My broken mind
I can’t read. There, I said it.
I can read, however, I cannot read.
I’m writing this because I think it will help people not like me deal with people like me, and people like me deal with being them.
I would be considered in the autistic side of dyslexic on the Neurodiversity scale. Through my whole life, this has been treated as and discussed in the context of a disability. In the last 15 years I’ve realized this simply isn’t the case, however it’s very difficult to explain why, and, introduces a lot of risk. Additionally, I take a great deal of issue with people who are not dyslexic (especially parents) calling it a “gift” — this simply isn’t true and makes it considerably more difficult for a dyslexic person to talk about. Often if you had a “disability” you’d call it a “gift”, I however, am perfectly able. I would just consider it different, a similar difference between hair colours or eye colours. Before we get into it, I want to thank so many of my friends for being comfortable discussing these things with me and showing me their minds so I could understand them in relation to mine.
The easiest thing I can do is explain to you what it’s like being me in a way that if you’re not, could understand. I wrote this as literally as I can, so please read it as such. This is oddly a very dyslexic minded way to think, as you’ll see. If you’re particularly good at rote work, if you find it difficult to draw a mental image, if tears are a drop of the salty liquid that moistens the eyes, much of this will sound very strange, and some aspects will be easily justified with an “of course”. In areas you wish to form an “of course” connection, please consider the paradox. Additionally, there are times you’ll think “that sounds exhausting” — it is, but not for the reasons you think.
The first aspect I’d like to discuss is the intake and consumption of context.
The first building block that is important to say is that everything is everything all the time. The easiest way to explain this is that my senses don’t have levels or channels, everything is always taking in everything all the time at the exact same time. The filters are only there and used if the sensor is needed to complete the thought. Words are not words unless I want/need them to be, the rest of the time they either aren't (even if they are, as in I don't see them), or they are just there because they make up something else (for me, it's a picture or video).
In addition to everything else that everything is, everything is also hard and soft, fast and slow. For example, white is very fast, so is a volcano. Blue is quite slow, and so is a potato, even if the potato is being thrown. If a potato is cut, the individual bits of the potato are faster than the whole potato, except in the dark. Celery is fast. A book is very soft, but a computer is very hard, an iPhone is much heavier than a macbook pro. It doesn’t much matter how big or small the book is, a computer is almost always harder. A white bit of paper is one of the more difficult things for me to comfortably look at. White paper with text is also uncomfortable. A white wall with lots of natural light on it is almost always moving (the wall itself, not the light, it moves too, obviously). I don’t really care about edges. They don’t bother me, but I don’t bother with them unless I need to. Summer and Winter look very different. These are not associations, they sense/feel/literally are these things for me.
When it’s even a little bit hot out I see the ripples off the ground.
The most overwhelming thing for me would be a moderately busy music concert in a very big field with the music equal to the light, lots of weather, and groupings of people spread far apart where I could kinda hear them but also wasn’t a part of them. The least overwhelming thing is a very very busy conference. Seems backwards, but it's not.
There are other things I can “sensor” in, however they are far too difficult to put into words. An example of this is that I don’t believe “feelings” are the same for me, it’s not that I don’t have them, they’re just everywhere (including yours) so I don’t mind them (I like them!).
Once things come in they have to be stored. To store something it has to either go in an existing folder or a new folder has to be created and mapped. Depending on how much information is coming in and how good the information is will depend on a) how quickly I can process and store it and b) where I decide to put it. These are not usually unconscious processes. If I was processing something and you asked me, I’d likely be able to tell you how. This is very very useful, and I like it a lot, the only problem really comes with a miss mapping or words with multiple meanings that are heavily tied to the physical world. For example, right and left. I can solve for this by building a different map, I just have to figure out how to re-map it and then take a while to train myself to remember the new map. I used to not know my left and right till I mapped it to the sense of a pencil in my hand. If you say left and I don’t feel my thumb it’s not right, I’ve gotten so good at this I can do it without “thinking”. Another issue is if something traditionally rote is miss-mapped and then something is built on it. If this is the case it’s much easier to create a new path than a new map, this is very expensive to access however. If you’re talking to me deeply and I’m learning, it has varying effects on my bodily functions running as a “cron” in working memory. Often if I’m moving very quickly through all the images and films and other folders I have to close my eyes. For this, imagine you could move around netflix at a billion times the speed you do, but you knew exactly where you needed to go, and you needed to pick up multiple things. While I’m thinking about this, I’m not, it’s just happening, again, hard to describe. This picking up of things is important because it allows me to put them into user space and show them next to other things, it doesn’t matter where they are or what they are, if I want to look at them next to each other, I can.
I can read but my mind prefers not to, not because it can't, it can, but it's not the best way for me to use that information later. I also have to take the time to strip out some of the stuff that doesn’t matter (the fact that it’s a book or a computer or red ink or blue ink or whatever), and even when the information is left and stored, I have to apply a transform to it later to use it, so I’ll always use it last and it will be difficult to put next to something else. Numbers live in very many places, for example on a clock, or my computer, or Brookes watch, as something we use to measure, as numbers. Numbers have effectively become very “pointless” for me. I’ve not figured out a good way to map them so I can make them useful in something like math, and I know so little math at this point it seems silly to try when I don’t much need it. If someone asks me what’s on the microwave clock, when talking to a child I might say “blue” when talking to a teen I might say “the time” when talking to an old person I might say “digit” for fun. This is because I like to, it’s a choice or because it’s easier to help the other person understand. In some larger, complex topics this looks like I’m not saying the same thing to everyone when I am.
