Description

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Drawing on cutting-edge science and intimate personal stories, an essential and paradigm-shifting book for readers struggling with fatigue, burnout, stress, and trauma—and for all of us who sometimes feel like we have been pushed past our breaking point.

In How We Are, the health psychologist and author Vincent Deary explored the process of habit and change in everyday life. In How We Break, a deeply compassionate and illuminating exploration of suffering, he examines what happens when we are pushed to our limit.

Deary is a practitioner health psychologist who also works in a fatigue clinic and specializes in interventions that help people cope with whatever life has thrown at them. The big traumas in life, he points out, are relatively rare. Much more common is when too many things go wrong at once, or we are exposed to a prolonged period of difficulty or precarity. When we are subjected to too much turbulence—when the world shrinks to nothing but our daily coping—we become unhappy, worried, hopeless, exhausted. In other words, we break. Breaking, he shows us, is embodied, as our physical and mental distress are linked, and happens when the same systems that enable us to navigate through life become dysregulated. But if we understand how the turbulence and overwhelm of life affects us, then we have a better chance of overcoming the challenges.

Drawing on clinical case studies, trailblazing scientific research, intimate personal stories, and illuminating references from philosophy, literature, and film, How We Break offers a consoling and deeply felt new vision of everyday human struggling, and it makes a bold case for the power of rest and recuperation.

About the Author

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Vincent Deary is a practitioner health psychologist and professor of health psychology at Northumbria University, where his research focuses on the development of new psychosocial interventions for people with a variety of health issues, including cancer survivors and the elderly. A clinician in the UK's first transdiagnostic Fatigue Clinic, he works as part of a multidisciplinary team to help people for whom fatigue is a disabling symptom. He is the author of How We Are, the first book in the How to Live trilogy. He lives in Newcastle Upon Tyne in the North of England.

Praise For…

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"Deary’s flexible, 'dimensional' approach makes room for varied individual experience ('our breaking, like our world, will be our own') and lays fertile ground for sensitive, analytical musings . . . An empathetic and searching meditation on some of humanity’s deepest psychological questions." —Publishers Weekly

"Much-needed . . . A particular strength of the book is the way Deary weaves between different schools of thought within psychology, philosophy and religion. The result is not merely a discussion of abstract ideas, but a collection of valuable observations about what it means to be human in the modern world . . . A cathartic meditation on just how difficult life can be . . . Deary makes a compelling argument as to the necessity of self-compassion. He leads us to a more humane understanding of our suffering and offers practical advice for navigating life’s ups and downs with greater grace and equanimity." —Alex Curmi, The Guardian (UK)

“Deary’s exhilarating new book mixes science, philosophy and memoir to argue that self-acceptance is our best defence against the stress of living . . . Deary’s writing is wise and compassionate, sometimes florid and always interesting—few writers could jump so nimbly between Proust and RuPaul, neuroscience and the occult . . . Deary’s is the rare book that helps you see the world a little differently.” —Sophie McBain, New Statesman (UK)

"This essential self-exploration underlines the deeply humane plea which is the heartbeat of the book: for more self-compassion." —Bel Mooney, Daily Mail (UK)

“Urgent . . . Reading this book had me re-reaching for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s seminal essays on his own ‘crack-up,’ not least because the speculative cadences of some of Deary’s metaphors are reminiscent of those pieces . . . The self-help wisdom here is properly caveated and hard-won.” —Tim Adams, The Guardian (UK)

"[Deary's] understanding extends beyond the purely conceptual, emanating from first-hand
experience of almost a year of post-viral fatigue . . . [He] challenges our cultural tendency to view work and rest as opposing forces . . . In those moments when we may be tempted to do it all anyway, Prof Deary offers a thought experiment that just might be a game-changer: 'Think of what you value in the people that you care about. I’ll bet you don’t say, ‘I love you because you’re so darn productive.’" —Niamh Jiminez, Irish Times

"Lyrical and ultimately uplifting . . . from [a] personal base, we range outwards, via Deary's polymathic referencing of literature . . . it's all done with a light and self-deprecating touch. Deary's last message is optimistic. When we do break, healing—or acceptance—is (often) within our grasp, but it may require a 'fundamental reorientation of our outlook." —Isabel Berwick, Financial Times