Natalie Brooks Shares Her Journey With Dyslexia As An Adult

I don't remember being diagnosed with dyslexia, it is something I feel I have known about my whole life. It feels intrinsically part of me and something that I can't imagine not having. My diagnosis of dyslexia was young, with my teachers first picking up on it when I was five as they noticed my curiosity in conversations did not translate to tasks in early school years.

For much of my school years, my biggest frustration was how much more challenging tasks were compared to others. My peers seemed to be able to gain good grades with much less effort than I required. Despite this and sometimes feeling that I wasn’t fulfilling my potential I still through myself into challenging subjects, such as History and Politics at A-Level.

Generally, looking back at school years I am very grateful for the support and advice I was given. I was lucky enough to go to a school that specialised in dyslexia support which always ensured that I never felt 'slow' or 'stupid' but that showed me I need to find my path to success, which in my case usually meant plenty of hours in the library.

Then onto University where I felt that school had provided me with the self-confidence and toolbox to excel as much as possible, as I did a degree in Politics which meant many more essays and hours of study. I was also lucky enough to meet my boyfriend (now fiancé) who is also dyslexic, he was a great support in checking my work and listening to me endlessly complain that I saw people arrive and leave in the time I had hardly started writing my essay.

For me, the real challenge of dyslexia has really come as an adult. I have always had traditional office jobs, working in both large and small companies. It is here I started to realise how much dyslexia affects every part of your life. What had made me able to achieve in education was finding my own path and working in a style that suited me. That meant stopping when I felt overwhelmed or tired, working at times that suited me or taking longer to finish seemingly simple tasks.

In my first job, as I was very junior much of my day involved basic tasks. I struggled enormously doing receptive tasks, after a short period of time and usually, in the afternoons it would feel like fog would cloud over me and I couldn’t concentrate. This would either result in me becoming disruptive and chatty or persevering and making significant errors. Either way, it felt like mental torture knowing that if I could just rest my eyes for an hour I would be able to steam ahead.

In later jobs the challenge would be filling in paperwork or contracts correctly, leading to simple mistakes that had significant consequences. I once put together a contract that had the wrong price (as I jumbled the numbers) which meant the company lost money due to an error in checking. Not only was this hugely embarrassing, it was frustrating as I felt I could never say ‘I shouldn’t be doing this’. The reality was that it was only a matter of time before I made another error due to the number of contracts and tasks of this nature I was doing. My issue is that the first draft of a contract is likely to have so many mistakes that it can take multiple attempts to get things right and it is extremely difficult for me to spot mistakes.