It's Not Always Depression, Reasons to Stay Alive 2 Books Collection Set

This two-book collection brings together It’s Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel and Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig. Across both titles, the focus is on psychological suffering and what it can mean to move through it, from understanding emotions to describing a personal experience of crisis and recovery.

In It’s Not Always Depression, Hendel challenges the idea that thoughts always drive emotions, arguing instead that experiencing emotions can be central to understanding thoughts and the self. Reasons to Stay Alive presents Haig’s true story of what happened when, aged 24, he felt unable to continue living, and how he learned to live again.

Included titles

• It’s Not Always Depression
• Reasons to Stay Alive

Key details

• Two-book collection set
• It’s Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel
• Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig
• It’s Not Always Depression discusses accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy

Synopses

It’s Not Always Depression

Hendel explains that emotions can shape thoughts, and that addressing psychological suffering may involve more than cognitive behavioural therapy or medication. Drawing on stories from her practice, she describes core emotions, defences and inhibitory emotions, and how their interaction can be understood.

The book outlines accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy, described as a way to accelerate healing through emotional experience in the present. It focuses on reconnecting with feelings in order to recover a more authentic self and become more calm, curious and connected.

Reasons to Stay Alive

Haig recounts how his world “caved in” at the age of 24 and how he came through crisis. He describes triumphing over an illness that nearly destroyed him and learning to live again.

Presented as more than a memoir, it explores how to live better, love better and feel more alive, and reflects on making the most of time on earth.