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Real Talk: Lessons from a Therapist to Help you Heal
It's time to bring therapy out of the therapy room and into the real world.
In recent years, therapy and self-care have become familiar buzzwords, but it's clear that people are having to face their emotional difficulties without the tools and insight to work through them. Enter Real Talk : A book to enable readers to have genuine, authentic conversations with themselves, and to start the journey of healing their past experiences and cope with the challenges of modern life.
Filled with techniques and wisdom from a therapist's toolkit this is a must-have handbook for optimising your mental health. Drawing on her experience as a qualified psychotherapist and applying her intersectional perspective Tasha Bailey shares the knowledge and skills you need to change your life.
Tasha's straight-talking but compassionate style will help readers hold up a mirror to their present situation and make sense of their past - delving into topics such
· Trauma & inner-child healing
· Love, trust, and attachment
· intergenerational cycles of behaviour, rupture, and repair.
· Self-Esteem, b odies & sex
Real Talk contains a collection of lessons which the reader might typically learn in therapy. Tasha teaches readers modern language and ideas about mental health, exploring self-love and self-understanding. Connecting psychological theory, lived experience, references from modern day media and case studies from Tasha's work to create a more current, creative, and inclusive perspective of mental health.
In recent years, therapy and self-care have become familiar buzzwords, but it's clear that people are having to face their emotional difficulties without the tools and insight to work through them. Enter Real Talk : A book to enable readers to have genuine, authentic conversations with themselves, and to start the journey of healing their past experiences and cope with the challenges of modern life.
Filled with techniques and wisdom from a therapist's toolkit this is a must-have handbook for optimising your mental health. Drawing on her experience as a qualified psychotherapist and applying her intersectional perspective Tasha Bailey shares the knowledge and skills you need to change your life.
Tasha's straight-talking but compassionate style will help readers hold up a mirror to their present situation and make sense of their past - delving into topics such
· Trauma & inner-child healing
· Love, trust, and attachment
· intergenerational cycles of behaviour, rupture, and repair.
· Self-Esteem, b odies & sex
Real Talk contains a collection of lessons which the reader might typically learn in therapy. Tasha teaches readers modern language and ideas about mental health, exploring self-love and self-understanding. Connecting psychological theory, lived experience, references from modern day media and case studies from Tasha's work to create a more current, creative, and inclusive perspective of mental health.
272 pages, Paperback
Published November 26, 2024
67 people are currently reading
511 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 14, 2023
I liked the fact that this book covered a range of different topics and had practical tools to accompany it. This book was a bit heavy to read but it is what I needed. Favourite parts of this book was probably grief, trauma and boundaries. I only wish certain parts were longer but that’s just my cue to continue to invest in my own healing journey!
September 13, 2024
As you might expect with a book that covers such an incredible breadth of topics, some areas of this book were really interesting whereas others didn't land for me as a reader. Individual reader mileage will vary with this one! With that in mind, I’m going to share what worked for me as an individual human and what didn’t. It’s really tough to review a book like this without experience, perspective, and preferences creeping in, but that’s kind of the point!
What worked for me:
✦ The first two sections around childhood and attachment styles were fascinating. It was revealing and interesting to see how I, and humans I’ve known, have presented the various attachment styles in different contexts and stages of life.
✦ This was my second ever audio book and I really loved how it was narrated by the author. Not only did it add a layer of authenticity, I didn’t feel like the ‘performance’ was standing between me and the book.
✦ As an immigrant living in the UK, some of the perspectives on people pleasing and communication avoidance (two things I really don't understand!) helped shed a light on this part of British culture that my open and direct self has always struggled to navigate.
✦ I deeply appreciated the author's stories and the perspective they gave me on how different humans respond to deep-seated childhood wounds.
✦ Identity and justice section was *chef’s kiss*. I particularly loved the examples of how other people’s reactions can cause harm to the affected party. I’ve been advocating against a lot of these performative and insulting facades of allyship in workplaces and it was beautiful how the author broke down typical reactions and why they were harmful. I loved the exploration of intersectional identities and privilege!