If I want to know something I just grab all the things and play it, place it, view it, whatever is the best way for me to look at it given the context I’m in (or not in) at the time (or not time). If there is a tree involved, I may use the exact tree, if the tree isn’t important to the fact, it’s just a tree. In my experience my brain almost never messes this up, it’s incredibly incredibly accurate. So much so, I can often replay a scene and see things other people did not, as a result making them doubt my memory.
If I know you well, when i’m talking to you, as we are talking there is a little PiP you that provides for me everything I know about you, everything I’ve ever known about you and many things you don’t know about yourself. It also provides a series of ways i know you act or react to various things. It’s very hard to describe what that’s like for me. I also tend to sort that information based on the context of the conversation to give myself more working memory for you. As the conversation changes I’ll often re-sort information on the right (the PiP window) so that I can access the new stuff faster. I don’t have to use cognitive load to do this, yet I’m conscious of it.
When I’m thinking (not processing or storing), I’m basically using the OS, sometimes it’s narrative, sometimes it’s visual, and sometimes it’s other stuff that I don’t have words for. The other stuff is around how ideas fit on top of each other, or around stored feelings (mine or otherwise). The most crude way I could describe it is as alternative scenarios from the scenarios I create, then watch them play out. Due to this I can see where something was relatively right and what paths became true, so I can go back and look at how that fits with the other incorrect assumptions. I can create a grid of realities. These realities can move backward and forward in time, and are highly accurate and always tested or testable. If you give me misinformation I can see it very quickly, as well as why, and if it even matters. I hate TV because it rarely provides useful things I can use later and usually only seek out to watch a doc that provides bits I need to see something. This makes my thinking very qualitatively, if I had to guess it makes up 80% of how I come to conclusions about things. I don’t dream, I suffered from very very intense night terrors in my mid 20s, I would wake up standing, covered in sweat, screaming in a sound I’ve never made, staring at the wall. It was terrifying. I also don’t get very tired, I often lay awake at night moving things around and sorting things out, if it was a really long day and lot happened, I have make sure everything is stored correctly and usually by then, it’s 3:30am.
When I’m building or accessing, I deliberately turn off other senses, so it looks like I’m just starting into space. I can do it with them on but it’s much quicker with them off. This looking into space is looking at the mind, my friend Justin calls his “the wall” and he “puts things on it”. If I want to figure out something new (something I don’t know) — I ask my mind to pull together everything I do know and look at it. This isn’t the same as recalling something I do know, although it sounds the same, it doesn’t look or feel the same. During this process I can also understand what I need to learn, and mostly know how/where to go learn it from. If I immediately know the answer to something then push back through the maps to folders to find out why. Sometimes it’s because I know it, sometimes it’s because I’ve built it. If I’ve built it, I can understand why I built it (I use this to check my reasoning is sound). If I’ve built it and I can’t understand why, the best thing to do is go test it. I remember the people/person who told me something, and why/how they know what they told me as well as why they told me. Some of this processing is conscious and I make it unconscious, some of it is unconscious and it make it conscious. I would consider everything in this paragraph to be low cognitive load, it doesn’t cost anything to do.
In terms of space, it’s almost impossible to tell you about it because it’s a sense but it’s coupled with things I can look at (visually). Additionally there is a 4D grid on everything all the time (this isn’t visual, however). The same with time. I experience time, I feel it and sense “through” it. I realize this paragraph sounds absolutely crazy. Sufficed to say, I hardly ever get lost.
A funny thing is that if you’re a friend you’ll say, no, John gets lost. You’ll recount the one time I got turned around slightly when I was with you, but forget the 50 billion times you walked with me looking into space on your phone and I took you there, I’ll remember the 600 times you got us lost, the one time you didn’t, oh and btw, you have a perfect sense of direction in your mind because of that one time and mine sucks. Stories like that are very common (and frustrating) for me.
Another common thing is that people do not think I’m detail oriented. That’s very very frustrating. It’s actually the most frustrating thing to me. I remember and notice lots of details, it’s just I find many people focus on the wrong ones and what I consider important is often seen as trivial, what I see as trivial is often seen as important. Often when I’m right it’s because I’ve built a very strong model that I believe in, but that model is so large and weird, full of details some people can’t even have, including presented opposing points and their opposing points again. It would take me a long time (maybe weeks) to explain, and even longer to then have someone understand. This is frustrating because when I’m “right” and someone else is “wrong”, I know the only thing I can do is let time pass. Those are days I would cry in the bathroom at work, out of sheer frustration, because of my dyslexia. I hope you see that type of frustration is very very hard at the top of fast moving business.
The main thing I wanted to say is that my dyslexia isn’t difficult because of me. I’m fine. However, while my dyslexia can be very difficult, frustrating, challenging, and scary, it’s almost never just because of me.Teaching me incorrectly is almost exactly like trying to install ubuntu on a mac without virtualization by hand rolling your own drivers and not reading any documentation in the process.
If you work on a SaaS product with a lot of text, a mode for us would be really great. If you work with someone who closes their eyes a lot when they’re telling you things, recount facts as stories, or take forever to reply to your wall of text email, don’t ask them if they’re dyslexic. Maybe just ask what they think about this post. For many, dyslexia can feel like a shameful prison they cannot discuss.
Further Reading:
Alice Philipson