Why I Want You To Read Yourself Happy

Reading to ease anxiety, and bring joy

Hello Team CCC! My new book, READ YOURSELF HAPPY is coming very soon (huge, huge thank yous to everyone who has been in touch to tell me that they have preordered, it’s the very best way to support me and I’m so grateful!)

I’ve written about why reading makes me so happy, and how reading has helped me when I’ve been very sad and scared, and when I’ve struggled to find my place in the world. I hope this essay brings you some comfort, joy and peace. I know that many of you are as hooked on reading as I am, and I hope this resonates, and that you enjoy my celebration of books and reading. READ YOURSELF HAPPY is full of recommendations, reading lists, interviews and ways to make your life feel a little bit easier and brighter, so I hope you’ll nod with recognition, and make some new discoveries too.

Why I want you to read yourself happy

This time last Sunday, I was feeling really anxious. For me, anxiety feels both taut and fluttering – it’s a bird trapped in the dark of my body, bashing at my bones and failing to find a window. I wanted to escape myself, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t still my mind and settle, I was standing in the middle of 16 lanes of traffic and the thoughts were coming at speed, running me over.

I had two anxiety salves on my person. A book – The Other Side Of The Fire, by Alice Thomas Ellis – and a large bag of chocolate buttons. When I bought the chocolate buttons, I hadn’t been feeling anxious. But when I’m overwhelmed by any big feelings, my first urge is to binge, and seek numbness. I was shovelling the chocolate buttons into my mouth, as a kind of displacement activity. And I was confusing and scaring the bird further. I really love chocolate buttons. It’s a waste of good buttons to eat them in a panic and losing the opportunity to let them melt slowly and deliciously.

Because I’ve had a fair bit of therapy and I listen to a lot of personal development podcasts, I was able to notice how I was feeling, and what I was doing, and realise that the latter wasn’t making the former any better. So I picked up my book. I didn’t want to. I had loads and loads of things to worry about, I wasn’t convinced that I could concentrate on a wordy black comedy about upper middle class families engaging in subtle deceptions. My eyes skittered over a paragraph. It didn’t go in. I went back. I read, slowly. And within ten minutes, my shoulders had dropped, my heart rate had slowed, and I was there with Claudia and Sylvie and Evvie. I was smiling. Life had stopped feeling overwhelming and started to feel delicious. When my thoughts drifted – and they did – they didn’t feel impossible or unmanageable. I was just another silly, petty human, managing as best she could, with varying results. The book opened a window, and the anxiety flew away.

When I was 22, I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety disorder. At the time, if someone handed me a book and said ‘Read! It will help!’ I would probably have thrown the book back at them, as hard as I could. My relationship with reading, probably just like yours, hasn’t always been straightforward.

I grew up in a house full of books, which was a privilege. I think greater privilege was having parents who read for fun. When I was little, I was encouraged to do lots of things that were good for me but were absolutely no fun at all. But reading wasn’t a parental scheme to keep me quiet or improve me in some way. It looked delicious. My Mum would plough through Ruth Rendells in the way that I plough through chocolate buttons. My Dad’s best birthday present was always the latest Stephen King, in hardback, with a thrillingly lurid cover. My parents bought books for the people they loved – including us. The people they loved bought books for them. We got books for Christmas, birthdays, good school reports, Halloween. One of my happiest memories is the Easter I spent curled up with a giant Malteaser egg and a copy of When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit.

Bookish kids don’t always get an easy ride outside the home. I was bullied. I found it difficult to make friends, I struggled to connect with people. I felt very weird, and the harder I tried to hide that weirdness, the more it seemed to show. But I never, ever felt weird when I read. Books were where my friends lived. I loved the Babysitters Club, because I knew these girls would welcome me into their gang. When I read Charlotte’s Web, I dreamed of helping Fern Arable with Wilbur (and I vowed that I would never turn my back on the animals for the sake of a social life!) I devoured Laura Ingalls Wilder books because they were so cosy. I didn’t want to be a 20^th century child at a modern school, but it felt good to hole up in the cabin with Ma, Pa, Laura and Mary, and dream of tapping maple trees.

