By Julie Smith
My rating: 5 stars
Goodreads Rating: 4.07
Genre: Self-Help / Mental Health
Format Read: Audiobook
Goodreads summary: Drawing on years of experience as a clinical psychologist, online sensation Dr Julie Smith provides the skills you need to navigate common life challenges and take charge of your emotional and mental health in her debut book.
Filled with secrets from a therapist’s toolkit, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? teaches you how to fortify and maintain your mental health, even in the most trying of times. Dr Julie Smith’s expert advice and powerful coping techniques will help you stay resilient, whether you want to manage anxiety, deal with criticism, cope with depression, build self-confidence, find motivation, or learn to forgive yourself. The book tackles everyday issues and offers practical solutions in bite-sized, easy-to-digest entries which make it easy to quickly find specific information and guidance.
Your mental well-being is just as important as your physical well-being. Packed with proven strategies, Dr Smith’s empathetic guide offers a deeper understanding of how your mind works and gives you the insights and help you need to nurture your mental health every day. Wise and practical, Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? might just change your life.
Find the book: Goodreads | Amazon
Review
I loved this book. Why Has Nobody Told me this Before? was written with the purpose of taking techniques commonly used in therapy practices and sharing them with the world. The author, Julie Smith, is a psychologist dedicated to breaking down the price barrier that prevents many people from gaining access to mental health resources. I cannot emphasize enough how life changing therapy can be for people who can afford it (and if you can, donate to someone who cannot!). If you cannot, or if you are on the fence as to whether you want to, this book is as close to a substitute as you can get.
As someone who is privileged enough to have had access to therapy for years, a lot of what was preached in this book were tools that I’d either been recommended or otherwise come across in my journey. Some of the suggestions were to do certain things that I hadn’t remembered hearing about in hears, and just having it repeated to me again brought the skill to be more present in my brain. I felt that the book was still worth it having attended therapy before. I say that with the massive disclaimer that I am extraordinarily interested in mental health and improving mental health, and so i have a greater interest in the material.
I listened to this book via audiobook, and I would say that I don’t think this was the best format to consume the material. The book features an appendix with exercises that the author recommends you complete while reading. There were interactive elements, and it would have been nice to more easily take breaks from reading and think about what I’d just learned. When I listened, I was riding to work, and thus couldn’t pause to absorb the material. This is a book that would be ideal if you owned it and could re-read it periodically.
I don’t really have much to say on this book, but I wanted to write about it here because I believe so strongly in mental health care and reducing the cost barrier that so often exists. Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before? was incredibly well written, approachable, and designed for people who wanted to put effort into improving themselves but couldn’t access therapy. You don’t need to be clinically depressed or anxious to benefit from this book. Wherever you are on the mental health spectrum, it’s important to take care of your mental health, and this book will help you do just that.
Write Through the Night 