Can Reading Help Loneliness?
Reading can help you deal with loneliness by allowing you to connect with fictional characters that are battling loneliness, or giving you the exact steps to overcome loneliness by way of non-fiction self-help books.
Reading is one way we can cope with strong feelings of loneliness, and while you shouldn’t rely solely on reading to fix your situation, it can be a motivational way to process your emotions, and eventually overcome them.
Relating to Fictional Characters in Books Helps You Feel Less Lonely
When you can relate to a character’s feelings, internal and external battles, and personality, it lets you know that you’re not alone in what you’re going through and how you’re feeling.
Humans have utilized story-telling along with other creative outlets to express and deal with emotions for centuries — ever since we first started using language to communicate. This tells us that people find deep meaning in the stories they connect with, including stories about loneliness.
Take one of the most beloved book characters of all time: Harry Potter. In the first book, Harry is a very lonely boy; his parent’s are dead, his Aunt Patricia has nothing but contempt for him, his Uncle Vernon hates him, and his cousin Dudley terrorizes him daily. He has no one to turn to until he eventually discovers his magical abilities and meets his two best friends at Hogwarts. Millions of people all over the world connected with Harry’s story, and as a result, they felt less lonely knowing that other people have felt lonely, useless, and unwanted, too.
If you can find books that relate to the topic of loneliness, feelings of not belonging, being unwanted, and so on, it helps to know that you’re not the only one on earth who has dealt with those feelings, and it also makes overcoming those feelings seem much more doable.
Reading Non-fiction Books About Overcoming Loneliness Can Motivate You
Reading non-fictions books about loneliness can provide you with valuable information on the topic, or they can give you the steps you should take to overcome loneliness.
Non-fiction books are often written specifically to inform you about something, or help you solve a problem, and there are plenty of books out there targeted towards helping people to overcome loneliness.
There are informational books about how different cultures view loneliness and solitude, self-help books with practical steps you can take to overcome loneliness in your life, and books about how you can help the people in your life to overcome loneliness.
Here are a few highly-rated non-fiction books from Amazon on the topic of loneliness:
In addition to those books, check out my blog post How to Cope With Being a Social Outcast/Misfit for some everyday steps you can take to overcome loneliness based on your situation.
Reading Poetry Is a Quicker Way to Process Your Loneliness
Poetry is a great way to help you process and understand your feelings of loneliness in a relatively quick way.
The cool thing about poetry is that the rhyme scheme, language and lessons can beautifully capture some of the deepest human emotions and experiences in some really creative ways, whether it’s a haiku, free verse, sonnet, lyric, prose, or any of the other multitude of types.
So, if you don’t quite have time for a book, try to find some poetry on the topic of loneliness.
Has reading helped you with your battle of loneliness, and how? Let me know by contacting me via email, and don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter in the footer of my site for more helpful content tailored to introverts and loners.
