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A review by field_of_books
It's All In Your Head: A Guide to Getting Your Sh*t Together by Rae Earl
TW: this is a mental health guide/self help book and I will be mentioning various mental health conditions in basic detail.
From the author of My Mad Fat Teenage Diary comes a mental health guide. This book is perfect for those that don’t have much understanding of mental health conditions, or for teens. It teaches you the basics of some of the most common mental health conditions, some tips on how to deal with them, and guides you with some of life’s most common problems (drugs, sex, relationships, parents etc). Rae’s writing makes you feel like she’s a personal friend- she’s witty, expressive, funny, and caring.
What I enjoyed: The book is split into clear chapters so that you can choose to skip them if you need to- I even skipped one myself. Each chapter explains the condition/problem simply, discusses medical treatments for it, and gives some basic tips on coping skills.
I enjoyed the chapter on anxiety, which I felt explained things well and even gave me, someone who has had mental health problems for over ten years, some tips that I hadn’t heard before.
I enjoyed the chapter about parents at the end, where Rae equates parents to breeds of dogs such as Labradoodles or Alsatians. It discussed how to communicate with them and also briefly talked about parental abuse.
Where it lacked: I felt that the chapters on OCD and eating disorders weren’t well written. The OCD chapter only described two types of OCD, contamination and danger type, and didn’t even explain that there are different types. It also spoke about the intrusive thoughts but I don’t feel like it explained the compulsion part clearly enough. The eating disorder chapter briefly mentioned numbers and even mentioned a meal plan at one point- which is extremely harmful to many people with eating disorders.
Overall, I did enjoy this book, I just feel like it could have done a bit better. It had some guidance from a psychiatrist but I felt like it could have done with more. I read this just after finishing the tv show My Mad Fat Diary and often read the book in the actresses voice!
From the author of My Mad Fat Teenage Diary comes a mental health guide. This book is perfect for those that don’t have much understanding of mental health conditions, or for teens. It teaches you the basics of some of the most common mental health conditions, some tips on how to deal with them, and guides you with some of life’s most common problems (drugs, sex, relationships, parents etc). Rae’s writing makes you feel like she’s a personal friend- she’s witty, expressive, funny, and caring.
What I enjoyed: The book is split into clear chapters so that you can choose to skip them if you need to- I even skipped one myself. Each chapter explains the condition/problem simply, discusses medical treatments for it, and gives some basic tips on coping skills.
I enjoyed the chapter on anxiety, which I felt explained things well and even gave me, someone who has had mental health problems for over ten years, some tips that I hadn’t heard before.
I enjoyed the chapter about parents at the end, where Rae equates parents to breeds of dogs such as Labradoodles or Alsatians. It discussed how to communicate with them and also briefly talked about parental abuse.
Where it lacked: I felt that the chapters on OCD and eating disorders weren’t well written. The OCD chapter only described two types of OCD, contamination and danger type, and didn’t even explain that there are different types. It also spoke about the intrusive thoughts but I don’t feel like it explained the compulsion part clearly enough. The eating disorder chapter briefly mentioned numbers and even mentioned a meal plan at one point- which is extremely harmful to many people with eating disorders.
Overall, I did enjoy this book, I just feel like it could have done a bit better. It had some guidance from a psychiatrist but I felt like it could have done with more. I read this just after finishing the tv show My Mad Fat Diary and often read the book in the actresses voice!