A Review of 2014: The Year of Adventure

I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas had a wonderful and peaceful holiday! Larry and I had a quiet but very enjoyable time.

It’s hard for me to believe that this is the last post I will write in 2014. The years go by so quickly now!

Before the start of 2014, I chose a word to guide me through the year: Adventure. I did have some adventures during the year, some fun and exciting, some not-so-fun but life-changing, some big, some small.

Here are some of my adventures in 2014:

January: I opened a freelance editing business.

February: I started thinking about and making notes to write a mystery novel. I went sledding for the first time in years and had a blast!

One of my favorite photos from 2014. It was taken by Larry.

March: I covered the Group 1A boys basketball finals in Richmond and wrote a story about it—me, a non-sportswriter.

April: Larry and I started our first garden in the raised bed.

The raised bed garden in June.

May: I did an interview for a story on OCD and scrupulosity on CNN.com.

June: Relationships with family members changed forever.

July: I started to knit. I went on a ride-along with a deputy with the county sheriff’s office.

Chase Bird doesn't seem to think too highly of my knitting.

September: I made an adjustment in my medications that made a big, positive difference in my depression. I didn't start talk therapy as I planned. I put that off until 2015 because of scheduling problems.

October-November: I started and finished physical therapy for a problem that remains to be diagnosed for sure: Neck? Shoulder? Both?

November: Larry and I tried authentic Japanese food for the first time. We found snow at the Peaks of Otter on Thanksgiving Day.

One adventure I worked on the whole year was reading. Yes, reading is always an adventure for me. I set a goal to read 24 books. I thought that was manageable and not so high that I would set myself up for failure.

I actually went over my goal and read 27 books. That might end up being 28 for 2014 since I’m currently reading one of my Christmas books.

I read a lot of articles and essays, too.

All but three of the books I read fall into the mystery/thriller category. I’m not sure what that says about me. Yes, I love mysteries. But maybe I needed some escape time, too.

Of the mysteries, 15 of them were by John Sandford. I discovered him last Christmas, and as you can guess, I found his stories captivating.

Here are the three nonfiction books I read:

The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness. By Elyn R. Saks.

Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. By Palmer J. Parker.

Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets the Glittering World. By Shirley Hershey Showalter.

I’m not sure yet what number of books I will set as a goal for 2015, but it will be higher than 24 or even 27. And I hope to include more nonfiction books.

So there’s a quick overview of 2014, one that in no way reflects the complexity of life. I am glad to put 2014 behind me.

On Thursday, let’s talk about 2015.

Readers, what one word sums up your 2014?

How books saved my life

The library in Altavista. Our county has four branches.

Does that title seem like an exaggeration? Over the top? Maybe.

Books didn’t literally save my life. A pile of books didn’t literally keep me from dying.

But they helped me survive mentally. I got through a lot of trying times because of books, especially when I was a child.

Books made me feel secure. I read some books over and over, so they were familiar to me.

I suppose they were an escape, too, from tension that was sometimes in the house, from anxiety and fear.

The real thing books did for me was to show me the world. I learned that other people lived different lives from me. I learned how other people treated each other. I was inspired to live a different life.

I visited the county library quite often, along with the school library.

I loved walking up and down the aisles of the county library. For a while, I stuck to the area holding the juvenile books, but gradually I started looking at the books in the other sections.

The librarian, Mrs. Guthrie, seemed to be able to identify every book in the place. She knew where every book was and whether or not I might like it.

Here were some of my favorites:

*Trixie Belden books

*The Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace

*A Gift of Magic by Lois Duncan

*Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp

*Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume

*Rosamond du Jardin books featuring the characters Pam and Penny Howard and Tobey Haydon

*Encyclopedia Brown books

*Books featuring the Tuckers (Tina, Terry, Merry, Penny, and Tom) by Jo Mendel

*Nancy Drew books

*Robin Kane books

*A biography of Amelia Earhart that I read over and over

*Sherlock Holmes stories

I had such a good time working back through my memories, remembering the books I read as a young person. Now I want to read them again.

