles are visible—in stumbling when reading aloud or producing illegible or misspelled work, they often internalize the idea that they are "stupid." This feeling is compounded by a school system that heavily values literacy as the primary measure of intelligence.
The Masking Effect: To survive socially, many dyslexic individuals become masters of masking and secrecy. They may refuse to participate in activities that require reading or writing, develop elaborate excuses, or even become disruptive to deflect attention from their inability to perform a task. This lifelong secrecy is emotionally exhausting.
A Lifelong Impact: This habit of hiding one's difficulties does not end with leaving school. Adults with dyslexia will avoid jobs that require extensive reading or writing, turn down promotions, or refuse to fill out forms in public, all to prevent their "secret" from being discovered. This self-imposed limitation can severely restrict career potential, social interactions, and even intimate relationships, perpetuating feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth long into adulthood.
The Developing Self: Navigating Identity
The challenges in the classroom ripple profoundly into a young person’s development of self-concept and identity.
Self-Esteem and Competence
School is a place where young people gauge their early competence in life. Consistent difficulty with reading and writing can lead to developing negative internal narratives, and patterns of maladaptive thinking such as “learned helplessness.”
Emotional and Social Development
The emotional reponse can manifest as frustration, shame, or anger. Socially, there can be a fear of reading aloud or having written work scrutinized, potentially leading to social isolation or reluctance to participate in group activities involving text. However, many dyslexic students often develop exceptional strengths in other areas. They can develop strong skills in problem solving, creativity, oral communication and public speaking, and design and engineering.
Jackie Stewart and the shame of Dyslexia
The life of racecar driver and businessman Jackie Stewart serves as a well known example of the negative impact of undiagnosed dyslexia and the positive development of strengths through adaptation.
Stewart struggled in school, feeling "stupid" and "thick" because of his inability to read and write easily. His dyslexia was not officially diagnosed until he was in his 40s. He left school at a young age with no qualifications, believing he was academically inept. This struggle greatly impacted his self-worth during his formative years and led to years of hiding his difficulties, a painful experience he has spoken openly about in his later years. When recalling an incident at nine years of age when asked to read in class, Stwart recalls, “I cannot exaggerate the pain and humiliation I felt that day. This pitiless torture was repeated every time I had to read in front of a class. I couldn’t do it and I didn’t understand why. Everyone was saying I was dumb, stupid and thick, and in the absence of another explanation, I started to believe they must be right.”
Stewart believes his success in motor racing was a direct result of utilising the very strengths that often accompany dyslexia: exceptional spatial awareness, rapid processing of dynamic visual information, strong hand-eye coordination, and superb mechanical intuition. These were skills that the traditional academic environment of his time failed to measure or value. He also stated that his difficulties made him more determined to succeed in whatever work he pursued. However, Stewart also paid a heavy emotional toll, even as a young adult before his diagnosis, constantly in fear that his dyslexia would be exposed and he would be publicly shamed.
There is a critical need for early identification, appropriate educational support, and a shift in perspective with Dyslexia. It is not just a deficit to be overcome, but also a difference to be understood and accommodated so that young people can develop positive self-acceptance, and be free from the isolating burden of shame and secrecy.
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The Secret Burden: Why Dyslexia Creates a Lifelong Shame
As a psychologist, I’ve seen the profound, lifelong affect that dyslexia takes—and it’s often less about the difficulty reading and more about the crushing burden of shame and secrecy. Dyslexia is a neurodevelopmental difference, not a measure of intelligence, yet for many, the repeated struggles in school feel like personal failure.
The Root of the Shame in School
In a world that equates literacy with intelligence, the classroom can become a place of silent suffering for a student with dyslexia.
Internalised Failure: When a child consistently stumbles while reading aloud or produces work riddled with spelling errors, they frequently internalize the painful narrative that they are "stupid" or "lazy”.
Masking Competence: To cope, children become masters of masking their dyslexia. They will avoid reading, act out to distract from assignments, or refuse to participate. This habit of hiding their difficulties is emotionally exhausting and only reinforces the idea that their struggle is a shameful secret that must be protected.
This shame doesn't disappear as you leave school; it follows people into adulthood, influencing career choices, social interactions, and self-worth for decades.
The life of Jackie Stewart
The life of racecar driver and businessman Jackie Stewart serves as a well known example of the negative impact of undiagnosed dyslexia and the positive development of strengths through adaptation.
As a child he was routinely called "thick" and "dumb" by teachers. This experience so deeply affected his identity that he left school with no qualifications, believing he was academically inept. Over time he developed a remarkable ability to adapt around his dyslexia, developing his skills that were not affected by his dyslexia, and finding different methods to complete tasks.
Stewart attributes his success in racing to leveraging the strengths he developed due to his dyselxia, such as mechanical knowledge, exceptional spatial awareness and rapid visual processing skills, and strong determination to succeed. But even when he was at the pinnacle of his sport as multiple world champion, his fear of exposure and being shame remained constant. If we fail to recognise and normalise dyslexia in our education system, we allow individuals born with dyslexia to suffer unnecessarily, and struggle with self-acceptance.
For a more detailed look at the effects of dyslexia on emotional development, academic stress, shame, and identity, read the longer article: XXXXXXXX
