HOW WE BREAK

How we respond to life’s turbulence.

In the second volume of a planned trilogy that began with How We Are, British health psychologist Deary draws on his clinical work, his research, and his own life and the lives of his family and friends to examine what happens to us when we feel pushed past our limits. A practitioner at a trans-diagnostic fatigue clinic, Deary works with patients seeking help for exhaustion resulting from illness—cancer, cancer treatment, or autoimmune disease, for example—or psychological or emotional stress. Offering several empathetic case histories, he considers the varied nature of toxic climates that “can exhaust our energies” or “cause us to devalue ourselves.” The author is candid about his own experiences with social anxiety, depression, and the terror he felt as a boy treated as a misfit by his schoolmates. Deary also chronicles the case of his mother, a passionate woman “trapped by circumstances” who became exhausted and despondent after a fall. Although research has found a genetic propensity to develop anxiety and depression, Deary underscores the idea that environments shape us more profoundly. Even siblings, eliciting different behaviors from a parent, necessarily grow up in essentially different worlds. Throughout each chapter, the author asks readers to reflect on the stories they construct about their lives and personalities and on the forces and experiences that continue to shape them. Those forces may include a change in work culture—such as a new boss instituting continuous monitoring; a family crisis; an illness; or a persistent nonvisible disability. “People with autism, trans people, queer people, overweight people, anyone marginalized, anyone who has just arrived in a country,” writes Deary, are burdened with the exhausting task of having repeatedly to explain themselves. “Self-befriending,” he concludes, is a step toward healing.

A compassionate guide to confronting distress.