How have you noticed characters coping affecting your own life?

I like to reread books pretty often, revisiting ones that have stuck in my head a few years later. I recently reread Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki by Haruki Murakami and without meaning to, I guess I adapted having a strict but simple routine to cope with loss, much like Tsukuru. I first read it at a time I lost friends as well, but I didn’t intend to take it as an instruction manual.

When I was a teenager, after my first breakup ever I read Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick (it was very popular with the movie coming out). Not by intention, but I allowed myself to deal with that breakup by acting emotionally like Pat Cooper, not recognizing as a 16 year old girl that Pat was an adult man struggling with bipolar. I now look back and see that I emulated him and that really wasn’t the takeaway of the book by any means.

There’s probably more examples but these two really stuck out to me. I should probably work on that, reading fiction has clearly developed my empathy since I identify with these characters so much. But I can’t use them as a blueprint either, even if Tsukuru is technically healthier than Pat. I know who I am in real life a lot more now but I still struggle with not integrating coping methods I read.

I’ve recently read a lot of nonfiction about marriage and healthy relationships, and I noticed I match better with the typical male characterizations of coping and conflict (not that there ever hard rules but generalizations exist for a reason) which I thought was unusual as a woman, but I think latching onto these two male characters might be a large part of why that’s the case.

Which characters or books have affected your real-life actions, positively or negatively?