Read, Shake, Appreciate #12
Welcome to Read, Shake, Appreciate! This is your fortnightly round-up of words that made me feel inspired, songs that made me shake my ass, and people who I think deserve some spotlight.
This week I’m reading:
Lost Connections, Why You’re Depressed and How to Find Hope by Johann Hari
Some people might say reading a book that begins by breaking down the research into whether anti-depressants are actually effective, about a month after taking anti-depressants for the first time, is not a very good idea. Thankfully, those people would be wrong.
This might be the most important book on mental health that I’ve ever read. While it starts by investigating chemical anti-depressants (thoroughly, gently, and without writing them off completely), it moves on to explore all of the very valid reasons that our collective mental wellbeing is suffering within the societies we currently live. Hari breaks down the real impact that existing within capitalism, in cultures where we’re taught to see ourselves as islands, and conditioned to push down any past pain and trauma, is having on us. It’s bursting with scientific studies, personal stories, and is so read-able – I looked forward to it every morning. Besides a small sprinkling of fatphobia (boo), it’s genuinely brilliant.
If you’ve ever struggled with depression or anxiety and thought “there’s no reason why I should be feeling like this, my life is fine” – pick. Up. This. Book.
Here’s a great excerpt:
I started to think of one of the most banal, obvious cliches we have: Be you. Be yourself. We say it to one another all the time. We share memes about it. We say it to encourage people when they are lost, or down. Even our shampoo bottles tell us – because you’re worth it.
But what I was being taught is – if you want to stop being depressed, don’t be you. Don’t be yourself. Don’t fixate on how you’re worth it. It’s thinking about you, you, you, that’s helped to make you feel so lousy. Don’t be you. Be us. Be we. Be part of the group. Make the group worth it. The real path to happiness, they were telling me, comes from dismantling our ego walls – from letting yourself flow into other people’s stories and letting their stories flow into yours; from pooling your identity, from realising that you were never you – alone, heroic, sad – all along.
No, don’t be you. Be connected with everyone around you. Be part of the whole. Don’t strive to be the guy addressing the crowd. Strive to be the crowd.
This week I’m shaking to:
Good Day by Jax Anderson ft. MisterWives & Curtis Roach)
Just another sunshine-through-the-window, impossible-not-to-feel-uplifted bop.
This week I’m appreciating:
After… 4 (?) years of studying to become a person-centred counsellor (and writing a whole dissertation on why the currently practised treatment of eating disorders is failing), Joeley recently launched her own online body image support group, for people of all experiences to have a space to unpack the harms of diet culture and heal together. And from what I can tell, she’s fucking great at it. The first run of 6-week sessions has just finished, and the next slots are currently filled – but if this sounds like something you might be interested in, keep an eye out for when she opens up again here.
Oh, she’s also my best friend but that’s irrelevant.
I should pick up that book :) I grew up as the daughter of one narcissistic parent and one emotionally absent parent. I really wish I could draw to express this, but my relationship to the rest of the world was either
(shaded cartoon image of a human but with no outline, in a sea of other humans with outlines; because there's no outline, the shading bleeds into the sea and there's a general sense of lack of self)
or
(large cartoon image of a human with thick, thick outlining and violent scribbling inside, as though it could burst out at any time. The image takes up the full page and there's no other humans)
Recovery and therapy helped me nurse the outline around myself, creating a sense of who I am rather than just being someone who takes on all the traits (and emotions) of everyone else. But, it also helped me stop falling completely into myself, teaching me how to turn outward and focus on others... I'm not describing it well... basically, that nice feeling when you're going through something really difficult and you reach out to a friend and get to hear about their ups and downs and it puts everything in perspective, you become one among many and that takes so much of the pressure off.
(cartoon image of a human with outline, in a sea of other humans with outlines. All the humans have light shading within the outline, and a little bit of each person's shading extends outwards and mingles with everyone else's)
Thanks for sharing these recs!
I heard about the Hari book when it was first released, and the soundbites about exercise /other conservative measures being as useful as anti depressants put me off. However your review has made me think it could be a decent read. I'm reading Gabor Maté's Scattered Minds at the moment, and it sounds like it has some similarities.