Using Books to Heal
Using Books to Heal
My recent "Field Work" in Bibliotherapy
If you’re new to The Rebel MFA Way, welcome! This is a bit of a cross-genre essay around writing.
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I can’t remember the specifics, but I can tell you that it was the summer before I went to college. That it was close to midnight. That I was third or fourth in line at Walmart. I was behind someone dressed in a black cape. He had circular glasses and painted a thunderbolt on his forehead. He was cute. I remember the chaos in the moments after they let the rope drop and we were allowed to grab the latest Harry Potter book and check out. I drove to Chipotle because it was one of the few places open that late at night. I think most of my friends had gone to a party.
I remember being at Chipotle, with a half eaten burrito and being engrossed in Deathly Hallows, tears streaming down my face when one of the employees came over and said they were closing.
I didn’t go to bed that night. I read the book in one sitting and then crashed for the entire next day, emotionally and mentally spent. Grief and healing washing over me for days afterward.
See, the thing is… The Harry Potter series saved my life. In the deep dark nights of the soul of my childhood and young adulthood, it was not therapy, it was not friends or family that came to my aid. It was Harry, Ron, Hermione, Sirius, Dumbledore, Hagrid. It was their stories of courage and bravery and trying again when against all odds — things seemed impossible that got me through.
I was lucky enough, as a young adult, to have a therapist who used bibliotherapy as part of her practice and through my sessions, we used the Harry Potter series as a shared language. When we talked about the characters, we were really talking about me or the characters in my life. When we talked about Voldemort, we really talking about the big baddie in my life. It was a beautiful way to work through my shit and it informed so much of the way I work in the world today.
But it also solidified my Rebel Logic theory that even if I hadn’t of had that therapist to work through specifics of my time with Harry Potter — I’d still had the experience with the books to help me heal. That work had been done without her. And my belief in that is as strong today.
Rebel Logic:
You always have the option of using books and writing to heal with or without the help of other people. You don’t need permission to do it, either. You already have everything you need.
As an adult, I am constantly healing through books using bibliotherapy. In fact, I’d say it’s one of the most important modalities used in my healing practices today. I use it on a weekly basis, in fact, with any book that I’m reading that fits into my holistic view of healing.
Since this essay is geared toward “field work” (are you not sure what that means… read this), I want to talk about how you can do this kind of work, too.
Because even though bibliotherapy, in it’s current incarnations (in a therapeutic setting) can be extremely beneficial, there are always other ways to approach it. You know this… that’s why you come to these essays of mine, because you know you’re about to get the rebellious side of things.
As I’ve been doing bibliotherapy work myself and with others (along with all the other healing work I do), it’s impossible not to notice the big ass GAP happening in the mental health space right now. I’ve been speaking with a lot of clients, writers, and friends who are saying the same thing over and over again, “talk therapy just isn’t working anymore.”
I get it. I stopped talk therapy about a year and a half ago. I tried again about six months ago and had a similar experience. There’s only so much that can be done in talk therapy. There are SO many other kinds of therapy for mental health, yes. And the mental health industry is a WHOLE other conversation that I’m not going to get into… that’s not the point of this essay. But I do have to mention the gap because I feel like bibliotherapy has an important role in filling that gap.
Because if talk therapy isn’t working, and other kinds of therapy modalities aren’t an option — what IS working?
For me and many others that I’ve been working with — what we’ve found to be working is:
Literature
Journaling
Community
Connection
Discussion
It has been truly transformative and amazing to see how this bibliotherapy group coaching work has been changing the way people see “therapy” and how it doesn’t have to look and feel like the stigmatized or stereotypical work with a therapist. Healing can and should look different! I’ll be talking more about bibliotherapy group coaching in the future.
But even group coaching can sometimes feel intimidating or limiting for folx who feel they can’t attend or afford it. And that also presents an issue in my mind because to me, the most important aspects of a modality of healing is:
Accessibility
Affordability
Approachability
And bibliotherapy in its true, basic form offers us all of those things.
How to allow books to help you heal
I think there are two basic paths you can follow when it comes to self-bibliotherapy and the major difference between them comes down to intention and simplicity. The first path is extremely simple, intuitive, non-directive and above all — the most easily affordable and accessible. It goes like this:
Read books that you connect with deeply, and discover what healing it has in store for you.
