“There’s so much noise in the world right now and the very act of reading is a kind of therapy.”
Novels, memoirs, short stories, essay compilations, and more continue to shape who we are and how we view the world, no matter what format—physical book, ebook, or audiobook—we use to absorb and enjoy them. Books are pathways into different worlds and different lives, and one can never be truly bored with a good book. As the word suggests, bibliotherapy combines two of our favourite topics – reading and psychology – so it seemed a particularly appropriate topic to highlight in this post. Reading a book might sound so simple, but in reality, it is an incredibly engaging and therapeutic activity that stimulates and calms the mind.
Many people have needed the therapeutic effects of reading more than ever this year. As neuroscientists and psychologists will tell you: Books are good for the brain. And their benefits are particularly vital now. Books expand our world, providing an escape and offering novelty, surprise and excitement, which boost dopamine. They broaden our perspective and help us empathize with others. And they can improve our social life, giving us something to connect over. Books can also distract us and help reduce our mental chatter. When we hit that glorious “flow state” of reading where we’re fully immersed in a book, our brain’s default mode network likely calms down, says Jud Brewer, a psychiatrist who directs research at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center. That’s a network of brain regions that is active when we are not doing anything else and that can get absorbed in worrying and rumination.
Research has shown that literary fiction enhances our ability to empathize with others, put ourselves into another’s shoes; become more intuitive about other people’s feelings (as well as our own), and self-reflect on our problems as we read about and empathize with a fictional character who is facing similar problems. In essence, when we are emotionally affected by a character, we may actually be responding to how that character connects with ourselves and our true emotional state. This sort of connection means that if the character then finds happiness at the end of the story, we may be more likely to believe that we, too, can find happiness. Characters can be learning vessels from which we learn how to better deal with and respond to our own real-life experiences. This can lead to the development of new coping methods that we may have not previously considered without the help of the novel.
But why books? Can’t we get the same results from watching a good film? A good film may of course also have therapeutic properties, just like a good book, but in general, our minds and our imaginations are more engaged when reading because we need to fill in so much that is not specifically put into words. In fact, books with too much detail tend to become boring. Part of what makes a good book engrossing is that we are able to engage our imaginations with the authors. We can place ourselves in the perspective of the character and, in doing this, become a part of the story itself. This level of connection and integration is harder to accomplish with a movie because the movie is far more visually concrete, with actors concretely filling in character parts while we play the role of observer.
When a bibliotherapist gets involved, they can find other books that we might not have even known existed. Like any specialist, bibliotherapists are experts in their field, which means that their knowledge of books is both expansive and eclectic, which helps to broaden our horizons. Because of this, bibliotherapy can be an effective alternative treatment for individuals seeking literary guidance through their daily struggles.
Books, bookstores, libraries and everything that brings me to books are a part of my life. I wanted to study bibliotherapy both as a writer and as an avid reader. As someone who discovered the miraculous healing of stories, this was inevitable. I think choosing to become a bibliotherapist was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. This is a real miracle.