Hyperlexia & AuDHD in Adult Women: When Reading Is More Than a Hobby

I almost always have at least one book on the go.

More often, it's two - one non-fiction, one fiction - and there have been stretches of my life where I've been working through four or five books simultaneously, dipping in and out of each of them, sometimes even reading sections of several books in one day.

For a long time, I just assumed this was a personality quirk. A bookish trait.

Then I recently discovered the term hyperlexia.

My AuDHD Journey (The Very Short Version)

Over the past year, I've been on a profound journey of self-discovery. I've come to recognise that my entire lived experience maps onto the experiences of many women who have both Autism and ADHD - a combination often referred to as AuDHD. More specifically, I most strongly identify with women who only discovered their AuDHD in adulthood.

This kind of late identification is far more common than people realise, particularly for women, who have often spent decades masking, adapting, and wondering why life feels harder than it seems to for everyone else.

There is so much I could write about that journey (and I will). But today I want to zoom in on just one piece of the puzzle: hyperlexia.

What Is Hyperlexia?

Hyperlexia is most commonly described in children as an exceptionally advanced ability to decode and read words - often far ahead of their age, and notably ahead of their comprehension abilities. Children with hyperlexia can often read fluently and accurately very early, sometimes self-taught, before anyone has taught them formally.

It's also frequently associated with both Autism and ADHD.

By the time we reach adulthood, the gap between our word decoding and our comprehension has usually narrowed significantly. But certain patterns tend to remain - and when I came across a description of how hyperlexia can present in adult women, I felt deeply, startlingly seen.

Some of those patterns include:

Around reading itself:

• Reading very fast, from a very young age - often self-taught or reading well before school.

• Being pulled towards reading almost compulsively: books, signs, packaging, anything with text - if you see it, you can't not read it.

• Reading fluently aloud, yet also absorbing very little of the meaning when reading aloud.

• Sometimes needing to re-read passages multiple times to actually take them in, despite being "a good reader".

  
  

Around comprehension and communication:

• Finding it easier to read than to listen to someone speaking - I always take in more with a physical book vs an audiobook.

• Struggling with abstract language, implied meaning, or reading between the lines.

• Preferring written communication over phone calls or face-to-face conversations.

• Using language very precisely and literally.

  
  

The broader pattern:

• Being praised as highly intelligent or academic, while privately feeling like you were sometimes faking your understanding.

• Excelling in subjects where you could read and memorise, but struggling where verbal reasoning or deeper comprehension was required, particularly when put on the spot.

This list of experiences surprised me - with just how much it resonated with my own experiences, throughout my life.

Reading as Compulsion, as Refuge

And what resonated just as deeply was this description of how hyperlexia shows up in adult life:

A voracious appetite for books, going beyond simply enjoying reading, and most of the time feeling more like a compulsion or a refuge. Always having a book on the go (often multiple at once). Reading as a primary way to self-regulate or decompress. Having read widely and voraciously from a young age. Books feeling safer or more comfortable than many social situations.

This all rang true for me.

I've also discovered in my research that there's also a particularly interesting layer for women who later identify as autistic. For us, books can serve a dual purpose: satisfying the hyperlexic pull towards text, and functioning as a way to study human behaviour, emotions, and social dynamics that feel less intuitive in everyday life.

This aspect of lived autistic experience in particular hit me really hard. Looking back now, it does not feel like a coincidence that I studied to become a psychologist of all things - I was required to read A LOT to complete both a psychology undergraduate degree and an doctorate, while at the same time I got to satisfy my need to learn about 'how to be a human' (because, honestly for the most part, human behaviour & human interactions have always equally fascinated and baffled me).

The ADHD Connection — Hello, Tsundoku

Hyperlexia isn't only linked to Autism. For those of us with ADHD in the mix, there's also potentially a dopamine-seeking element - which can show up as compulsively acquiring books - far faster than we could ever read them.

There's actually a wonderful Japanese word for this: tsundoku - the act of buying books and letting them pile up, unread. If your bedside table, bookshelves, and Kindle are all overflowing with books you fully intend to read one day, you may be familiar with this particular flavour of hyperlexia.

I am certainly VERY familiar with this (she says, with an overflowing bookshelf behind me!)

Why Hyperlexia in Adult Women with AuDHD Matters to Me

Discovering hyperlexia has been genuinely validating. Not because it changes anything about who I am, but because it gives language to something I've always experienced - and reframes it as a strength rather than an oddity.

As part of my broader journey of self-rediscovery in midlife, it has been meaningful to name this aspect of how my brain works, and to see it clearly: not as a flaw, not as something to manage, but as part of the wonderful particular wiring my brain has - that also makes me the excellent learner, psychologist and communicator, that I am.

What I'm Reading Right Now

Since we're on the subject of books - I feel called to share with you what's currently on my nightstand:

Non-fiction: The Autistic Survival Guide to Therapy by Steph Jones - This is an incredibly insightful, entertaining and funny, tongue-in-cheek read for anyone navigating therapy as a neurodivergent person, and is a valuable learning tool for therapists who want to be more neuroaffirming in their practice.

Fiction: The Women by Kristin Hannah - I've read the first few chapters even quicker than usual, because it's that good.

If any of this resonates with you - the compulsive reading, the late-discovered neurodivergence, the strange relief of finally having words for your experience - I'd love to hear from you.

You're not alone with your wonderfully wired brain, even if it has been largely misunderstood until now.

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I'm Dr. Jenny Turner, Clinical Psychologist, Mum, late-in-life-self-identifying AuDHD human, and founder of Mind Body Soul Psychology - a specialist, trauma-informed, private psychology service for women.

I can help you at any stage of your life journey - whether you need support to enter adulthood, navigate perimenopause, heal from trauma, finally transform your relationship to your own anxieties, shame, guilt, rage and/or overwhelm - I can support you to enrich your life & relationships.

My services are trauma-informed, non-pathologising, compassion-focussed, neuroaffirmative, and always offered through an intersectional feminist lens - most people I work with identify as a woman, but my services are trans & non-binary inclusive.

I offer online appointments to women based all over the UK, and I offer in-person appointments in Ripon, North Yorkshire - click here to find out more: www.mindbodysoulpsychology.co.uk

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