#BookReview By Lou of If You Should Fail By Joe Moran @joemoransblog @VikingBooksUK #NonFiction #SelfHelp #Philosophy

If You Should Fail
By Joe Moran

If You Should Fail is a non-fiction book that is certainly informative and interesting. Find out more in the blurb and then my review. I also thank Viking/Penguin UK for gifting the book in exchange of an honest review.

Blurb

There is an honesty and a clarity in Joe Moran’s book If You Should Fail that normalises and softens the usual blows of life that enables us to accept and live with them rather than be diminished/wounded by them’ Julia Samuel, author of Grief Works and This Too Shall Pass

‘Full of wise insight and honesty. Moran manages to be funny, erudite and kindly: a rare – and compelling – combination. This is the essential antidote to a culture obsessed with success. Read it’ Madeleine Bunting

Failure is the small print in life’s terms and conditions.

Covering everything from examination dreams to fourth-placed Olympians, If You Should Fail is about how modern life, in a world of self-advertised success, makes us feel like failures, frauds and imposters. Widely acclaimed observer of daily life Joe Moran is here not to tell you that everything will be all right in the end, but to reassure you that failure is an occupational hazard of being human.

As Moran shows, even the supremely gifted Leonardo da Vinci could be seen as a failure. Most artists, writers, sports stars and business people face failure. We all will, and can learn how to live with it. To echo Virginia Woolf, beauty “is only got by the failure to get it . . . by facing what must be humiliation – the things one can’t do.”

Combining philosophy, psychology, history and literature, Moran’s ultimately upbeat reflections on being human, and his critique of how we live now, offers comfort, hope – and solace. For we need to see that not every failure can be made into a success – and that’s OK.

Review

Life is measured on success and failure, sometimes a long, seemingly fixed perception that is wide-spread in society, and sometimes a more personal perception. Joe Moran talks about the culture of success and now people are told that if they fail to try and try again and how fails become success. He talks more of the reality of this theory in quite a philosophical way. He also uses case studies and quotes from people from many different walks of life to illustrate the points he makes as he tries to change people’s perceptions on failure within the arguments he presents. There are mentions of well-known psychologists like Freud, literary people like Virginia Woolf, olympians and more…

It’s an interesting, philosophical book with something quite realistic, that may have readers examine their own lives in terms of failures and successes and how they perceive them and how society perceives them. It doesn’t try and set unachievable expectations or goals.
I wasn’t as enthralled as I thought I might have been, even though it is at times, a deeply thought-provoking book, but don’t totally discount it as there are some interesting ideas and observations at how society is. There is a reality that most people at some point will relate to and may find useful. It is a book, perhaps best taking time to ponder over as you read and to reflect and think about what is being said in its well-researched weaving of historical and current time on the subject of failure and society.

The Suicide Prevention Pocket Guidebook @welbeckpublish #welbeckbalance #TheSuicidePreventionPocketGuidebook #NonFiction #NonFictionNovember #MentalHealth

The Suicide Prevention Pocket Guidebook
By Joy Hibbins

Would you know how to support someone who is in crisis and having suicidal thoughts? This book will assist you in enhancing your knowledge. Thanks to Welbeck Books/Welbeck Balance for gifting me this important book to review. Discover the blurb and my review below.

Blurb

Understandably, we may feel extremely cautious about how to approach or talk to someone who is having suicidal thoughts; we may be worried about saying or doing the ‘wrong thing’ – and this often creates a barrier to helping.

In this pocket guidebook, Joy Hibbins, founder of the charitySuicide Crisis, shares her invaluable experience of helping people through suicidal crisis. Using the charity’s groundbreaking approach, Joy helps you gain the practical skills, knowledge and confidence you need to support friends, work colleagues or family members during a time of crisis.

This book will show you how to:
• Understand the complexity of suicidal feelings and what may lead to a crisis
• Be aware of factors that can increase someone’s risk of suicide
• Directly ask someone about suicidal thoughts
• Build empathy and a strong connection with the individual in crisis
• Learn strategies to support someone and help them survive

The fact that you care, and you want to help, can make such a difference to someone who is in need of support.

