Reading Anxiety
A recent Washington Post perspective piece made the argument for spoilers. The author, Olga Mecking, explains that she comes from a family who loves spoilers. They read the ends of books first and Google plots of movies before viewing. The lack of tension produced makes for a more pleasant experience, Mecking argues.
I get that. In fact, writing my own book was a result of my inability to hold the tension that reading requires.
Science has explained that tension. Put someone into an MRI, have her read Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park with careful attention, and the reader’s brain will light up as if she is performing the same tasks as the characters in the novel. Is Fanny Price dancing? The careful reader’s brain will respond as if the reader herself is the one doing the dancing.
When my life took a truly difficult turn into parental dementia and divorce, I, an English professor and lifelong avid reader, found myself unable to read anything new. That was fine because I love re-reading, so I read the Harry Potter series repeatedly and turned to my favorite writer of all, Jane Austen.
Both my love of Harry Potter and Austen as well as my propensity to re-read have the same explanation: I’m an anxious reader. I read quickly because characters come alive for me, and I worry about what will happen to them. I re-read because, if a book is good, then I want to see how the author created this magical world that feels real to me. Plus, like Mecking and her love of spoilers, I can then read in more relaxed fashion.
When it got to the point, though, where I could read only one book repeatedly for more than a year, Austen’s Persuasion, I knew I actually had a problem that needed addressing, which resulted in my book.
What I learned from the process of research and writing is that my own anxiety was so overwhelming at the time that I simply could not handle the extra load that reading produced for me — even with books I had read before, yes, even with spoilers.
So I truly do get Mecking’s argument. And if someone is in a similar place to where I was at that time, go for the spoilers if it helps.
However, on a regular basis, don’t.
The thing about books and life is that they are both stories really or, to use a fancier word, narrative. Anxiety comes about from the story we tell ourselves, not from a specific actual threat. We respond to real threats with fear.
When we can hang out with narrative anxiety via fiction, we can train ourselves to hang out with our anxiety in life too.
We are never going to be rid of anxiety, and we shouldn’t want to be rid of anxiety anyway. Anxiety is a normal feeling, and it’s inherent to being human. As Bruce Tift put it in a Lion’s Roar podcast I listened to recently, anxiety means that you are a sensitive sentient being. Anxiety is what kept our species alive during the dangerous Pleistocene Era. We need it, yet we do need to moderate it.
One way to moderate it is to sit with it. If we can sit with absolute acceptance with any emotion for 90 seconds, it will pass on through.
A great way to practice that is to hang out with Elizabeth Bennett, Harry Potter, or your own favorite literary character and experience anxiety vicariously. By stirring up those physiological symptoms of anxiety in a safe space, we can learn to recognize them when they pop up in life and to know that we can handle those symptoms safely when they do.
Maybe start small if you’re into spoilers like Meckler. Read some Austen who will guarantee a happy ending even if there’s a little anxiety along the way. Then work your way up to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for some ridiculousness and a tad more monster-induced anxiety.
As for me, I am currently over-compensating for my reading drought and reading far too many books at once — all without spoilers. I am vicariously coping with death, rejection, and even monsters, which is a tad anxiety provoking, but mostly great fun.
