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A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind: My road to staying sane, and how to navigate yours
'A really clear, funny, useful guide to mental health.' Keith Stuart, author of A Boy Made of Blocks
'Warm, welcoming and wise.' Red magazine
'This is a funny, brutal, kind, sobering, remarkably brave and clear-eyed book. Compelling and necessary.' Warren Ellis, author of Normal, Gun Machine and Transmetropolitan
'Emily Reynolds is a brilliant writer on an important subject. And hilarious too.' Adam Rutherford
'This book isn't just brilliantly written and welcoming in its tone; it's honest, practical and important. It is going to help so many people - including friends and family who desperately want to help a loved one but don't know how.' Emma Gannon, author of Ctrl Alt Delete
Emily Reynolds is mad. After years of trying - and failing - to cope with her symptoms, she was finally diagnosed as bipolar in her early twenties. Since then Emily has been on a mission to find the best way to live with her illness, and now she wants to share that knowledge with you. Living with mental illness is isolating, infuriating and painful - but also very boring and, sometimes, kind of gross. A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is a companion to make the journey feel a little less lonely.
A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind gives you tips on:
How to deal with exam pressure at school and university
How to date when you are mentally ill (and what to expect when you're on the other side)
Navigating the internet and the online mental health community
Handling self-harm and suicidal thoughts
Diagnosis, treatment and maintaining your mental health
A blackly funny, deeply compassionate and extremely practical book, A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is a candid exploration of mental illness that is both a personal account of what it's like to live with mental illness and a guide to dealing with and understanding it.
'Warm, welcoming and wise.' Red magazine
'This is a funny, brutal, kind, sobering, remarkably brave and clear-eyed book. Compelling and necessary.' Warren Ellis, author of Normal, Gun Machine and Transmetropolitan
'Emily Reynolds is a brilliant writer on an important subject. And hilarious too.' Adam Rutherford
'This book isn't just brilliantly written and welcoming in its tone; it's honest, practical and important. It is going to help so many people - including friends and family who desperately want to help a loved one but don't know how.' Emma Gannon, author of Ctrl Alt Delete
Emily Reynolds is mad. After years of trying - and failing - to cope with her symptoms, she was finally diagnosed as bipolar in her early twenties. Since then Emily has been on a mission to find the best way to live with her illness, and now she wants to share that knowledge with you. Living with mental illness is isolating, infuriating and painful - but also very boring and, sometimes, kind of gross. A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is a companion to make the journey feel a little less lonely.
A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind gives you tips on:
How to deal with exam pressure at school and university
How to date when you are mentally ill (and what to expect when you're on the other side)
Navigating the internet and the online mental health community
Handling self-harm and suicidal thoughts
Diagnosis, treatment and maintaining your mental health
A blackly funny, deeply compassionate and extremely practical book, A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is a candid exploration of mental illness that is both a personal account of what it's like to live with mental illness and a guide to dealing with and understanding it.
240 pages, Paperback
First published February 23, 2017
43 people are currently reading
695 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
March 18, 2017
http://jessjustreads.com
A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind is an eye-opening memoir from a girl with bipolar who has spent years trying - and failing - to cope with her symptoms. Emily was diagnosed as bipolar in her early 20s and spent many years trying to understand how to live with her diagnosis (even before she was diagnosed she knew something was wrong, she just couldn’t get any doctors to believe her).
This memoir is both hilarious and moving. Emily makes light-hearted jokes throughout the book and is brutally honest about her life’s experiences. She doesn’t shy away from talking about the tough topics, with a whole chapter in the book dedicated to self-harm and suicide and how those two things enveloped her life and worsened her condition.
“But whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that I was miserable all of the time. ‘Sad’ doesn’t quite capture how I felt - ‘sad’ is melancholic. Sad is soft. Sad is gentle. Sad is looking out of a window wistfully. What I felt was more vicious than that.”
Emily wrote this book because she couldn’t find a self-help book that actually helped her cope with her symptoms, and she wanted to pass on what she’s learnt to others. But this book is also a memoir and I imagine the guide has helped Emily come to terms with who she is and how she will live her life with bipolar.