✦ As a human who is voluntarily not in paid work because of job-related trauma and burnout, I felt so seen in the stress section, particularly the impacts of long term burnout and unhelpful thinking patterns. I like the emphasis that “burnout isn’t a badge of honour” and encouragement to redefine “laziness” and why rest is so important, the antidote to toxic productivity and exhaustion.
✦ I’m not on social media and don’t care about celebrity culture so huge chunks of the self esteem and body image sections didn’t resonate with me. This did, however, validate my choices to eschew these particular parts of modern culture! I feel like some of the commentary is helpful for social media users who need to be reminded of the harm it causes and the distorted versions of life it perpetuates.
What I wasn’t so keen on:
✧ I struggled with how heavily Freudian this was at times and leaning into pseudoscience (like dream interpretation). While I can see how exploring dreams, acknowledging an inner child, considering ego, can be used as tools to help people on their healing journeys, the scientist in me felt let down by the emphasis that was given in some of these sections. It also felt contradictory (and exhausting!) that I have an inner child, inner parent, inner Batman, inner Bruce Wayne, real self, fake self, shadow, etc.
✧ Didn’t love the religion; religion is the root of pretty much every painful instance of my childhood and some of the trauma I carried into adulthood.
✧ While there were a range of experts mentioned throughout the sections, some had more weight than others. Particularly, I noticed the amount of “influencers/content creators” consulted in this book which deeply dampened the credibility for me in these areas, especially when the ‘influencer’ status was the reason they were consulted.
✧ At times, I struggled with the suggested boundaries verbiage and conversation starters: sometimes they felt stilted, formal, watered down, or almost passive aggressive. This might be my North Americanness but I really don’t think, in some instances, kindness should be a consideration when setting boundaries. Drawing on an example from the book: If family is hounding you about when you’re having a kid, “Asking about my sex life is rude and inappropriate. Please don’t ask me this again.” Certainly a human enforcing boundaries around sex, consent, and physical touch should never worry about being “unkind”.
✧ There were a LOT of celebrity and pop culture references that I didn’t understand or weren’t familiar with. Additionally, there's a lot of trendy slang that may not age well.
All that to say, this book is a magnificent primer on all things healing and self-love. It provides interesting thought experiments, exercises, and thinking points to help us on our healing journeys while giving us the language to dive deeper into areas we may want to focus on. While there were areas I found more applicable and interesting than others, I think I felt every emotion known to humankind while reading this book which told me something in itself. Using this book as a tool to start/deepen self-work and understand more about a therapy journey makes healing and stewarding brain health accessible to all and helps normalize conversations in a way that can truly benefit our individual and collective selves. One to read, re-read, and annotate when I get a physical copy.
I’m deeply appreciative of Octopus Audio for making this audiobook available to review on NetGalley - thank you! 🐙✨
What worked for me:
✦ The first two sections around childhood and attachment styles were fascinating. It was revealing and interesting to see how I, and humans I’ve known, have presented the various attachment styles in different contexts and stages of life.
✦ This was my second ever audio book and I really loved how it was narrated by the author. Not only did it add a layer of authenticity, I didn’t feel like the ‘performance’ was standing between me and the book.
✦ As an immigrant living in the UK, some of the perspectives on people pleasing and communication avoidance (two things I really don't understand!) helped shed a light on this part of British culture that my open and direct self has always struggled to navigate.
✦ I deeply appreciated the author's stories and the perspective they gave me on how different humans respond to deep-seated childhood wounds.
✦ Identity and justice section was *chef’s kiss*. I particularly loved the examples of how other people’s reactions can cause harm to the affected party. I’ve been advocating against a lot of these performative and insulting facades of allyship in workplaces and it was beautiful how the author broke down typical reactions and why they were harmful. I loved the exploration of intersectional identities and privilege!
✦ As a human who is voluntarily not in paid work because of job-related trauma and burnout, I felt so seen in the stress section, particularly the impacts of long term burnout and unhelpful thinking patterns. I like the emphasis that “burnout isn’t a badge of honour” and encouragement to redefine “laziness” and why rest is so important, the antidote to toxic productivity and exhaustion.
✦ I’m not on social media and don’t care about celebrity culture so huge chunks of the self esteem and body image sections didn’t resonate with me. This did, however, validate my choices to eschew these particular parts of modern culture! I feel like some of the commentary is helpful for social media users who need to be reminded of the harm it causes and the distorted versions of life it perpetuates.
