How to Be Okay When Nothing Is Okay: Tips and Tricks That Kept Me Alive, Creative, and Happy in Spite of Myself

Bestseller Lawson (Furiously Happy) offers a witty roundup of coping strategies for navigating anxiety, creative block, and distraction. Drawing from her experiences with depression, anxiety, and ADHD, she shares ways of reframing mental flaws and embracing one’s limitations, useful tools (such as identifying concrete sensory details to interrupt emotional spirals, or lowering expectations to bypass creative paralysis), and gentle reassurances (describing how she dealt with her own sensitivity to rejection, she reminds readers that “you’re not for everyone. And that’s wonderful”). Lawson’s at her most winning when she’s relating her personal mishaps, from mistakenly handing a Dunkin’ Donuts cashier a long-expired hotel key card to abandoning a “hot yoga” class mid-session, to show how ordinary embarrassment can be reframed as evidence of persistence rather than failure. The result is an irreverent, idiosyncratic grab bag of tactics for getting through tough mental health days. (Mar.)