I know, you’re like, “Jade, what the fuck, that is so simple and silly.”
But, seriously, that is really all the “simple” path requires of you. If you truly want to get started on self-bibliotherapy and healing RIGHT THIS MINUTE and not a second longer — that is the next step you take.
However, there is a more intentional path you can take. This path does require you to be more attuned and aware of your emotional states and where your mental health fits into your overall emotional landscape. It also requires you to do the healing work necessary to get the most out of the process.
This path to self-bibliotherapy looks something like this:
Read Bibliotherapy: The Healing Power of Reading by Bijal Shah — To understand the fundamentals of bibliotherapy and why bibliotherapy works on so many different levels. Not only does Bijal explain how the process works in a therapeutic setting, but she also goes into detail on self-bibliotherapy as well. It’s a fantastic resource that will really give you a good foundation if you’re serious about using bibliotherapy to heal.
Journaling: Part One — In order to know where you are going (or where you want to go) you need to know where you are. Journaling helps us do that. Use journaling to help you figure out what issues, topics or themes you would like to explore through bibliotherapy for growth and healing purposes.
Finding your Books — Begin compiling books that speak to the issues, topics or themes you want to explore, but also resonate with your personal reading preferences (fiction, nonfiction, audiobook, ebook, etc). There are plenty of ways to “curate” your reading list — just Google and find out how many!
Journaling: Part Two — Once you’ve found your books, begin keeping a reading/literary journal that will be your companion during your reading experience. Use this journal to write down thoughts, emotions, insights, connections, questions and realizations that come up during and after your reading sessions.
Integration — After you’ve completed a book, it’s time to consider how you might integrate everything you experienced, discovered, learned and healed from. Your integration will be personal to you. Perhaps it’s more journaling or it’s taking all of what you learned into a 1-1 bibliotherapy coaching session for further probing or it’s joining a bibliotherapy group coaching program to get a different perspective or it’s simply talking it out with a friend or loved one.
The caveat that goes with that list is that everything is flexible. Don’t want/need to journal? Okay, that’s cool. You do you, boo! Again, the best kind of healing modalities are the ones that are accessible, affordable, approachable and…
the ones that people will actually follow through with.
So if we make reading books and following through with the dissection and bibliotherapy components of them as approachable, accessible, and affordable as possible — what might happen?
That’s the question I’ve been asking myself nonstop these days.
What if we all took a commitment to self-bibliotherapy in order to heal — to better understand ourselves and the world? What changes could we make? What hearts could we mend?
Looking for the answers to those questions has been the point of my “field work” recently. Not only in a personal sense of using bibliotherapy to heal, but in running bibliotherapy group coaching programs, developing 1-1 prescriptive bibliotherapy lists, creating self-bibliotherapy products.
I want to be able to give someone a tangible, actionable, accessible and affordable way to begin healing without ever leaving their house because the truth is — we’re all so fucking tired. Life is hard right now. Overwhelming. Incapacitating. We don’t have time to do the runaround required for traditional therapy models. We don’t have the patience to wait months (or years) to finally get to the bottom of our “issues.” And most importantly — we don’t NEED anyone else to save us or try to tell us what’s wrong. What we need is a way to see our own stories reflected back to us. What we need is to know that we already have what it takes to heal ourselves — it just requires us to use those skills we often avoid — patience, self-love, compassion, self-awareness, and introspection.
If you can commit to using those skills and keeping an open-mind, there really is no telling how far you can go with your own healing. Why don’t you start with a book and find out?
Coming Soon…
As I alluded to in this essay, my field work lately has been experimenting with different ways to incorporate bibliotherapy into various programs and products to make it more accessible, affordable, and approachable. So far, these experiments have included things like:
Bibliotherapy Group Coaching Cohorts
Self-Guided Bibliotherapy Journeys
Bibliotherapy Journals
Bibliotherapy + Writing Fiction to Heal combinations
It’s been really interesting and fun to see what is resonating and what’s working with my clients and readers, but I’m curious what my Substack readers might also be interested in. What sounds appealing to you after reading more about what bibliotherapy is and what it can offer readers in terms of healing benefits?