Sorry My Mental Illness Isn't Sexy Enough for You: Lessons on Living with Personality Disorders and Mental Illness

by Kay Garbett, Katja Pavlovna, Peter Tyrer - foreword

We've all seen the prettied-up image of mental illness. That movie-perfect, 'single artful tear', 'gazing wistfully out of the window' situation that conveniently disappears when you need to do the laundry. Well, life with a personality disorder isn't like that. At all.

Katja Pavlovna and Kay Garbett have been there, wading through stigma, discrimination, and all the worst bits of mental illnesses that people don't like to talk about. In this candid guide, they share the lessons they learned the hard way, to help you tackle everything from labels and disclosure to working with medical professionals and maintaining relationships.

Whether you're newly diagnosed, have been living with a personality disorder for years, or are supporting someone who is, this book will help you to make it through the unsexy bits and build a solid strategy to make it work.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mental Health

Audible Audio

Published June 25, 2026

Reviews

[Lisa Gray]

I was sent this book from the publisher; I had never heard of it. Of course I learned about personality disorders in school, but the vibe was definitely “stay away from treating them” or “they can’t be treated”. Being in a private practice, I’ve rarely had PD clients. So it was fascinating to read this book, written by two women diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, one of them also with Schizotypal PD. This book is such a compassionate and informative guide for those struggling with PD, and it was brave to put their stories out there. I think it’s also super helpful to read this as a clinician, if nothing else but to challenge some assumptions I had buried in there somewhere. There are a lot of practical tips in the book; do note though that the authors are British so some of the practical information about accessing care may be different here in the US.

[Jemma Thompson]

What can I say about this book? It had me in tears at the acknowledgements as I’m extremely lucky enough to be able to class one of the authors as a close and very dear friend. There are reasons why we clicked and after reading this book those reasons make perfect sense!
This book is going to be a lifeline to anyone who has had to fight for their mental health, both with themselves and with the professionals who are supposed to help, with diagnosis and then with further support. Help that is sorely lacking from step A to step Z when it comes to people with true mental health issues and not those who have been deemed ‘mental’ by social media or their peers.
This book made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me shout out loud, it made me want to hug my friend. This book is brutal in its honesty on how to live with mental health issues that indeed are not ‘sexy’ or have been portrayed as such through film and tv. Katja and Kay give you an unflinching, honest and raw tour of their lives both before, after and during their diagnoses, how it has affected both personal and professional aspects of their lives and how it continues to do so. Funny, heartbreaking, warm and above all, honest, if you only ever read one book on the subject, let it be this one.