Book review: Strangers to our selves: Understanding Minds and the stories that make us by Rachel Aviv

 Stories about 6 mentally ill people

• Rachel, author herself, checked into hospital at age of 6 for anorexia
• Ray, a middle aged cocasian man checked in Chesternut Lodge for depression. Fromm-Reichmann described loneliness ass "one of the least satisfactorily conceptualized psychological phenomena, not even mentioned in most psychiatric textbooks" - a state in which the "fact that there were people in one's past life is more or less forgotten, and the possibility that there may be interpersonal relationships in one's future lefe is out of the realm of expectation."
• Bapu
• Naomi : 

        About Naomi's mother Florida ---

                "She didn't know she was beautiful, she didn't know she was smart, she didn't know she could                     raise her kids by herself. She took the first thing that showed her some interest and ran with it.                     Think about her history. Your upbring will trickle down" 

• Laura

            Need of her pain being taken seriously

            Prescription cascade: The side effects of one prescription leads to a succession of new                                     prescriptions

            "On 7.5 milligrams, I am a better family member"

            I wish I had a more flexible approach toward my feelings of inadequacy ("I want to be someone 

                 better than me", I had written in my 2nd grade diary), but I also feel closer to that space of                         flexibility when I take Lexapro; it seems to relieve the cognitive rigidity that often                                 accompanies anxiety and depression - the sense that one's story can unfold only one way.

    

• Hava