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 well, 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 suffer from dyslexia, you have difficulty reading and writing. Interpreting letters is difficult and you often confuse them. You know the reading rules, but applying them consciously and unconsciously is difficult.
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 likely to read than a sickly child, even healthy food plays a role in this.
The home environment in terms of reading also determines the attention children pay to reading, and stress in the home environment also affects attention and reading behavior[3].
When the mother smokes during pregnancy, the child is also more likely to develop 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.
Good socioeconomic status can also prevent dyslexia. This probably has to do with parents then having the resources to hire additional schooling and to ensure the child's health by being able to attend a sports club and often eating healthier.
Reading together and having many children's books can also prevent dyslexia[5].
What are the effects of dyslexia?
If you have dyslexia, it can cause anxiety, for example reading aloud in class, low self-esteem and even depressive symptoms.
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 like other problems children may have, such as ADHD, where the adult suggestions about what this means are for a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Hypnosis and dyslexia
Hypnosis has also been cited as an alternative way to suffer less from dyslexia[7].
Then, if you want to consciously use hypnosis to do something about dyslexia, it is important to know what beliefs you have acquired over time about what dyslexia means to you. What does having dyslexia mean to who you are, how you are and in what way 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 figure out these types of dyslexia-related beliefs, you can use regression with hypnosis. With regression, you go back to the first moment when the knowledge that you had dyslexia had a negative consequence on what you did, that it stopped you from doing something, for example.
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.
Dyslexia, for example, can cause you to dislike writing or reading in public. It can give you fear of failure or compensatory behavior. This is all very unfortunate and unnecessary. Fortunately, then, hypnosis can do something about that, too.
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 playshop (also in Zwolle).
Instead, would you like to help children or learn directly how to help others? Then check out our events or enroll directly in one of Hypnosis Institute Netherlands' training courses (ask about online options if this 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.