Most days I felt dysregulated, wrong in my body, constantly tensed against the next bully, or the next incoming shock. I expected to be startled. But I felt so safe and still, with a book.

Like Fern Arable, I did eventually become a teenager and get a social life. But my reading habit was in my muscle memory. It was, I later learned, like exercise. I didn’t always feel like doing it, but I always felt better for doing it. And if I skipped too many days, I felt dreadful. My body needed regular doses of still, calm and quiet. Reading delivered it to me. And I learned, through trial and error, that reading for pleasure was as vital for my wellbeing as staying hydrated and getting enough sleep.

If I wasn’t enjoying a book – and there are plenty that I’ve struggled with – it was always better to switch to an old favourite and go back to a place where I felt as comfortable as possible. I also learned that there’s no such thing as a guilty pleasure. We’re all different. We’re all allowed to love different things. And I believe I’ve learned more about life, love, writing, confidence, humanity and joy from rereading Jilly Cooper than I have from wading through Steinbeck and Dickens.

It doesn’t matter what you read. It doesn’t matter what your kids read. It matters, I think, that you open yourself up to the magic of all books – that you lean into the idea that the act of reading itself can be magical, alchemic. It matters to me that you feel that reading is for you, first and foremost. The way I feel about reading is biblical. I think this is Matthew 25:35-46: ‘When I was in trouble you cared about me, when I was in danger you tried to stop it, when I was sick you visited me, when people ran away you took my hand; Whenever you did for the poorest and smallest people, I felt as if you did it for me.’ This is exactly the way I feel about my reading habit. I wish I could tell you I knew the Bible that well, but I took this quote from Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason – it’s a note someone has left outside Kensington Palace, following the death of Princess Diana. (Bridget leaves her a copy of Vogue, Milk Tray, a scratch card and a packet of Silk Cut.)

Reading has saved my life, and it will keep saving my life. I’m fanatical, I’m evangelical, I want everyone to know the pleasure of laughing hard at a funny bit, or remembering a conversation with a clever friend (and then remembering the conversation happened with an author friend, on the page), or simply not feeling alone any more, because they have kindred spirits on the same emotional journey, whether they’re waiting for war to break out, or hunting a giant whale. I want everyone to know what it’s like to wake up feeling positive and excited because they want to find out whether Rachel got out of rehab, or how Elizabeth will interpret the next clue, or if Carrie Soto won the tennis.

I think life feels incredibly hard right now. Ironically, our expectations for ourselves have never been higher. When I feel at my worst and lowest, it’s usually when I think everyone else is doing brilliantly well, and I feel isolated. I think it’s a feeling I associate with being bullied. I don’t ever want to resent anyone for having a great life – but I do fall into the trap of thinking that everyone has a great life, and I’m always the worst one, falling behind. Reading is the best cure for that feeling that I’ve ever encountered.

There is so much truth in fiction. Every good book is more or less about people facing a range of practical and emotional challenges, worrying that they don’t have the ability to do what’s required of them, and then surprising themselves. Books are about the way that every one of us has the capacity for change, how nothing lasts forever, and how the way that other people make us feel always has very little to do with us, and everything to do with the other person. But they also make us dream about possibility and potential, fantasy and fun. When we read, we can forgive our worst selves, and we can start to see who we can become.

So I’d love to invite you to Read Yourself Happy with me. It’s the very best thing we can do for ourselves – and I think that reading, and building my capacity for calm and joy has made me better, kinder, more loving and more fun. Reading makes me the partner, friend, sister, colleague, daughter and mentor that I’m proud to be. I have no doubt that it has made me a better writer – in fact, I simply wouldn’t be a writer if I wasn’t a reader.

Whether you’re a seasoned reader and I’m preaching to the choir, or whether you’d love to build a reading habit, and feel the infinite benefits, I think there’s something in this book that will bring you joy and peace. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you.

Love

Daisy X