This is hard for me to talk about or articulate without sounding like I'm pointing fingers so I'll just preface it with this, it was not working for me and it was ultimately making me miserable. So miserable in fact that I didn't feel like myself, I felt like a carbon copy of who I thought God wanted me to be. Who other girls I admired were, I thought I need to be them, feel the way they did and only then was I living in accordance with what God desired and expected and I couldn't do it any longer. I had reached a point where my life was a series of rules and although there was some freedom there I was constantly questioning and chastising myself.
I had boxed up all secular books, cd's television shows, and movies. I had this idea of what I needed to do every day in order to be "right" with God, read the Bible for at least this amount of time, say only these things, feel this way, don't feel that way and most of this stemmed from my own lack of understanding and instead I focused and followed one view point. Without naming names this view point, person, book, whatever you want to call it instructed me to do all of these things that I was doing and ultimately it just wasn't for me and I wasn't happy. I couldn't get them out of my mind though, I struggled for months trying to reconcile who I was, my unique and awkward personality that clashed with what these people taught and proved with the Bible and who I thought I needed to be and I couldn't reconcile the two. So I took a break. I'm not the kind of person that could still read the Bible but ignore certain parts but those certain parts, I couldn't understand. It didn't compute.

"And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Colossians 3:17

Well what if I wanted to watch a movie that was secular, was that sinning? Of course it was, according to that verse, unless I was watching something like an animated Disney movie or something else rated PG. And eventually I wanted to dye my hair or or listen to Taylor Swift and it didn't match up with those things therefore I just could not keep doing it, and failing. And beating myself up for failing and not desiring the things I was supposed to desire. And that made me miserable and feel worthless and compare myself to people who did desire those things and were happy. So what was wrong with me? I figured I just wasn't cut out for Christianity. I never stopped believing in God or how real he was, ever, but I stopped trying to follow him because I didn't know how to do it and still be who I was.
Two things I lacked back then that I identified recently are from Donald Miller's "Blue Like Jazz," needing to accept God's grace and understand that Christianity is not a formula and realizing that I can't do things without God. I can't suddenly not want to use foul language and skip reading my Bible on my own because that is my natural inclination.

"I was a fundamentalist Christian once. It lasted a summer. I was in that same place of trying to discipline myself to "behave" as if I loved light and not "behave" as if I loved darkness. I used to get really ticked about preachers who talked too much about grace, because they tempted me to not be disciplined." Donald Miller Blue Like Jazz