Teaching myself to read, again

Nearly everyone has had the experience of reading a paragraph or a page in a book, getting to the bottom of it, and then realizing they have no idea what they just read. In 2017, this was happening to me on a regular basis. In fact, it was happening all the time. As a writer, not being able to focus or comprehend reading material was obviously problematic.

This had never been an issue for me in the past. Prior to my experiences in Sweden, I had laser focus. But after my return to the US, I found I could read news articles and the simple short posts people would write on social media, but I couldn’t focus on longform or fiction. My abilities to research and to stay on task were also significantly reduced.

Why the change?

I had been diagnosed with cPTSD in 2017 (actually the diagnosis was PTSD because cPTSD has not yet been included as a diagnosis via the DSM). The hypervigilance I was experiencing, I learned, had a great deal to do with my reduced brain power. You can’t concentrate on reading if your brain has been trained to focus on survival.

If I was unable to recapture my ability to focus and do the deep work required to be a writer, I was going to have to give up my career and seek a job at Stop & Shop or become a Cheese Specialist at Whole Foods (yes, I seriously considered these job opportunities). This just didn’t seem like a very good option for me.

“You must look up executive functioning.” That was the message my brain gave me one morning when I work up. I think my response to that was something along the lines of “What? You mean like in the government?”

As it turns out, executive functioning, controlled by the prefrontal cortex, is a set of mental skills which help people organize, plan, and complete tasks. Executive functioning also directs behavior and motivates us toward achieving our goals and preparing for future events. Executive Function and PTSD: Disengaging from Trauma published at the US National Library of Medicine was a very helpful article. I also learned that I could repair or “rewire” my brain, but it was going to take a lot of work and energy.

I started with children’s books.

I had heaps of books in my to-be-read pile. These included such things as E.O. Wilson’s Consilience, Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens, and Katherine Alden’s Bear and the Nightingale. But I couldn’t complete them. I was constantly distracted by stupid things.

I was also taking a keen interest in learning physics (mostly because I really wanted to understand what the hell my son was talking about) but I couldn’t grasp the academic papers or books he was providing me. The odd thing was, and I have no idea why this was the case, that I could read for hours about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and recovery from narcissistic abuse. I couldn’t get enough. But NPD was simply something I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life reading about. That was “his” problem, not mine.

It was finally on Thanksgiving weekend 2017 that I decided I was going to sit down and read a fiction book even if it took me days/weeks to do it. I was going to read that one book and comprehend it. That was my job for that weekend. Just that. I started with Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card.

It took me over a week to complete Card’s book. But I did and each time I found my concentration wandering, I brought it back to the words on the page. I did that over and over and over. I knew that each time I refocused, I was retraining my brain. When I finished Ender’s Game, I moved on to Charlotte’s Web. From there I concentrated on Fairy Tales. And then there was chick-lit, Norse mythology, Roxane Gay, and Seven Brief Lessons in Physics by Carlo Rovelli.

I researched a lot about executive functioning (thanks, brain!) and during one study session, I discovered Srinivas Rao on Medium. Rao also has a wonderful podcast called The Unmistakable Creative. But in Medium, I came across his piece entitled, Starting Your Day on The Internet is Damaging Your Brain.

Rao writes, “I’ve said before the first 3 hours of your day can dictate how your life turns out. And this often begins with the very first thing that you decide to put in your brain. You can either start you day with junk food for the brain (the internet, distracting apps, etc) or you can start the day with healthy food for the brain (reading, meditation, journaling, exercising, etc). When you start the day with junk food for the brain, you put yourself at a self-imposed disadvantage that inhibits your ability to get into flow and prevents you from doing deep work. When you start the day with health food for your brain, the exact opposite happens.”

Because of all the work I was investing in getting my executive functioning back on-line, Rao’s article led me to believe that checking my email and social accounts first thing every morning was quite counter productive to my mission. So, I stopped. I began taking my coffee outside to the porch and waking up to the blue sky and birds in the yard. I began writing Morning Pages. And I started to meditate.

I meditated all the time. In the morning. In the bath. On walks. I had never considered meditation to be an aid to focus attention. I always believed that its main purpose was to empty one’s mind. I focused completely on my breathing. Each time my mind wandered, I gently brought it back to the breath knowing each time I did so I was retraining my brain.

While I believe cPTSD was certainly an issue with my inability to read comprehensively, I also believe that the distracting influence of social media trains our brains to accept mere sound bites of information and enforces lack of attention. If we constantly are digesting sound bites, our brains adjust to those limits of information. I recently bought a new mobile phone. There is not one single social media application installed on it. I feel pretty good about that.

It’s now been almost one year since I began that journey starting with Ender’s Game last Thanksgiving. It was a lot of hard work and it was extremely enjoyable. I believe my ability to concentrate is higher than it has even been, as is my ability to do deep work. I think, and I hope, that my writing has improved. I’ve so far read twenty-two books of fiction in 2018 as well as hundreds of news articles, longform pieces, books on neuroscience and physics, and many books on narcissistic recovery.

What a gift this has been. A gift that I gave to myself. And I appreciate it so much more than before I moved to Sweden, because rather than taking my ability to focus for granted, this is something I worked for.

Lisa Mikulski is a freelance writer and photographer based in Boston, MA. Available for print or online publications. Focusing on art, design, life experiences. Editorial, features, content development, and creative. She is presently working on her first memoir.