You Are Not a Broken Machine: Why We Need to Rewrite the Story of Dyslexia

Martin Middleton
Feb 24
6 min read

Updated: Apr 3

The Gatekeepers of Our Stories

If you search for a therapist online, the first result you see is likely from Psychology Today, as one of the largest directories for finding therapists in the UK and US. Along with this, they produce blogs, have contributions from expert therapists, and provide definitions of "conditions". They shape how we understand ourselves and our children before we've even sat down with anyone.

But language is never neutral.

When a resource such as Psychology Today defines dyslexia, it isn't just offering medical facts; it's constructing a narrative and telling a story about who is "normal" and who is "broken." This is a story told through a person's life, from primary school into adulthood, reinforcing a lifetime of feeling less than.

This is a narrative I want to challenge.

The "Psychology Today" Narrative: A Story of Deficit

What is the story Psychology Today presents as dyslexia? It uses the clinical terms we use for illness:

"Symptoms"
"Diagnosis"
"Treatment"
"Phonological Deficits"

Drawn from a Medical Model, this frames dyslexia as a specific story: the dyslexic individual is a "patient" suffering from an "illness". The story centres the neurotypical brain as the main character of the human story - they are the standard of health and correctness. The dyslexic person is cast as a deviation from this plot, defined almost entirely by what they cannot do.

To get to the definition, you have to follow a very clear path:

Conditions → Neurocognitive Disorders → Dyslexia

There is no room in this story for anything other than the idea that something is wrong with a dyslexic individual. The article states, "Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability that causes difficulties." The problem lies entirely within your brain, like a faulty wire in a machine.

But what if this isn't the story of a broken machine? What happens when we start the story from somewhere else?

The Spectrum of Definitions: From 'Disorder' to 'Difference'

There are other ways to construct this narrative.

The British Dyslexia Association (BDA) offers a different narrative. They define dyslexia not just as a reading issue, but as a difference in "information processing" and don't only define it as a deficit:

Similarly, the NHS makes the distinction:

While the NHS still uses terms like "problem" and "symptoms," they, along with the BDA, open the door to a Neurodiverse perspective - that difference does not mean lesser.

But, while these UK bodies acknowledge strengths, the dominant narrative (like Psychology Today's) often buries these positives under the weight of "deficits."

The Social Model asks us to go further than just "acknowledging" strengths. It asks: Why do we call it a 'learning difficulty' rather than a 'teaching failure'?

The Social Model of Disability

The Social Model of Disability argues that people are not disabled by their bodies or brains, but by the barriers built into the systems in society that were never designed to account for them.

When we apply this to these definitions, the story changes completely:

The Medical View (Psychology Today): You struggle because you have a "phonological deficit."
The Nuanced View (BDA/NHS): You process information differently and have creative strengths, but you will face "problems" with reading, writing and spelling.
The Social Model View: You struggle because our educational system relies exclusively on phonics-based, rapid-fire, linear literacy.

From a social model perspective, the "deficit" does not exist in a vacuum. If we lived in a society that prioritised oral storytelling, holistic thinking, or visual pattern recognition (areas in which the BDA notes that dyslexics often excel), the advantage would run the other way.

Imagine a fork in the road with two paths, both leading to the same destination. On the right, a well-maintained, clear, straight path; on the left, overgrown, muddy. One will clearly be quicker and less effort, but is closed off to the dyslexic individual.

However, it's important to remember that if the destination of this path were big-picture thinking or being able to quickly link concepts together, the narrative would change. It is now the dyslexic individual who has access to the well-maintained path.

The mismatch is where the struggle is not in the person.

"The Chaos" of Language

A clear example of this mismatch is the English language itself. The English language can be particularly difficult for dyslexic minds because of how inconsistently sounds are written. In more consistent languages such as Italian or Finnish, which are written in a highly phonetic and consistent manner, reading difficulties for dyslexic individuals are reportedly less severe.

One of the best examples to illustrate this barrier is the poem "The Chaos" by Gerard Nolst Trenité. It was written specifically to demonstrate how inconsistent English spelling is compared to its sound.

Below is an extract of the poem for a side-by-side comparison. The column on the right uses phonologically consistent spelling (writing words exactly as they sound).

In the example above, look at the "ea" sound:

Creature = ee
Creation = ay
Head = eh
Heat = ee
Heart = ah
Beard = eer

For a dyslexic learner (or even a non-native speaker), this requires memorising thousands of exceptions rather than relying on a consistent set of rules. The cognitive load required to decode a word before even beginning to understand its meaning is substantially higher - the brain has to take the longer path every time.

If English were a purely phonetic language, you would only need to learn the code once. In English, the code changes constantly without warning.

Re-Authoring the Self: A Narrative Approach

Why does this matter for therapy?

You might have internalised the medical narrative, you carry stories where you label yourself as "Lazy," "Slow," or "Stupid." Maybe you view your anxiety as a symptom of a disorder.

I know this from the inside. The first time I heard the word "dyslexic" from a teacher, he told me it was time to "stop with this dyslexic nonsense now." I didn't know what dyslexic meant, but I knew from his tone that it must be something bad and that I shouldn't be it, and that feeling of something being wrong stayed with me.

From a Constructivist Narrative Perspective, we understand that "Lazy" is a story told by a culture that is obsessed with speed; it's not a fact about who you are. When we strip away the medicalised language so we can look at your story on your terms.

In practice, it might look like this:

Mapping how the anxiety actually works: Understanding your specific patterns of thought, physical response, and avoidance, and where they came from.

Going back to where the story started: Using hypnotherapy techniques, including rescripting, to revisit early memories that cemented these beliefs. Your adult self, with what you now know, stepping back into those moments to provide the support the younger you needed but didn't get.

Finding the evidence the old story ignored: The resilience and problem solving, the pattern recognition, the creativity that developed because of how your brain works and the obstacles you had to overcome.

I've written in more detail about what this looks like in practice in a companion post. If the theory here resonates, Dyslexia, Anxiety & Shame: How to Rebuild Your Confidence shows what these steps look like when we actually work through them together.

Conclusion: Moving Forward

Therapy shouldn't just be about "managing symptoms." If you are tired of definitions that pathologise your existence, it might be time to look for support that understands the context of your struggle, not just the content of your diagnosis. You are not a diagnosis waiting to be treated but a complex narrator of your own life.