I wrote the book because, throughout my career, I have heard the same sentence over and over again. Someone has received mental healthcare for five or ten years and says to me: “I wish I had known this at the start. If only I had known what questions to ask. If only I had known there was more than what my first healthcare professional told me.”

That is the whole reason for this book: to help you understand yourself better at the beginning of your journey, rather than discovering after years of treatment what you could have known from the start.

This is about everybody

I wrote this book for the general public, not just for the relatively small part of the population that has received a diagnosis. Psychological suffering can happen to anyone: me, you, your next-door neighbour, or your colleague who seems absolutely fine. Fear, sadness, disruption and disturbing experiences can affect anyone, not just people labelled as ill.

Once you take this seriously, the question changes. It is no longer: Does this belong to the ill or the healthy? Instead, you can ask: What is happening in my life that makes me feel this way, and what do I need to feel better?

Seeking Mental Health Support: You know more than you think

The essential point is that you know the most about your own experience, but you hardly ever get to use that knowledge. Because:

– You know what it feels like.
– You know what happened to you whenever your father lost his temper.
– You know how your body reacts when you walk into a crowded room.
– You know when something gets worse and when something feels liberating.
– You know which people bring you peace, and which do not.
– You know what eats you up and what stimulates you.

This is real knowledge. It is simply implicit: you know it, but you cannot necessarily put it into words. As a result, it competes with the knowledge of mental healthcare professionals, with their categories and lists of symptoms created by committees that may have little to do with your individual experience.

And then something unpleasant happens. You try to explain something in the doctor’s office that cannot easily be translated into professional language, but the response comes back in that language: “That sounds like fear.” “Trauma might be the cause.” “That might be depression.”

Your story is told back to you, and before long you hear yourself talking about yourself in words that do not belong to you. Without your own language, you risk losing your own compass.

Self-healing is not a vague concept

The second part of the book explores what actually works. In other medical disciplines, this principle is already familiar. Antibiotics stop bacteria, but your immune system does the rest. Treatment gets the ball rolling, creates hope and offers perspective; the person then plays an active role in their own recovery.

Psychological suffering works in a similar way. The recovery movement has been saying it for years: recovery is something you do yourself. That does not mean you have to do it alone. It means that recovery begins when something inside you starts to wake up: motivation, perspective and a learning process that helps you make changes in your life and mind.

Textbooks do not always explain it this way. Treatment guidelines often describe treatment in terms of symptom reduction. That perspective has been challenged by scientific research, yet it remains influential.

This is not an attack on the mental healthcare sector

I am not writing this to criticise the mental healthcare sector. It has good, hard-working people who do their utmost within a system governed by red tape. They do valuable work.

Like you, mental healthcare has its strengths and sensitivities. With this book, I want to help you work with those strengths and navigate those sensitivities.

Without preparation, however, you may be put on a track that focuses mainly on your shortcomings: What is wrong with you, and which method will fix you? Once people have been put on this track, they can find it difficult to get off it.

Why you need to know this in advance

Look at cardiology. Some of its greatest public health gains have come through educating the public, rather than relying solely on consultations in the doctor’s office. Exercise, do not smoke, eat healthily. Everyone understands the importance of maintaining healthy blood pressure.

We have never done this in the same way in mental healthcare. For 15 years, we have been telling the public a story about mental illness, and that is it. That is why this book is educational. It offers insight and encourages you to ask questions — not after treatment, but before.

You will also learn to recognise the support that already exists outside the traditional mental healthcare sector: recovery academies, peer support groups, experiential experts, life coaches, specialised therapists, or a volunteer who has time for you every week. This wider support network is already there, at least in part. You do not have to wait for someone to point you towards it.

And lastly

The book itself will not change anything. But it could give you a voice, a different perspective and something to guide you. The rest is up to you.

Read it before seeking mental health support. And pass it on to someone who feels wobbly and does not know where to turn.