Sign In Join Now
User Accessibility
  • Increase Font

  • Invert Colours

Search for a Book Browse Books Menu
I'm Not as Well as I Thought I Was Cover Play Sample

Sample may contain unsuitable content.

Open Audiobook

Audiobook streaming provided by:

OverDrive Logo

Share this book:

I'm Not as Well as I Thought I Was

AuthorRuby Wax

NarratorThe Author

Duration6h 12m

CategoriesAdult Non-Fiction, Biography and Autobiography, Mind, Body and Spirit, Self Help

PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing

VersionUnabridged

  Save to Wish List
  Add to Favourites List

Brought to you by Penguin.
Checking into a psychiatric institution wasn't exactly on Ruby Wax's agenda for 2022 - writing about it wasn't either, but here we are. These days, trying to stay sane in a completely chaotic world makes life incredibly difficult, especially if you're struggling with your mental health. While searching for inner peace and equanimity amidst global chaos, Ruby realises that, ultimately, the most challenging gauntlet we all must face is ourselves.
I'm Not as Well as I Thought I Was is Ruby's most honest and raw book to date - an insight into the depths of her psyche, and a stark exploration of what trauma can do to someone. Reflecting on years of personal and professional experience, she opens up to readers about her struggles with mental health and different treatments over the years, hoping to provide reassurance and guidance to anyone confronting their own anticipated, or unanticipated, struggles with mental health.
©2023 Ruby Wax (P)2023 Penguin Audio

3 (1 Review)
0
0
1
0
0

Anonymous 8 Aug 2024

An Honest & Raw Account of Depression That Gets A Little Lost in Anecdotes

This is my first time reading or, should I say, listening to a Ruby Wax memoir. Her seventh book starts in a psychiatric ward. It's honest and raw, and she is very vulnerable in her memoir. Ruby discusses her relationship with her loving second husband Ed, her children, spiritual retreats at Spirit Rock, Monastries, Fame, Jealousy, famous friends on the comedy circuit—including the late Alan Rickman, Dawn French, and Jennifer Saunders—and her TV days. Ruby discusses therapy, her parents and her past with biting honesty.

Ruby's accounts in the psychiatric ward are the most interesting, but in exploring her travels and flashbacks, her memoir gets a little discombobulated, and the true meaning of what she is trying to say gets lost. Admittedly, this is essentially her diary, and maybe the non-linear structure is representative of her mental illness at the time of writing, but for me, it could be a true gem if it was distilled a bit further.

Ruby has done a great job of writing, but I think the editing could have been more refined.

Related Titles

The Prison Doctor Cover

The Prison Doctor

Author: Amanda Brown

The Prison Doctor

Author Amanda Brown

Narrator Sophie Aldred

Duration 6h 3m

Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent behind bars. The no-holds-barred memoirs of a GP who went from working at a quiet suburban practice to treating the country's most dangerous criminals - first in young offenders' institutions, then at the notorious Wor...

View Book
Women Who Run With the Wolves Cover

Women Who Run With the Wolves

Author: Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Women Who Run With the Wolves

Author Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Narrator The Author

Duration 2h 18m

First published three years before the print edition of Women Who Run With the Wolves made publishing history, this original audio edition quickly became an underground bestseller. For its insights into the inner life of women, it established Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Est‚s as one of the most important voices of our time in the fields of Jungian p...

View Book
Admissions Cover

Admissions

Author: Henry Marsh

Admissions

Author Henry Marsh

Narrator Henry Marsh

Duration 7h 47m

Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical front line. Prompted by his retirement from his full-time job in the NHS, and through his continuing work in Nepal and Ukraine, Henry has been forced to reflect more deeply about what 40 years spent handling the human brain has taught him. Moving between encounters with patients in his Lond...

View Book
Face It Cover

Face It

Author: Debbie Harry

Face It

Author Debbie Harry

Narrator Clem Burke

Duration 8h 53m

Debbie Harry is a musician, actor, activist and the iconic face of New York City cool. As the front-woman of Blondie, she and the band forged a new sound that brought together the worlds of rock, punk, disco, reggae and hip-hop to create some of the most beloved pop songs of all time. With all the grit, grime, and glory recounted in intimate detail...

View Book
A Mindfulness Guide For the Frazzled Cover

A Mindfulness Guide For the Frazzled

Author: Ruby Wax

A Mindfulness Guide For the Frazzled

Author Ruby Wax

Narrator Ruby Wax

Duration 6h 59m

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Frazzled, written and read by Ruby Wax. Five hundred years ago no-one died of stress: we have invented this concept and now we let it rule us. Rest has become a dirty word, and our idea of satisfaction is answering the last email. We're sleepwalking through our own lives. Ruby Wax...

View Book
Gone Cover

Gone

Author: Min Kym

Gone

Author Min Kym

Narrator Rebecca Yeo

Duration 8h 10m

Penguin presents the complete unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Gone by Min Kym, read by Rebecca Yeo. 'The hours fell away as I read this spellbinding tale of love, loss, and above all devotion to art. You probably don't know what it feels like to be a child prodigy or a world class violinist, but you will after reading this luminous me...

View Book
A Day Like Today Cover

A Day Like Today

Author: John Humphrys

A Day Like Today

Author John Humphrys

Narrator John Humphrys

Duration 13h 3m

For more than three decades, millions of Britons have woken to the sound of John Humphrys's voice. As presenter of Radio 4's Today, the nation's most popular news programme, he is famed for his tough interviewing, his deep misgivings about authority in its many forms, and his passionate commitment to a variety of causes. A Day Like Today charts Joh...

View Book
Kraftwerk Cover

Kraftwerk

Author: Uwe Schutte

Kraftwerk

Author Uwe Schutte

Narrator Sam Peter Jackson

Duration 6h 14m

Brought to you by Penguin. The story of the phenomenon that is Kraftwerk, and how they revolutionised our cultural landscape 'We are not artists nor musicians. We are workers.' Ignoring nearly all rock traditions, experimenting in near-total secrecy in their Dsseldorf studio, Kraftwerk fused sound and technology, graphic design and performance, mo...

View Book
Healing Developmental Trauma Cover

Healing Developmental Trauma

Author: Aline Lapierre

Healing Developmental Trauma

Author Aline Lapierre

Narrator Tom Perkins

Duration 10h 29m

Explaining that an impaired capacity for connection to self and to others underlies most psychological and many physiological problems, clinicians Laurence Heller, PhD, and Aline LaPierre, PsyD, introduce the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), a unified approach to developmental, attachment, and shock trauma that emphasizes working in the pres...

View Book
For the Record Cover

For the Record

Author: David Cameron

For the Record

Author David Cameron

Narrator David Cameron

Duration 30h

David Cameron was Conservative Party leader during the largest financial crash in living memory. The Arab Spring and the Eurozone crisis both started during his first year as prime minister. The backdrop to his time in office included the advent of ISIS, surging migration and a rapidly changing EU. He sets out how he helped turn around Britain's ec...

View Book