Chase Bird seems to like reading, too. We're now reading "Personal," by Lee Child.

What books did you read as a child? And if you have children, what are they reading?

Gardening, knitting, books, and hints of fall

Hello, dear readers. I’m finishing up the week with a hodgepodge of things that I’ve been doing and observing:

Our garden is just about over for the summer. Larry picked these cucumbers and peppers Thursday morning.

We were disappointed that the tomatoes didn’t do well. We also didn’t get any broccoli or fully-grown carrots. But we learned some things that we’ll put to good use next year.

***

The scarf I started knitting has morphed into a kitty blanket. I started out with a width that I thought was manageable and suitable for a scarf. But I quickly found that it’s almost too wide to keep on my needles.

I also discovered that it’s the right width for Chase Bird’s kitty bed that sits under the sofa table in the living room.

So it will be a soft blanket for Chase Bird to lie on.

***

Last weekend I read an excellent book by Elyn Saks: The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.

Saks is a law professor at the University of Southern California and has many more professional accomplishments.

In her book, she writes about her life with schizophrenia and how she built a life with work, friends, and love while battling it.

I didn’t want to put the book down. It was hard to read in places—she describes her psychosis with honesty and detail—but the way she fought through it to a good life is amazing and inspirational.

If you enjoy memoirs, you will enjoy this book.

***

We’re already seeing some acorns from the oak trees in the front yard. I’m so glad to see them. I hope we have a good crop this year for the animals. And I hope fall weather is not too far away.

This week’s weather in Central Virginia gave us a taste of fall—daytime temperatures in the 70s and low-mid 80s and some of the nights dipping into the 50s. I love fall, and I can’t wait for it to arrive.

But hotter weather is returning next week. Oh, well. Soon.

One thing about this time of year I don’t enjoy: allergies. I’m allergic to ragweed, and apparently, it has arrived. Itchy eyes, sneezing, sniffling—you get the idea.

Are there any signs of fall where you live? Do you even want to think about it? And what have you been up to this week?

7 ways to cope in times of overwhelming anxiety

If you’ve read my blog posts this week, you know that it has been a very anxious time of late.

But even during the bad times, we can still learn or be reminded of what we’ve learned in the past.

I decided right away that I was not going to get down. And I took some steps in self-care that I believe helped me navigate new territory.

Before I go into those, though, I want to thank you for your kind words, your understanding, your caring, and your presence. Thank you so much, dear readers, for supporting me during a bad time, for reminding me that I am not alone.

And I can’t say enough about my husband. His quiet presence and his open heart are treasures for which I can never be grateful enough.

Here are some of the ways I’ve coped:

Fun reading

I’ve divided reading into two categories. The first one I call fun reading. It’s reading that you don’t “need” to do. It’s not meant for self-improvement. It’s for entertainment, enjoyment. It’s for fun.

During times when I didn’t want to think about any real-life problems, it was a pleasure to turn to reading mysteries. I read Storm Prey, by John Sandford (one of my favorites).

Now I’m reading a book called The Faithful Spy, by new-to-me author Alex Berenson. It’s wonderful. And I’ve found a new author to follow.

Helpful reading

This kind of reading is for self-improvement, though, of course, enjoyment is also part of the experience.

I got out my copy of Mindfulness for Beginners, by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I previously studied part of the book, but never finished. I started over and have gained a lot of insight into the ways our minds work and the relationship between our thoughts and reality.

Mindfulness meditation

I turn to mindfulness meditation when I try to focus my thoughts. I increased my practice in order to deal with the swirl of thoughts and feelings that were negatively affecting my moods and quality of life.

Right now I am using the CD that came with the book by Kabat-Zinn I wrote of above. It’s helpful for me right now to have a voice leading me into the meditation.

Writing

Writing is so natural for me, something I turn to in just about every situation. I wrote down some of the thoughts I had that scared me, that made me feel especially sad and guilty. A lot of what I wrote will probably never see the light of day. But just getting the words down gave them a safe place to rest, out of my constant thoughts.