A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is a candid exploration of mental illness. Unflinching and brutally honest, Emily Reynolds has detailed exactly how depression affected her life. She dedicates a whole chapter to self-care and how she didn’t possess any, harming herself in her bed and then sleeping in blood-stained sheets. She had empty wine bottles all over the floor, and used a cheese grater as a spoon because she didn’t own any cutlery. Sanitary products cost money and would require her to leave her apartment to buy them, so she didn’t, and she rarely showered.
A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind is an incredibly brave memoir about navigating mental health, but it’s also a fantastic resource for any reader struggling with it themselves. After the end of every chapter, some of which focus on education, relationships and self-harm, Emily gives advice for anyone going through the same thing. And even though I’m not the target audience for that section of each chapter, the advice seems reasonable and practical. She wrote it because all the self-help books that she read gave impractical advice that didn’t really help her. So, she wrote this book in the hope that she might be able to pass her knowledge on to anyone else struggling with depression and not sure how to handle it.
“Empathy can't - or shouldn’t - be limitless; there’s a point in which you really should stop making excuses for other people’s shitty actions.”
This book is also beneficial for those readers wanting to better understand what mental illness is like and how it can affect a person’s life, in case they happen to have a loved one going through it and needing help. There is a chapter in the book where Emily talks about her relationship with her family, and then she gives advice to people who may have a loved one going through depression. She advises them to be a listening ear but also to understand that there’s no quick or easy fix to that person’s condition and as their loved one, you need to be patient and understanding and not bully or judge the person for their condition.
I loved this book so much and devoured it in one sitting. It’s shocking, hilarious, eye-opening but also extremely well written. If you’re ever interested in gaining a little more insight into mental illness, make sure this is the book that you pick up.
Thank you to Hachette Publishers for sending me a review copy of this title.
A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind is an eye-opening memoir from a girl with bipolar who has spent years trying - and failing - to cope with her symptoms. Emily was diagnosed as bipolar in her early 20s and spent many years trying to understand how to live with her diagnosis (even before she was diagnosed she knew something was wrong, she just couldn’t get any doctors to believe her).
This memoir is both hilarious and moving. Emily makes light-hearted jokes throughout the book and is brutally honest about her life’s experiences. She doesn’t shy away from talking about the tough topics, with a whole chapter in the book dedicated to self-harm and suicide and how those two things enveloped her life and worsened her condition.
“But whatever the reason, the fact of the matter is that I was miserable all of the time. ‘Sad’ doesn’t quite capture how I felt - ‘sad’ is melancholic. Sad is soft. Sad is gentle. Sad is looking out of a window wistfully. What I felt was more vicious than that.”
Emily wrote this book because she couldn’t find a self-help book that actually helped her cope with her symptoms, and she wanted to pass on what she’s learnt to others. But this book is also a memoir and I imagine the guide has helped Emily come to terms with who she is and how she will live her life with bipolar.
A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is a candid exploration of mental illness. Unflinching and brutally honest, Emily Reynolds has detailed exactly how depression affected her life. She dedicates a whole chapter to self-care and how she didn’t possess any, harming herself in her bed and then sleeping in blood-stained sheets. She had empty wine bottles all over the floor, and used a cheese grater as a spoon because she didn’t own any cutlery. Sanitary products cost money and would require her to leave her apartment to buy them, so she didn’t, and she rarely showered.
A Beginner’s Guide to Losing Your Mind is an incredibly brave memoir about navigating mental health, but it’s also a fantastic resource for any reader struggling with it themselves. After the end of every chapter, some of which focus on education, relationships and self-harm, Emily gives advice for anyone going through the same thing. And even though I’m not the target audience for that section of each chapter, the advice seems reasonable and practical. She wrote it because all the self-help books that she read gave impractical advice that didn’t really help her. So, she wrote this book in the hope that she might be able to pass her knowledge on to anyone else struggling with depression and not sure how to handle it.
“Empathy can't - or shouldn’t - be limitless; there’s a point in which you really should stop making excuses for other people’s shitty actions.”
