Welcome to Proper Mental episode 62 with my guest James Withey, an author, editor and public speaker.
He has written 5 books about mental health and mental illness and his own experiences with anxiety, depression, suicide and anorexia.
James is also the founder of The Recovery Letters project which publishes letters from people recovering from depression, addressed to people experiencing it. The idea came to him during a stay in a psychiatric hospital when he wanted to hear about recovery from depression but couldn’t find anything.
James and I chat about his mental health journey and his decision to write and talk about it.
We chat about the importance of humour in his books, how the mental health conversation has changed and how he works to normalise this conversation and tackle the stigma around it.
I also ask James about some of the specific management techniques and ideas from his latest book about anxiety and he tells me a beautiful story about how he came to live with an emotionally damaged cat.
You can learn more about James and his work via his website www.jameswithey.com and follow him on social media @jameswwithey.
You can learn more about The Recovery Letters at www.therecoveryletters.com
His new book, that we chat about in this episode, ‘How To Tell Anxiety to Sod Off’ is out now in your favourite bookshop and the amazon link is here: Amazon.co.uk: James Withey: Books, Biography, Blogs, Audiobooks, Kindle
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Thanks for listening!
Enjoy!