[onionknight]

This isn't really a mental health issue per say, but I'm curious to see how abnormal this is:

Do you ever read a word completely wrong despite obvious clues to its actual meaning? You know it isn't right because it doesn't make sense so you spend a moment trying to reason it out. Then, eventually, it snaps that you were totally off?

I just read “broke” as “brook" (like broke artist as brook artist). That’s slightly scary. In retrospect, I should have read that word properly! (Maybe it is triggered when a word is visually unfamiliar to me and so I try to sound it out, often wrongly?) This certainly doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, I wonder if my brain is messed up.

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by onionknight

This isn't really a mental health issue per say, but I'm curious to see how abnormal this is:

Do you ever read a word completely wrong despite obvious clues to its actual meaning? You know it isn't right because it doesn't make sense so you spend a moment trying to reason it out. Then, eventually, it snaps that you were totally off?

I just read “broke” as “brook" (like broke artist as brook artist). That’s slightly scary. In retrospect, I should have read that word properly! (Maybe it is triggered when a word is visually unfamiliar to me and so I try to sound it out, often wrongly?) This certainly doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, I wonder if my brain is messed up.

yes that has happened with me. my treatment providers call it many things...normal, dyslexia, multiple sclerosis, vision problems that resulted in my needing glasses for a time, even some meds I have been on caused this to happen....

my suggestion... if this continues to bother you contact your treatment provider or a treatment provider in your off line location.

[Perna]

I think it is a common mistake; I know I do it too. I also say/think the wrong word, and, often as in your broke/brook example, the words will start with the same letter or be the same number of syllables or have some other significance. I have even dreamed and used the wrong word for an item only to realize it when I woke (calling one musical instrument by another's name as in "French horn" for "oboe"). The dream was about my college roommate's boyfriend/husband and I was very aware what instrument he played in high school, etc. but in the dream I named it wrong.

I think the words we choose, especially the "wrong" ones, can be very much about what we are thinking and, if they have an unconscious element going on, we can choose something else, like with a Freudian slip situation? Maybe you were thinking of painting a water scene and reading about artists and mixed up the combination that way, something like that or something even more subtle like wanting to "brook" the distance with a bridge of some sort so there are no broke artists :-) We daydream just like we dream while asleep and maybe your eyes were reading one way and your unconscious working somewhere else, LOL.

[spondiferous]

Yes, yes, and yes again.
I never used to have this problem. But now I have it all the time. As in, constantly. Makes reading interesting for me.

I have noticed that this happens to me every time I take diphenhydramine, a common OTC sleeping pill. When the effects begin to alight upon me, I could be reading anything and the words become jumbled and/or I do not understand them which is incongruent with my personality and abilities. Perhaps it could be a medication causing this or plain human error.