Sane New World: Taming the Mind

Description

How is it that our own minds can jeopardize our sanity? With the experience of her own periods of depression and a Masters degree from Oxford in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy to draw from, Ruby Wax explains how our busy, chattering, self-critical thoughts drive us to anxiety and stress. If we are to break the cycle, we need to understand how our brains work, rewire our thinking and find calm in a frenetic world. Helping you become the master, not the slave, of your mind, here is the manual to saner living.

Arriving in Britain from the United States in 1977, Ruby Wax began her acting career with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She went on to write and perform in her own hugely popular television programmes for the BBC and Channel 4 and was Script Editor on all series of Absolutely Fabulous. Recently she has obtained a Masters degree in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy from Oxford University and spoke at TEDGlobal. She has become the poster girl for mental illness in the UK.

Ruby Wax has an extraordinary mind, and she has brought it to bear with trademark wit and searing honesty on the subject of that mind, and the minds of all us. Very few will be able to read this wonderful contribution to the literature of mental health without recognising some part of themselves, and certainly of someone they know. A ruby beyond price. - Stephen Fry I love this book more than I love Ruby. And that's saying quite a bit...in a loud, funny voice. Yes...I love this book. And I know books. And I know love. And Ruby's book is both. - Carrie Fisher Ruby Wax combats ignorance with knowledge, confusion with crystal clarity, prejudice with open-mindedness, rigidity with humour and slays the dragon of stigma in this superb introduction to the twenty-first century science of the mind. This book will be a turning point in our battle to bring parity of esteem to mental and physical health. Explaining in simple language the nature of mental disorder and describing evocatively what you can do about it, is a substantial contribution to making our society a better place. This manual for living must be read by everyone. - Peter Fonagy, Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis at UCL Ruby Wax is at her best in this wonderful book. Its acute observations are both extremely funny and deeply moving. Many people will be grateful for her courage, openness, humour and wisdom. - Mark Williams, author of Mindfulness In Sane New World, Wax touches upon her own anxieties and fears with honesty and humour...it royally hauls a stigmatised fact of life kicking and laughing into the open. - The Times The book does succeed as a 'life manual' exactly because it is Ruby Wax who has written it...her life-affirming humour carries it through on a tide of quirky jokes and separate anecdotes from her life. - Daily Express