All My Friends Are Books
Just kidding, I have some really amazing human (and cat) friends too.
I’m been seeing a therapist, Karen, who specializes in narrative therapy, a type of therapy that encourages people to become “experts in their own lives.” A couple weeks ago, Karen asked me to draw a picture of “safety.” What did safety mean to me, and what did it look like? I thought about it for only a moment before drawing a picture of a girl reading a book. As a kid, I loved to read. My mom would surprise me by hiding a new book under my pillow. I first fell in love with chapter books by Beverly Cleary and spooky stories by R.L. Stein; then with Stephen King and John Greene novels as a teenager; and as an adult, with books by Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich and so many others. Books are, and have always been, places of safety for me.
I was an anxious child who has grown up to be an anxious adult. Social interaction is, and always has been, stressful for me; but reading is the opposite – books are little islands of calm. Reading feels nourishing, like making a human connection without the instantaneous pressures of face-to-face human interaction. Karen explained to me that when I’m caught in a “loop” of anxiety, my brain is being flooded with hormones, namely cortisol and adrenaline.
I wondered – if there is a chemical basis for my feelings of anxiety, is there also a chemical basis for my feelings of safety while reading a story? A quick google search presented a lovely article called The Science of the Story by Jeremy Adam Smith in Greater Good Magazine, published by UC Berkeley, which begins, “Stories are told in the body.” Smith writes, “As we see fictional characters interact, our bodies tend to release a neuropeptide called oxytocin, which scientists first found in nursing mothers. Oxytocin has subsequently turned up in studies of couples and group-bonding—indeed, we find oxytocin whenever humans feel close to each other, or even just imagine being close.” Smith’s assertions prove what I have always suspected – books are my friends.
If books are your friends too, I think we’ll get along just fine. Follow along for blog posts about reading and writing, and probably some stuff about cats and beer.
This blog post was adapted from the preface for Naked States