Explaining what it means to have a disorder is a tricky thing. Because of this, those who have it struggle to be understood and those who don’t have it struggle to understand what the big deal is, sometimes leading to frustration at the very least.
Dyslexia is one of those disorders that people who don’t have it find it hard to understand. “How can you not read this? It’s written plain and simple!” No, it’s not.
Therapist Lindsay Fleming recently put out a video on her TikTok channel that puts things into perspective when it comes to understanding what it really feels like to have dyslexia.
It's hard to explain what it's like to have dyslexia, but this woman managed to simulate the feeling
Image credits: lindsay.fleminglpc
In a TikTok video, Lindsay Fleming simulates what it's like to read text as a dyslexic
So, Lindsay Fleming is a licensed children’s and teenagers’ therapist who creates content for the internet tackling a number of mental illnesses and disorders, including ADHD, anxiety, and many others. Being dyslexic since 6 herself, it is normal to see regular dyslexia-related content on her social media.
In the video, Lindsay starts off by asking the question “Have you ever wondered what it’s like for someone who’s dyslexic to read in the classroom?” She went on to issue a challenge to the internet: to read the text she provides in the video. She also urged people to duet a video—a TikTok feature where the original challenger video is put side by side with the challengee video.
Lindsay is a licensed children's and teenager's therapist who has had dyslexia since she was 6
Image credits: lindsay.fleminglpc
The text she provides to read is an excerpt from the Wikipedia article on dyslexia. Now, this isn’t your ordinary text—not only is it all horribly misspelled and the letters are all jumbled up to a degree where it’s impossible to recognize the words, but also, random words keep changing to alternate misspellings, making it extremely difficult to read.
Sad to say, but dyslexia is more than just this. It is also difficult to understand concepts and ideas as fast as some of your other peers in the classroom would and to take notes along the way, making you lag behind in class and potentially leading to things like anxiety. And it’s also a spectrum, so it can be even more than this and to varying degrees. But the video definitely does a great job in conveying the struggle that dyslexic people undergo on a daily basis.
She came up with a text simulation that is jumbled up and constantly changing
Image credits: lindsay.fleminglpc
Luckily, according to Mayo Clinic, dyslexia can be treated by using specific educational approaches, like using several senses to learn—hearing someone reading a text and tracing with a finger the shape of the letters used and the words spoken.
Dyslexia doesn’t mean that a person can’t succeed—there are many famous people with dyslexia, like Whoopi Goldberg, Steven Spielberg, and Keira Knightley, who are all amazing talents despite their dyslexia. It’s just a different way of thinking and it makes things harder when processing information.
The video challenges internauts to read the text to the best of their ability
Image credits: lindsay.fleminglpc
Lindsay also shared with BuzzFeed how she experiences and manages her dyslexia: "My eyes jump from different lines while reading. I struggle to read words that I fully understand the meaning of when stated out loud. I often skip over big words and use context clues to figure out their meaning or recognize them. Dyslexia is on a spectrum, and the severity varies from person to person. I also struggle with anxiety and ADHD."
Lindsay’s video soon started doing rounds on the internet, making headlines on a number of news sites as well as going viral on TikTok, where it garnered over 66,000 views with over 12,600 likes. A number of people, with or without dyslexia, actually dueted the video, showing how hard it actually is to read the text.
Here is a close-up of the text she provided
Image credits: lindsay.fleminglpc
Some dueted and attempted to read the text in the video
What are your thoughts on this? If you have dyslexia, how would you describe the experience to someone who doesn’t have it? Let us know in the comment section below!
Here's how people reacted to the now viral video
