Dyslexia – Do You Feel Like You’re Not Good Enough?
Never Feeling Good Enough
When I was growing up I always felt like I wasn’t good enough, I felt stupid no matter how hard I tried. I felt like I found it more challenging than others to achieve a decent grade. I’d know so much about a subject, seeing it like a mindmap in my head, but when it came to executing my knowledge in a linear form like an essay, I struggled massively. What’s interesting, is that when I spoke on the same subject I excelled! I remember at school I was tasked with producing a presentation and an essay on the same subject. Would you believe it, I was told my presentation was outstanding but for some reason, my essay received negative feedback and I was told that I didn’t know what I was talking about, how could that be?
Don’t Base Your Worth on Your Grades
With so much emphasis being placed on our school grades as we grow up, we tend to associate our results with our value and worth. Unfortunately, in the UK much of our intelligence is assessed by our ability to get our thoughts down on the page, our ability to revise and remember information to then relay it on paper in an exam. Now does that sound like a way in which the dyslexic brain works?
Have you ever wondered if the schooling system were to be designed to reward critical thinking; to reward the ability to innovate, create and engage with people, would dyslexia still be seen as a deficit by others? Would we still feel this undeniable shame and not feel good enough?
A Technical Revolution
Now in the age of digital downloads, many have come to love the convenience of audio books. I remember when audio books became more accessible, it was like a whole new world was opening up. Suddenly I could engage with text in a way that didn’t seem so forced, and it became much easier for me to interact with text than when I was just reading.
I have a friend who loves to read, he told me he found audio books impossible to take in. This made me wonder, what if the world was reversed? If audio books had have been the main medium as opposed to written books, would dyslexia exist in the way it does now? Would my friend have been classed as dyslexic if the world and mediums of information were designed in a different way?
Food for Thought
I got to thinking how do we determine what is good enough and what isn’t good enough about ourselves? It’s very easy to learn as a child to externalise your value like we do with our grades at school. But when we start to internalise our value and realise who we are, who we want to be, and hold ourselves to account, our whole world can shift. If we base our value on the external and how good we were on the external, the external will always shift depending on someone’s opinion on belief or what is the latest trend. Whereas if we internalise our value based on our own beliefs and boundaries, they’ll remain much more consistent.
Have a think about how you value your worth. Are you comparing yourself to others and the external expectations around you? And is there a better, more kind way to build a relationship with yourself? I’m sure you’ll find the answer is yes.
Nicola James
Psychologist and Founder at Lexxic
Learn more about dyslexia, take a look at Dyslexia: ‘A Brief History’