I've seen a lot of articles recently entitled something like "Seven reasons why knitting is good for your mental health". No surprises there. But I don't see a lot of articles about the relationship between reading and mental health - something that's become painfully personal to me over the last year - so I've decided to fill the gap.
Firstly, the title. Following convention, it should be something along the lines of "Seven reasons why reading is good for your mental health", but if I was following convention then I shouldn't be writing this at all, because the stigma surrounding mental health would quite like me not to bother anyone with my mental. Well, hard cheese. I'm going for this:
Why mental health is good for your reading, and why reading is good for your mental health.
Ok, so it's not that snappy, but again, hard cheese.
So, why is mental health good for your reading? Well, it's very difficult to concentrate on a book when your thoughts are racing at a million miles an hour. Even if you manage to get your thoughts about everything else to pipe down a bit, then you get the thoughts about reading itself. For the last year - really since I stopped being able to update this blog regularly (not really a coincidence, now I think about it) - every time I've tried to pick up a book, my brain has gone down a rabbit hole along the lines of "But is this the right book? Will you enjoy this book? See, look, it's not immediately a page-turner. You were too tired to read yesterday so you'll have forgotten what's going on. There's no point trying to pick it up again tonight. It wasn't that good anyway. Pick a different one, it might be better." I've lost count of the number of books I've picked up, read a chapter of, then put down again. I stopped going to my monthly book club because I "wasn't enjoying" any of the choices. Now, some of them were probably not for me. But since I've sorted out some of my mental health issues, I've finished at least one of the ones I previously rejected and really enjoyed it, so I think the fault lies more with my brain than the books.
And the worst thing about all of this is that all along I thought it was me. I've been a reader all my life. It's pretty central to who I am. One of the ways I know that is because even throughout this whole period, I haven't stopped WANTING to read books. I haven't stopped donating a significant portion of my salary to Waterstones. I haven't stopped listening to book podcasts and playing with different ideas for tracking the books I wasn't reading. I haven't stopped evangelising about the power of books. So this weird reading slump was deeply confusing. Am I not a reader any more? Have I... grown out of it? Who am I if I don't read? So when I started to be able to read again, when I finished that first precious book, and then the second, I was just deeply grateful that the reading slump was over. I thought it had something to do with having some time off. And then my therapy group were given a case study about a man who was so anxious that he couldn't concentrate on reading, which was something he had previously enjoyed, and suddenly the whole thing made sense. I hadn't lost my identity at all. It was a symptom I hadn't even noticed. I feel like I've found myself again. And that is such a profound relief. My mental health is good for my reading, but it also turns out that reading is pretty good for my mental health. That link just got a bit broken for a while.
So, what have I been reading since I found my sanity again? More on that, and the wonder that was #cosyreadingnight, next time.
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