I’m sharing my personal experience with masking my spelling challenges in my past career in Land Surveying. Looking back now, after years of coaching, I see so many ways that I could have accommodated myself instead of hiding.
My spelling errors became a big hurdle on that job, and at the time I was trying to deny it was a challenge for me. Now, when I identify a challenge at work, I dive in, I explore why I think and operate that way, and I adjust.
I am sharing this story to remind you- lean into your growing edges. That is how you achieve real success that grows with you.
CLICK HERE to schedule your FREE consultation call.
Transcription:
So, people talk about masking. When you have a neurodiversity, in certain circumstances you will do some masking, and that means that you attempt to camouflage that you, in my case, don’t have a spelling issue.
One of the biggest mistakes I ever made—and about lying to myself that I didn’t struggle with dyslexia, and that I didn’t struggle with spelling, and that I wasn’t always going to struggle with spelling—was when I had a job in civil engineering and land surveying. I was helping to develop property. You might not know much about that.
Anyways, at some point—um—at the time, documents were made official by literally having them printed on vinyl. And those documents were thereby—this was done for development of property—those documents were then brought in to the county and kept on file. They had them in vinyl because they needed them in case they ever left the building.
I can tell you that I have been to county offices with a hand grinder—electric, next to a plug-in—grinding off my misspellings, because I was not really clear to them that I should never be the last person to read these documents. That because of my neurodiversity, I was very gifted at design and very gifted at other things. But one thing that needed to be done was somebody needed to proof—really proofread and edit those final versions of the description and so forth, because there were gonna be misspellings.
So, it was very humbling. It did not go well. Um, it always made me feel less than. It made it hard for me to ask for a raise when it came time, because I felt like I wasn’t good enough and I wasn’t worthy. And that was such crap. And I know that now, but I didn’t know that then. And I wish I had informed myself, and I wish somebody had helped me through some of that.
So, if some of this resonates, you’re not alone. I get it. And when we learn to not mask, and just to be specific about what this looks like for us and how this plays out—that’s what I talk about. And when I’m talking about adult dyslexia, it looks like that. Like, it plays out in life in a variety of ways, and you don’t always know.
But learning to talk about that, and then again, learning to be in your strengths—that got me inspired to start my business. It was not the worst thing in the world, but it sure felt awful at the time.
So, if you’re ready to stop masking, or want to know a whole lot more about how much masking you’re doing and how you can move into your strengths, I am definitely the person to talk to.
I’m JoyGenea. I’m an international neurodiversity coach. I am helping people transform their lives one little step at a time, and one honest conversation with themselves at a time.
Bye now.