Surprisingly, this book had a lot of great content, which I did not expect from the unassuming cover. My expectations were that there would be some vague, general tips that I'd largely ignore, but honestly? I so appreciated the approach the authors took here. By diving into the societal expectations and experiences of women, it got deep into the full reasoning for emotional dysregulation, body dysphoria, people-pleasing, and more. Tons of exercises and examples made the research more tangible, and I could easily see this being a great workbook for a lot of people. Apart from its strict adherence to the gender binary and a few too many visualization exercises for me, I enjoyed this. Not bad for a 23-year-old book written to a general audience.
Content warnings for discussion of misogyny, trauma, suicide, infidelity, disordered eating, and general mental health.