The hypnosis of dyslexia and how hypnosis can help you

Dyslexia can make your life quite difficult. Being able to read and write well is important to avoid problems. Language is important in Dutch society. You get all kinds of information from the government, which you generally have to read. Then there are banks and insurance companies for which you have to read carefully what is or is not insured, for example, or how everything works with loans or just saving money. If you can't read this properly you may have just not understood the text, which can get you into trouble later

So Dyslexia is incredibly inconvenient and often takes a lot of time as well, because you do want to understand the text. This can bother you a lot, which is why it is important to find out what you can do to suffer less from dyslexia.

About 3 to 12% of people suffer from dyslexia. So that could be about 1 in 30 to 1 in 10 people.

What is dyslexia?

If you have dyslexia, you struggle with reading and writing. Interpreting letters is difficult, and you often mix them up. You know the reading rules, but applying them— both consciously and unconsciously —is challenging.

In the brain, the connections on the left side related to language and reading are often developed differently than in people who do not have dyslexia, for example, there is less gray matter[1].

Among other things, this causes word processing in text and sound to be different or take longer because you have to process the sounds of what you see and this often takes a little longer than for people without dyslexia.

Dyslexia test

If you are tested for dyslexia, it is usually done with some sort of IQ test. Dyslexia is diagnosed if the component for language is significantly lower than the other components that make up the IQ test.

For example, you can still have VWO thinking level in math, geography and other subjects, but may be stuck at a lower level in language and reading.

Why does anyone have dyslexia?

Dyslexia can be caused by genetic and environmental factors and a combination[2]. In people whose parents have dyslexia, there is a 30 to 60 percent chance that the child will also develop dyslexia. So that could be 1 in 3 children or 1 in 2.

Environmental factors also play a big role; not every child of a parent with dyslexia also gets dyslexia. So that you can't do anything about dyslexia is not entirely true. In fact, the environment can contribute (unintentionally) to the development of dyslexia.

Environmental factors include whether there is a lot of reading at home. This is among other reasons why it is so important to read to your children (give them sight of the letters, who knows, they might become curious).

A healthy child is also more willing to read than a sickly child; even a healthy diet plays a role in this.

The home environment with regard to reading also determines children’s attention to reading, and stress in the home environment also influences attention and reading behavior[3].

When a mother smokes during pregnancy, her child also has a higher risk of developing dyslexia[4].

Preventing Dyslexia

We've already given a few hints, reading together, eating healthy, and a relaxed home situation help lower (and thus perhaps prevent) the odds.

Dyslexia can be prevented if a child has relatively early language development. This can negate the genetic factors say.

A good socioeconomic status can also help prevent dyslexia. This is likely because parents in such situations have the resources to hire additional tutoring and to ensure their child’s health by allowing them to join a sports club and often eat a healthier diet.

Reading together and having many children's books can also prevent dyslexia[5].

What are the effects of dyslexia?

If you have dyslexia, this can lead to anxiety—for example, about reading aloud in class—low self-confidence, and even symptoms of depression.

You can avoid reading as a child which means you are much less exposed to text than other peers which, in the long run, puts you even further behind in your development than your peers[6].

Dyslexia and hypnosis

When you are told as a child that you have dyslexia you are actually hypnotized to some degree. You are told all kinds of comments (or suggestions) that you cannot read well and that you find it difficult to learn to do so.

Because you see that friends indeed read through all the level books faster than you, you immediately believe this too and this can make you feel bad, causing you to stop reading.

Because (especially young) children are naturally in a kind of hypnotic state, they often take such comments for "true." This, of course, does not encourage them to pay attention during language lessons, because you can't do it anyway, it's too difficult and why should you try your best?

It’s just like with other issues children may face, such as ADHD, where adults’ suggestions about what this means can become a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hypnosis and dyslexia

Hypnosis has also been cited as an alternative way to suffer less from dyslexia[7].

If you want to consciously use hypnosis to address dyslexia, it’s important to understand the beliefs you’ve developed over time about what dyslexia means to you. What does having dyslexia mean for who you are, how you are, and how you function best in the world?

Next, you still need to check how logical those beliefs are. For example, your dyslexia can block you from doing something you really want to do, such as writing a book. Even though your book is always checked by the publisher first. So those spelling mistakes don't have to be a problem at all.

To uncover these types of dyslexia-related beliefs, you can use regression in hypnosis. With regression, you go back to the first moment when the realization that you had dyslexia had a negative impact on what you did—for example, when it held you back from doing something.

You then go on to do something with that moment. Since this is personal for everyone, I can't say what, but I can say that the hypnosis expert will help you with this. This causes you to interpret the moment in a different way so that the conviction also changes and can't slow you down in the future.

In addition, hypnotic suggestions can help restore pleasure in reading and reduce the irritation that you can't read as quickly. Because you are under hypnosis you are more open to these suggestions and absorb them more quickly. These can be suggestions such as:

"Reading a book is like watching a movie."

"Slow reading is also reading and fun."

"Your reading ability says nothing about who you are."

"You are a fun and talented person."

"You can learn anything."

These are just examples of hypnotic suggestions. Depending on your beliefs and problems due to dyslexia, the hypnosis expert may choose to give a different suggestion.

In this way, hypnosis can ensure that you keep reading, allowing you to catch up with language deficits over time (because you can continue to learn throughout your life and brains are plastic and remain in development for a long time).

In addition, hypnosis can also address the secondary symptoms of dyslexia such as anxiety, low self-esteem and depression.

For example, dyslexia can make you dislike writing or reading in public. It can lead to performance anxiety or compensatory behavior. This is all very unfortunate and unnecessary. Fortunately, hypnosis can help with that as well.

Being told early in life that you have dyslexia can therefore hypnotize you into becoming less good at language than you need to be. Fortunately, hypnosis can also be used to restore your enjoyment of reading and ensure that you continue to read anyway in order to get your language skills to the level needed to function well in Dutch society.

Want to know exactly how hypnosis works and how to do it? Then come to a hypnosis workshop (also in Zwolle).

Would you like to help children or learn right away how to help others? Then check out our events or sign up directly for one of the courses offered by the Hypnosis Institute of the Netherlands (ask about online options if that suits you better).

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6261519/

[2] https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-032814-112842

[3] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psychopathology/article/child-and-environmental-risk-factors-predicting-readiness-for-learning-in-children-at-high-risk-of-dyslexia/8BF608D9D75080EA2E06A9AEBD7FC15A

[4] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/87565641.2017.1374960

[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6261519/

[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6261519/

[7] Dyslexia and Alternative Therapies (2006), M. Chivers.