leahg22's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

4.0


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pau_line's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

4.5

ein etwas anderes buch im vergleich zu dem, was ich normalerweise lese, aber ich mochte es total gerne.

Das Buch besteht aus vielen kleinen Beiträgen verschiedener Autoren, die sich alle mit mentaler Gesundheit auseinandersetzen.

Auch wenn ich selbst nicht von den angesprochenen Themen meist nicht betroffen bin, hat mich das Buch sehr nachdenklich und emotional gemacht. Ich fand es super interessant, all die verschiedenen Perspektiven zu hören, von denen jede ihre Berechtigung hat, gehört zu werden. Natprlich muss man auch sagen, dass nicht alle literarisch herausragend waren, trotzdem habe die Geschichten so gut wie alle etwas in mir bewegt. Ich hab nicht nur einmal geschnieft und geheult und die Botschaft des Buchs ist einfach so unglaublich wichtig.
Es war einfach sehr Komfort, es wurde gegendert und sensibel mit Sorache umgegangen, gleichzeitig war es aber auch unbequem und hat mit Tatsachen konfrontiert, die man gerne mal auszuklammern versucht 
Ich kann das Buch nur allen ans Herz legen.

ein paar Zitate zum Abschluss (die mich betroffen, berührt, zum Nachdenken gebracht haben. In denen ich mich eils wiedergefunden habe, teils aber auch nicht. )

"Es frustriert mich, dass ich so bin. Es frustriert mich, dass ich nicht weiß, warum ich so bin. Und es frustriert mich, dass ich offensichtlich die einzige bin, der er so geht"

"Das Problem ist, das wir nicht wissen, wie man unglücklich ist"

"Ich weiß inzwischen, dass mein seelisches Wetter ständig umschlägt. Kein Gefühl der Welt hält ewig und manchmal durchlebe ich vier Jahreszeiten an einem Tag"

"Genau deswegen gibt es kein perfekt und kein normal. Weil da immer jemand sein wird, der dich annimmt und liebt, mit allem, was du bist oder eben auch nicht."

"Das Gegenteil von Angst ist eine schöne Sekunde"

"Wenn du keinen Ausweg siehst, kannst du dich manchmal nur noch zu einer Kugel zusammenrollen udn dein Bestes tun, um den Sturm abzuwettern. Irgendwann, ob es nun Stunden, Tage, Wochen, Monate oder Jahre dauert, haben sich die Wolken ausgeregnet und der Sturm hat sich gelegtm Dann spähst du aus deiner kleinen Kugel hinaus und rollst dich langsam auseinander. Es wird eine Weile dauern, die Sturmschäden zu beseitigen, aber du schaffst das."

"Aber wenn ich selbst Schwierigkeiten habe, bin ich wie ein verschlossenes Buch...wenn es auf meine psychische Gesundheit ankommt, tu ich gerne mal so, als würde ich mich wegen eines gestoßenen Zehs krankmelden"

"Jeder Mensch, dem wir begegnen, kämpft einen Kampf, über den wir nichts wissen."



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lenarthoe's review against another edition

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5.0


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britgirlreading's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring sad slow-paced

5.0


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nickoliver's review against another edition

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hopeful fast-paced

3.0

I've been in a bit of a reading slump lately. The book I'd picked up barely interested me, so I went days without reading a single page - which is extremely rare for me. I usually read at least a little bit every day, but I just couldn't engage with a book the way I wanted to. Because of that, I ended up picking up this particular book - since it was simply a collection of essays, I figured it would be easier than a full-length novel. I could read an essay at a time and didn't have to pay attention for too long a time. And it definitely worked!

Now, before I delve into my feelings a bit more, I need to give a little disclaimer: I read the German edition of this book, which was abridged with only about 310 pages instead of the almost 600 pages of the English version - something I didn't realise until I went to mark the book as currently reading. So it's entirely possible that the original would've had some groundbreaking, amazing essays that I now missed out on. But judging by these 310-ish pages, I honestly doubt that.

What I did like about the book was that it was diverse. It didn't just talk about one kind of mental health issue or had authors who experienced their illnesses the same way, nor did the authors all focus on the same thing. Some essays chose to tell the story of the authors' lives with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, bipolar disorder etc. Others found it more important to make it clear that it was okay to have a wide variety of feelings - that anger was okay, that sadness was okay. There were even a few that focused on extrinsic factors that could have an impact on mental health, like homophobia, xenophobia, or even your own culture where talking about such topics wasn't the norm. I really appreciated that diversity, because I think especially teenagers - which at least my library considered to be the target audience - could profit from some of the essays.

And I admit that some essays - or at least some paragraphs of them - did get to me. They made me tear up a little, and for a short, glorious moment, I felt less alone, because I saw my own thoughts and feelings reflected back at me.

However, the essays that truly read personal and meaningful were only few and far between. Unfortunately, the majority of them were very surface-level, so the ones that delved deep kind of drowned in them. It could be argued that the authors attempted to keep it lighthearted, to not trigger the reader and instead make them see their own mental illness - or mental illness in general - as something that didn't have to take over your life and shouldn't be as stigmatised as it is.

But in my opinion, that didn't work that well. Instead, some essays just seemed like their authors put absolutely no thought into them and the message they wanted to convey. For example, Benjamin Maack just mentioned that he didn't meet the deadline and that made him a piece of shit and sorry about that. Some were extremely short - for example, Naomi Campbell's was literally half a page long -, and many superficial sayings could be found within them that were probably already obvious to most mentally ill people. Sometimes, I felt like I'd accidentally picked up some leaflet at a mental health specialist's office. There was a also a lot of repetition from one essay to the next, which obviously tempered my excitement, too.

I do have to say I really liked Scarlett Curtis's essays. She was the editor of the book, and you could see that the book meant a lot to her. And I think the idea behind a book like this is admirable! But overall, this wasn't as impactful as I'd hoped it would be. 

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booksandcat's review against another edition

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4.0


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emilymai's review against another edition

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3.75


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