Anxiety and anger are just some of the emotional symptoms experienced by people with dyslexia. Find out what people with dyslexia feel and how their experience differs from healthy people.
Anxiety
Anxiety is the most common emotional symptom reported by adults with dyslexia. People with dyslexia become anxious because of the constant frustration and confusion at school.
Anxiety causes people to avoid what scares them. Dyslexia is no exception. However, many teachers and parents misinterpret this avoidance as laziness. In fact, a dyslexic’s reluctance to participate in school activities, such as homework, is more related to anxiety and confusion than apathy.
Anger
Many of the emotional problems caused by dyslexia stem from frustration caused by school or social situations.
In theory, the obvious target for dyslexics’ anger would be schools and teachers, but people with dyslexia often take their anger out on their parents. Mothers are particularly often affected by dyslexics’ anger. Children do not discharge angry emotions at school, but give vent to them at home. Anger and other strong feelings are often directed towards the mother. Ironically, it is the child’s trust in his mother that allows him to vent his anger. However, this becomes very frustrating and confusing for the parent who is desperately trying to help their child.
When young people reach adolescence, society expects them to become independent. The tension between the expectation of independence and the child’s learned dependence causes great internal conflicts. The dyslexic teenager uses his anger to break away from the people on whom he feels so dependent.
Self-image
People with dyslexia are extremely prone to frustration and anxiety. According to Erik Erikson, in the early years of school every child has to resolve conflicts between a positive self-image and a sense of inferiority.
- If children are successful at school, they will easily develop positive feelings about themselves and believe that they can succeed in life.
- If children face failure and frustration, they learn that they are inferior to others and that their efforts do not matter much. Instead of feeling strong and productive, they learn that they are controlled by their environment. They feel powerless and incompetent.
When typical students succeed, they attribute it to their own efforts – when they fail, they simply try harder. However, when a dyslexic succeeds, he is very likely to attribute his success to luck. When he fails, he simply considers himself stupid.
Research also suggests that a sense of inferiority develops before the age of ten. After this age, it is extremely difficult to help a child develop a positive self-image. This is a strong argument for early intervention.
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Depression
Depression is also a common complication of dyslexia. Although most people with dyslexia are not depressed, children with this type of learning disability are more likely to experience intense feelings of sadness and pain. Perhaps because of low self-esteem, people with dyslexia are afraid to direct their anger at those around them, and instead harbour bad feelings within themselves.
Family problems
Like any disabling condition, dyslexia has a huge impact on a child’s family. However, because dyslexia is an invisible ‘disability’, these effects are often overlooked.
Dyslexia affects the family in a variety of ways. One of the most obvious is sibling rivalry. Children without dyslexia are often jealous of the dyslexic child, who receives most of the attention, time and money. Ironically, the child with dyslexia does not want such attention. This increases the chances that he or she will act negatively against the successful children in the family.
Specific developmental dyslexia runs in families. This means that one or both of the child’s parents may have had similar problems at school. When confronted with a child with school problems, dyslexic parents can react in two ways. They may deny the existence of dyslexia and believe that if the child simply applied himself more diligently to his responsibilities, there would be no learning problems. On the other hand, parents can relive their failures and frustrations through their child’s school experience. This brings back strong and frightening emotions that can interfere with parenting skills.
Sources:
- http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/parents/living-with-dyslexia/home/social-emotional-challenges/what-does-person-with-dyslexia-feel