This book is also beneficial for those readers wanting to better understand what mental illness is like and how it can affect a person’s life, in case they happen to have a loved one going through it and needing help. There is a chapter in the book where Emily talks about her relationship with her family, and then she gives advice to people who may have a loved one going through depression. She advises them to be a listening ear but also to understand that there’s no quick or easy fix to that person’s condition and as their loved one, you need to be patient and understanding and not bully or judge the person for their condition.
I loved this book so much and devoured it in one sitting. It’s shocking, hilarious, eye-opening but also extremely well written. If you’re ever interested in gaining a little more insight into mental illness, make sure this is the book that you pick up.
Thank you to Hachette Publishers for sending me a review copy of this title.
July 28, 2017
This book is absolutely incredible and I'm so grateful that it came into my life when it did. What makes it so powerful is that Emily Reynolds writes about mental illness with radical honesty. All the ugliness and the awkwardness of mental illness was explored in practical terms, no detail spared, which made it possible for this book to directly explore the very real ways in which life with mental illness is difficult.
Psychotic episodes, self-harm, and suicide attempts do not make for the most cheerful reading material - but something about Emily Reynolds' frankness allowed bits to be funny. Mental illness often gets othered, treated as though it's not part of 'normal' or 'everyday' life, and her use of black humour brought home one of her key points: your diagnosis does not define you, but your illness is part of who you are. It's also written in a very accessible way, so that - although painful subjects are dealt with - sitting with these ideas is no more painful than necessary.
This book sparked some intense self-reflection in me. It genuinely helped. It even gave me the motivation to change an unhealthy pattern of behaviour and start acknowledging that having a nice, clean living space is important. It felt real from start to finish - I'm often wary of superficial, quick fix books about mental illness, but "A Beginner's Guide..." is authentic and goes to the root.
I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for help living with or understanding mental illness. Well worth reading.
Psychotic episodes, self-harm, and suicide attempts do not make for the most cheerful reading material - but something about Emily Reynolds' frankness allowed bits to be funny. Mental illness often gets othered, treated as though it's not part of 'normal' or 'everyday' life, and her use of black humour brought home one of her key points: your diagnosis does not define you, but your illness is part of who you are. It's also written in a very accessible way, so that - although painful subjects are dealt with - sitting with these ideas is no more painful than necessary.
This book sparked some intense self-reflection in me. It genuinely helped. It even gave me the motivation to change an unhealthy pattern of behaviour and start acknowledging that having a nice, clean living space is important. It felt real from start to finish - I'm often wary of superficial, quick fix books about mental illness, but "A Beginner's Guide..." is authentic and goes to the root.
I'd recommend this book to anyone looking for help living with or understanding mental illness. Well worth reading.
August 3, 2017
I adored this book, I wish I could've read it years ago.
February 14, 2017
I was lucky enough to get my hands on a copy a few weeks early (the perks of working in the publishing industry!) and raced through it in a single afternoon. Emily Reynolds has written a thoroughly readable - and in many cases relatable - book on her experiences with mental illness.
Even though the author's experiences are vastly different from my own, I still found a lot of familiar things between the pages. There is nothing so reassuring as having someone else articulate a feeling you had almost talked yourself out of thinking you had - I found myself highlighting certain passages and thinking 'thank god, I wasn't making it up after all!'
I thought it straddled the line between 'readable memoir' and 'useful self-help' well, and I was never bored. I also think it is a credit to both Emily and her editing/publishing team that the book is so compulsively readable - I was drawn through the entire thing, from each sentence to paragraph to page to chapter, which is something that not many books (and certainly not many nonfiction books) can claim to do literally from the first page to the last.
Even though the author's experiences are vastly different from my own, I still found a lot of familiar things between the pages. There is nothing so reassuring as having someone else articulate a feeling you had almost talked yourself out of thinking you had - I found myself highlighting certain passages and thinking 'thank god, I wasn't making it up after all!'
I thought it straddled the line between 'readable memoir' and 'useful self-help' well, and I was never bored. I also think it is a credit to both Emily and her editing/publishing team that the book is so compulsively readable - I was drawn through the entire thing, from each sentence to paragraph to page to chapter, which is something that not many books (and certainly not many nonfiction books) can claim to do literally from the first page to the last.
