Nutrition

You have come upon a blog discussing tools to help dyslexics and hyperlexics.  The topic, this time, is emotion.

When I was first diagnosed as dyslexic (age 45) I was told there were no solutions to help me. The reason: I could sound out works, read words and had a good vocabulary — the usual definition of a dyslexic. Yet, the test pigeonholed me as a dyslexic.

What to do? I kept asking and two years later I was given two invaluable pieces of advice:

1.   Give up eating foods with refined sugar. The reason:  stop the inner rushing in my body. I followed the advice and a year later the rushing stopped almost entirely. This correction made me ready to move to the second piece of advice.

2.   Work with a therapist to discover within myself emotional issues that were unresolved. At first I wondered, is this really necessary? But going off refined sugar had improved my ability to be quiet within and more willing to pick up a book. So, perhaps clearing pesky emotions was worth exploring.

My therapist was brilliant.  Her intuition told her I was masking anger. It took me some time to find it, but find it I did. As I released my hold to past anger I discovered many things about reading:

• my buried disruptive emotions stopped me from wanting to read and reading
• when reading a book with characters who had emotional issues that resonated with me, I would not continue reading the book.  When I discovered this behavior I taught myself to stop reading. I defined  where the emotion being expressed in the book was existent in my life and then processed it.  By processing, I mean delving into the issue, seeing where I was the victim or the perpetrator and then discovering how to forgive myself and others. The change doesn’t happen quickly but eventually positive results emerge. When done, I went back to the book and continued reading until another emotion stopped me.  It took me about a year using this discipline to move out of this “stopping reading behavior” caused by buried emotions that needed attention.

What I now understand is that my feelings were hidden, or not accepted as real by me or others.  They were churning about within, an explosive energy. No longer were they simply a feeling.

My technique as a child and adult was to bury my dark feelings. Feelings left unexpressed build up. They took up space inside me. They tried to get my attention by “preventing” me from being able and/or willing to read. I didn’t realize they wanted attention.  I can see now that my emotions are my reactions to my feelings I was choosing to avoid.

Years later I was re-diagnosed as hyperlexic:  meaning I could read words fine, but comprehension was the problem. If I hadn’t done the emotional homework I know that my work of correcting the hyperlexia would have been much more difficult, if not impossible.

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If you have topics that you would like me to address about my experience in overcoming dyslexia and hyperlexia feel free to send your ideas through the comments below.

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Information on this blog is intended to complement, not replace, the advice of your own physician or health care professional