The Bees Knees Exercise 1

One of the techniques that Antonio uses in his work with dyslexic students is to ask them if they would like to write, draw or audio tape (other mediums are fine too) a self-characterisation sketch that describes the influence dyslexia has had on their life. The self-characterisation sketch, or ‘sketch’ for short, if you decided to do one, will help you to start the process of focusing on your own dyslexia

(N.B. a self-characterisation sketch is a technique devised by George A Kelly (1955) and used in personal construct psychology)

There really isn’t anything that difficult about doing a sketch. You simply have to write about yourself as if you were an actor in a play about yourself, your life and your dyslexia. You have to write it though from the third person perspective. This basically means that you write it how you think someone who knows you very intimately and sympathetically might write it. For example, if I (Antonio) was to write one today I would start with something like this,

“Antonio is someone who really struggled with his dyslexia in the past. He found it so hard to understand and make sense of his dyslexia and struggled so much to bring it under control. In fact he spent over seven years focusing on his dyslexia on a daily basis before he was able to fully understand it to the point that he was satisfied with. He now wants to help others to understand their dyslexia and to overcome it but in a fraction of the time that it took him to do so. He wants to do this by…”

If you decide to write a sketch about yourself or tape record one if that’s what you prefer, then don’t worry about how long the sketch is, about spellings and grammar, or even where about in your life you begin from. The important thing is that you just start writing about what is significance to you.

In the sketch above that Antonio wrote, he chose to begin writing from where he is with his dyslexia at the moment. The reason for this is that this is what is important for him at this moment in time. If he had written this sketch, let’s say, eight years ago then it would have been a very different sketch from the one he wrote above. He most probably would have written something along these lines,

“Antonio hates being dyslexic! He hates not being able to express his thinking in the assignments he has to write at college. He finds it hard to accept that he is dyslexic and wishes that he could get rid of it so that he can get on with his life. He spends hours writing his assignments and never gets the grades that he thinks he deserves…”

What to do with the sketch once you’ve done one

Once you have written a sketch file it away, work on exploring your dyslexia more, and then write another sketch. This might sound a bit of a strange thing to do and perhaps might seem to be a bit of a pointless exercise. However, it is the process of writing a sketch that is important as it gets you to really focus on your dyslexia. As you gain more and more understanding of your dyslexia you will notice that the sketches you write will be completely different from the earlier ones that you wrote. In this sense they are a good way of gauging your progress and keeping track of it.

If you feel that you would like coaching through the process of becoming more aware of you dyslexia and want help also to find ways to overcome your dyslexia, contact us for information about our online tuition service.