How Can Books Help Us Heal?

Have you ever read a book that felt like it understood you better than anyone else could?

As a child, I loved the Worst Witch stories because, like our heroine Mildred, I felt quiet, awkward, and not very good at anything in particular. The fantasy elements made it exciting, but the way Mildred always tried her best, loved her cat, and often felt out of her depth resonated with me at a young age, and the stories helped me feel less alone.

As an adult, books like The Midnight Library and The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot spoke deeply to me at a time of difficulty and helped me process what I was struggling with in a way that felt gentle yet profound.

Stories have a quiet yet powerful magic. They offer us a place to rest, reflect, and reconnect with parts of ourselves we may have forgotten. In fact, there’s a whole field devoted to this idea - bibliotherapy, or healing through books.

Bibliotherapy has been used for decades by therapists, librarians, and coaches to support emotional wellbeing. Even the ancient Greeks understood the power of books for healing the soul, and soldiers in World War One were often ‘prescribed’ poetry to help them heal from the traumas they experienced.

Bibliotherapy isn’t about offering advice or self-help in the traditional sense. Instead, it’s about choosing books - fiction, memoir, poetry - that mirror our struggles, soothe our nervous systems, or open up new ways of seeing the world.

Sometimes it’s about recognition: meeting a character who feels the way we feel, who faces similar fears or heartbreaks, and seeing how they survive or grow. Through them, we can gently begin to process our own emotions in the safe space of a story.

Other times, it’s about escape. A chance to breathe, to laugh, to adventure; to be somewhere else, if only for a chapter or two. That, too, can be healing. As can reading stories of people who have faced great hardship or horrors, helping us feel that if they can survive, then so too can we. Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning is one such book.

Books invite us to slow down. To sit with questions. To feel things fully, without being told what to do about them. They help us build empathy not just for others, but for ourselves.

So if you're feeling overwhelmed, lost, lonely, or just a bit stuck, pick up a book. It might just help you find your way back to yourself.