I just don't want to admit it.

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So this is something thats been bothering me a little bit for about 5 years. When I was a highschool student back in 2006 a girl at my school got shot and to make a long story short I ended up with PTSD. The first thing I noticed within a week of the shooting was I started having a difficult time reading. It was very noticable because I have always been above my reading level and I would regularly read up to three books at the same time switching off between chapters and still following all the different topics.

But yeah within a week of the shooting I went from that to barely being able to focus on one book....I've been trying to ignore this and deny it to myself for about five years ever since that happened. But being back in college and having this problem is difficult.....sometimes as much as I want to read even just for class I can't seem to focus on it at all.

this is stressing me out a bit, its already bad enough that I am quite sure I failed my first paper for my english college class.....it was descriptive writing which i have always been rather horrible at as when I experiance things I can enjoy or not enjoy them but i don't usually think in words about how i would describe something. So I guess that got me frusterated and I started thinking about other things that might cause some problems in college. And I realised I have not gotten over this obsticle with reading which sucks because I have all the comprehension skills and can read well but i have had a very hard time doing so ever since that happened.

I teach writing ...

Honestly, a little a day is better than a lot at the time anyway for school purposes. Can you give yourself a reading goal (like, say, twenty minutes a day)? If you set a timer, you can do a little at a time and work up to more.

Also, have you talked to your professor about the paper in question? Specific instructions as to how to improve might calm down some of the anxiety.

There are things I avoid because they stir memories and anxiety or whatever, and your reading was interrupted by a potentially life-threatening situation. So in my own case if I were you, I would try Renata's suggestion ...

I have pretty bad anxiety and reading is tough even though I have high grades in reading.

Don't beat yourself up about it too much when you can only manage a few minutes. Accept that some days it's gonna be harder to do and making the effort to try is itself a huge thing. If you have any little treats that you like to give yourself when you do well (for me it's a particular beverage or luxury snack food I like that I only treat myself to when I want to make myself feel better, or watching one of two movies that can always make me feel better) then use that. Reward yourself a little for making that effort, even if you only managed a few minutes that's still a big deal that you were able to do that. It may also help reinforce that feeling that you are safe when reading by starting to build up a second more positive association with having made the effort to read.