Does Reading Fiction Help You Ptsd? My Experience And Wanting To Know More.

[tolstoytherapy]

I hope this thread is in the right place!

I'm new here, although I'm a long-term lurker :rolleyes: I've had PTSD since I was a child, although I only realised this when I was diagnosed a year or so ago. Both before and after the diagnosis I've gained so much help through reading, and it would be interesting to know if this is common.

I started up a website on bibliotherapy (using books to get you through situations or feelings) last year, and a lot of people have commented with the books that have helped them through anxiety or depression. For PTSD it's a bit more complex, I think.

Tennyson's Ulysses poem (the one quoted by M in the James Bond Skyfall film) resonantes so much with me. The motivation it includes to escape the past makes it quite an obvious choice for PTSD sufferers to read, I think. However, I've also found it useful to read less positive books that I could relate to. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf tells quite a disturbing story of a war veteran that experiences such hardship and comes to a nasty end, although I found I could gain something through relating to the character's actions, beliefs and behaviour.

Do books that show a struggling PTSD sufferer help you or trigger you? Are there any books that are more positive, e.g. Tennyson's Ulysses, that have helped you?

It would be interesting to hear your thoughts :)

 

[ExanimisRex]

Hamlet! There has never been a book written that better expresses what I go through as a sufferer of PTSD than Hamlet.

"Oh that this too too sullen flesh should melt, thaw and resolve itself into dew, Or that the everlasting had not set his cannon against self slaughter. oh god, God! how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world. Fie ont a fie, tis an unweeded garden that's grown to seed, things rank and gross in nature posses it merely."

From memory so I know it isn't a perfect quote but I believe that Shakespeare (or whomever actually wrote those words) had to have suffered great depression to have understood and described it so well

 

[tolstoytherapy]

That's a great choice! I'm sure I've underlined or put lots of exclamation marks around that quote in my copy.

If Francis Bacon had depression and PSTD, perhaps we'll be able to say that Shakespeare was a fraud :p

 

[franciemarnie]

I love Edward St. Aubyn's books.

T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets and The Wasteland.

"We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."

I loved A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and Jane Eyre growing up. The young protagonists had to go thru so much to survive, and came out the better.

Books were almost my only companions for many many years. Memoirs of people surviving against the odds held me up.

Primo Levi - I have no words for how much he affected me. But that's non-fiction. He did write fiction too, but his real life stuff got me.

What would I have done without books? I shudder to think.

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I've read a lot over the years, way before I knew I had PTSD. I led a very solitary childhood and in my free time - when I was genuinely alone, reading was what I did. I read to escape, to travel, to make friends and foes, to vanquish those foes, to experience emotions and experiences. Mostly I read fantasy, I've read so many fantasy novels to be honest I don't remember all of them by name but I know the characters and the stories.

I hadn't noticed anything relating specifically to PTSD but since roughly this time last year I've had a massive break from reading and it was within that time that I was diagnosed. I do however notice that over the years and the many novels that I've read that there are specific things that I relate to more - often in a way that I'm pretty certain the author didn't originally intend, or the same way as the author intended but far more intensely that they probably meant.

Sometimes it's sentences, paragraphs, quotes, analogies or descriptions but sometimes it's a specific character, or whole segment of story. Sometimes I've understood things that other people who have read the same book as me very profoundly when others have barely understood what was meant. The escapism from books and the what I've taken from them has not only kept me sane but it gives me a vague understanding and connection of other humans - something I think that with out I'd be lost. So this:

What would I have done without books? I shudder to think.

is exactly how I feel.

 

[tolstoytherapy]

Books were almost my only companions for many many years. Memoirs of people surviving against the odds held me up.

I led a very solitary childhood and in my free time - when I was genuinely alone, reading was what I did.

I can completely relate to this. I too had a very solitary childhood, and reading was all I could really do with my time. No wonder it became the main coping mechanism for me as I grew up (and still is!) As Kas_Can_Fly has mentioned, often books are what stop you from becoming entirely alone. I certainly think that I'd have much lower social skills and connection with others if I hadn't read so much when growing up.

I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who has been helped by books. When suffering from a problem as traumatic and complex as PTSD, knowing that you always have your favourite novels to turn to becomes quite comforting. As you've both said, stories of escapism and people surviving despite the odds can be precisely what you need during tough times and down days.

