if feels unhelpful
completely at liberty
to stop at any point
In the UK and elsewhere, bibliotherapy – which also includes recommendations for non-fiction and self-help literature – has been soaring in popularity as a means of improving people’s wellbeing, help navigate tough life decisions, and even to treat specific mental health conditions.
For people wanting to try out bibliotherapy for themselves, Carney recommends trying to find a club for group discussions. Jolly recommends public libraries, where you can try lots of books for free – and if a book isn’t resonating with you, pick up another one instead, try something shorter, or a different genre like poetry. And if reading isn’t for you, Poerio adds, maybe there are other ways to improve wellbeing, like music or visual art. “If you feel it’s helping you, if you’re feeling the benefit… you’ll want to carry on,” Schuman says. “But if it feels unhelpful or intrusive, then [you] should feel completely at liberty to stop at any point.”
From the article, ‘It opened up something in me’: Why people are turning to bibliotherapy by Katarina Zimmer in BBC Books.
The idea or concept sounds good – improving people’s wellbeing, help navigate tough life decisions, and even to treat specific mental health conditions by reading.
BUT anything that needs the caveat … But if it feels unhelpful or intrusive, then [you] should feel completely at liberty to stop at any point …
Really?
I mean if I find something unhelpful or intrusive, something kicks in that makes want to finish everything in the bowl anyway.
Well, no that’s not true.
The truth of the matter, I go into any enterprise looking for any reason to bail out.
But what to do with that … And if reading isn’t for you.
Gosh.
Heard of those folks.
Glad its a complaint I have avoided all my life.
Of the many things I have written about, I am not so sure that the line, if reading isn’t for you, if it feels unhelpful or intrusive, then feel completely at liberty to stop at any point.
Boy Howdy but that sounds sad.
Don’t get me wrong on one part of that.
I have long felt that mature reader is someone who can pick up a book and after investing in a few chapters – pages – paragraphs – lines can feel that the book unhelpful or intrusive … or just a bad book and I feel completely at liberty to stop at any point.
Nothing makes me drop a book or a show quicker that a historical story told incorrectly or incompletely.
One feller I can think of wrote about the greatest College to NBA basketball transition of all time (the Ervin Johnson/Larry Bird era) and claimed to have grown up in East Lansing and knew most of the people in the book but couldn’t kept confusing Jay and Sam Vincent.
I found that book to be unhelpful or intrusive and into the bottom desk drawer.
Maybe one of the worst examples I came across was a book about Theodore Roosevelt where the author repeated a lot of writings and speeches AND CORRECT THE SPELLING of words like lite, thru and laf WITHOUT seemingly to know that Mr. Roosevelt embraced the concept of Simplified Spelling … oh well.
I digress.
I love to read.
I often find therapy thru what I read.
I hope you do it.
You can find a book and read about it.
No Haiku For You 