What I wasn’t so keen on:
✧ I struggled with how heavily Freudian this was at times and leaning into pseudoscience (like dream interpretation). While I can see how exploring dreams, acknowledging an inner child, considering ego, can be used as tools to help people on their healing journeys, the scientist in me felt let down by the emphasis that was given in some of these sections. It also felt contradictory (and exhausting!) that I have an inner child, inner parent, inner Batman, inner Bruce Wayne, real self, fake self, shadow, etc.
✧ Didn’t love the religion; religion is the root of pretty much every painful instance of my childhood and some of the trauma I carried into adulthood.
✧ While there were a range of experts mentioned throughout the sections, some had more weight than others. Particularly, I noticed the amount of “influencers/content creators” consulted in this book which deeply dampened the credibility for me in these areas, especially when the ‘influencer’ status was the reason they were consulted.
✧ At times, I struggled with the suggested boundaries verbiage and conversation starters: sometimes they felt stilted, formal, watered down, or almost passive aggressive. This might be my North Americanness but I really don’t think, in some instances, kindness should be a consideration when setting boundaries. Drawing on an example from the book: If family is hounding you about when you’re having a kid, “Asking about my sex life is rude and inappropriate. Please don’t ask me this again.” Certainly a human enforcing boundaries around sex, consent, and physical touch should never worry about being “unkind”.
✧ There were a LOT of celebrity and pop culture references that I didn’t understand or weren’t familiar with. Additionally, there's a lot of trendy slang that may not age well.
All that to say, this book is a magnificent primer on all things healing and self-love. It provides interesting thought experiments, exercises, and thinking points to help us on our healing journeys while giving us the language to dive deeper into areas we may want to focus on. While there were areas I found more applicable and interesting than others, I think I felt every emotion known to humankind while reading this book which told me something in itself. Using this book as a tool to start/deepen self-work and understand more about a therapy journey makes healing and stewarding brain health accessible to all and helps normalize conversations in a way that can truly benefit our individual and collective selves. One to read, re-read, and annotate when I get a physical copy.
I’m deeply appreciative of Octopus Audio for making this audiobook available to review on NetGalley - thank you! 🐙✨
November 18, 2023
What I liked most about reading this book is the range of topics covered. I will be able to revisit specific chapters when looking for tips and practical tools to use in my life. This book wasn't written to replace going to therapy, but has definitely brought up things from my childhood which I maybe unconsciously buried deep. A very easy read and highly recommend!
September 8, 2024
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Real Talk by Tasha Bailey is an interesting form of self-therapy on healing.
This is not a book you start and finish, this is a guided therapy session that you can complete in your peace and time.
Over the years I read or listened to many self-help books, finished intense therapy and kind of thought I knew more or less all the things but I am telling you - this book is different!
I started this as an e-book but after screenshotting nearly every page I ordered a hardcover as I can see how this will be used in our family!
What is unique in my opinion that you can use this book for yourself to deal with inner demons, and to understand why you feeling how you feeling, but if you are like me, and you already dealt with all this - you can read this book as a parent to ensure you saving your children's future mental health!
This book is not just informative, it's so easy to read and understand as examples are presented in such a basic way through the characters we all know!
And there are practical parts where you can sit down and do some work!
For practical reasons, I would advise having this book as a physical copy.
Originally I applied to listen to an audiobook narrated by the author but I didn't download it on time (I thought I did but the book just wasn't there anymore) so I bought an e-book to complete the review and I ended up buying a hardcover as well! So I am happy that I lost the audiobook as I believe it would have been harder to listen and complete practical tasks, or see tables with information.
Real Talk by Tasha Bailey is an interesting form of self-therapy on healing.
This is not a book you start and finish, this is a guided therapy session that you can complete in your peace and time.
Over the years I read or listened to many self-help books, finished intense therapy and kind of thought I knew more or less all the things but I am telling you - this book is different!
I started this as an e-book but after screenshotting nearly every page I ordered a hardcover as I can see how this will be used in our family!
