Truth About Dyslexia podcast
Loving a Dyslexic Brain: Why We React, Forget, Shut Down and Care Deeply
Loving someone with dyslexia can involve big feelings, missed messages, sharp tones and deep loyalty. I share what may be happening underneath, plus practical ways to translate it together.
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Loving a Dyslexic Brain: Why We React, Forget, Shut Down and Care Deeply
What you will take from this episode
- A dyslexic person may react to the fast, emotional movie their mind has built, rather than only to what happened in the moment.
- Interrupting deep focus can bring out irritation that is more about the sudden mental gear-change than the person asking the question.
- Forgetting to check in does not automatically mean a person does not care, but the impact on a partner still matters.
- Shutdown, sharp tone and long explanations can all create friction. Naming what is happening gives both people more room to respond well.
- The aim is not perfection. It is learning each other's operating systems and making repairs when things come out wrong.
When love is there, but the reaction makes no sense
Have you ever had a tiny moment turn into a much bigger argument than it seemed to deserve? A message lands with the wrong tone. Someone asks a question while you are absorbed in something. Your partner goes quiet, gets sharp, or appears to have forgotten something important. It can leave both people wondering what just happened.
I get asked about this stuff a lot, often by people who have started dating someone with dyslexia, sometimes alongside ADHD. They want to be empathetic, but they also want to know how to stand their ground. That is a fair question. Understanding a dyslexic brain should not mean one person has to quietly carry all the difficult bits.
For me, the useful shift is to stop treating every confusing moment as proof that someone does not care. It may be a clue about how their mind is processing pictures, emotions, focus and words. That does not remove responsibility. It just gives you a better place to start the conversation.
If you are trying to make sense of traits in yourself or someone close to you, the free adult dyslexia quiz can be a useful educational starting point.
We can react to the movie in our head
One of the biggest things I have noticed is that I do not always react only to reality. I can react to the movie my brain makes about reality. Something small happens, then my mind races through similar experiences, old fears and possible meanings. Before I know it, the picture has become much larger than the event itself.
I think visual and emotional thinking can make this especially intense for some of us. A comment, a message or a look can get filtered through other moments that felt similar. The reaction may then look out of proportion from the outside, because the other person cannot see the full internal movie playing at speed.
I used to be much worse at this than I am now. Ten or fifteen years ago, I was heavily ruled by the pictures and emotions racing through my head. At the time, I did not even realise that other people might experience the same moment very differently. You only know the inside of your own mind until you start comparing notes.
My best practical move when I suspect the movie is wrong is simple: take a breath, step away, and come back once the emotion has lowered. It is not an excuse to storm off or avoid the conversation forever. It is a pause so I am less likely to respond to a fear-filled story as if it is a proven fact.
The words we use around ourselves and each other can add fuel to these internal stories. my episode on the power of words for dyslexics explores why language can carry so much emotional weight for dyslexic thinkers.
An interruption can feel huge when we are deep in focus
When I am focused, I am often properly inside the thing I am doing. It is not always easy for my brain to jump tracks quickly. So a normal question from my wife can sometimes hit me at exactly the wrong moment, and irritation comes out before I have caught up with myself.
That short or frustrated tone is not necessarily about the question, or the person asking it. It can be about the timing and the sudden gear-change. I described it in the episode as trying to turn the Titanic. My mind has momentum, and it takes a little time to swing around.
That said, intention is only half the story. If I snap, it can still hurt. Saying, ‘That was not about you, I was deep in something’, may explain it, but it does not magically undo the impact. I have had to get better at noticing it and repairing it.
This is where practical relationship design beats trying to follow some imaginary perfect format. Talk about how you can get each other’s attention. One friend of mine had a light in his office that his wife could switch on. He knew that meant he should come and check in within the next five or ten minutes. It was a small system that respected both people’s needs.
For more thoughts on making communication work when minds think in leaps and pictures, my number one communication tip for relationships is worth a listen.
Deep care does not always look like regular contact
This part can be hard on relationships. I can care deeply about people, be fiercely loyal, and be there quickly if they need me. But if someone is not right in front of me, I may not be the person who remembers to message every few days and ask how they are going.
That can show up with friends, family and partners. Messages go unanswered longer than intended. A promise slips out of working memory. A check-in that mattered to someone does not happen. None of that automatically means there is no love or care underneath it, but I completely understand why it can land that way.
I think of my working memory as a dodgy old filing cabinet sometimes. The intention may exist, but it has not reliably made its way to the front of the brain at the right time. That is not a reason to shrug and say, ‘Well, that is just me’. If regular contact matters to someone you love, it is worth building support around it, whether that is a reminder, a shared calendar or a simple routine.
The key for both sides is to separate meaning from impact. A forgotten check-in may not mean rejection. But the hurt is still real, and the relationship gets stronger when you can acknowledge it and create a better system together.