August 21, 2017
This book is great. Although it might be a cliché by now, it can't be said enough that this is the kind of book I could have used as a teenager - especially since it acknowledges the fact that when you're that age, legitimate mental health concerns are frequently dismissed as a mere side effect of puberty. For this reason, I didn't secure any professional help with depression until I was 19.
Emily Reynolds also brings the ugly reality of depression to the forefront; think being unable to get out of bed, festering in your own filth, trapped in self-destructive thought patterns. And in an age where people with mental health issues are told to "do yoga!" or "just think positive!", this is incredibly validating. It's one of the most honest, unromanticised resources on the subject that I have read. Even though the book is aimed at teens/early 20s, there is plenty that older folks can take away, too.
Emily Reynolds also brings the ugly reality of depression to the forefront; think being unable to get out of bed, festering in your own filth, trapped in self-destructive thought patterns. And in an age where people with mental health issues are told to "do yoga!" or "just think positive!", this is incredibly validating. It's one of the most honest, unromanticised resources on the subject that I have read. Even though the book is aimed at teens/early 20s, there is plenty that older folks can take away, too.
January 5, 2018
What a lovely, kind, thoughtful, and honest memoir/self-help combo. There are so few books out there about mental illness that 1) cater to young folks and 2) don’t glamorize mental illness; I think this may be the only one I’ve read. I didn’t personally learn much from it because I’m kind of old hat at this now, but I wish it’d been around when I was 18-21-ish.
August 2, 2017
Interesting and funny and very honest. Definitely a "beginner's guide", with lots of biographical elements which kept things compelling. It didn't teach me anything I didn't already know about mental health but it was still a rewarding read.
July 3, 2022
Emily Reynolds latest book, A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is memoir about battles with bipolar. She has spent years trying to cope with her symptoms after being diagnosed as bipolar in her early 20s and has spent years trying to understand how to live with her diagnosis.
This memoir is about her personal story which includes advice for individuals who are managing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Living with mental illness is isolating, infuriating and painful but also very boring. She has covered variety of topics such as ho to cope with exam pressure at school or university, handling self-sabotaging and suicidal thoughts, advice for family and friends and even tips for dating.
Later in the book she has provided in detail advice and suggestions on diagnosis, treatment and maintaining one's mental health. After reading, I have found some of her suggestions are applicable in our daily lives since we all, in someway cope with mental stress and pressure a lot these days. It's not only a memoir, this book is an honest exploration in the field of mental illness.
Her writing is flawless and her experiences are engrossing.
This book is beneficial and directed towards readers who want a better understanding of what mental illness is like and how it affect a person's life. It indeed will sound eye-opening if you haven't read something on this topic before. In that case, you should read this book.
4 out of 5!
This memoir is about her personal story which includes advice for individuals who are managing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Living with mental illness is isolating, infuriating and painful but also very boring. She has covered variety of topics such as ho to cope with exam pressure at school or university, handling self-sabotaging and suicidal thoughts, advice for family and friends and even tips for dating.
Later in the book she has provided in detail advice and suggestions on diagnosis, treatment and maintaining one's mental health. After reading, I have found some of her suggestions are applicable in our daily lives since we all, in someway cope with mental stress and pressure a lot these days. It's not only a memoir, this book is an honest exploration in the field of mental illness.
Her writing is flawless and her experiences are engrossing.
This book is beneficial and directed towards readers who want a better understanding of what mental illness is like and how it affect a person's life. It indeed will sound eye-opening if you haven't read something on this topic before. In that case, you should read this book.
4 out of 5!
February 2, 2017
Emily Reynolds' A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is an unflinchingly honest, deeply empathetic, and vitally needed primer on living with and surviving mental illness in adolescence and early adulthood. Reynolds' personal stories of the best and worst of her life with bipolar disorder are comforting, validating, and revealing; her advice is informative and helpful, and, most importantly, she provides guidance for every single step, even how to make an appointment with a general practitioner or ask for help from a teacher. Humor, tenderness, and, above all, blunt truth run through every word in this book, and I am grateful for this new resource for those struggling with mental illness and those who love them.
