I’ve just spent about a week reading a self-help manual for moderate depression**.
I was about two-thirds of the way through when I dropped it because its repetitive, faux-chirpy, childish tone was driving me nuts.
Author, Josefina Walker says that she’s suffered depression since she was aged eight. Indeed she tells us this on pages two, five, 12 and ad nauseam.
She also uses far too much primary school toilet talk and refers so glibly – even unkindly - to named people like unemployed husband ‘George’ and ‘psychic vampire Sally’ I must presume they are invented characters in order to engage her readers.
Then suddenly, Walker remembers some advice given to her by an older college mate whom she half-recalls quoting Indian Independence Movement leader Mahatma Gandhi.
In fact, the misattributed remark, “the key to success lies in the consistency of purpose” was made by Queen Victoria’s favourite prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli addressing the banquet of the National Union of Conservative and Constitutional Associations, at the Crystal Palace, on June 24, 1872.
This helped to remind me of the therapy pioneered by early French psychologist Émile Coué who taught patients to recite "every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better.”
The method, said his critics, appeared to work. Then it did not.
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* I received an advanced reader’s copy of The Happyish Project from Booksgosocial.com.
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** The Happyish Project is available from Amazon.com on Kindle @ $1.00 or in paperback @ $8.50.
© Natalie Wood (19 August 2016)
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