The Comfort Book

Have you ever had the experience of hitting rock bottom? Of feeling so depressed and anxious that you felt like you couldn’t bear to be alive? That’s a feeling that the author Matt Haig knows very well. When he was 24 years old and living in Ibiza for the summer, he had what he describes as a “breakdown.” He was flooded with an anxiety so intense, he couldn’t get out of bed. 

From the outside, he looked “normal.” Inside, he was in a constant state of panic and despair. He was so desperate to escape from those feelings that he decided he had to end his life. He went to the top of some cliffs and prepared to jump. But something held him back: he thought about the pain he’d cause his family if he were gone.

In his toughest moments during the years that followed, Haig clung to what he calls “life rafts”: small comforts that gave him a momentary reprieve from his painful thoughts and reminded him of his own resilience. Twenty years, two children, and many books later, these life rafts have carried Haig into a life he loves. Although he would be the first to tell you that there’s no such thing as complete recovery, his life now looks very different from how it did when he was in the grip of his breakdown. 

What gave Haig a sense of comfort, even as he felt he was falling apart? What allowed him to keep going through years of severe depression and anxiety?

That’s what you’re about to find out in these blinks. 

Whether you’re feeling depressed or just want to develop your emotional resilience, prepare to draw inspiration from Haig’s honest and sometimes unconventional advice. These blinks distill The Comfort Book into 14 key points or mantras, brought to life by an audio soundtrack.