Review

This is an easy to follow and digest guidebook that is accessible to all. The book is broken up into short, easy to read paragraphs, with some examples too, which enhances understanding and firms up what the chapter is saying, as does the short summaries at the end of each chapter. There are also a comprehensive list to who to call when you need support for yourself, a loved one or a complete stranger who you find yourself supporting. Being a pocketguide makes it easily transportable to have easy to hand.

The book is covers all manner of sub-topics and takes your hand on what is a huge subject and leads you through. It goes through what you may be feeling when faced with someone who has suicidal thoughts and vaildates them, such as fear of saying or doing the wrong thing, guilt and more, as well as reassuring that the book will equip you with the tools to manage this situation, that you may not already have. This can be highly useful because you just don’t know if or when you will come across someone who is suicidal. The book splits suicide into parts, including Passive Thoughts of Wanting to Die, Active Thoughts About Suicide, Suicidal Intent. It also explains certain terms as well as increases your understanding about what may lead to a sucidal crisis. The book then goes onto debunking as many as 10 myths/misinformation about suicide. The book then tells you of warning signs, including what they may say or do and potential mood changes. So, this gives you information that puts everything into context and what to look out for. The book develops from here into how you can help practically and lists questions you can ask and how to handle them as they helpfully include many permeatations in answers; your body language and actively listening; tone of voice; topics to focus on; how to help them survive (again, if it is more than 1 crisis point they have experienced in their lives) and creating a safety plan.

The book responsibly also talks about how to care for yourself after supporting someone who is at suicidal crisis point. It also says about what support the person in crisis can also recieve and who you can call.

The book is all in all one that seems very valuable for everyone.

#BookReview by Lou Fantastic Fin Faces His Fears by Jessica Bowers It’s a book with #ClassroomResources @rararesources #JessicaBowers #ChildrensBook #KS1 #KS2 #FacingFears #ChildrensWellbeing

Fantastic Fin Faces His Fears
by Jessica Bowers

Fantastic Fin Faces His Fears is suitable for 4-7 year olds. It has a pages at the back for parents and teachers to support children through this story. There are also resources available for the classroom. Thanks to Rachel Random Resources for inviting me to the blog tour and for gifting me the book. Find out more in the blurb and my review.

Blurb

Come and join Fantastic Fin as he grows his courage by embodying various inspiring characters and animals to face his fears!

Teachers, Parents and Carers can access the free Fantastic Fin Teaching Resource Pack available from the author’s website.

This is the first book in a series supporting children’s mental health by well-being author and psychotherapist Jessica Bowers. Ideal for children age 4-7.

Review

Fantastic Fin Faces His Fears tells the story, in rhyme, of a boy called Fin, or rather Fantastic Fin. He is a shy and anxious boy who finds a lot of life challenging. He then imagines he is different things like t-rex, a spy, a shark and many more to help him feel brave and overcome these life challenges he is experiencing. The pictures are big and bold with a hint of humour around the hope they provide as Fantastic Fin transforms and feels braver to confront his fears with all his might. At the end of the story there is a page of “Fantastic Fin’s Factfile”. It gives children some practical tips and there is also a page they can draw on themselves, to show how they feel when they face their fears and perhaps conquering them.

The book provides positivity and enough story that can also be woven into a greater conversation and topic of wellbeing or positivity. It can also be used as a conversation opener to find out what your children fear most and how they may face them and overcome them in a fun way. It can, as the story is also fun, be a way of also bonding and finding out more about your child and their emotions in a gentle manner.

About The Author

Jessica is a well-being writer with an extensive background in supporting both young people and adults with their emotional well-being and mental health. Jessica is a qualified Counsellor and Psychotherapist who trained at the Sherwood Psychotherapy Training Institute. Prior to this, she worked for over 10 years with young people with social, emotional and behavioural difficulties. Jessica consults with and writes for the wonderful Storytime Magazine, for their emotional well-being and mental health content. She has written a collection of well-being themed children’s picture books for 4-7 year olds, and Fantastic Fin Faces his Fears is her debut book. She has also developed some school workshops which offer emotional education aswell as offering author visits to read her books and poetry to EYFS and KS1 children. Jessica develops free activity and teaching resource packs around emotions and well-being themes which are available from her website at www.jessicabowers.co.uk .

