How We Break: Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living

“Deary’s writing is wise and compassionate . . . Few writers could jump so nimbly between Proust and RuPaul, neuroscience and the occult . . . [This] is the rare book that helps you see the world a little differently.”
—Sophie McBain, New Statesman

Vincent Deary works in a fatigue clinic and specializes in interventions that help people cope with whatever life has thrown at them, in particular burnout, stress, and trauma. The big traumas in life, he points out, are relatively rare. Much more common is when too many things go wrong at once, or we are exposed to a prolonged period of difficulty or precarity. When we are subjected to too much turbulence—when the world shrinks to nothing but our daily coping—we become unhappy, worried, hopeless, exhausted. In other words, we break. Breaking, he shows us, is embodied, as our physical and mental distress are linked, and happens when the systems that enable us to navigate life become dysregulated. But if we better understand how turbulence and overwhelm affect us, then we have a better chance of overcoming life’s challenges.

Drawing on clinical case studies, trailblazing scientific research, intimate personal stories, and illuminating references from philosophy, literature, and film, How We Break offers a consoling and deeply compassionate new vision of everyday human struggling, and it makes a bold case for the power of rest and recuperation.