Rating: 5 out of 5

I felt this was well written, interesting, engaging, light and yet deep as well. It is, above all, accessible. The kind of book that everyone should read to give them an insight into what anxiety and depression look and feel like.

Highlighted passages:

From Professor Jonathan Rottenberg: We need broader mood literacy and an awareness of tools that interrupt low mood states before they morph into longer and more severe ones. These tools include altering how we think, the events around us, our relationships, and conditions in our bodies (by exercise, medication, or diet)

Doubts are like swallows. They follow each other and swarm together.

Einstein said the way to understand relativity was to imagine the difference between love and pain. ‘When you are courting a nice girl an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder a second seems like an hour’

as Schopenhauer said, ‘we forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people’ then love - at its best - is a way to reclaim those lost parts of ourselves

Maybe love is just about finding the person you can be your weird self with

There is this idea that you either read to escape or your read to find yourself. I don’t really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping

I loved external narratives for the hope they offered

Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity

The plot of every book ever can be boiled down to ‘someone is looking for something’

Fear makes us curious. Sadness make us philosophise

Pain lengthens time. But that is only because pain forces us to be aware of it

Appreciate happiness when it is there

Be gentle with yourself. Work less. Sleep more.

No drug in the universe will make you feel better, at the deepest level, than being kind to other people

If the sun is shining and you can be outside, be outside

Originally posted to my Goodreads account