Why Books Are Important to Our Mental Healing

Have you ever needed that moment of escape? To leave your reality of mental and physical issues and enter a new world where none of that matters?

 

When they say that books are a window to another world, they aren’t joking. And these new worlds can be just what we need in some of the craziest moments of our anxiety and depression.

 

I’ve recently reignited my love of reading, after a few years of focusing solely on my kids and their fun, rather than keeping up with my own needs. I love making sure my kiddos have amazing fun and are in a good mental space, but I’ve started to learn that I need to do the same for myself to effectively help them.

 

I focus on three different books every month – a “fun” book (fiction, biography, other non-fiction), a personal development book, and a spiritual book. All three provide some amazing mental stimulation and help me address and mitigate some of the affects of my anxiety and depression.

 

My fun book for the month provides some excellent escapism, a new or different world to explore. I look for a book that, at the beginning of the month, speaks to whatever my mind has been dealing with lately. Do I want fantasy? An escape to the world of one of my favorite rockers? Hike a distant trail with someone?

 

My personal development book provides real world tips and tricks, new tools to help me with whatever tough spot or difficulty I’m running into at the moment. I try to pick this one at the beginning of the month, too, based on an area where I feel like I could use some extra help at that moment.

 

My spiritual book is usually one that I finish pretty quickly, so I usually have more than one each month. I don’t subscribe to a particular religion, so I choose spiritual books from across the board, all different religions and faiths, to learn more about the world and the different ways that we can find a higher purpose. Use spiritual books to explore new avenues and find what works best for you. There’s no right or wrong answer here.

 

Books are one of my favorite ways for quelling my anxiety, and exploring different authors and genres to find what works best for me in the moment is cathartic in and of itself. There’s not much out there that can beat walking through a bookstore on a weekend afternoon.

 

Want to chat with like-minded, epic book nerd mamas? Come check out our community – we chat about books every Thursday.