Bibliotherapy + Finding Peace When We Don’t Get the Response We Want

Meet bibliotherapist Bhakti Mathur @bhaktimathur98 (who I’m enthusiastically recommending before actually having a session or knowing if she’s going to accept me as a client, much to Sam’s chagrin)

Last night, I signed up for my first bibliotherapy session.

Have you heard of bibliotherapy? It’s about “healing through books.” Basically, you identify an area of your life that you’d like some help with and tell a trained bibliotherapist about it. A few days later, she comes back to you with a “prescription” - 8 to 10 books that can help you gain insight on your situation. And I’m not talking about 8 to 10 self-help books – the list includes fiction, poetry, memoirs, history, short stories, humor pieces…everything.

This is a thing. A real-life thing. Did you know about it?!

I didn’t. I only learned about it because “Healing through Bibliotherapy” was a talk at the Hong Kong Literary Festival and, now that China’s borders are open, I can pop over to events in Hong Kong.

But here’s something interesting that I want to share. It’s about other people’s responses to us and how little control we have over that.

First, some backstory: this ability to “pop over to Hong Kong” that I mentioned – that’s a dramatically oversimplified way of putting it. Going to Hong Kong (currently) means taking a 20-minute taxi ride to the Shenzhen/Hong Kong border, then spending 30-60 minutes getting through immigration, then spending an hour in a taxi, metro or bus to get into the part of Hong Kong where things happen.

Ain’t no “popping over.” It’s grueling and tedious. For now, that is. Once China and Hong Kong fully reinstate pre-Covid protocols, it’ll be a breeze. I’ll be able to get from my front door to the booming center of Hong Kong in about 40 minutes without having to wait in lines and notice all the ways that I’m not spiritually enlightened.

The point of this backstory? Once I finally made it to the talk on bibliotherapy, I wasn’t a smiling, shiny rainbow of a human. I was a tired and cranky one. So, even though I enjoyed the speaker’s talk, I wasn’t an engaged participant. I didn’t ask questions during the Q&A. I didn’t stay afterward to thank her.

I darted out of my uncomfortable seat the second the session ended, feeling like a caged animal who was just given her freedom.

Then, after a bit of a walk and a few bites to eat, I emailed her to say, “Thank you for an amazing talk. I’d love to sign up for a session with you.”

Do you think that she would have guessed that I’d be one of the people to instantly sign up based on the vibes I was radiating out during her talk?

I don’t.

And that’s the point of this musing. None of us ever know what someone else’s vibes are linked to. Maybe I’m shifting uncomfortably through your talk because I don’t find you to be an engaging speaker. Or maybe I’m shifting uncomfortably because my trek to get to your talk took a lot out of me.

Maybe that person who is grinning through your entire presentation thinks you’re the cat’s meow. Or maybe they’re newly in love and they’d be grinning even if you were talking about rotting corpses.

We don’t know. I don’t know, you don’t know, that speaker didn’t know.

And isn’t that liberating? Not having to take anyone’s response to us personally? Remembering that every human we meet has a rich and complex life outside of their interaction with us…a life that is surely coloring how they show up during our time together.

It’s something I like to remember. It helps me relax. Feel more at ease. And that’s basically 80% of what I’m trying to do with this stint on Earth: relax. Feel more at ease.

Wishing you relaxation and ease,

Keely