Music

I’ve had a difficult time falling asleep lately. I’ve found that listening to certain music helps quiet my mind.

For times when I’m trying to relax, it’s better for me to listen to instrumental music with no words.

My favorites are Lifescapes’ “Meditations: Native American Flute” and Yoga Journal’s “Pure Relaxation.”

Visualization

I started doing this almost by accident and found that it helped me relax.

While listening to one song on “Pure Relaxation,” I started visualizing being on a boat in the ocean, right at sunset. It was almost like I was watching a movie that I was adding details to. I imagined Larry and me on the boat, the wind blowing our hair. I could see the lights on shore. The stars were starting to come out. It was a beautiful time.

With the next song, I imagined being in a cabin at night with Larry and Chase Bird. Snow was falling. We sat in chairs by the fire, reading. Then we turned off the lights so we could see the snow falling outside. Chase Bird sat on my lap for a while, then on Larry’s. We were quiet and at peace.

Now when I hear those songs, I am immediately in those places, either on the boat or in the cabin. I have found myself smiling in the dark as I visualize.

Playing with my cat

You knew I would mention Chase Bird, didn’t you? Playing with him takes me out of myself. I laugh at his antics and stay busy chasing the toy that he bats back with amazing strength and agility.

Chase Bird guarding the treat bags that he knocked off the table.

What ways do you cope with overwhelming anxiety? Please share.

Mid-week thoughts during vacation

I am hitting the middle part of my week off from the newspaper, but I’m trying not to focus on it. Vacation weeks always fly by, don’t they?

It was really nice on Tuesday not to be laying out pages and reviewing copy at the newspaper. I like my job, but it’s nice to get a respite now and then from a day that is usually very stressful.

I’ve been doing some editing work. I enjoy the editing process so much, and it’s nice working from home.

I’ve also been reading. I just finished Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn.

Have you read it? What did you think?

I found it fascinating, frightening, troubling. It’s incredibly well- written, and I really didn’t want to put the book down.

But boy, the story itself is disturbing. I hope I never meet people like the main characters, Nick and Amy. Or if I’ve already met them, I hope I don’t learn anymore about them.

If I dream about the characters, which I sometimes do after I read a book, the dreams will actually be nightmares.

Yes, that disturbing. If a book can make me feel that way about the characters, I think the writer has done a good job.

On that note, here are a couple more photos to lift myself out of Nick and Amy’s world:

Have you ever read a book that, while it was excellent, had disturbing characters that stayed in your mind after you finished the book?

The influence of my childhood reading

Having to empty one of my bookcases to move it for the heat pump work was an inconvenience. But on the positive side, it has allowed me to look over some books that I haven’t opened in years.

Some of those books are ones that I received as a child.

I was a bookworm from an early age. I remember being fascinated with books even before I could do more than recognize the letters of the alphabet.

OCD has bothered my reading on and off, but I always find my way back to the love of reading.

Trixie, Honey, Diana, Jim, Brian, and Mart find mysteries to solve even while on vacation in Arizona.

I found my first two Trixie Belden mysteries among some books that my oldest brother had read when he was a young boy. Those Trixie Belden books started my lifelong love of mystery books.

I eventually collected most of the series, but over the years, through a lot of moves as a young adult, I’ve ended up with just two.

I took the whole box of Little House books with me on vacation one time and read my favorite parts as I rode in the car.

When I was in the third or fourth grade, I received the Little House books for Christmas. I read and reread those books so many times. I can still remember many of the stories.

This is the second book in the series, where the Ingalls family moves out to the prairies.

I got in the habit as a child of writing my name in my books. Here’s my signature as a child:

Nancy Drew was another favorite series. I collected a lot of them, and still have them. Password to Larkspur Lane was one of the best.

This book had some scary moments. Nancy helped rescue some elderly people being held against their will.

I’m still working on organizing my books. I’m moving them around on different bookcases, trying to give them a logical order and trying to keep them neat enough to enjoy looking at.

