I'm the patient not the shrink!: Bipolar, Clinical Depression and Dyspraxia walk into a bar...

by Cal Kennedy

What happens when the mind you’ve spent a lifetime trusting suddenly turns against you? In 2009, Cal Kennedy’s life imploded. A successful event producer, lecturer, husband and father, he had spent decades building a life that looked perfectly functional from the outside. Behind the scenes, however, depression, anxiety, insomnia and bipolar disorder were slowly tightening their grip. Then everything collapsed. What followed was a psychiatric hospitalisation, terrifying suicidal thoughts, powerful medication, crippling anxiety and a four-week stay inside a world where talking to yourself could be considered perfectly normal. I’m the Patient, Not the Shrink! is Cal’s brutally honest, unexpectedly funny and deeply moving account of what happened next. He writes about the darkness of a mental breakdown, the stigma surrounding psychiatric illness, the devastating impact on the people who love you, and the painfully slow journey towards recovery. Along the way come family tragedies, addiction, relapses, memory loss, a career rebuilt from almost nothing — and the extraordinary people who refused to give up on him. There are no miracle cures here. No inspirational clichés. No promises that everything eventually becomes perfect. Instead, there is honesty. Sometimes heartbreaking. Sometimes uncomfortable. And frequently very funny. Because when life becomes almost unbearably dark, humour can be more than entertainment. Sometimes it's one of the few things that reminds you that there is still a person underneath the illness. This is a story about clinical depression, bipolar disorder, dyspraxia and survival. But more than anything, it's a story about finding your way back to yourself when you’re no longer sure who that person is. If you or someone you love has ever struggled with mental illness, I’m the Patient Not the Shrink! offers something the view from inside the bubble. And one simple You don’t have to do this alone.

341 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 23, 2018

Reviews

[Joanna]

Dnf