Reading a book is not an interactive experience. The book can't respond to you either positively or negatively or any other way. Self esteem isn't about "caring" what others think of you either as you imagine when you're manic. Self esteem is being "centered" and working on Life from the inside out. Knowing who you are and being kind of like those clown punching balloons that always right themselves? Life comes at you from the outside but your inside is "weighted" when you have good self esteem and you right yourself easily/naturally.

A therapist can help with our search for ourself, for that weighted portion that we can count on that doesn't play keep away from us because it "is" us. It's a bit like target practice and the therapist is the target :-) They mirror what you're doing and what effect it is having and say "try moving over two inches to the left" and the like. Eventually you can hit the "target" every time because you have a "feel" for it/where it is. It is probably harder if you have BP since you do sometimes have a moving target through no fault of your own. But it just takes longer to figure out the quirks of your particular Self and its patterns. It's possible to hit a moving target but is admittedly harder than learning to hit a stationary one.