Here’s what I’ve done so far. You can see that I still love mysteries.

On the top shelves, you’ll find Sue Grafton, Kathy Reichs, Meg Gardiner and Lee Child. On the bottom shelf are my Trixie Belden, Little House, and Nancy Drew books.

I’ve recently discovered the mystery/thriller novels of John Sandford. I’ll be adding his books to the shelves soon.

What did you read when you were a child? If you read mysteries now, who is your favorite author?

A quiet winter’s weekend

"Trees in January"

I’ve spent a quiet weekend burrowed inside from the cold. I ventured out only twice, once Saturday and once on Sunday.

It rained all day Sunday. It’s supposed to get warmer through the night, then the arctic air hits Monday (today) and we’ll have wind chills below zero.

It won’t be nearly as bad as many of you in other parts of the country and the world have it, but it will be very cold for this area of Virginia.

Over the weekend, I read a lot. In fact, I finished my first book of 2014, a mystery by John Sandford. Sandford is the pen name for John Camp, a writer who won a Pulitzer as a journalist.

I read the first of the Lucas Davenport series, Rules of Prey. It was not only scary and intense, but well written.

I also took some naps, sat by the fire with Chase Bird, played with him, did some household chores and watched some TV with Larry.

I didn’t do much adventuring this weekend, as you might guess.

I’ve had to come to the realization that the holidays are really over. The extra time off from work, the changes in schedule for the past two weeks—it’s all done, over with. Now it’s back to the usual.

That thought doesn’t appeal to me. But I’m pushing through my reluctance.

I’ve got work to do for the newspaper.

And I will get my business license for the freelance editing this week. I tried to get it last week, but I had missed a step in the process and had to take care of that bit of business first. I look forward to telling you when I’m officially in business.

And there are some other writing projects percolating.

I’ve just got to shake myself out of my semi-stupor and get back into the routine, with my new sense of adventure.

Are you ready to get back into more of a normal routine? Or has that already happened for you?

Reading OCD revisited

The most-read post I’ve written for this blog is one called “Read, reread, again and again: Reading OCD.”

When I check the list of search terms used to find my blog, I often find listed something to do with reading.

I never knew until I wrote that post that so many people with OCD suffer from the compulsion of rereading the words on a page until if feels “right” to move on to the next page.

I used to believe that I was the only person in the world who had that problem.

Reading OCD is one of those OCD symptoms that come and go with me. Sometimes I read unimpeded by any sense that I haven’t read each word “perfectly.”

Other times, it’s a struggle to read, so I just avoid it.

On Goodreads, I set as a goal to read 26 books this year. I set a low goal on purpose, so if my reading OCD kicked in, I wouldn’t totally blow a high goal.

So far, I’ve read 12 books. According to Goodreads, I’m three books behind schedule.

That disappoints me, to be behind schedule. I’ve still got enough “good student” in me to want to measure up, even to an arbitrary goal I set on an online social media site.

More than reaching that goal, though, is the desire to free myself from the reading OCD.

What works best for me is to plow through the pages. I don’t allow myself to go back and reread.

Something I do that helps me to be able to do that is to tell myself that I can go back and reread later if I need to or want to. I delay doing the compulsion of rereading.

After a while of doing this, the anxiety lessens and I start enjoying myself. And I don’t reread.

Reading is one of the chief pleasures of my life. I’m not going to allow anything to keep me from enjoying it.

For your reading pleasure, here’s a list of books that I’ve read this year so far. All of them have been good reads, and I encourage you to check out any that interest you:

Flash and Bones. By Kathy Reichs.

Killing Floor. By Lee Child.

Lessons from the Monk I Married. By Katherine Jenkins.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. By Charles Duhigg.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. By Susan Cain.

Bones Are Forever. By Kathy Reichs.

Ransom River. By Meg Gardiner.

Reaching: A Memoir. By Grace Peterson.

Proof of Heaven. By Eban Alexander.

Tripwire. By Lee Child.

