Christmas Bibliotherapy

Published on December 26, 2018

 

It’s Christmas season again.

 

In Iceland, Christmas gift giving is unique. Special. Books are traditionally exchanged as gifts there. This is what I saw and learned from Writer Sid Frost’s FB page for a writers’ group.

 

Books are real gifts. They bring health and wholeness. For the weary, lonely, and downtrodden, including during Christmas seasons, books can be a source of solace and wisdom.

 

As Alvin Toffler put it, “A library is a hospital for the mind.”

 

Depending on a person’s context, I’ve at times read specific passages in a book to depressed clients. For the purpose of healing and perspective. It proves to be an effective natural anti-depressant.

 

“Bibliotherapy,” psychotherapists and mental health professionals would call it. It employs an individual’s relationship with content found in books and poetry.

 

First coined by Samuel Crothers in 1916, even dating back to the Middle Ages, bibliotherapy uses books to change behavior and reduce internal distress.

 

“Thank you doc, I got it from Philippians 4:7,” said a client Peter, who recovered from severe depression, addiction, and marital separation reading the Daily Bread.

 

Books heal. It’s medicine if you choose correctly and well.

 

Category(s):Art Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Depression

Written by:

Dr. Angelo Subida, Psychotherapist

Dr. Angelo Subida is a clinical psychotherapist, author, and speaker. He is author of books "Inner Healing," "Secrets Of Your Self," "Chess and Life," among others, blogs, and articles. He has appeared frequently as an expert on psychotherapy/life recovery issues on national television, radio broadcasts, print media, and webcasts, including GMA 7, TV 5, ABS CBN 2, Q-11, 700 Club, Radyo Veritas, Inquirer Radio, Smart Parenting Magazine, Business Mirror, among others, and has served as resident therapist/counselor for parents and kid-artists in the highly popular ABS-CBN 2 Voice Kids TV singing reality show. Dr. Subida is an eclectic, multidisciplinary therapist and originator of his own revolutionary high-tech, high-touch counseling plus model. His areas of specialization include parent-child therapy, clinical infidelity treatment, relationship/marital counseling, separation/divorce therapy, anger management, depression, addictions, psychotherapy-spirituality integration, and innovative chess therapy. For more of Dr. Subida, you can find him at www.drsubida.com.

Dr. Angelo Subida, Psychotherapist belongs to Dr. Angelo O. Subida Psychotherapy Clinic in Philippines