There is useful language for this experience in this episode about emotional object permanence. It can help explain why people, promises and goals sometimes feel less mentally present when they are not right in front of us.
Long stories, shutdowns and tones that do not say what we mean
Some of us answer a simple question with a full documentary, including three side quests and the emotional context from 2007. We think in stories and pictures, so it can feel natural to give the whole backdrop before we land the plane. But if your partner just needed a yes or no, it can be exhausting for them.
I have got better at this over time. A useful line is: the short answer is yes, and I have a longer answer if you want it. It gives the other person a choice, and it helps me remember that my preferred way of explaining is not always what the moment needs.
Going quiet can be just as confusing. Shutdown is not always avoidance or stonewalling. Sometimes the words are not there yet, the pictures are moving too fast, or the emotions are too big to sort through while someone is waiting for an answer. Being pushed in that exact moment can make a person retreat further.
A clearer response is to name the processing need: ‘I am not ignoring you. I need 20 minutes to work out what I think because this matters to me.’ Then, importantly, come back to the conversation. Space works best when it is paired with follow-through.
Tone can be another liar. I can sound angry when I am overwhelmed, sharp when I am scared, or dismissive when my brain feels overloaded. I have had moments where even good news piled up so quickly that my body felt overloaded. One time, when my wife asked me something during that state, I bit her head off. It was not about her, but it was still not right. The next morning, I apologised and explained what had happened.
I share more of the lived experience behind dyslexia and ADHD in Dyslexia and ADHD Explained From the Inside. It is written for people who want to understand the inside of these kinds of patterns, rather than just a list of traits.
Loving someone with dyslexia means translation, not perfection
The goal in dyslexia and relationships is not to never react, forget, shut down or say something with a tone you did not mean. That is fantasy land. The better goal is translation: learning to explain what is happening inside your brain before it turns into a fight, and learning how your partner’s brain works too.
I do not think a healthy relationship is simply ‘accept me exactly as I am’ with no expectation of growth. That leaves both people stuck. For me, love includes being accepted as a whole person and caring enough to notice how my actions affect the other person. It includes making repairs, trying different systems and getting better over time.
If you are the dyslexic partner, self-awareness is a powerful next step. Notice your patterns: Do interruptions get you? Do you build scary stories from small clues? Do you need time before you can speak clearly? Do you lose track of people when they are not in front of you? You do not have to judge yourself for the answer, but you can take responsibility for what you do with it.
If you love someone with dyslexia, curiosity is a better starting point than mind-reading. Ask what helps them switch focus. Ask what a shutdown feels like from the inside. Be clear about what you need as well. Empathy does not mean disappearing your own needs.
For a practical next step you can read together, 20 Things to Remember if You Love Someone With Dyslexia offers more ideas for understanding and supporting a person with dyslexia.
Learn the operating system, then keep practising
Loving a dyslexic brain is not always simple. There can be pictures that run away with themselves, interruptions that land badly, forgotten messages, shutdowns and a tone that does not match the feeling underneath. There can also be an enormous amount of care, loyalty and desire to do better.
I have found that the most useful thing is not chasing perfection. It is being honest about what happened, apologising when I have caused hurt, and learning how my wife and I can work with each other better. You are not trying to prove who is right. You are trying to build a shared translation guide.
Read the full episode transcript
Loving a dyslexic brain: why we react, forget, shut down, and care deeply. In today's podcast on the Truth About Dyslexia, I want to go into a topic I get asked about probably more than any. It's usually coming from women who have started dating someone they find out is dyslexic. It can go the other way, don't get me wrong, but it just seems for some reason there are a lot of women finding out their partners have dyslexia, maybe ADHD, and they're trying to deal with how to have a good relationship, how to be empathetic, but also kind of stand their ground. You know, I'm not going to go too deep into it in this intro, but, you know, I get excited about these podcasts. So let's dive into today's episode.
Okay, so as mentioned in the forward there, I do think about this topic a bit because I get the question so often. The book I just wrote is very, very good to get an understanding of the dyslexic mind and how people work on, so have a little look at that if you are interested in going deeper. But I wanted to share in this podcast seven things that can kind of either be misunderstood or not really known. About the dyslexic brain and why it can impact relationships. So the first one, we don't always react to reality; we react to the movie in our head. You know, this is the big one.
You know, something small happens, someone says something, a partner walks past the TV, a message comes through with the wrong tone. You know, it can really become something huge in our minds. We can overthink it. Our brains can kind of turn it into something that is so much bigger than it is. It's kind of like a bit of a fear response because we're such visual, emotive thinkers. You know, if we've had some sort of, it could be a trauma in the past or it could be some experience in the past, our brains kind of work like Instagram, and they kind of go through and filter by what other experiences may have been like this.