Poison Flower. By Thomas Perry.

The Kill Artist. By Daniel Silva.

  Reading is my favorite leisure-time, solitary activity. What’s yours?

OCD and fear of change

My blogging friend Keith recently wrote a great post about change called “If you do what you’ve always done . . .” on his blog Musings of an Unapologetic Dreamer.

In the post, he ponders the quote, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

This resonated with me because I want to make some positive changes in my life, and my tendency is to think about them and wait for them to happen to me.

As Keith says in his blog post, “if you want something different, you need to do something different.”

I want to do something different. I want to start my own business. I want to start a freelance editing business.

Just telling you that is kind of scary. But the real fear has come as I’ve gotten deeper into planning.

Many people have fears when they consider starting a business. They worry about being able to get clients or customers. They worry about being able to make money. They wonder if they have what it takes to be successful.

My biggest fears are connected to my OCD.

I have OCD about reading and writing. When the reading OCD is active, I have a hard time reading a passage without compulsively rereading it. When the writing OCD is active, I may write and rewrite, worrying about whether the correct meaning is being conveyed with my words.

Would having OCD make it impossible for me to be a successful freelance editor? Would I get so bogged down with OCD that I wouldn’t be able to perform the job?

I could physically feel the fear Sunday afternoon as I read about starting a business. My heartbeat quickened. I felt nauseated. I felt a sense of foreboding.

But I also recognized what was happening. I thought about all the times I’ve been excited about making a change, then let fear stop me. I thought about how I want my life to be different, a life lived according to my priorities and values.

I thought about how I want to do something different.

I have OCD. And I have generalized anxiety disorder and depression. But I’m also being treated for them. I’ve learned ways to manage them. I’m so much better than I used to be, and I have every hope that improvement will continue.

The fears I’m feeling are understandable. They are not an excuse to stop my plans.

I didn’t intend to write a post about freelancing yet. But I decided to tell you what I was planning and what I feared. Being open with you about my fears helps me push them back. It makes it easier for me to take the next step in putting together a business.

So more news to come. Stay tuned!

When have you had to push past fear to accomplish something important to you? How did you do it?

OCD and the loss of dreams



The building at Bowling Green State University where I took many classes and taught many classes.



Obsessive-compulsive disorder, a debilitating anxiety disorder, can take a lot away from us. It can take time, money, peace of mind, self-esteem. And dreams.

The dream

When I was a senior in college, I began to worry about what I would do once I graduated.

I wanted to be a writer or a social worker. Those were my two interests. The desire to write had been with me since I was a child. The desire to be a social worker was ignited during one of several sociology classes I took in college.

Basically, I wanted to write, and I wanted to save the world. With a degree in English.

During my last semester, one of my professors talked with me about my future and suggested that I go to graduate school. I could teach and become a professor and write important literary papers and books.

I liked the idea, and I liked the thought of having a definite place to go after graduation from college.

So I applied and got accepted into Bowling Green State University in Ohio. They gave me a graduate assistantship, which meant they paid my tuition and gave me a stipend in exchange for teaching while I worked on my master’s degree in English.

I took classes and taught classes for two years, writing a thesis during my last semester (which is a story in itself that I will have to tell you one day). And I finished. I got my M.A. in English.

The next step, if I hoped to become a college professor, was to get a Ph.D. I chose to stay at BGSU for my doctoral work.

For the next two or so years, I took classes, put together a doctoral committee, chose a genre and time period to focus on, created a reading list for my doctoral exams, studied for my exams, took my written and oral exams, chose a dissertation topic, did preliminary research, put together a proposal for my dissertation, and gave a public presentation of that proposal.

I passed everything and ended up being in ABD status: All But Dissertation.

In other words, all I had left to do before receiving my doctorate was to write my dissertation. As my dissertation chair told me, “All you have left to do is to write a very long paper.”

One more step. One more task.

The OCD

What I haven’t told you yet is how OCD was a part of those years that I worked so hard.