What is unique in my opinion that you can use this book for yourself to deal with inner demons, and to understand why you feeling how you feeling, but if you are like me, and you already dealt with all this - you can read this book as a parent to ensure you saving your children's future mental health!
This book is not just informative, it's so easy to read and understand as examples are presented in such a basic way through the characters we all know!
And there are practical parts where you can sit down and do some work!
For practical reasons, I would advise having this book as a physical copy.
Originally I applied to listen to an audiobook narrated by the author but I didn't download it on time (I thought I did but the book just wasn't there anymore) so I bought an e-book to complete the review and I ended up buying a hardcover as well! So I am happy that I lost the audiobook as I believe it would have been harder to listen and complete practical tasks, or see tables with information.
June 18, 2024
I cannot recommend this book highly enough! I discovered through a podcast and it had been sat on my reading pile for ages as I was nervous to start it.
I couldn’t have been more wrong! I took it away on holiday with me and couldn’t put it down.
It has helped me undo so much negative stuff in my life and really helped me turn a corner. So much so that I’ve bought it for a few of my friends, too. I can vouch for it that much!
Tasha keeps it simple enough for someone without any prior knowledge of therapy to understand. Her pop culture references also really helped me understand a lot, too.
Just buy this book! 👌🏻
I couldn’t have been more wrong! I took it away on holiday with me and couldn’t put it down.
It has helped me undo so much negative stuff in my life and really helped me turn a corner. So much so that I’ve bought it for a few of my friends, too. I can vouch for it that much!
Tasha keeps it simple enough for someone without any prior knowledge of therapy to understand. Her pop culture references also really helped me understand a lot, too.
Just buy this book! 👌🏻
August 18, 2025
This is such a helpful book for anyone on a mental health journey. It’s filled with thoughtful prompts that really support self reflection and healing. I love that it’s not just a one time read it’s a resource you can return to again and again.
February 9, 2025
Really enjoyed this book! It covers many different topics regarding psychology, it was my night book and read one chapter a night that left me reflecting to sleep and for the morning after.
August 12, 2025
(3.5 stars) the book is well written and the content is well thought. However, the various topics are presented only at high level.
October 4, 2025
The Inner Batman content was my favourite! 🦇
September 2, 2024
**Listened to the audiobook**
This book was really interesting. I got a lot from it. I loved that the books author Tasha Bailey narrated the audiobook.
There were parts of the book that were more like 'common sense' - but when in this context you really do listen and pay attention.
I think a couple of listens is needed to fully get the most from it as there is A LOT of info fired at you.
I also liked the fact that there were journal prompts with each section - it felt interactive.
A down-to-earth, friendly, inclusive self help book.
This book was really interesting. I got a lot from it. I loved that the books author Tasha Bailey narrated the audiobook.
There were parts of the book that were more like 'common sense' - but when in this context you really do listen and pay attention.
I think a couple of listens is needed to fully get the most from it as there is A LOT of info fired at you.
I also liked the fact that there were journal prompts with each section - it felt interactive.
A down-to-earth, friendly, inclusive self help book.
July 7, 2024
I loved this book and read it during a time when it was exactly what I needed. It covers so many helpful topics and provides practical tools and tips for mental health and wellbeing. Tasha truly brings forward ways that therapy can help our every day life and it felt like a conversation with a friend. It helped me do the work but it had real talk and often made me laugh. I highly recommend this book for everyone!
July 18, 2024
4.5⭐️
Amazing as someone whose had therapy before (& wants to go back) this book triggered me at points and really makes you question habits, behaviours you have and really look inwards. She touches on so many topics and has so much insightful knowledge. Each chapter feels like your own personal therapy session.
Loved how the book is full of practical tools, reflective exercises and activities. I listened to the audiobook and am going to purchase a physical copy.
Real Talk I’d recommend this book!
Amazing as someone whose had therapy before (& wants to go back) this book triggered me at points and really makes you question habits, behaviours you have and really look inwards. She touches on so many topics and has so much insightful knowledge. Each chapter feels like your own personal therapy session.
Loved how the book is full of practical tools, reflective exercises and activities. I listened to the audiobook and am going to purchase a physical copy.
Real Talk I’d recommend this book!
January 23, 2025
Insightful and supportive, especially with painful subjects like sexual abuse.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews