It's Not You, It's the World - by Joanna Cheek Hardcover

Book Synopsis

What if the mental health symptoms we face aren't the actual problem? What if they're signals that help us see and solve the real problem--the imbalances in our wider systems that are making us all sick?

As our world clashes and collapses around us, it's no surprise that one in two of us will be diagnosed with a mental health condition by the age of 40, with one in five people affected each year. It's hard to view all our mental health symptoms as disordered if so many of us are experiencing them. Perhaps it's not that something's gone wrong in our bodies and minds, but that something's gone right: These symptoms are brilliant alarms and adaptions to survive a disordered world. Having sensitive protective functions that sound alarms or short-circuit when we're threatened isn't a design flaw. It's a design success.

As a psychiatrist, professor, and mental health speaker, Joanna Cheek argues that we're not broken or doing it wrong when we're stressed or struggling. As our systems are pushed to the brink of collapse, self-improvement alone neglects the source of our suffering. Instead, to care for ourselves, we must heal the imbalances in our wider systems that keep making us all sick. In It's Not You. It's the World, Dr. Cheek offers a survival guide of mental health tools to care for both ourselves and our collectives, helping us understand and befriend our alarms so we can come together to solve the shared problems they're signaling.

With a foreword by Gabor Maté, chapter-by-chapter guidance, and practical action to empower, connect, and instill hope in the reader, It's Not You. It's The World is the go-to guide for anyone feeling depressed, anxious, enraged, despairing, numb, or sick from adapting to a world on fire.

Review Quotes

"Dr. Cheek makes healing into a practicable aim and endeavor; the ultimate balm recommended in this fine work is compassion."--From the foreword by Gabor Maté

"Highlighting the inextricably interconnected nature of our existence and the vast web of causes and conditions behind each of our individual experiences, Dr. Cheek's It's Not You, It's the World emphasizes the need for greater compassion and mutual understanding to best meet the polycrises impacting us all today."--Sharon Salzberg, author of Lovingkindness and Real Life

"Kudos to Dr. Cheek for showing us the science behind our global dysfunction, and the research-led responses needed to heal ourselves and our world. Without flinching, Dr. Cheek faces the personal and the political, bringing her 'perky optimist' self and clinical expertise to a stunning range of problems. Her courage and wisdom shine through these pages!"--Jack Kornfield, PhD, founding teacher of Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and Trudy Goodman, PhD, cofounder of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy and founding teacher of InsightLA

"The real reason emotional suffering is skyrocketing isn't because we're flawed or broken--it's because we're responding to a deeply unwell world. In this brilliant, wise, and profoundly compassionate book, Dr. Joanna Cheek guides us to see the wider ecology driving our distress--the dis-ease of greed, hatred and delusion that infects our societies. With clarity and care, she invites us to face these truths together, to hold hands, and to begin healing the roots of our collective pain."--Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance

About the Author

Joanna Cheek, MD is a board-certified psychiatrist, psychotherapist trained in dozens of modalities, researcher, meditation teacher, journalist, and Clinical Professor at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Medicine. She co-created the national-award-winning Mind Space collective, offering publicly-funded mental health workshops to teach effective mental health strategies through connection and care to tens of thousands of community members and physicians who, like us all, experience the mental health symptoms that arise from living in a disordered world.