I had reading OCD, which grew worse as I moved into the doctoral program. There were many books on my reading list that I was never able to finish because of OCD.

I had OCD about my writing, which made me obsessed with the possibility of plagiarizing, making it difficult for me to research and to then write a coherent paper.

I had contamination OCD, which made me clean my bathroom for hours, vacuum my apartment repeatedly, wipe down my kitchen counters. I spent literally hours doing these compulsions.

I had checking OCD. For example, I could spend huge chunks of time checking the stove in my apartment, making sure it was off, even if I hadn’t used it.

I had hit-and-run OCD. I drove the streets of Bowling Green looking for bodies that I imagined could be there.

The loss

The OCD affected my performance in graduate school from the beginning, but it got worse as time went by. It became especially difficult to cope as I faced what seemed to be the monumental task of writing a dissertation in spite of not being able to properly read, research and write.

Even though I started medication treatment during my third year in my doctoral program, it didn’t help enough, or help in time, for me to finish the dissertation by the time my fellowship ran out.

I moved back to Virginia, with vague hopes of finishing my dissertation there. But the OCD, though drastically improved, still fed into my academic work.

I never finished my dissertation. I never finished my Ph.D.

The vow

It may sound strange, but I don’t wish I was a college professor. The writing I wanted to do had nothing to do with the study of contemporary fiction. I don’t miss teaching.

I don’t believe I wasted the time leading up to the dissertation because education is never wasted.

I don’t dwell on it like I used to. I don’t know that my life would have been better or more productive with a Ph.D.

What I do regret, though, is not finishing a goal after coming so close.

I regret the fact that OCD was so strong then that it affected me reaching my goal, my dream.

But with all my tools to fight OCD that I’ve gained through treatment, with all my intent to live a full life, I won’t let OCD take away any more dreams.

What ways have you protected your dreams and reached your goals?

Reading OCD does a disappearing act

I’m reading again.

That may sound like a small thing, but it’s huge for me.

I periodically have a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder called reading OCD.

I wrote about reading OCD in this post. Basically, this form of OCD makes me obsess over whether or not I’ve “really” read a passage in a book or magazine and whether or not I’ve understood what I’ve read.

The compulsion, then, is to reread passages over and over until it feels “right.”

This makes reading laborious and sometimes unbearable. I find myself avoiding reading. It’s just not worth the effort.

Reading OCD first affected me when I was in the seventh grade. It made doing schoolwork a nightmare. I had a hard time finishing assignments because I took so much time to read the work.

Reading OCD followed me periodically through school and in the years after. I’ve gone through periods when I’ve zipped through books with no problem, not even thinking about reading.

Then I’ve had periods when I couldn’t finish one book for weeks at a time, and I’ve stopped trying.

My efforts to resolve this OCD ritual have had mixed results. I normally try to discipline myself not to go back and reread, no matter how badly I want to. Sometimes this works. Sometimes I end up unable to focus on what I’m reading because of the anxiety.

I have no explanation for why this form of OCD, or for that matter, any form of OCD, can wax and wane. I don’t know why I go into periods of not being able to read. I don’t know why those periods will end without warning.

I do have some suspicions. I think that the more anxious I am generally, and the more other OCD symptoms are flaring, the more the reading OCD acts up.

I went through such a period this past fall. For some weeks, I didn’t pick up a book for serious reading because of the pain of trying to keep myself from rereading.

I think part of the reason was because a medication I was on was ramping up my anxiety. I wrote about a change in medication that I made shortly before the holiday season began. With that change, my general anxiety level has dropped.

Maybe that’s why I was able to read and finish a book over Christmas. Then shortly after Christmas, I picked up a book that I had received as a gift and started reading. And read and read. I read it in about two days, then picked up another book and finished that in a few days. Considering that I had to go to work during that time, I was thrilled.

The reading is good now, and I’m thankful for it. I hope it lasts.

I hope the next time reading OCD strikes, I’ll be more successful at my attempts to derail it.

