| Title: | I don't want to be crazy| Written by: | Samantha Schutz | Format: | Hardback | Genre: | Non-fiction: Auto-biographical | |
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 | This is a true story of growing up, breaking down, and coming to grips with a psychological disorder. When Samantha Schutz first left home for college, she was excited by the possibilities — freedom from parents, freedom from a boyfriend who was reckless with her affections, freedom from the person she was supposed to be. At first, she reveled in the independence . . . but as pressures increased, she began to suffer anxiety attacks that would leave her mentally shaken and physically incapacitated. Thus began a hard road of discovery and coping, powerfully rendered in this poetry memoir. |
While this is my 6th book of the year, it is the first book for me in the Mental Illness Advocacy Reading Challenge.
Writing in the present tense makes her story more present, more real. It was powerful, gripping, distracting, agitating... I have occasional anxiety attacks, but they're different from her experience, so it was enlightening to see this through her eyes. What wasn't so pleasant was when her anxiety first begins to develop and I would start to feel the anxiety creeping in just from reading about it.
A passage that really hit home:
When it is happening we in another placeIMO, this really gives a good insight into what's going on inside an episode, at least in my experience of anxiety, BPD, and depression.
where the rules of reason do not apply.
We need a voice from the outside
because our own voices cannot be trusted.
I'd strongly recommend this book to anyone wanting to know more about Anxiety Disorders.