Anna Lembke

It's interfering with my sleep.

It's interfering with my ability to be present.

You know, just sort of vague generalities.

I did not tell him what specific genre of book I was struggling with initially.

So then he asked me, what would you be giving up if you stopped that behavior?

And I said, I would be giving up the intense pleasure and feeling of escape that I get from reading.

But then when I said that, I realized, yeah, but those things are not as important to me as being present for my husband and for my children, for being invested in and good at the work that I do.

Yeah, isn't that amazing?

And it is striking and a bit of a mystery, frankly, as to why putting into words what we're doing, especially telling another live human, has this remarkable ability to penetrate our lack of awareness and make us aware in a way that also then greatly enables our ability to change that behavior.

The conversation, as I'm recalling it, went on a little bit longer, but not much longer, frankly.

So then he asked a very simple question.

He said, well, what's one thing you could do to take a step toward changing that behavior?

And I thought, well, I could get rid of my Kindle because my Kindle gives me such incredible easy access to these downloadable reads, including free reads from Amazon.

that if I got rid of it, it would create a barrier between me and the romance novel so that I'd have to do more work to get it.

So that's what I decided to do.

So how did that go?

Did you just quit cold turkey?

Once I had had that conversation with him and I thought about it the next day, I had a moment where I realized, oh, wow, I think I've developed a minor addiction to romance novels and erotica.

And so then I simply made a decision to do what I recommend my patients do, which is abstain for four weeks, got rid of the Kindle, and just, you know, made a strong commitment to not reading romance novels and erotica.

But what shocked me was that very night, which was the first 24-hour period of my not engaging in romance novel reading as a way to put myself to sleep, I was gripped by anxiety and restlessness and agitation.