And what am I reading? I just finished A Wanted Man, by Lee Child and Flash and Bones, by Kathy Reichs. Now I’m reading a nonfiction book that I’ll probably review here.

Are you a reader? What kinds of books do you read? If you’re on Goodreads, you can find me under http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7185436-tina.

Read, reread, again and again: Reading OCD

  Imagine opening up a book to begin reading it. Chapter one. You read a paragraph. Then you reread it. Then you move to the second paragraph, but you realize that you may not have read the first paragraph well enough. So you go back and read paragraph one again. Then you read and reread paragraph two several times. You finally make it to the end of the page, and in turning the page, you think, “I’ve read page one adequately.”

  But you can’t be sure. Did you understand everything you read? Will you remember it?

  So you reread page one, reading and rereading the paragraphs again. After an hour of being on page one, you get tired and decide to put down the book. You’ll get through the book someday. It’s only the third time you’ve tried to read chapter one.

That’s reading OCD. That’s how difficult it is to read when you doubt that you have “really” read the paragraph or page and feel compelled to go back and reread again and again.

When OCD first affected my reading, I was about 12 years old, in seventh grade. At first it affected mostly reading that I had to do for school. But as I got older, the OCD invaded my pleasure reading. And I felt betrayed.

The obsessions and compulsions were affecting the heart of me, what I loved the best: reading a good book.

What was I obsessing about? Why was it so important to know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had read every word? Because I believed if I missed a word, or a paragraph, or a page, I would be dishonest if I said I read the book. This was especially true if the book was a classroom assignment.

I also wanted to make sure I understood what I read and would remember it once I got further into the book.

This symptom of OCD has followed me throughout my life. Sometimes, I don’t want to pick up a book because I know what a struggle it will be to read it. Other times, I can fly through books and enjoy the experience with no OCD problem.

Not too long ago, I went through an OCD reading problem time, and it wasn’t fun. I have books lined up in my Nook and on my bookshelves, waiting for me to read them. But I avoided it because of the pain of trying to get through a page.

Very recently, though, the OCD has lifted enough to enjoy reading again, and I’ve been playing catch-up.

My method of getting beyond the reading OCD is to force myself not to go back and reread. This takes a lot of discipline, and I’m not always successful at it.

Jonathan Grayson Ph.D. discusses reading OCD in his book Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Personalized Program for Living with Uncertainty. He calls it a reading and understanding problem and refers to it as “one of the most insidious OCD problems you can have” (p. 168). He further explains it:

“The core of the problem is having the feeling that you don’t understand what you read. As a result, you reread a sentence or a word over and over before going on to the next sentence. Unfortunately, this contributes to destroying the flow of what you are reading, so the feeling of understanding becomes even more unattainable. Generally, the more important the material, the greater the anxiety. Schoolwork becomes torture.” (p. 169)

However, sufferers understand more than they think they do, said Grayson. When he has patients read something in his office, they usually understand the main points. “However, when this obsession is left untreated, perception is everything. If you have this reading problem, it feels as if the feared consequence has taken place: Your ability to understand what you read has been compromised” (p. 169).

Some people with reading OCD also have obsessions about good and bad numbers and words, which just complicates the whole process of reading, Grayson said.

In order to move forward from the reading rituals, sufferers “have to be willing not to understand portions of what was read or perhaps miss material that might be important” (p. 169).

Grayson listed some reading exposure aids: read aloud, cover the lines already read with an index card, use a marker to cross out random words so you will miss some material, and tear out pages once they have been read.

If the material to be read is school or work related and is very important to understand, then rereading is allowed, but not until you reach the end of the chapter or the work itself, Grayson said.

I can’t see myself tearing out pages of books as I read them, but I can appreciate that an index card covering up the words I’ve already read may be helpful. And I like the “permission” to reread under certain circumstances.

I suspect I will be dealing with reading OCD off and on for the rest of my life. What I can do is apply what I’ve learned and do the best I can until the full joy of reading returns. And it always does.

  Have you ever experienced reading OCD? How did you deal with it? How important are books to you?