Stress
Stress is the personal perception of how one communicates with the environment around us and is highly subjective. It is normal for pupils to be anxious when taking tests as people commonly wish to do their best. According to Thomson (1995, p. 33), ‘stress appears threatening only when it becomes pervasive and invasive, when it affects too many areas of our lives and when we have neither the strategies nor the energy to cope with it’.
A combination of factors (e.g. lack of strategies or lack of skills) can result in: ‘an overwhelming sense of apprehension, incompetence and confusion, sleeplessness and fatigue. It also invites the victim to resort to escape mechanisms which indirectly relieve pressure, to fantasise, obsess, rebel or withdraw’ in dyslexics at school (Thomson, 1995, p. 33; Alexander-Passe, in press-1, 2).
Whilst one can’t reasonably protect children from all stress, as some measure of it is useful, parents and teachers should monitor stress levels carefully. Thomson (1995, p. 34) notes that ‘if stress levels become intolerably high, many dyslexic children develop their own inappropriate strategies, becoming disruptive, aggressive, withdrawn or school phobic’ (Alexander-Passe, in press-1). Some even also enter primary school vulnerable, as they have already learnt in pre-school that are unable to learn as easily as their peers.
As Fawcett (1995, p. 12) notes ‘it is hardly surprising that life is stressful for a dyslexic child who is failing within the school system….a useful analogy here might be that of the dyslexic constantly running on a treadmill, just to stay in one place in a range of skills that others acquire with ease’.
Hales (1994b) notes using the 16PF (Cattell, Eber and Tatsuoka, 1970) with N=300 dyslexics of mixed age, found that infant aged dyslexic children had scores which indicated at primary school they were tense and frustrated, with low motivation and high anxiety, and at secondary school a desire to keep in the background. Also in the middle school he found there was a noticeable drop in confidence and optimism, especially among girls. He also found an overall inverse relationship between anxiety and IQ, with middle school children with low IQ having the higher levels of anxiety.
Alexander-Passe (2008a, b) investigated the sources and manifestations of stress in N=78 school-aged dyslexics compared to N=77 sibling controls. Results suggest significant differences between the groups, with dyslexics in primary school experiencing the highest stress levels, specifically in: interactions with teachers; worries over academic examinations (SATs) and performance testing; causing emotional (fear, shyness and loneliness); and physiological (nausea, tremors, or rapid heart beat) manifestations. Results also suggest that dyslexics in larger families (3 to 4 sibling families) experience greater stress in interactions with their peers, than those in smaller families (2 sibling families) – possibly from greater unfair sibling comparison.
Anxiety
Grigorenko (2001), Hales (1994) and Scott (2004) suggest there is clear evidence that dyslexics suffer from anxiety disorders. Aniety triggers the body’s self-defences into action, such as adrenaline to give the body a boost, however after 5-10 minutes if the anxiety is still there, the body is unable to cope and exhaustion kicks in.
Legrand, McGue and Iacono (1996) suggest that approximately 20% of all adolescents suffer from anxiety disorders which can exhibit itself in numerous ways: panic attacks; irritability; restlessness; poor concentration; incoherence in speaking; fear; and the inability to move. Physical features include: dizziness; faintness; sweating; tremor; tension in neck; chest or stomach pain; nausea; shortness of breath; diarrhoea; increased urination; palpitations; hyperventilation; and insomnia (Gomez, 1991). It has been linked with alcoholism and drug taking, with Scott (2004) suggesting that such abuse is higher amongst dyslexics than non-dyslexics.
As Gomez (1991, p. 68) states ‘everyone is anxious some of the time - survival depends upon alertness to danger’ and one should distinguish between a rational human response to real threat, as opposed to the irrational, neurotic and often learned response of excessive anxiety that has become an end in itself. This is particularly relevant for dyslexics who may be experiencing a very real threat to them[selves]’ (Scott, 2004, p. 169). In studies of children’s anxieties (Winkley, 1996; Jacobs, 1986) the following basic anxieties were found: fear of isolation; abandonment; not understanding; not knowing; being disoriented in new circumstances; and fear of the notion of emptiness. Scott (2004, p. 170) says ‘I am struck by how almost every one of these childhood anxieties are particularized in the dyslexic condition’.
The DSM-IV (APA, 1994) defines excessive anxiety or phobia as when an individual’s reactions are out of proportion to the demands of the situation: cannot be explained or reasoned away; and is beyond voluntary control or lead to an avoidance of the feared situation. Other important signs are that such fears persist over an extended period of time and are unadaptive or are not age or stage-specific. Scott (2004, p. 170) a counsellor to dyslexics notes ‘excessive anxiety occurs a lot in dyslexics, and it is a serious and disabling condition…anxiety often leads to panic attacks in both dyslexic children and adults’. Thus it could be suggested that dyslexia as a condition is disabling and the excessive anxiety resulting from the condition is also disabling, thus a double whammy!
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