November 5, 2017
I’ve read so many mental health books trying to get more info on my own issues and how to explain to those that haven’t experienced, and mostly they make me feel stupid (overly scientific) or as if I’m a child being dramatic. This is the first that I’ve engaged with and stopped multiple times to share a passage with a friend who I thought could use it just as I did, or to a family member/other half in an attempt to share my experiences. Honest, straight forward, and...just helpful.
January 13, 2024
I loved this book - as a mental health clinician, and as someone with mental illness. Emily writes in a relatable fashion while at the same time being informative and serious. At points I was surprised I wasn't reading a book written by a clinician! And don't be fooled by the name - you don't have to be in your 20s to absolutely relate and learn from this book. It's definitely a keeper in my bookcase!
April 22, 2021
Similar to my favorite self help book, How to Come Alive Again by Beth Mccoll, but better organized. Great for those seeking their first book about mental health or for people with mentally ill family members/friendships/relationships. I love how Reynolds says being mentally ill gives you “a way of navigating the world slightly differently.”
May 17, 2017
This is a great practical guide for those beginning their mental health journey, a book that I perhaps needed some months ago as most of this information I haven't found. But an excellent book to give someone who is struggling, with anecdotal evidence and practical advice.
April 10, 2022
It help me a lot on understanding how people with mental illness’s life is like and there are sections that guide people around them(exactly my status right now)which really can practically improve the relationship between us by trying each of these methods out
Read
December 3, 2024I left this book unrated because it was definitely heavily focused on depression and less so on anxiety. Because of this, I didn’t get what I needed from the book. However, I’m sure that the information provided is helpful for those with this particular struggle.
November 26, 2021
Fue como un abrazo de mi mejor amiga que vive del otro lado del mundo
September 4, 2023
This book saved me. Oh god. I love it so much
June 5, 2017
Emily Reynolds latest book, A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind is memoir about battles with bipolar. She has spent years trying to cope with her symptoms after being diagnosed as bipolar in her early 20s and has spent years trying to understand how to live with her diagnosis.
This memoir is about her personal story which includes advice for individuals who are managing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Living with mental illness is isolating, infuriating and painful but also very boring. She has covered variety of topics such as ho to cope with exam pressure at school or university, handling self-sabotaging and suicidal thoughts, advice for family and friends and even tips for dating.
Later in the book she has provided in detail advice and suggestions on diagnosis, treatment and maintaining one's mental health. After reading, I have found some of her suggestions are applicable in our daily lives since we all, in someway cope with mental stress and pressure a lot these days. It's not only a memoir, this book is an honest exploration in the field of mental illness.
Her writing is flawless and her experiences are engrossing.
This book is beneficial and directed towards readers who want a better understanding of what mental illness is like and how it affect a person's life. It indeed will sound eye-opening if you haven't read something on this topic before. In that case, you should read this book.
4 out of 5!
This memoir is about her personal story which includes advice for individuals who are managing symptoms of anxiety and depression. Living with mental illness is isolating, infuriating and painful but also very boring. She has covered variety of topics such as ho to cope with exam pressure at school or university, handling self-sabotaging and suicidal thoughts, advice for family and friends and even tips for dating.
Later in the book she has provided in detail advice and suggestions on diagnosis, treatment and maintaining one's mental health. After reading, I have found some of her suggestions are applicable in our daily lives since we all, in someway cope with mental stress and pressure a lot these days. It's not only a memoir, this book is an honest exploration in the field of mental illness.
Her writing is flawless and her experiences are engrossing.
This book is beneficial and directed towards readers who want a better understanding of what mental illness is like and how it affect a person's life. It indeed will sound eye-opening if you haven't read something on this topic before. In that case, you should read this book.
4 out of 5!
December 31, 2017
This review has been crossposted from my blog at The Cosy Dragon . Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me, which appear on a timely schedule.
Emily Reynolds struggled with depression from teenagerhood, ending in a period of psychosis that finally had her correctly diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder type I. This novel is her insights on how to cope, how to get help and how to speak to others about having a mental illness.
Emily has written a brilliant guide for those who might be affected by mental illness, either as a patient or as a concerned friend. Her articulation of the problems she faced in getting a diagnosis and getting well are ones that many with non-physical illnesses will recognise.
