Dyslexics are visual learners with inherent mental gifts and talents. People who develop dyslexia think in pictures rather than words; they are imaginative, creative, and solve problems by looking at the whole picture rather than working step-by-step.
When a dyslexic encounters an object that is unfamiliar or confusing, the natural tendency is to turn that object around in the mind to make sense out of it. This is very creative and works well in the natural world when looking at 3D objects, but does not work at all in reading, writing, or doing some forms of math. This kind of thinking we call non-verbal conceptualization. It's fast and powerful in the right situations. (see Two Kinds of Thought)
The problem comes in when trying to use this mental process to figure out words and numbers. What the dyslexic is doing is trying to make sense out of letters or numbers (2D images) as if they were objects in nature. The result is confusion. Confusion can then lead to symptoms like slow reading, poor spelling, poor comprehension, dysgraphia (handwriting that’s hard to read), and/or math problems.