And should it pick up something that is not quite correct and kind of over-exaggerate something in our minds, we can then react to it like that. Something I so talk about with that side of things is making sure that if you think the movie in your head is not right, take a breath and walk away and then come back to it afterwards once the emotions die down. That is so important. But this is such a common problem, and there are definitely dyslexics that have this challenge more than others that may have not had the experience of learning to react to it better. I definitely used to be terrible at this. Ten, fifteen years ago, I was a shocker.
You know, I was so ruled by these emotions. You know, the thoughts, the pictures, the movies in my head were so quick, I didn't actually know. You know, I didn't even realize this wasn't normal. You know, the problem with being in a dyslexic mind is you actually don't know what everyone else's minds are like. It's not like you're given an example and you go, Oh, that's how I experience life. You just experience life the way you do.
Does that make sense? You know, it's not an excuse, but it's a bloody useful thing to understand this if you get it right. Second, an interruption can feel like being punched in the brain. You know, when I'm focused on something, you know, I'm not just watching TV or doing work. I'm inside it, you know. So when someone suddenly asks a question, my brain has to jump tracks really fast, and the jump can come out of irritation, frustration.
You know, it can kind of pop out like a tone that I didn't mean. And my wife, me and my wife both work from home, and sometimes she'll ask me a question that seems completely normal in her head and vice versa. And I'm doing something, and I'm so engulfed in it. When you ask me something, it really takes my brain. It's kind of like trying to turn the Titanic sometimes because I'm so focused on where I'm going. It's a big ship to turn around.
So that can sometimes frustrate me or annoy me, or I can be short when it's nothing to do with the question that's being asked. It's just when it was asked of me. Does that make sense? So it can kind of feel like, why am I snapping at her, or vice versa? And it's kind of like you just crash through the wall of my brain, is the way to say it. So it's kind of getting a feel for the partner and what they're like.
Like if you know they're kind of like that, you kind of need to either, you know, talk about it. Like, how can you, you know, how can you let each other know that you need to ask a question without it becoming intrusive? Like, a friend of mine even got to the point where he actually had a light in his office, and his wife could flick a switch, and the light would go on. And then he knew that within the next, like, five, ten minutes, he would go and see what's up or how he can help or talk to her, because that was the best way to do it. And they kind of came up with that solution. I thought that was pretty, pretty cool the way that works.
And I think the key is not getting stuck in old formats of relationships sometimes and kind of think, oh, for this relationship to be good, it's got to be a certain way. What it really is about is understanding each other's little weird intricacies,I can never pronounce that word,those weird kind of ways that we operate. Does that make sense? If you can get through that and you can understand each other, it really, really helps. Now, number three, we care deeply. But we can forget to show it.
This is one thing people misunderstand. Dyslexic and ADHD people can care so much, like deeply, painfully, like loyally care. But if something is not in front of us, we can forget to message, we can forget to check in, forget things we promised. You know, I've got friends that I catch up with once every six months to a year, and when we catch up, it's great. But, you know, maybe it's not the, you know, we're not the people that sometimes always catch up every three days. You know, we check in on, How are you going?
We're just not those people. But the minute you need us, we're hugely loyal. We really care, and we're there in a heartbeat. It's like if anyone needed me, I'm there. But I'm not always going to be the one that checks in. Does that make sense?
And that's just the way my brain works. I've done some other great articles and podcasts on emotional object permanence is the deeper term on it. It's really important to get your head around. Like, I can't stress highly enough about the importance of that one. You know, our working memory is just like a dodgy old filing cabinet sometimes, and it just doesn't always get to where it needs to be. Number four, we can tell long stories when someone just wants an answer.
Now, it's interesting. I do this sometimes, but over the years, I've got much better at not doing this. My mum, I really, like, she's never been diagnosed dyslexic, but it comes down the tree, and you kind of know, right? And I love her dearly for it, but, like, she's someone who can tell you this story about a relationship that she's had in her life, and, like, when you just want a quick answer, she's basically, her brain, like, picks up on a story and will tell you that story whether you want to hear it or not, whether it's helpful. You know, a yes or no might have really helped. You know, we don't really need to go back to 2007 and talk about three side quests and explain the emotional context and land the plane, like, eight minutes later, right?
It can be tough. You know, and so many of us think in stories and pictures, so that's how we do and that's how we operate. But in relationships, they can create friction. And the other person, like, you know, if the other person's a direct, more logical thinker, it can be a bit painful. So sometimes we need to learn to say the short answer is yes, the long answer is coming if you want it. You know, all of this gets mixed up as well.
Like with dyslexia, ADHD, and autism, I truly believe there's a triangle there, and some people are more one, some are more the other. And it kind of just, depending who you are, you can kind of have different variations of this kind of challenge. Like, you know, sometimes people who are a little bit more autistic will just be yes or no a lot more, is what I've seen. They don't kind of tell the stories as much, even if they've got ADHD. Sometimes. These challenges are actually fighting in our heads, which can be a real pain.
