Outlook freezes

Hi, Outlook has started to freeze on me repeatedly, meaning, all of the sudden I cannot see what I wrote anymore, it blanks out. Then the entire program gets corrupted - all the text and folders etc. of the program itself becomes blank or jarbbled, until the only option left to me is to close the enire program, if I can.

Note of potential relevance: If I highlight the text with Ctrl C, it highlights and I can copy and paste it into a Word Doc where it will appear again normally for me to read and save. 

what is going on here, or, what can I do to fix this problem?

thanks a lot for your assistance!

Manuel