Reasons to Stay Alive in The Tempest Reading Challenge

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Mar 25, 2016 Ellen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I had a very personal reason for picking this book up. You can probably guess it.

There are two ways you can approach this book, and these will profoundly affect the way you respond to it. One is to read it as an outside observer of mental illness, perhaps as a friend or family member of someone who is struggling. Maybe you're just interested. The other is to read it in order to understand your own experience. For me, it was the latter. I've been struggling with depression and anxiety for a numbe I had a very personal reason for picking this book up. You can probably guess it.

There are two ways you can approach this book, and these will profoundly affect the way you respond to it. One is to read it as an outside observer of mental illness, perhaps as a friend or family member of someone who is struggling. Maybe you're just interested. The other is to read it in order to understand your own experience. For me, it was the latter. I've been struggling with depression and anxiety for a number of years. When I picked this up off the bookshelf, I was in a slump and was hoping it might be able to help me. I was both wrong and right about that, but mostly right.

Reasons to Stay Alive is part memoir, part self-help. Matt Haig takes us through the three major stages of his depression - the crisis, the steep hill of recovery and the process of everyday living after his 'recovery'. All of this is interspersed with short lists, thoughts and conversations between Matt from 'then' and 'now'. It's a moving, honest, non-judgemental, and often very funny journey. It's also very relatable to someone who has suffered either depression or anxiety, or as Matt refers to so strikingly, the "nightmare marriage" of both.

I've read a lot of glowing reviews about this book, and I can understand why. Many people have said it should be required reading in schools and the NHS, an idea that I am firmly on board with. Matt Haig's writing is accessible, engaging, and unpatronising (a rarity for self-help books). And it's not often that a book which writes so frankly on depression dominates the bestseller list. Yet personally, I found some parts of the book much more enjoyable and relatable than others. The book shines most when Matt forgoes the turns to the memoir form and gives us anecdotes. Perhaps I'm not one for self-help after all. The description of his lowest point, when he almost turns to suicide on the island of Ibiza, moved me greatly. While it might seem unexpected that I found the most objectively sad part of the book the most moving, I was more touched by the way Matt wrote it, as a window into a mind bewildered by a disease he did not understand.

This is not to say that the parts of the book aimed towards self-help are a write-off. I found many of Matt's lists and suggestions for dealing with depressive episodes impressive and open-minded (notably, he takes an uncontroversially ambivalent view of medication). Yet if you're anything like me, you've had a lot of people try to give you solutions to deal with panic attacks and depressive episodes. Through yoga, through exercise, through CBT and countless other methods. What you might not have had is someone to relate to in terms of feelings and experience, as I found Matt to be, despite our circumstances being very different. Before you expect too much of this book, perhaps its best to remember his cautious clause for understanding: "Minds are unique They go wrong in unique ways. My mind went wrong in a slightly different way to how other minds go wrong. Our experience overlaps with other people’s, but it is never exactly the same experience."

In short, any quibbles I have with the book are personal, and formed through my own experiences and might not be what you experience when reading it. Much more importantly, I am immensely thankful for Matt Haig's bravery in publishing Reasons to be Alive. It's no small feat to revisit the worst period of your life when you're fearful every day that the monster might consume you again. I know that I will turn back to parts of it again and again as a familiar friend to remind me that depression and anxiety can both be beaten with strength and love. I couldn't have asked any more of this book than that. ...more

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Sep 12, 2024 Sana marked it as to-read

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Aug 09, 2020 Avani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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