You’re going to need to be a bit insensitive to lots of swearing, the text is liberally scattered with them. But for me, this rang true as the mind of someone with mental health things going on. Sometimes just saying ‘f*** it’ is all you can do! And being sick is something that you can swear about.
At times, Emily’s conversational tone seems a little much for the ordinary reader, but there are real gems of wisdom in there. I particularly liked her section on relationships and how NOT to tell someone you have health problems! Emily says that every person is supposed to have a novel in them, but honestly I feel like Emily has already written mine!
Towards the end of the novel I started feeling quite weighed down by her discussions of suicide and self-harm. Although lighthearted, it’s not exactly easy reading. In addition, her frank discussions on the impact her uncontrolled illness had on her family were potentially unsettling. In fact, it came as quite a relief that a significant chunk was helpful resources and acknowledgements.
Buy this for a loved one, buy it for yourself. I am certain that the style of this novel will not be for anyone, but it is worth trying it out. Despite giving this 5 stars, I’m not sure it is going to remain on my shelf – I want it to get out there and be available for other people who are less experienced than I in this field.
Emily Reynolds struggled with depression from teenagerhood, ending in a period of psychosis that finally had her correctly diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder type I. This novel is her insights on how to cope, how to get help and how to speak to others about having a mental illness.
Emily has written a brilliant guide for those who might be affected by mental illness, either as a patient or as a concerned friend. Her articulation of the problems she faced in getting a diagnosis and getting well are ones that many with non-physical illnesses will recognise.
You’re going to need to be a bit insensitive to lots of swearing, the text is liberally scattered with them. But for me, this rang true as the mind of someone with mental health things going on. Sometimes just saying ‘f*** it’ is all you can do! And being sick is something that you can swear about.
At times, Emily’s conversational tone seems a little much for the ordinary reader, but there are real gems of wisdom in there. I particularly liked her section on relationships and how NOT to tell someone you have health problems! Emily says that every person is supposed to have a novel in them, but honestly I feel like Emily has already written mine!
Towards the end of the novel I started feeling quite weighed down by her discussions of suicide and self-harm. Although lighthearted, it’s not exactly easy reading. In addition, her frank discussions on the impact her uncontrolled illness had on her family were potentially unsettling. In fact, it came as quite a relief that a significant chunk was helpful resources and acknowledgements.
Buy this for a loved one, buy it for yourself. I am certain that the style of this novel will not be for anyone, but it is worth trying it out. Despite giving this 5 stars, I’m not sure it is going to remain on my shelf – I want it to get out there and be available for other people who are less experienced than I in this field.
August 30, 2017
Thanks to NetGalley and SOURCEBOOKS (non-fiction) for the opportunity to read and review A Beginner's Guide to Losing Your Mind by Emily Reynolds! This helpful and down to earth book involves diagnosis, self-care, dating, education, self-harm and suicide, family and friends, the Internet and recovery and relapse as the chapters listed in the table of contents. The introduction describes the author's personal experiences of depression and what she went through before diagnosis. This down to earth book offers realistic advice, help and ideas of how to overcome and maintain mental illness. The author shares everything to help others that are struggling and to encourage those that feel like there's no hope. The book also includes a list of resources and hotlines for help and getting questions answered; breathing and relaxation exercises as well as ideas for a mood diary. I feel that teenagers could benefit from this helpful book and I plan on purchasing it for the library. 5 stars.
June 20, 2018
Lovely, smart, gentle, honest guide to dealing with mental health issues of all kinds. It’s technically a ~self-help guide, but maybe a third of it is actually memoir/anecdotes from the author’s own life, and she gets really real and raw about her own stuff (some of which, especially the self-harm/suicidal ideation, could be triggering, so watch out for that). I don’t think I necessarily learned very much new information, but some of the suggestions/coping tactics are helpful and I may try some. Mostly I’m just glad this exists for youth! It’s such a good and rare combination of honest depiction of personal mental illness (without glamorizing) and genuinely helpful advice (and just as helpful admissions of what might not help or what’s worth trying but sometimes really hard to do). Obviously it’s not like an edge-of-your-seat page-turner, and a lot of the stuff is fairly basic/101, but the anecdotes kept it feeling consistently interesting and affecting. I’m glad I read it.
