Dyslexia and ADHD Overlap: Why I’m Letting Go of Fixed Labels

Hey everybody, Stephen here from the Truth About Dyslexia. In today's episode, I want to talk a little bit about how dyslexia and ADHD overlap, how neurodiversity is becoming a big word, and why I think it's really important to not hold things too tight about how you see things. And I've got a couple of good examples of how I've learned to do this because I used to be terrible at it as well. So let's dive into this. Okay, so this topic is a bit of a hard one, so bear with me as I try and explain my point of view here, because I think it's really important. And the distinction of this was game-changing in the way I saw myself.

Now, I've spoken about how I got diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 10, and then I didn't get diagnosed with ADHD until, I want to say 33, 34. It's all blurry, but it's about five years ago, give or take, and how I didn't really understand what dyslexia was till I was in my early 30s. So I had different variations of myself as I learned more and more about these challenges. When I first learned about dyslexia, I thought it was just reading, writing, spelling. That's all I understood. When I found out more about how it impacts the way I think, feel, how I see the world, my perceptions, I was like, wow, this is amazing.

I didn't know any of this, and it all made so much sense. How my brain thinks visually and how visual pictures affect and impact my day-to-day life, all of this other stuff. I then learned about all these, what should we call them, these symptoms that appear because of the way I think and the way my life has shaped because of dyslexia and/or ADHD. And then when I found out later I had ADHD as well, it made a lot of sense. I could understand where my attention challenges were. I could understand where my impulsivity came from, and just the way my brain worked in that respect.

So. The challenge with it all is that many of these life challenges come with a bunch of, I hate the word comorbidities, but symptoms that appear that can appear for one or for both of them. In some people, they don't appear at all. So this is the biggest challenge with both ADHD and dyslexia. And to be honest, I feel, you know, and I've seen mixed bags of everybody, so many different people with different challenges that some of them I don't experience at all. And, you know, the one that was raised to me in an email recently, which was well received, was around perfectionism.

And the person who sent that to me, and I won't name names or anything, mentioned that, oh, perfectionism is an ADHD characteristic. It's not dyslexic. Now, very early along, I 100% felt the same way, but sometimes the opposite, because I knew a lot more about dyslexia than I knew about ADHD when I first started, 100%. And that was, and I kind of built this, you know, especially when you're learning about this, you build an identity around these challenges, and you're like, because I'm dyslexic, I have this challenge, or I need this exemption, or this, this, this, this. And I truly went down that path, and I really believed in what I'd learned and how I'd learned it, and it made logical sense. And then I learned about ADHD, and I saw that some of the challenges in ADHD matched the same as the ones I'd learned about in dyslexia.

And for a while it was really tough. I'm like, no, that's a dyslexic trait. It's not an ADHD trait. There was a part of me that was kind of fighting against, let's just say words, you know, realistically. It was, I was fighting against a way people... You know, used words.

That was all it was. It was literally different perceptions of similar challenges. And it took me a while to get my head around and be very open to accepting the crossover of dyslexia and ADHD and how things appear. And this example around perfectionism is actually a fantastic one, because a lot of people are told you become a perfectionist if you've got ADHD. But realistically, there's no specific ADHD factor that makes you a perfectionist. You know, being inattentive, that's not a perfectionist base.

Attention is not perfectionism either. You know, people say, oh, it's hyperfocus. That's not attention to detail, because I'll guarantee you, once you're out of hyperfocus, you're not caring about being perfect. I'll guarantee you that. So, like, there's a bunch of things that don't specifically relate to ADHD, but people with ADHD have perfectionism challenges. A hundred percent, they do.

With dyslexia, the same thing: perfectionism challenges. But you also, what I see so often with both of these challenges, especially with dyslexia, is the bell curve challenge. And again, I see this in ADHD as well. This comes across people with both diagnoses, where you're either one or the other. You're either a complete perfectionist or you've given up in a lot of ways. And sometimes you can have a bit of both.

You can be a perfectionist about something, and in other places you've just completely given up. Like, I used to be a perfectionist about how I lived. My room was so tidy, clean, minimalistic, and I was very,I don't want to say anal is the wrong word, but, you know, it helped my brain. Everything was clear. I was very focused. And then when me and my wife got together, she, you know, she's a bit more, you know, I need things left out so I know where things are, and we've got a little one, so, you know, good luck trying to keep everything in line.

And so I had to literally,I kind of went the other way. I had to put in some systems to make it work, but I kind of went the other way, and I've hopefully most times become a lot more the opposite side. I'm not a perfectionist around minimalism. I'm kind of like, I'm okay. You know, a bit of clutter, a bit of mess is there. I do have my challenges.

I'm sure my wife would tell you that. Don't worry. But, you know, it's both sides of the coin, and it's not specifically an ADHD or a dyslexic trait. Like, with dyslexia, there are studies out there. There's one I can even link to in the show notes. Around where they've actually done research.

