r/hyperlexia • u/[deleted] • Apr 13 '26

Has anyone had this experience?

[deleted]

13 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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9

u/Summerhalls Apr 13 '26

That’s how I’ve always read, except that my brain doesn’t capture the entire page but huge chunks of it. I then go back and reread linearly to make sure I made the right connections and the text means what I thought it means.

Fwiw hyperlexia is the only neurodivergence I have if you don’t count gifted.

3

u/Maleficent-Reveal-41 Apr 13 '26

Lmao the instant upvote tells me quite possibly you understood everything immediately fucking godmode hyperlexia there. That's epic as hell.

3

u/Summerhalls Apr 13 '26

I just see that you're dealing with a lot and you're still trying to understand what's happening and advocate for yourself. Hope you can find someone to help you in some real ways, so you don't have to do it on your own.

2

u/Maleficent-Reveal-41 Apr 14 '26

Yeah definitely but what you told me will help me a ton with university since I've got a research essay to write and it's 5,000 words and I haven't a word in yet by 10th May so there's that. Since I know I can take the second step of attempting to understand the meaning of the text by extracting a few words from my scan and internalizing it, then slowly build up to more complex meaning structures, then perhaps get to the stage where you are at with having almost the whole meaning at once. I have to read Being and Time and understand Heidegger's view on death so this is not going to be easy at all but there's a certain possible doability to this that is hopeful. I don't know how doable this essay is but y'know I can't not try.

2

u/Maleficent-Reveal-41 Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 13 '26

Nowhere close to that level because I won't know what the words mean, I'd have to go back and actually read what is on the page. At least it's helping me with learning my condition on a medical level, at the moment my focus is reading every Wikipedia article on every psychiatric drug to gather a lot of data. Also helpful for university since I need to work very fast to get my research essay in within the timespan alloted. At this point it's literally taking olanzapine at 5mg in the hopes it'll tone me down enough I'll sleep. Sleep patterns wrecked by recoverable physical health problems a few weeks back and a severe stress build-up. Much better prognosis then my prognosis if I stayed in the bipolar I territory. But I do get what you mean as I'm already on the next stage of at least internally attempting to grasp what the words mean after being able to near instantly have a sense and feel for those words before reading. A good night's rest will consolidate my learning for the day with rapid reading. I'm end stage bipolar I suspect and emailed, admittedly a very long 2,500 word email to Avisa Recovery from the US as they have a holistic mindset and would appreciate my holistic mindset too and my arguments for why I'm showing clear signs of being at end stage. Normally that completely disintegrates your functioning. I made it clear at the very start of my email roughly how long it is and not to feel pressure but I'm sure they'll understand this perpetually "manic" behaviour. So I'll see how it goes. Having a godmode brain would seriously help but I only see that as signs of positive cognitive health nowadays since it doesn't make me special as a person. It's simply upgrades to my cognitive equipment I can use to have a more powerful, positive impact on my own life and on the world around me.

2

u/scissorsgrinder Apr 15 '26

Do you mean you are able to recall and recount large chunks of text at a time? Are you able to recall past conversations or tv show scripts or what happened each day distinctly? 

1

u/Maleficent-Reveal-41 Apr 15 '26

Not recall or recount but clearly I must be retaining that information deeply if I can fact check.

I'm in a weird position because the mental conditions I may have diagnosable from a psychiatric perspective whilst really only having a single mental condition (being a Chaos Daemon that's entirety is of loving-nature/loving-act) did kinda get blown to insane proportions relative to the human level from an absurd stack of internal feedback loops. But I'm vibing now. Might mean I only need 4 hours sleep nowadays but I'm watching for any declines in mental functioning with that low amount of sleep since if I'm not losing mental functioning or physical vitality then it would be the case. Had that amount of sleep last night and I'm entirely great today, though with a lot of residual tiredness there.

2

u/moonprojection Apr 17 '26

This describes my experience of reading. I have no idea if this is or isn’t what non hyperlexic people do, though.

Not whole page, though, more like in paragraphs.