A client reports
the following: low self-esteem, lack of confidence, feelings of shame and embarrassment,
inability to work efficiently, panic at the thought of going to the office, poor
concentration, memory lapses, periods of blanking out in conversations, difficulty
in relating to people. Is he depressed?
Dementing? Agoraphobic? Perhaps - but perhaps part of his problem is that he is
experiencing 'dyslexic' difficulties. (For convenience I have used the masculine
pronoun throughout this article.)
Dyslexic
difficulties, more usefully known as specific learning difficulties, encompass
a variety of impairments in cognitive, perceptual and motor functioning - for
example, in phonological skills, short-term memory, sequencing skills and fine
hand-eye co-ordination. (Difficulties in these last two areas are sometimes termed
'dyspraxia'.) These impairments result most noticeably in poor literacy skills,
but they also affect information processing generally. For example, a dyslexic
person may have difficulty in following a discussion or a debate, in remembering
spoken instructions, or in formulating his own ideas when conversing or giving
a talk.
There are difficulties, too, in
dealing with complex visual displays, such as maps or the pages of a dictionary
or directory; and difficulties with orientation in space: a dyslexic may have
trouble in telling left from right, and may easily lose his bearings in strange
surroundings. Finally, a dyslexic tends to operate in a generally muddled and
untidy way: he may be late for meetings, forget appointments, and miss deadlines.
Many dyslexics are highly intelligent and, consequently,
the wide range of difficulties they experience when trying to impart or absorb
information causes them great frustration - and in many cases shame and embarrassment.
Many adult dyslexics are not in fact aware of
the nature of their problems. Dyslexia is often assumed to be essentially a reading
problem, and, since many adult dyslexics have acquired some reading competence
over the years, it may not occur to them that their difficulties are dyslexic
in nature. All too often they regard themselves as being 'thick' or fundamentally
flawed in some puzzling way.
Dyslexic
difficulties then become a guilty secret - a source of humiliation. There is also
a fear that, if the difficulties become evident to an employer or to colleagues,
then promotion may be blocked or, even worse, dismissal may ensue.
In some cases, the level of anxiety generated by
these feelings is so great that sufferers have been unable to face going to the
office at all; they have perhaps developed sickness or other minor complaints
on workday mornings. When they are at the office, they are often felt by their
colleagues to be disagreeable: they may be morose and withdrawn, or touchy and
aggressive. They are also the despair of their employers since they work in an
inefficient manner - and appear to be unwilling or unable to improve their performance.
Clearly the general chaos of a dyslexic's life,
and the confusion of emotions which accompanies it, not only present a problem
in themselves but they also compound any feelings of dejection, bewilderment or
despair that have their origin in childhood experiences. Fortunately, dyslexic
difficulties can be identified and dealt with more quickly than 'neurotic' ones:
what is required is assessment by a psychologist who specialises in assessing
adults with developmental dyslexia, and individual tuition from a suitably qualified
teacher.
For the therapist, it is obviously
useful to bear in mind that some of the difficulties reported by a client, especially
if they are related to work performance, may be due in part at least to cognitive
impairments. Feelings about these difficulties and how they relate to the general
emotional picture presented by the client can then be explored.
April
2000
Dr. S. Moody
Sylvia Moody
works with dyslexic adults in North London, UK, and is co-author of ‘Dyslexia in the Workplace’,
published by Whurr.
Whurr
Publishers
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