And the perfectionism side is not,it's not like there's a part of your brain that makes you a perfectionist or not. There's not like a chemical of perfectionism. It just doesn't exist. But the way I see it around perfectionism and dyslexia, where it comes in is our brains can create quite visual pictures. We can create quite clear designs in our heads, okay? I can picture, you know, a beautiful, let's say a dolphin swimming through the water, a beautiful picture of a dolphin swimming through the water, maybe it's jumping out and going through some rings that are just in the air.

It's amazing. Every detail of water, every droplet is just stunning, absolutely stunning. Now, if I wanted to draw that, it's not going to take me two minutes. It's going to take me ages. I don't have the skill set nonetheless. So if I started to try and draw that picture, it would look like a stick figure dolphin jumping,I could probably get the ring right,jumping through the ring on a weird angle.

It would look horrible. And I'd be like, That's terrible. That's absolutely terrible, because I can't take the picture out of my head and put it into reality. Now, that's a real literal example, but the same happens at work and in relationships. I can picture how some part of my work is needed, and maybe I can see a website, because we design websites, I could see a website and how I want it designed. Now, when I try and brief my team on what I want, because of my dyslexia, I really struggle to communicate and get all of my picture out of my head verbally so that they can create the perfect thing that's in my head.

And what I think, I think is perfect. And so when they can't deliver that, it creates communication issues. I keep pushing back. You've all heard of the move two pixels, two pixels thing, because I've got such a clear picture in my visual head that I can't get right. And so to me, that is where my perfectionism comes from. It doesn't touch the sides of ADHD.

It just doesn't. But on the other hand, where other people pick up the perfectionism side is that many kids with both dyslexia and/or ADHD went through years and years of being told they're not quite good enough, or sit still, or stop looking out the window, or, you know, you should be able to read or write better, you know, or this shouldn't be that hard for you. You know, we all, especially in the early days, people just weren't diagnosed, so this was coming through a bit of everywhere. Okay, so this was coming across the bat. So what happens is, you know, over time, they just, they start to build up this questioning inside, you know, and they start to worry that I'm not good enough. I keep getting things wrong.

How do I get things right? You know, that's the real pain, is that they want to get everything right. And, you know, over time they say, well, if I was perfect, or if I got, if I didn't make as many mistakes, I would be wonderful. You know, I'd be, people would accept me. And that's the big one, people would accept me. And so they start to build this way of wanting everything to be perfect so they don't get judged.

And this judgment just comes up because they felt judged all their life for different things. I see this across, and if I'm honest, it's a neurodiverse thing. It's really a neurodiverse challenge, this perfectionism side. And so, like, they see this all again. An example I saw in a video recently was about someone who, when they wrote emails, they hated the idea of imperfect emails because it would look stupid, that their spelling was wrong, and that they would be shunned. And so perfectionism, in my opinion, doesn't come directly from either any neurodiversity.

From what I've seen and experienced in my own life, it comes from across the board. And I think we can get very tight, and this is perfectionism is just an example. There's a heap of other things. You know, you can also have, you can also make an argument around time, where that sits. I think time sits an issue for those with ADHD and an issue for those with dyslexia, and slightly different reasonings, and I can do another podcast on that. But what I would say is, and I know this is very hard for a lot of us, is when we get really focused and learning about learning something, in doubling down on it, we really believe what we've read, and it kind of becomes an instant identity for us.

You know, I always explain this one like once I decided to become a vegan for about two and a half weeks until I went, Nope, that's too hard. But for those two and a half weeks, I could tell everyone I was the best vegan in the world, and I probably was for two and a half weeks. And you know what I mean? Like, it's this, we get this real strong focus. And what I would say is start to learn to let go of things as not being quite as solid as we may think. Things might be wrong, and it might not be a problem you've made.

You may have just learned it a certain way, but it can also be right in other factors, and just to be okay about that. Just to not let it sink into your identity so much that you can't change it, that you become so incurious about what could that mean. So, for example, perfectionism. Maybe you have learned that it is an ADHD challenge. Great, fantastic. But that doesn't mean that it isn't a dyslexic challenge as well.

For different reasons, and potentially some of the same. There's probably crossover. And that's the same with everything in life, really. But for what we're talking about today is don't get too fixed. Don't beat yourself up if you learn something one way and you learn a bit more about it next. That's the rest of everyone's life.

It doesn't matter what you are, who you are, learning will never stop. But it's how you receive that learning that will change the way you act in your life. So that's all I want to share today, guys. I hope that's added some value. I hope it's got you thinking. Hope it's got you letting go of maybe some fixed beliefs you've got.

Maybe something will come up in the next couple of days and you can just play with it a bit and not be too worried if it's not quite what you always thought it was. Because I'll tell you, once you learn how to do this, it makes life a lot easier. Hope that's added some value. Have an excellent day. Stephen out. Thanks for listening to the Truth About Dyslexia.

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