Bibliotherapy
I highly recommend supplementing your personal growth journey with insightful and inspiring content in between appointments. While some online media can be valuable, I urge you to consider finding a book – or three! – that you find relevant to your journey. Your reading material does not have to be about what you work on in the therapy room! It can be a book of poems, fiction, scholarly – maybe a book full of prints by your favorite visual artist. Anything that encourages you to reflect and gain insights into your personal experiences.
Treat yourself by spending some time in a local bookstore and let your intuition guide you through the aisles. Honor what you’re drawn to, and dive in. Perhaps explore Powell’s City of Books, or another favorite of mine, New Renaissance Bookstore in Northwest Portland. If you have barriers to accessing transportation to these bookstores, please consider checking out Bookshop.org, where you can shop for books and still support local businesses.
Below you’ll find affiliate links to several books that I return to time and time again. Some are educational. Some are experiential. All of them have made me pause and reflect.
The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk
An excellent, accessible read about how humans develop, express, and heal from trauma. You don’t need to suffer from PTSD in order to benefit from reading this book; it will help you better understand what nearly (%) of our population is dealing with, and how we can help.
Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed
Written anonymously (at the time) by Wild author Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things is a compilation of the advice column with a cult following, Dear Sugar. Pick it up anytime, open to a random page, and prepare to be moved by the excruciatingly beautiful, fragile, and shared experience of being human. Caution: some of the experiences shared by anonymous writers could be triggering for persons struggling with unresolved trauma. If you are currently struggling with existing trauma symptoms, consider skipping this one for now.
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
An introduction to Frankl’s development of Logotherapy through the lens of Frankl’s time spent in a Nazi concentration camp during WWII. Against the stark background of one of the darkest chapters in human history, Frankl describes the necessity of avoiding the trappings of nihilism and finding meaning in life despite one’s circumstances.
This book never leaves my bedside, and I reach for it often. Spiritual in content, Gibran’s prophet offers words of wisdom on a variety of topics including, Joy and Sorrow, Giving, Marriage, etc. Many of us who have chosen to walk a spiritual path in life have already come across this invaluable gem, but in case you’re learning of it here for the first time, consider this your sign.