Dyslexia can be a debilitating condition, as Debbie Whitfield knows only too well. In Adult Learners Week, she tells Lindsay Jennings how she finally overcame her fear of words.

A GOOD read is an essential item on most people's pre-holiday list. But when Debbie Whitfield finished her book following her Spanish holiday recently, it was a momentous occasion. It was the first book Debbie had ever read - The Boy Next Door by Josie Lloyd and Emlyn Rees - and a moment she will never forget.

"It showed me that books weren't the monster I thought they were, and that I could do it," says Debbie, 26, of Middlesbrough. "I just sat there the whole week, reading."

Debbie's fear of words stemmed from an early age. She missed a great deal of her early years in primary school due to problems with her hearing. It was only after her hearing problems were resolved, that her teachers and mum realised her difficulties with reading were not normal.

"It wasn't as if the words moved on the page, I just physically couldn't read it. When I looked at it, I got this huge fear and I couldn't do it," she says. "It was as if the words weren't there, that they had disappeared."

Her mum suspected she had dyslexia - difficulties with reading, writing and spelling - but Debbie was nine before her condition was officially diagnosed. Then, she was moved around to four schools before ending up in a remedial class with her record saying she had learning difficulties. One of the teachers, she recalls, told her she was stupid and lazy and would never get on in life. "The thing with the remedial classes is that they would give me work to do, and I would finish it all in ten minutes," she says. "I wasn't stupid."

Eventually, they moved her back to mainstream classes and she struggled through with the help of a support teacher. She left school with seven GCSEs thanks to an amanuensis - someone to read and write for her - but gaining help was still a battle.

"My mum had to fight with the authorities to get the amanuensis and they warned me that it would be on my GCSE certificates - but it never was," she says.

After school, she studied for three years at her local college where, with the support of teachers, she blossomed and secured her GNVQ in Business and Finance. But when she came to leave college she learned that the outside world was just as unwelcoming as school.

Astonishingly, she was offered administrative jobs three times, only to be told after she had explained about her dyslexia that the jobs were no longer available. Her confidence plummeted and she ended up working in menswear retail for seven years before she mustered the strength to apply for another job.

"It was buying and selling petrol and I worked for them on trial for a full day and I worked really hard," she says. "At the end of it the company told me I had a job and when I explained about my dyslexia they later told me it had been between two people and they had gone for the other one. They didn't even ring to tell me I had to ring them. It just totally broke my confidence."

Debbie's father had his own rail company and urged his daughter to work for him. She refused, wanting to stand on her own two feet, but eventually relented.

She has since become a site manager at her father's firm in Sheffield. She also went on to attend the DDAT (Dyslexia, Dyspraxia and Attention Therapy) centre in Sheffield for two years where she worked on a specially-devised exercise programme to stimulate the cerebellum - the part of the brain which coordinates balance and language dexterity.

Now, she attends the Stockton Dyslexia Institute once a week where she has been taken back to basics, to the extent of learning the sounds of letters. Not that she minds.

"How could you learn the words if you didn't know the sounds for the letters?" she says.

"I've learned all the rules of English which I should have learned aged six instead of 26. But I've had a new lease of life since. My reading has improved and I've gained in confidence. It still makes me angry because I think I should have had this help before and I don't think I should have had to pay for it."

Her new-found confidence has also led to a new-found love of books. She has finished off her second and is hunting around for a third.

"I could never understand why people enjoyed reading books. I used to think what's so exciting about that?" she laughs.

"Now I know."

* Names have been changed

l DDAT can be contacted on 0870 880 6060 or www.ddat.co.uk

* For more information on the Stockton arm of the Dyslexia Institute contact 01325 283580