Psychotherapist Julia Samuel provides a valuable and insightful guide to surviving modern life and the perspectives on the self. She writes in a sensitive and engaging manner about the inevitable nature of change. Very little in life remains immune from change, reflecting on five critical areas, often overlapping, to provide a helpful guide on how we might best manage life's challenges. She concludes by identifying eight pillars of strength for times of change, relationship with oneself, relationships with others, ways to manage emotions, time, treating mind and body as one, understanding the need for limits and how they may change through life, the stabilising nature of structure, and focusing.
Samuel's 5 critical areas reflect on the complexities of family relationships, love in all its forms, work, health and identity. With each area, she provides interesting details of her clients and their lives, summing up the area generally by reflecting on what might help us improve all our lives specifically in that area. Within family relationships she looks at a mother-daughter relationship, the adjustments a new father has to make when a much longed for baby arrives, and the problems with being a working mother. In the myriad of factors that are associated with love, she examines marriage and affairs, dealing with love and loss, finding new love and starting over, divorce, and looks at love through the lens of passion, intimacy and commitment. Work is seen through the acquisition of a first job, maternity leave, losing your job and facing life after retirement.
Health is seen through the impact of serious illness within a family, the menopause, the issues facing a single dad with cancer, the repercussions of ageing, employment and the loneliness of old age. Identity is particularly fascinating as it often tends to evolve, is not fixed, and it is not always easy to answer the question of who am I? There is a young Syrian woman who has moved from Raqqa to Berlin, having to cope with trauma and integration, others looking at coming out, moving beyond the binary, and the effects of race, culture and gender, in a society often uneasy at handling difference.
Samuel is a skilled psychotherapist, and provides plentiful evidence of her expertise with the work she does with her clients, she is able to hone in on the important issues, whilst acknowledging the real life difficulties that people face when it comes to change, it is often deeply uncomfortable to face and can be even harder to implement change. This is not going to be a book you are going to read cover to cover in a single sitting, you would be better served perhaps delving into a section that is particularly pertinent when necessary, or just reading through a section, reflecting and then taking a break before returning for the next bit. A great informative guide that I think most of us would find very useful in the practical help it may offer on crucial aspects of our lives. Many thanks to Penguin UK for an ARC.