What is bibliotherapy?

Bibliotherapy is all about feeling good with books: reading great novels, poems and stories to help us through difficult situations and feelings.

It’s also about nurturing our sense of wellbeing and feeling better in ourselves. Reading is one of the best ways to relax and enjoy a bit of peace and quiet.

Reading fiction is one of the easiest ways to relate to others when we feel isolated. Also, as we get to know characters, we get to know ourselves.

Bibliotherapy is a lifelong companion to all those who welcome it. You don’t have to hit rock-bottom before you consider it, simply pick up a book.

Remember, for severe problems, bibliotherapy is a way to complement therapy, self-care, and a healthy lifestyle. For feelings as troubling as those related to PTSD, depression, severe anxiety, or other mental health issues, fiction is clearly not enough. I would recommend using books to help your wellbeing, but only when you are sure that you are receiving the support and guidance that you need as well.

 

 

The Bibliotherapy Books List

Books for accepting yourself

• The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• A Little Princess – Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Rosie Project – Graeme Simsion

Books for anxiety

Read more: 20 books for anxiety to relax with

• How to Relax – Thich Nhat Hanh
• War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (Briggs translation)
• Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest and Coloring book – Johanna Basford
• Zen: The Art of Simple Living – Shunmyō Masuno
• The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim
• Collected Poems – Edward Thomas
• Haikus of Basho
• Notes on a Nervous Planet – Matt Haig
• City of Girls – Elizabeth Gilbert
• Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese
• Wabi Sabi – Beth Kempton
• Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
• The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down – Haemin Sunim
• The Hobbit: Illustrated Edition – J. R. R. Tolkien
• Radical Compassion – Tara Brach
• Silence: In the Age of Noise – Erling Kagge
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernières
• Gratitude – Oliver Sacks
• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail – Bill Bryson
• Poem: The Lake Isle of Innisfree – W. B. Yeats
• Collected Poems – William Wordsworth
• Healing Without Freud or Prozac: Natural Approaches to Curing Stress, Anxiety and Depression – Dr Servan-Schreiber

Books for beauty and meaning

Read more: 8 books to appreciate how beautiful life really is

• War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
• “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” – W.B. Yeats (poem)
• Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values – Robert M. Pirsig
• The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
• The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
• Siddhartha – Hermann Hesse (recommended by Brian)
• The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng
• Rhythms of Renewal: Trading Stress and Anxiety for a Life of Peace and Purpose – Rebekah Lyons

Books for breakups and heartbreak

• Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar – Cheryl Strayed
• Brave Enough: A Mini Instruction Manual for the Soul – Cheryl Strayed
• Untamed – Glennon Doyle
• The Sun and Her Flowers – Rupi Kaur
• How to Love – Thich Nhat Hanh
• The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down – Haemin Sunim
• Some Thoughts About Relationships – Colin Wright

Books for depression and low mood

• Reasons to Stay Alive – Matt Haig
• Brave Enough: A Mini Instruction Manual for the Soul – Cheryl Strayed
• The Uncommon Reader – Alan Bennett
• The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (The Chronicles of Narnia) – C.S. Lewis
• Collected Poems – Edward Thomas
• Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog – Jerome K. Jerome
• The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson
• All Creatures Great and Small: The classic memoirs of a Yorkshire country vet – James Herriot
• The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency – Alexander McCall Smith
• The BFG – Roald Dahl
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling
• A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy – William B. Irvine
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernières
• The Jeeves Omnibus – Vol 1 – P.G. Wodehouse
• Tennsyon’s Collected Poems
• Healing Without Freud or Prozac

Books for knowing yourself

• The Enchanted April – Elizabeth von Arnim
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog – Muriel Barbery (recommended by Holly)
• Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
• Leaves of Grass – Walt Whitman
• Wild – Cheryl Strayed

Books for low self-esteem

• Essays – Michel de Montaigne
• Meditations – Marcus Aurelius
• How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer – Sarah Bakewell
• Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
• The Last Runaway – Tracy Chevalier
• The Fry Chronicles – Stephen Fry

Books for PTSD and trauma

Read more: 10 books that helped me through trauma & PTSD

• Tennsyon’s Collected Poems
• Healing Without Freud or Prozac: Natural Approaches to Curing Stress, Anxiety and Depression – Dr Servan-Schreiber
• The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma – Bessel van der Kolk M.D.
•  The Sun and Her Flowers – Rupi Kaur
• War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy (Briggs translation)
•  Brave Enough: A Mini Instruction Manual for the Soul – Cheryl Strayed
• Wild – Cheryl Strayed
• Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver
• Getting Past Your Past: Take Control of Your Life with Self-Help Techniques from EMDR Therapy – Francine Shapiro
• Queen of the Desert: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell – Georgina Howell

Books for persevering through hardship

• The Odyssey – Homer
• Wild by Cheryl Strayed
• The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
• The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng
• Discourses and Selected Writings by Epictetus

Books for self-care

Read more: 7 self-care books for relaxing and unwinding with

• Goodbye Things – Fumio Sasaki
• What I Know for Sure – Oprah Winfrey
• Gratitude – Oliver Sacks
• The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down – Haemin Sunim
• How to Love – Thich Nhat Hanh
• A Pukka Life – Sebastian Pole

Books for solitude

• Walden, or Life in the Woods – Henry David Thoreau
• The Solitary Summer – Elizabeth von Arnim
• A Room of One’s Own – Virginia Woolf
• Into The Wild – John Krakauer