April 7, 2017
A very honest and personal journey through Emily's life with bipolar. It walks through her experiences and what she's learnt along the way; no magical cures or patronising advice just practical things that might help make a difference.
I honestly wish I'd had this book as a teenager, it made me feel less alone and less "mad" because hey other people feel this way too. I don't have bipolar but struggle with depression and anxiety and this helped give me a bit of insight in to a few of the differences and I'm hoping that moving forward I can be better at supporting my friends with bipolar.
Even if you haven't had mental health issues, if someone you care about does I think this book can give a good insight into what they are going through and how you can support them productively.
I honestly wish I'd had this book as a teenager, it made me feel less alone and less "mad" because hey other people feel this way too. I don't have bipolar but struggle with depression and anxiety and this helped give me a bit of insight in to a few of the differences and I'm hoping that moving forward I can be better at supporting my friends with bipolar.
Even if you haven't had mental health issues, if someone you care about does I think this book can give a good insight into what they are going through and how you can support them productively.
Read
March 7, 2017English freelance journalist Emily Reynolds was a teenager when she first developed bipolar disorder. It proved a hard diagnosis because it took around a decade of visits to health-care professionals and a cocktail of different medications in order to settle on the right ones. While on this journey, Reynolds researched and read the books that were available about mental illness, but she was unable to find one that resonated with her own unique condition. A Beginners Guide to Losing Your Mind is a result of Reynolds filling this gap.
To read the rest of this review please visit: http://magazine.100percentrock.com/re...
To read the rest of this review please visit: http://magazine.100percentrock.com/re...
August 3, 2020
It’s a crude book in all honesty. A vip seat into bipolar disorder, depression and psychosis. I wouldn’t label it that much into anxiety as - given the fact I suffer from it - I couldn’t resonate with the author on her anxious triggers and thoughts.
On what she explains as her depression history, please beware. It’s extremely graphic. I do have OCD and this grossed me out to the point I felt like throwing up when she mentioned her lack of cleaning habits and the status she allowed herself to live for many years.
On what she explains as her depression history, please beware. It’s extremely graphic. I do have OCD and this grossed me out to the point I felt like throwing up when she mentioned her lack of cleaning habits and the status she allowed herself to live for many years.
December 26, 2021
Does what it says on the tin. Don't read if you already know quite a lot about mental health because it won't be anything new but if you have a friend who's a bit clueless when it comes to those issues or you are just starting to struggle yourself would recommend 100%. It will definetly be an eye opener and I think if anything else, very down to earth and easy to get your head around. I like her style of writing and for someone who's a bit impatient with mental health issues I think this might put things into perspective a bit more.
October 15, 2017
A really excellent beginners guide to mental illness and the ways you can start to manage it. Drawing heavily on the author's personal experiences, this is both an honest and engaging story of dealing with bipolar disorder as well as a handbook to understanding and managing your own mental health. Trigger warnings in the book for discussion of suicide and self harm (but these sections are well flagged)
August 18, 2020
The best and most real book about living with mental illness that I have ever read (and trust me, I’ve read a lot about mental illness...) I felt genuinely seen and heard and listened to and reading such a relatable experience so candidly written about made me feel so much less alone. I can’t express enough how important this book has been for me and I know I’m going to keep coming back to it when I’m in need!
August 17, 2021
A funny, candid and occasionally self-indulgent memoir of living with poor mental health, Emily Reynolds’ book acts as both comforter and life coach for those struggling to make sense of their own head. It is an unflinching account of her own issues, and a riposte to empty-headed self-help books and doctors that belittle mental health as a “phase”. It’s always hard to label a book as “essential” - but for those having a dark night of the soul I can’t think of anything better to recommend.
August 4, 2018
This is one of the only selfhelp/memoir books where I felt like the author actually got it. She doesn’t shy away from the frustrating and truly disgusting sides of mental illness. She’s honest about how annoying the usual recovery suggestions are (drink water, exercise, get out more) while still acknowledging that they can be helpful.
October 15, 2018
This book really made me feel better about the state of my depression. It was helpful to read someone else's story that I could relate to. It was well written with a more casual style that made for a more fun read.
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