Author: Hilary Jacobs Hendel
Rating: 2/5
A book on using the change triangle to become more self-aware of your emotions. So, nothing new here.
Spoilers ahead.
This was a non-fiction book so will be a general review rather than focusing on the usual plot and pacing, characters and writing style.
It’s Not Always Depression, if you didn’t gather from the ginormous subtitle, explores how the change triangle can be used to improve your mental health. Essentially, there are three parts of the triangle: core emotions, inhibitory emotions (that prevent you from feeling those core emotions) and defences (which prevent you from feeling core and inhibitory emotions). The main point is you’re supposed to figure out where on the triangle you are and then make your way to an open state full of calmness and clarity.
This book was recommended to me by my counsellor and I had VERY high hopes. I thought the title was quite interesting because depression or saying you’re depressed have become such buzzwords nowadays and I always feel uncomfortable when people say them unless they’ve actually got a diagnosis.
The title, however, is incredibly misleading. I thought there would be information on how different disorders manifest and produce depression-like symptoms. I thought there would be useful strategies for getting to the root of your problems with tips to alleviate any mental illness you have. Instead, this book just drilled the same message over and over and over again: find your place in the change triangle, understand how your emotions are working against and for you, become calm. That’s in a nutshell.
This book may be useful for those who lack even the slightest bit of self-awareness but I am not that person. I thought the exercises were redundant. The case studies were boring to read and I got quite annoyed with how Hendel described her therapy sessions starting every sentence (in dialogue with) “I hear you are ___” and the blank would be, word-for-word, whatever the client had said in the line above. I get that’s how therapy sessions work but, like, it doesn’t make for an interesting read.
I also don’t 100% agree with the premise of the book, that just becoming aware of how you feel will make your depression or anxiety or whatever go away. I am VERY aware that I’m scared and angry about how my flatmates decided to invite a friend over tonight without giving me much warning. That doesn’t do anything to solve the anxiety that results from it. And I do NOT feel calm despite naming those emotions.
The only reason I gave this book a 2/5 rather than a 1/5 is I liked that Hendel made a distinction between small-t “trauma” and big-T “Trauma.” Some of my friends and family keep telling me how they’ve had traumatic pasts and, okay, perhaps they do but a lot of the time, it’s not really big-T “Trauma.” It’s things like how your parents brought you up and that one time they didn’t let you quit the football club and you’ve been nursing that grudge for three thousand decades.
Also, this book did NOT need to be so long (it’s only 296 pages or so and that’s still a hundred too many). I didn’t care about all those clients. I would have liked to see more exercises, preferably more profound than “take deep breaths and think about how you feel.”
So, overall, this book–not for me. I know I sound very salty in this review but hey ho.
Earnestly Eccentric 