Social Media Links –

https://www.facebook.com/jessicabowerswellbeingwriter

https://twitter.com/bowerswellbeing

https://www.instagram.com/jessicabowerswellbeingwriter/

Purchase Links

UK – https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fantastic-Fin-Faces-His-Fears/dp/1527298868/

US – https://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Fin-Faces-His-Fears/dp/1527298868/

#BookReview by Lou of One Thousand Days and A Cup of Tea by Vanessa Moore @Scribblingpsych @Kyle_Books @Octopus_Books @RandomTTours #Memoir #NonFiction

One Thousand Days and A Cup of Tea
By Vanessa Moore
Rated: 4 stars ****

Heart-rendering and emotional to the max; truthful with a surge of hope, no matter how hard things get, is depicted with searing honesty that is all affecting to the core.

Grief, it strikes all of us at some point or another, including the people you would least suspect, in this case, a clinical psychologist. This is her Vanessa Moore’s memoir. At the end of my review are a few interesting facts about grief.

I thank Anne Cater at Random Things Tours for inviting me to review. I thank the publishers Octopus Books and Kyle Books for providing me with a copy.

Meander down to find out more about the author, the blurb, my review, some facts and I’ve included a couple of links you may find useful.

About the Author

Vanessa Moore is a clinical psychologist. She studied Psychology at the University of Bristol, gained her PhD in Experimental Psychology from University College London and trained as a clinical psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry. She has had a long career in the NHS working in clinical, teaching, research and senior management roles. She specialised in working with children and families early in her career and she has published extensively in academic journals, mainly in the field of child psychology. She is a specialist magistrate in the family courts and she lives in Hampshire.

Blurb

Vanessa’s husband Paul dies suddenly and tragically on their regular Sunday morning swim.
How will she cope with her dilapidated house, her teenage children, the patients who depend on her? Will therapy help? Why do mysterious white feathers start appearing in unexpected places?

As a clinical psychologist, Vanessa Moore is used to providing therapy and guidance for her patients. But as she tries to work out how to survive the trauma that has derailed her life, she begins to understand her profession from the other side. Like her, many of her patients were faced with life events they hadn’t been expecting – a child born with a disability or life-limiting illness, a sudden bereavement, divorce, failure – and it is their struggles and stories of resilience and bravery that begin to help her process her own
personal loss.

Taking us through her journey towards recovery as she navigates the world of dating and tries to seek the right therapy, Vanessa uses her professional skills to explore the many questions posed by unanticipated death and find a way forwards. Beautifully written and honestly relayed, One Thousand Days and One Cup of
Tea is a heartbreaking grief memoir of the process of healing experienced as both a bereaved wife and clinical psychologist.

“This book is about a period of great loss in my life, a time when the tables were completely turned on me. I was a qualified therapist who suddenly found myself needing psychological therapy. I was a trained researcher who became my own research subject, as I tried to make sense of what was happening to me. I was an experienced manager who now struggled to manage the events taking place in my own life. Yet, throughout all this turmoil, my patients were always there, in the background, reminding me that there
are many different ways to deal with loss and trauma and search for a way forwards.”
Vanessa Moore

Review

Grief, it’s always around people. We live, we die and most people know someone who has died and most have experienced grief. The book is an honest account from Vannessa Moore who is a clinical psychologist, who needed assistance from psychological therapy herself to move past her own grief and turning her research onto herself as she became her own research subject. It’s a brave move to have made and even more so to write about in such a judgemental world. I will say, grief is experienced differently by everyone and that’s okay. This is very much Vanessa Moore’s account of it, but she has been through a huge gambit of emotions that somewhere, people will be able to relate to some part or all of it. It’s a searing look at each stage of grief as it is lived through.

