How To Read More When You Live With Chronic Illness

The Rest Room

Struggling with reading is something that can be really upsetting to many people, so last year I took to my Instagram Stories to find out what your biggest challenges are when it comes to reading, and what has helped you find a way to make it more accessible.
Helpfully, and perhaps unsurprisingly, most of the reading issues that people shared can be broken down into a handful of categories:
🧠 Concentration and processing
🌩️ Physical issues/pain
😫 Energy
🕰️ Making time
We're going to cover a bunch of tips, tricks, and ways of thinking and approaching reading that I hope will help you!
It’s worth remembering that everybody reads at a different pace. Some people are extremely quick readers and the only things they struggle with are the impact of specific chronic illness symptoms. Others may have bigger challenges on top of that.
I am someone who is naturally an extremely quick reader and writer, and that’s something that I’m eternally grateful for.
This gives me automatic advantages when it comes to tackling these issues because my barrier to entry is already much lower. I’m thankful for everyone across the reading spectrum who has shared their experiences to help widen the scope of this piece of work.
We'll be covering topics like pacing (I know, but it's two different ways of thinking about it!), why reading is reading is reading is reading, different methods of reading, helpful resources, making physical books easier to read, the tracking trap, reflecting on your own experiences, and much more.
I'd love to hear about your relationship with reading: how do you find it, how does your chronic illness impact it, and what tools have you learned that help you?
You can find me on socials:
www.instagram.com/ NatashaLipman
www.twitter.com/NatashaLipman
Cover Art: @MimiButlin
Editing and music: Amit Rai
Blog post: https://natashalipman.com/how-to-read-more-when-you-live-with-chronic-illness/
Transcript: https://natashalipman.com/the-rest-room-reading-transcript/
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit natashalipman.substack.com