BDA Blogs: Common adult dyslexic challenges no one talks about (from someone who lives them too)

Common adult dyslexic challenges no one talks about (from someone who lives them too)

In 2019, I was on the train into work, the morning after my boss had screamed at me for a mistake I had made in my emails. He shouted, "what is wrong with you? Are you lazy or are you stupid?"

I wanted to reply that I am dyslexic, but I couldn't. Not because it wasn't true, but because I was no longer a child in education, and this mistake had nothing to do with spelling or reading. So I stayed quiet, knowing the mistake was down to dyslexia, but also knowing that every time these kinds of mistakes came up I had no way to help myself, because the only advice I could find online was either for kids, or focused on spelling and reading, which weren't the biggest issues I faced.

That day I went online and created an Instagram account called Dyslexia in Adults, as a way to vent and find community in the struggles I was facing. Answers felt like a distant dream. Just a simple "me too" really helped. That was almost seven years ago, and since that day I have realised that millions of adults feel exactly the same as me, and as you.

We talk far less about the quieter, stranger, more everyday challenges that dyslexic adults live with, often without even realising they are connected to dyslexia at all. So here is a list of common challenges I know many of you will be vigorously nodding along to.

1. Having amazing ideas but second-guessing your own brain. The thought is good, sometimes really good, and yet years of knocked confidence leave you quietly doubting whether it is, unsure whether to trust your own mind.
2. Feeling frazzled by detail overload. Taking in, processing, remembering and responding to lots of information at once is an enormous load, and it can leave you blank at exactly the wrong moment.
3. Being tired in a way that is hard to explain. For many of us, compensating and masking all day takes a quiet, constant toll, and by the evening there can be nothing left in the tank.
4. Dreading certain conversations. Because stress tends to make everything harder, speaking to particular people can turn a simple exchange into something you rehearse for hours.
5. Going blank when put on the spot. An unexpected question arrives, and the answer you absolutely know simply will not come until later.
6. Muddling dates, times and details. Not through carelessness, but because holding small pieces of information is often what a stretched working memory finds hardest.
7. Pushing a door when it says pull. The everyday mix-ups, left and right, this way and that, that can catch you out even when you know perfectly well which is which.
8. Having wonderful ideas that get tangled in the telling. The idea is clear and vivid in your head, but explaining it out loud can come out muddled, and it rarely lands the way it felt inside.
9. Thinking in stories or analogies. Many of us reason through narrative, reaching for an example or a comparison to make a point, because that is how the thinking naturally travels from one place to the next.
10. Having brilliant ideas but no idea how to begin. You can see the whole thing, bright and fully formed, and yet finding the first step, the way in, can feel strangely impossible.

If you read that list and nodded along so hard you could put in a claim for whiplash, please know this. You are not alone. There are millions of us, navigating exactly these things, often quietly and often without the words for it. Understanding that you are not the only one is often the first and most important step.

The conversation around adult dyslexia is growing, and that's something worth celebrating. Communities like Dyslexia in Adults help people feel seen and understood, while organisations such as the British Dyslexia Association provide trusted information, practical guidance and routes to further support. Whatever stage you're at, there are people who understand, and you don't have to navigate it alone.