The book starts off sedately with just how normal life can be trundling along, until the next moment, it isn’t like that anymore and it changes because of a sudden and most unexpected death. It has emotion and the racing thoughts of who you need to instantly call and what to tell the children and the lead-up to the funeral. She talks of desires of unburdening onto complete strangers. People may find this relatable, if they’ve unburdened onto someone else or someone has onto them. She talks candidly about how she feels when she sees Jennifer – a Psychotherapist, who listens and sometimes shows some concern. This is certainly her accuracy and account. I cannot say if this is true for everyone, but it is for Vanessa Moore and her experiences are very interesting.

It’s a surprisingly pacy book. I half expected to be trudging through it and was glad that this isn’t the case at all. It is however a book that can be dipped in and out of and is perhaps wise in some ways to do this, depending on how you’re feeling yourself, but it is a worthwhile read as it isn’t a “poor me” story, it goes beyond that. Something terribly sad happened, but it has a truth of warts and all about it, but is just about matter-of-fact too, with some of the pragmatic.
It also seems not to hide anything that she experienced in her grief, from being so low that she found solace and comfort in talking about it, to being enraged to finding a psychosymatic calmness in white feathers and imagining they are a symbol. She seems to have experienced it all. The book does move on from her counselling sessions and onto some of her work and clients and more into her own personal life, such as the quandry as to whether to date or not and into some pretty dark corners, but also, for her, and maybe for others reading this, brings some hope for a brighter future.

There is also an interesting snapshot into how things are changing in the NHS and her views on this. It also gives interesting illumination into psychotherapists. The attitudes and more…It comes to a great and very truthful conclusion, that many readers, I’m sure will find agreeable, she also manages to give a bit of hope for everyone now as she ends on a hopeful note about the pandemic, which everyone can relate to, no matter how you’ve lived through it.

What I do think would be perhaps wonderfully helpful in books that tackle such emotive and universal subjects such as these, is a list of just a few websites and contact numbers to charities who specialise in the book’s topic, in case there is anyone who would like to reach out. That aside, this is such a worthwhile book to read. I of course, also wish

Facts:

Some 800,000 women lose their spouses each year in the UK. Statistically, women are far more likely to be widowed and far less likely to remarry than men.
A study done by Amerispeak found that 57% of Americans are grieving the loss of
someone close to them over the last three years.
According to Child Bereavement UK, a parent of children under 18 dies every 22
minutes in the UK; around 23,600 a year. This equates to around 111 children being
bereaved of a parent every day.
1 in 29 5-16 year olds has been bereaved of a parent or sibling – that’s a child in every
average class.

Useful, Confidential Links

ChildBereavementUK Samaritans

#BookReview by Lou – The Existence of Amy by Lana Grace Riva @LanaGraceRiva #MentalHealth #Fiction

The Existence of Amy
By Lana Grace Riva
Rated: 3 stars ***

The Existence of Amy is a book that shows a character with O.C.D. dominating much of her life and also balancing the key aspects and milestones of life.
Thanks to Lana Grace Riva for sending me a copy of her book. Find out more below as to what it’s all about and my review.

Blurb

Amy has a normal life. That is, if you were to go by a definition of no obvious indicators of peculiarity, and you didn’t know her very well. She has good friends, a good job, a nice enough home. This normality, however, is precariously plastered on top of a different life. A life that is Amy’s real life. The only one her brain will let her lead.

Review

The book is presented in first person and in a such a way that the writer perhaps wants you to be right there with Amy as she tells her story of her life. Her life is pretty normal if you look at it as a tick list of her having a home, a job etc. Amy, however has a mental health issue which dominates her life. It tells the story of her O.C.D and how excruciating it seems to her in many situations.
The book is written in a way that it is clear that its purpose, or at least one of them is to show what O.C.D. can be like for someone who has it.
Does it make for an interesting story? Well, on the level of it presenting how O.C.D can affect someone’s life, then yes, as it does allow the reader to really get into the character of Amy’s head. She seems quite a fragile character at times, especially around the likes of Ed. This does add a little more dimension to Amy. The fact that there are other characters who she wants to remain friends with etc, adds to the plot.
On another level, some chapters flow better than others, it is somewhat mixed and it is an interesting cover choice, as, although it is a pretty colour, it has no imagery, which in someways is a shame as there is imagery in the descriptive writing on the inside; in another way, it is clean cut and uncluttered as perhaps, in someways, in a deeper way, showing someone with OCD and how this character in-particular likes something that is not cluttered or busy.

