I discovered something new today.

I've struggled with reading as much as I've struggled with writing for many years.

For some time, I assumed my difficulties with reading were due to something mechanical, like eye tracking issues, or something to do with my neuro+somato difference. Something cognitive, like attention.

But then, when I reflected on this, it didn't make sense. I started reading at a young age, and the first things I read were the Childcraft and World Book encyclopedias, along with magazines like National Geographic and Doctor's Answers. I also enjoyed some parts of Readers' Digest. I had no issues reading those for hours, and even in my early 20s, I was reading Wikipedia obsessively.

What's the difference, then?

Reading about "external things" is easy. Reading anything on "internal states" was problematic.

—

I was deeply interested in philosophy and psychology for years; I still am. But I found reading anything on these subjects horrendously tricky, even painful. I could not finish articles, much less books. My Kindle piled up with books I bought but never read.

When I discovered the concept of complex trauma in my mid-30s, I thought, "Oh, this must be a trauma thing." Perhaps reading about philosophical and psychological stuff hurt because it triggered my nervous system.

Yet, knowing this never helped. Usually, awareness about something allows me to move to the next steps, even if there is no resolution, something better—some ease, at the very least. Or understanding, and therefore, space opens where there was none before.

With this issue of reading, however, nothing moved for years. It was frustrating as heck because there's so much I want to learn about that is accessible through reading, but this avenue was barred to me.

Recently, I put my business on hiatus to focus on the healing of some deep wounds around the blending of identity and self-worth around work, thus leading to a lifelong compulsion towards workaholism.

Part of this healing process was choosing to create a life, instead of "a work", and part of that was asking, "What does creating a life look and feel like for me?"

Opening up space to read more was one of these things, and because I have less work now (I focus only on existing clients and have stopped content creation and marketing), I found it easier to sit, open a book and read it.

It's been a few weeks of this, and it's been most enjoyable.

Then, today, I added a new book to my collection: Ursula K. Le Guin's Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on words, women, places, specifically to read her essay The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, which was mentioned by my client during their session today.

And reading it [1], I suddenly came to a powerful (to me) realisation:

Reading about outer things is easy, but reading about people describing and talking about inner states, or their assumptions of what's normal or abnormal about those has been (and still is) excruciatingly painful because most of these are written by folks and about folks whose neuro+somato+socio realities are nothing like mine.

Why is this important? Social mirroring is essential to well-being.

Mirroring remains important during our entire lives. [...] Our identity demands a significant other whose eyes see us pretty much as we see ourselves.

In fact, Erik Erikson defines identity as interpersonal. In Childhood and Society he writes:

The sense of ego identity is the accrued confidence that the inner sameness and continuity . . . are matched by the sameness and continuity of one’s meaning for others.

— The Shame that Binds Us, by John Bradshaw

Every word hits with the pain of a lobotomy pickaxe because most of what is written about inner states are states I cannot begin to comprehend, much less resonate with. It sometimes reads with the feel of a dystopian horror, where I'm left wondering if I'm mad or if everyone else is mad.

It rubs acid into wounds that can never fully heal that I do not fit into most spaces because my heart and mind work so differently, and it is blatant: I'm reminded of it often because people point it out frequently enough.

Frankly, one prefers to be the mad one. It is safer. It's what I call a disorganised attachment to the world.

Anthony de Mello shares the following parable in his book The Song of the Bird:

THE NARROW PATH

God once warned the people of an earthquake that would swallow all the waters of the land. The waters that would take their place would make everyone crazy.

Only the prophet took God seriously. He carried huge jugs of water to his mountain cave so that he had enough to last him till the day he died.

Sure enough, the earthquake came and the waters vanished and new water filled the streams and Jakes and rivers and ponds.

A few months later the prophet came down to see what had happened. Everyone had indeed gone mad. They attacked him and would had nothing to do with him and were convinced that he was insane.

So the prophet went back to his mountain cave, glad for the water he had saved.

But as time went by he found his loneliness unbearable. He yearned for human company, so he went down to the plains again. Again he was rejected by the people for he was so entirely different from them.

The prophet then took his decision. He threw away the water he had saved, drank the new water and joined his fellow men in their madness.

If only it were that easy, eh? Just drink some water that will somehow rewrite your biopsychology.

Of course, the question arises: Do we even want that? I don't. (Which is a topic for another day.)

I can't help but hear Stephen Fry from the documentary he made entitled Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive:

It says something about manic depression that despite it being the greatest killer of all psychiatric illnesses, many of those suffering from it if given a chance, don't want to get rid of it. If I'm honest, I don't.

—

So. It turns out that something as seemingly simple as difficulties with reading had roots in much deeper existential issues. As always. As most things are. Surface things have deep roots; always.

Nothing is simple, yet all is.

I think most reading will always hurt me to some degree. But now, it no longer feels insurmountable. I can feel the pain of being different without it always being soul-destroying.

A client of mine coined a marvellous phrase for this, "Reality non-denial."

When we confront reality as it is and seek the genuine reasons for what it is and why, we are liberated from its weight, bonds and burden. The suffering may remain, but the quality changes. It becomes a part of our human experience.

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[1] It wasn't that I didn't agree with what Ursula K. Le Guin wrote; on the contrary, it was because of the superb resonance with her thinking that made me realise this!