John Green reveals how he deals with OCD, anxiety

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Aug 17, 2015 06:40 AM EDT

"Paper Towns" is finally in theaters, and this is a second for John Green, whose film adaptation of his 2012 novel "The Fault in Our Stars" made reaped millions at the box office last year. The award-winning writer, who is very close to his fans through his social media presence, recently did a Reddit AMA where he spoke of his experiences with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and anxiety.

As a best-selling author, Green has had to deal with fame and various press events, and one fan asked him how he dealt with all of this. The Huffington Post reports that Green admitted he he deals with his anxiety "poorly".

"I've known that I have this mental illness for a long time, and I've had a lot of therapy and learned a lot of strategies for dealing with my illness. I know the benefits of exercise and meditation and medication and CBT strategies and etc," Green wrote. The writer credits "Paper Towns" star Nat Wolff, who has been very supportive throughout the process, taking questions for Green when the latter would feel overwhelmed at press conferences and other public appearances.

"I try to treat my mental illness the way you would any chronic illness, and I'm very lucky that in general it's very manageable," Green explained. "But it's hard to describe just how extreme and overwhelming press junkets are. (I mean, I realize these are the first-worldiest problems possible; I'm just trying to be honest about my experience.)"

Nonetheless, Green is taking everything in stride. The father of two opened up to The Guardian about the lessons his children, 5-year-old Henry and 2-year-old Alice, have been teaching him.

Green admitted, "They’ve also helped me understand love better. 'Love is stronger than death' is a line from the Bible that gets bandied around. I thought it was a hopeful idea, but never believed it."

The 37-year-old writer also said, "When Henry was born I realized that as long as either of us was alive, I would be his father and he would be my son and, in that sense, love is stronger than death because love, in a relationship, will survive and so there is some kind of love within the human species that goes all the way back and all the way forward for as long as we are going to be around."

Green's young adult fiction often centers around love, relationships, resilience, and the value of life and its meaning, just like in 'Paper Towns".

"The meaning of human life is to pay attention," he told the Guardian. "We are, as far as we know, the only creatures that are of the universe and can also observe it, and we should try to take advantage of that."

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