Is it still worth a read? Yes, and the reason I say this is because it will show someone who doesn’t have O.C.D. how it can dominate and really affect many areas of life and, those who do have this condition may relate to either it all or in part.

#BookReview by Lou of The Fear Talking – The True Story of a Young Man And Anxiety by Chris Westoby @ChrisWestoby @BarbicanPress #RandomThingsTours #health #wellbeing #mentalhealth #nonfiction

The Fear Talking – The True Story of a Young Man And Anxiety
By Chris Westoby
Rated: 4 stars ****

A day late due to technical issues outwith my control. Apologies…Today I’m delighted to close the blog tour of The Fear Talking. It is one that perhaps will resonate with people and for those of us who don’t have this anxiety within us, it is a good study and will people will be able to empathise.

About the Author

Author information: Chris Westoby has a PhD in Creative Writing at the
University of Hull, where he is now Programme Director of the Hull Online Creative
Writing MA. He guest lectures in subjects of mental health, teaches reflective writing
to Mental Health Nursing Students, and runs cross-faculty writing workshops. Chris
was born and raised in Barton, on the Lincolnshire side of the Humber, where he still
lives.

Blurb

Chris knows he will never get over his anxiety. He didn’t
want a ‘How to get better’ book. He wanted to understand his
condition. So he wrote this book.
• An honest heart-breaking account of how generalized anxiety disorder affected Chris, his family and everyone around him, yet went undiagnosed.
‘Westoby’s memoir succeeds brilliantly. The reader comes away with a new and profound understanding of what mental illness feels like from within.’ Jonathan Taylor, Associate
Professor of Creative Writing, University of Leicester
‘This book offers young people an insight into the range of unique ways the world can be experienced and the chance to reflect on their own struggles and know they are not alone in
these. I have recommended this book to my academic colleagues, my students and my
children.’
Dr Judith Dyson, Reader Healthcare Research, Birmingham City University
‘Chris Westoby shows us what it is to make use of the resonant power of words to offer a
portal into what it is really like. A vital touchstone for public and health professionals alike,
to understand deeply, to see and to learn from first person experience.’
Kathleen T. Galvin, Professor of Nursing Practice, University of Brighton

Review

The book begins with Chris and his parents in Orlando looking at a space shuttle. It should have been exciting, and all that adrenaline should have been pumping and endorphins going round, but instead it is quite the opposite. Chris tells how he feels, this includes what he feels when anxious. It is graphic, real symptoms. I don’t mean anything gory or anything like that, I just mean, he tells it how it actually is for him and instead of enjoyment of life and this experience, it is more than a deep uncomfortableness. Anyone who experiences or has ever experienced anxiety will relate and it will also assist those who want to find out more what it can be like, which can be useful if you have a partner or friend etc who suffers from this or maybe in the future you might.

Chris then takes readers to his home in England and he meets a girl, Emma and attends college. The magnitude of anxiety and all that comes with it like self-doubt and talking yourself out of something really shows. The words etch into you, they become absorbing and immersive.

There are conversations in college around his learning, which is interesting, but so is the mindset of both tutors and Chris in many ways around this and the fact he needs to see a nurse and then a counsellor. It goes into detail of what actually goes through Chris’s mind when he needs to get this type of support and has an appointment.

The book progresses somewhat in that it shows more about the next stages and whether he stays at college or not and the decisions made, but all the while, showing his anxiety. The book shows the juxtopositions of Chris’s life of what he desires and wants to have the possibility to acheive and what his fear and anxiety is doing, that is curtailing this and ultimately gives a vision of what it is like to be okay until a certain age and later develop anxiety.