Number five, shutting down is not always avoidance. You know, I used to think everything was avoidance. I used to think everything was stonewalling with partners in the past. But, you know, sometimes we do go quiet because we are processing something. You know, the words are just not there yet. The pictures are moving too fast.
The emotions are too big. And when someone pushes us in the moment, it can make us retreat even more. You know, I've had issues with food and other things like that, using those as kind of like crutches when I'm trying to process, and I've needed better solutions for processing. I think the rest of my life is going to be working out different solutions for processing emotions in life sometimes. You know, one of the most loving things a relationship can learn to say is, you know, if you are dyslexic, is to say, I'm not ignoring you. I just need 20 minutes to work out what I think first because it's too important to me just to blurt something out.
Does that make sense? Because that's actually what's happening, is the person actually needs some time to decide on what they truly believe and think in themselves and their bodies, rather than just saying the first thing that comes to our head. Because I know with my brain, if I just said the first thing that came to my head all the time, God knows what would come out this mouth. Who knows? You know, my brain is really, really quick, but because of that, it doesn't always give me time to vet what I'm thinking and saying. I'm not sure if you've seen that happen in your relationships, for you or your partner.
Number six, our tone can lie as much as our pictures do. Now, this is a hard one. Sometimes I sound angry when I'm actually a bit overwhelmed. Sometimes I sound sharp when I'm actually a bit scared. You know, sometimes I sound dismissive when my brain is just overloaded and trying to survive the next 30 seconds. You know, but here's the thing: the impact still matters.
You know, I have to realize that it's not right or wrong. It's who I am. But there are consequences to my actions. This is something dyslexics also struggle with. I've done other podcasts on it. But, you know, consequences exist in the world.
So if I act like this, even if it's not intended to be negative, it can have a negative impact, especially if my partner doesn't know or maybe they're in a bad place at the time as well. You know, if you're both in a bad state for whatever reason and some of this happens, it can just get very explosive. And so, you know, I've really, you know, worked on coming back to saying, you know, that came out wrong. I was overwhelmed. I'm not angry at you. And I do this with my wife from time to time.
It's not all the time, but there are moments where I'm just, you know, I had a day probably a week or two ago where I actually had so much success. I had things happen in my life that were great. It was just bang, bang, bang, so much good stuff. My body was actually overloaded. It was like, oh my God, everything really went well today. I'm so happy.
It was great and fantastic. And I actually had to literally go and lay down. I watched some TV. I realized I was in this weird zone, kind of this overloaded zone. And my wife came in to ask me something and I bit her head off. And it wasn't about her at all.
It was about me. And it took me until the next morning to go to her and say, Hey, I'm sorry, that was not right. This is why it happened, and I apologize. And, you know, that self-awareness, it feels so terrible to say self-awareness is the most important thing, but this continued self-awareness journey for everyone is vital because when you understand yourself, you can, one, give yourself a break, and you can also apologize when something isn't quite right. Like I've learned that myself. And then number seven.
The goal is translation, not perfection. A good relationship with a dyslexic brain is not about never reacting, never forgetting, never shutting down. That is fantasy land. It's not going to happen. The goal is translation, learning to explain what is happening inside your brain before it turns into a fight, helping your partner understand the operating system, and also being willing to understand theirs. Because love is not just, accept me as I am.
I actually think that's bullshit. That's not truth. That is not a good relationship. If you are just that self-imposed, you are going to fail. You know, it's also, let me learn how I affect you so we can do this better together. You know, that's a relationship.
Relationships are love, they're work, and it's the work you want to do because together you become better. Like, that's to me what a good relationship is. You know, what I love about my wife is she accepts me for who I am, but she also understands that I care enough to get better and to try and learn about her and vice versa. And we're similar. Neither of us are perfect, but we both accept each other as we are. But we also care enough to learn how the other operates and how we can work with them better.
Does that make sense? So, you know, loving a dyslexic brain is not always simple, but when you understand the pictures, the interruptions, the forgettings, the shutdowns, and the deep care underneath it all, you stop seeing a broken person and start seeing a different operating system. Hope you've enjoyed the podcast. As I say, my book is out now. If you're interested, I really need a few good reviews. So if you wouldn't mind grabbing a copy on Kindle or a paperback copy and giving us a review, that would be fantastic.
The audiobook will be out soon. It takes a lot longer to record those than you think, but quite excited. So have an epic rest of your day, and I'll be back next week. Thanks for listening to the Truth About Dyslexia. This podcast is sponsored by Added Nutrition and our new product, Added Sleep. It's designed for brains wired differently.
If you want to sleep better, maybe give it a try. Use the code Truth About Dyslexia to get a $10 credit on your order at addednutrition. com. Link in the show notes.
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