Dyslexia, who would have known.

I am a person centred counsellor and one of the 1 in 10 people that have dyslexia. I went through my schooling not knowing that I was dyslexic, it was not ever picked up on. Looking back I think I just got left behind, seen as a child who was not "very bright" . I have recently had to confront my personal fear around being dyslexic head on, as my daughter also has dyslexia. As a family we are caught within the constant struggle within the educational system to get the support our daughter clearly needs. As a person with dyslexia it has been interesting to look at how this impacts on me as an individual. I love reading but have always found this difficult as I would word skip while reading. Not even realising I was doing it, but even though this happens I completely understand the content of what I am reading. Genius eh!! I also skip small function words such as the, a, an and leave off word endings. Which can be fun for a person reading your text messages, or emails. I used to apologise for being dyslexic, as it made me feel inadequate and some how not quite good enough. But as a person centred counsellor I now understand these feelings as my conditions of worth, beliefs that have been reinforced by others such as teachers and parents. The trouble with measuring self in this way is that if I never did well it re -enforced my feelings around not being worthy. Which then made me introject the values of others which made me lose sight of my self, stopping me from trusting my own instincts.

Now I embrace my quirks from Dyslexia such as when a word is on the tip of my tongue, but I then cant bring the word to the front of my brain. or when pronouncing the word I cant get the exact sound combination right. I can laugh now at the times when I have asked for a glass of "pino gringo" sounding like del boy when he thinks he can speak French "mange tout" was his way of saying "no problem". I except my dyslexia as being part of me and practice kindness to self, also by giving myself extra time to prepare and reply helps a lot. I still get stressed when I have to talk in front of a group of people, something that I did a lot within my counselling training. But I have an understanding of my dyslexia now and except that I have a lack of awareness within sounds and that I spell by memory and treat words as a sight sign. All these things are part of what makes me who I am today, before finishing this short blog ( which has took me ages to write ) it seems really important to highlight the greatness that comes with dyslexia such as excellent thinking skills, an ability to figure things out, curiosity, creativity , great people skills. So lets champion difference and diversity and have a "pino gringo" on me 😍😍  

        Yours Selina Speight @recentercounselling