I just finished reading the book Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things by Jenny Lawson and I absolutely LOVED it!
In this book Jenny Lawson writes about some of her daily experiences with her mental illness. I would highly recommend it for anyone going through anxiety and/or depression, and also anyone who wants to better understand what it’s like living with anxiety and/or depression. Actually I just recommend this book to anyone because it’s great!
Not everyone’s journey with mental illness is the same but I found myself relating to the author on so many levels. There were so many points in this book where I laughed out loud and there were just as many that made me feel less alone because I’m not the only person that can take the smallest things and have their brains take it off into the most crazy tangent.
I don’t want to go into too much detail because I don’t want to spoil too much for those that are going to read it but I do have to share two excerpts from her book that really spoke to me. Even if you don’t have time to read the book I think these are two points that you will appreciate especially if you suffer from a mental illness.
The first one is something that I wish I could shout to the world. It is a great example of how ridiculous it is when you tell someone who is fighting a mental illness that it is something they can just get over. I relate to this so much because at the beginning I often wouldn’t understand why I couldn’t just snap my fingers and be happy or stop panicking when there wasn’t even anything to panic about but that is not at all the case. This is an illness we’re fighting and it’s not just going to go away without help. Just because this form of illness isn’t visible doesn’t mean it’s not real and doesn’t mean that fighting it isn’t just as important.
I have many days where I feel like a complete failure. It’s so hard for me to go from having a good day to spending the next day not being able to get out of bed. I also often compare myself to other people who have anxiety which is not helpful at all because it’s not like a broken arm, every case of anxiety/depression is different. It’s so frustrating that this illness is completely unpredictable and that it’s not something we just get rid of. One of the things my therapist told me when I first started seeing her is that anxiety/depression isn’t something we get rid of, it’s something we learn to dance with. There will be good days and there will be bad days but it will always be there. This excerpt perfectly summed up these feelings for me and helped me further understand that every case is different and I need to focus on what is the right way for me to dance with this illness.
I could go on and on with the takeaways and parts of this book that I clicked with but at that point you should really just read the book. I checked it out as an e-book from my library but if you want to purchase it (I’m totally getting it and adding it to my collection) it can be found on Amazon here.
If anyone has any books they would recommend regarding anxiety and depression (or just in general because I’m a book nerd) I would love to hear them.
Until next time, happy reading! 💜