I'm thinking about writing a book on the use of literature for mental health problems such as PTSD. I'd find it so interesting to draw on my own experiences, although one person (a non-PTSD sufferer) once commented on my blog that I was underestimating the severity of mental health problems by suggesting fiction to those who were suffering. By no means should reading be used alone when addressing a problem so severe as PTSD - this I know from experience. I do, however, think that it's a great complementary tool to therapy, self care and a healthy lifestyle, and I think that drawing on my own experience might help others who are going through therapy, new diagnoses, or ongoing issues.

Your similar experiences have made me feel a lot more confident about this!

 

[Kas_Can_Fly]

I certainly think that I'd have much lower social skills and connection with others if I hadn't read so much when growing up.

I feel daft admitting this because lets face it, books/TV/Film are known for not being entirely realistic and are hardly an education resource for learning how humans should and shouldn't behave. Especially in fantasy novels, knights in shining armour etc.

Yet despite my love of books, I feel sometimes that reading s too big a commitment and I go through long periods of being unable to read. Sometimes I find that it goes on for so long that I find it difficult to come back to, but whenever I do come back to it I still love it all over again.

 

[ExanimisRex]

I read 78 books last year and so far this year I've read 1 and 1/2 books. I understand what you said Kas

 

[franciemarnie]

Same Kas, sometimes I can read, sometimes not so much.

I'd read Tolstoy's book on literature and healing any day.

I wrote a much longer post but it went POOF!
Too tired to repeat. Off for the nap to make up for last night.

Just one more thing - how I miss working in bookstores! Maybe someday. If I won the Lotto, I'd open one. So many gone in my neck of the woods.

 

[Resilientbibliophile]

Greetings,

Perhaps I'm intruding on this thread for I haven't so many fiction titles to contribute, whereas I'm not quite sure the impact (for good or ill) some have had upon me given that I don't believe I'm doing so very well. Isolating childhood, friends scant or friendships exceedingly difficult to sustain given circumstances. Some titles to offer, although really it will be up to the reviewer to judge for themselves the worth of that which I identify.

Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Get Your Gun. A present hardly constituting life, the flooding of memories of a life not to be recovered, and a desperate desire to communicate in an environment where few are suitably receptive all resonated with this reader.

Stanlisaw Lem's Solaris. Two film adaptations, one a three-hour treatment by the legendary Andrei Tarkovsky and a recent and very sound remake by Steven Soderbergh with Geo. Clooney. Haunting, many flashback sequences concerning regrets felt, and sci. fic. physical manifestations of psychological loose ends that literally materialize before crew, etc. The novel predictably evidences some nuances the films do not, although if intrigued, read and see all.

I rather find utopian fiction calming, given that such typically reflects the inverse of all the nightmares and societal inconsistencies a writer has taken notice of and employed to springboard towards what might be better instead. Austin Tappen Wright's Islandia from 1940 (I think!) is good, and not much less than 1,000 pages! Such detail is lavished upon describing what a PTSD sufferer would regard as the core stuff of emotional resilience generalized out to embrace an entire society. Seeing such reflect back in the pages of any quality utopian novel registers within my head that that writer too is thinking 'never again, never again' with regards to felt losses, the inadequacies of their childhood homes, upbringings, etc.

Mostly I read nonfiction, whereas I believe I gravitated towards grisely war memoirs as a child given such tonally matched what I felt I was enduring. I'll term such works hyperrealist coming of age tales where uncertainty, death and destruction is commonplace, and if penned by a soldier indentified as being part of an aggressor nation and/or army, there is usually a tidepool of grief and guilt that telegraphs across that for various reasons resonated on personal level even if I didn't fully understand or appreciate why. All for now...

M.

 

[tolstoytherapy]

I read 78 books last year and so far this year I've read 1 and 1/2 books. I understand what you said Kas

I get that too, particularly when my concentration levels seem to have dissipated into thin air. Sometimes I just end up staring into space and rarely focusing on the words, but at other times I can become so involved in what I'm reading. I guess the book choice must impact this as well as how I'm feeling.

I can also relate to this:

I rather find utopian fiction calming, given that such typically reflects the inverse of all the nightmares and societal inconsistencies a writer has taken notice of and employed to springboard towards what might be better instead.

Mostly I read nonfiction, whereas I believe I gravitated towards grisely war memoirs as a child given such tonally matched what I felt I was enduring.

Thank you for sharing!

 

[Lucasta]

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I can't believe I'm the first to recommend this!