Saturday, December 26, 2009

Book Review - Beyond Blue by Therese Borchard

When I received Beyond Blue by Therese J. Borchard in the mail I was feeling the polar opposite of what the book was about. I have a wonderful husband, healthy children, good friends and a positive outlook on life however, I know a lot of people like a Therese.


Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes - is part memoir/part self-help. It describes Borchard's experience of living with manic depression as well as providing cutting-edge research and information on dealing with mood disorders. By exposing her vulnerability, she endears herself immediately to the reader and then reduces even the most depressed to laughter as she provides a companion on the journey to recovery and the knowledge that the reader is not alone.

Comprised of four sections and twenty-one chapters, BEYOND BLUE covers a wide range of topics from codependency to addiction, poor body image to postpartum depression, from alternative medicine to psychopharmacology, managing anxiety to applying lessons from therapy. Because of her laser wit and Erma Bombeck sense of humor, every chapter is entertaining as well as serious.

In A Nutshell: Therese is a good writer; the book is witty and full of guidance from someone who knows depression first hand. This is the kind of book that will speak to people. Therese is not only an author and the book is not just another book about depression.  

Here is how Therese describes herself:

That would be me.
Hi. I’m Therese. I’m a manic depressive, alcoholic, and adult child of an alcoholic; a codependent, boundaries violator, and stage-four people pleaser; an information hoarder or clutter magnet, Internet abuser, and obsessive-compulsive or ritual-performing weirdo; a sugar addict, caffeine junkie, reformed binge smoker, and exercise fanatic; a hormonally-imbalanced female, PMS-prone time bomb, and sexually dysfunctional or neutered creature; a workaholic, HSP (highly-sensitive person), and, of course, I’m Catholic. Which could possibly explain some of the above.

The book comes out January 2010!


2 comments:

  1. Good review.

    I wasn't into reading it before, but now I think I will get a copy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Being that I am so tired of "self-help" books from the '80s & '90s, I would normally not even have given this a 2nd glance. But your review made me think that I would want to read this. I have some of the same problems as Theresa... Growing up in a household of an abuser and an enabler, I am plagued by anxiety, depression, OCD, and HSP.
    Thanks for a great review.

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