Advantages for Dyslexics

Growing up I thought that there were no advantages to having dyslexia, none at all. In fact I thought of having dyslexia was like having a death sentence at least for me being a productive member of society. I learned this fact from the people around me and what the world tells people with a learning disability. It was hard to grow up thinking that I would never graduated from high school, or if I did that that would be the high point of my life.

This was years before they started think about that there are a lot of positive aspects of having dyslexia. Surprise- there is a lot of positive aspects to having dyslexia. It took me a while to reflect back on my life and to see the positive things that have come from me having dyslexia.

So some of the positive aspects that I have learned are:

1) We are highly aware of what is happening around us. I have found that the more I know what is going on the more I am able to relax, the less I freak out, and the less mistakes I make. Trust me- my friends will tell you that I make a lot of mistakes, but don’t we all.

2) We are highly creative. I have found that I am very creative and I like doing creative things. I am just not go at all of them. I love to write poems and love to crochet, but ask me to draw something and the nicest thing someone can say about it is that it looks a terrible stick figure.

3) We have the ability to think about the big picture. The little details don’t bog us down. Details are important, but so is the big picture. Most of my teachers would tell my parents that I have a great ability to think of the big picture.

4) We have the ability to empathies with people in difficult situations. We have been there. I have discovered that I have a great ability to understand and talk to people about hard things.

5) We have a great ability to adapt in most situations. I have discovered that if I understand and are ok with myself, that in most situations I have found that I can adapt to everything that happens.

6) We are overall very curious. I love learning and I want to understand all I can about many, many topics. Curiosity is very helpful in the ability to adapt to situations and I have discovered that knowing things is helpful in me maintaining my self-image.

7) We tend to think in pictures instead of words. I have found that since I cannot spell on a normal everyday bases that I think in pictures or images. My brain seems to work best with images and picture. I believe that most people think in words, not photos. I have found that I also think about spelling words in pictures and images. These are part of my bag of tricks for spelling and remembering things.

8) We have a superior ability for reasoning or logic. My brain works in very logical steps. Mainly so that I can follow my own thought process and to explain that to other people. Other people seem to get very mad at my ability to use logic on arguments and other situations.

Some of the other things I have found in my research on this are we have a great ability to turn our thoughts into reality, our ability to alter and create perceptions, and overall to see patterns, connections, and similarities very easy.

Some of the others are:

· Strong concentration;

· can be very driven, ambitious and persistent;

· Capable of seeing things differently than others;

· Love for complexity;

· Simultaneous multiple thought processing;

· not following the crowd;

· the ability of visual, spatial and lateral thinking

All of these things sound like very good things to have and to do. In many ways I feel blessed to have dyslexia. Without dyslexia I would be a very different person. At this point I am glad that I have it, but it took me several years to get to this point.

Until next time!