Sane New World: A User's Guide to the Normal-Crazy Mind - Softcover

Wax, Ruby

Softcover

ISBN 10: 039917060X ISBN 13: 9780399170607

Verlag: PERIGEE BOOKS, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

The #1 UK bestseller that presents a funny, honest, and engaging look at the craziness of modern life, explaining why we’re all just a little bit out of our minds.

In Sane New World, Ruby Wax - comedian, writer and mental health advocate - shows us just how our minds can send us mad as our internal critics play on a permanent loop tape ‘Don’t do that.. why you... you didn’t... should have... but you didn’t...’. Ruby knows those voices well. She has been on a tough but ultimately enlightening journey that has taken her from battling depression to achieving a Masters Degree from Oxford University in Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy.

In Sane New World, Ruby helps us all understand why we sabotage our sanity, how our brains work and how we can rewire our thinking – often through simple mindfulness techniques - to find calm in a frenetic world.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Ruby Wax is an actress and author who began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company before moving into television. She has contributed to, written and edited numerous scripts for TV including Absolutely Fabulous. After three decades working on stage, TV and radio she then changed direction, completing both a Psychotherapy Diploma and a Masters Degree in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy from Oxford University. She now presents workshops for corporate leaders, helping them to come to a deeper and more direct level of communication with their clients and colleagues, and campaigns on mental health issues.

Ruby Wax is an actress and author who began her career with the Royal Shakespeare Company before moving into television. She has contributed to, written and edited numerous scripts for TV includingAbsolutely Fabulous. After three decades working on stage, TV and radio she then changed direction, completing both a Psychotherapy Diploma and a Masters Degree in Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy from Oxford University. She now presents workshops for corporate leaders, helping them to come to a deeper and more direct level of communication with their clients and colleagues, and campaigns on mental health issues.

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THE BEGINNING

This book is dedicated to my mind, which at one point left town, and to the rest of humanity, who perhaps at one time or another might have misplaced theirs. Though I personally have gone on a roller-coaster ride of depression for most of my adult life, this book is not exclusively for the depressed. I am one of the one in four who has mentally unraveled; this book is for the four in four. It’s for everyone, because we all share the same equipment: We suffer, we laugh, we rage, we bitch, we’re all vulnerable, delicate creatures under our tough fronts.

In this book I am going to attempt to give a rough guide for where we (the human race) are right now and offer some suggestions that might make our time on Earth a more joyful experience. I’m not talking “everyone in the Jacuzzi” joyful, I’m talking about the almost blissful state you sometimes have when time stops, your body feels like it’s home, and the volume of those internal critics in your mind lowers. I know those voices well, and so many people I meet recognize this dictator barking orders in their minds, keeping them up at night with that tormenting “I should have, I could have” tape playing relentlessly.

Many of us suffer from the pressures in today’s world that drive us from burnout to depression. We are slaves to our busyness with an insatiable drive for money, fame, more tweets—you name it, we want it. The problem is, it’s only in the last fifty to a hundred years that humans have lived with such abundance. We’ve gone from scarcity (when we were probably somewhat normal and had appetites to match) to the limitless demands we have today. You could say that multitasking has driven us mad; like leaving too many windows open on your computer, eventually it will crash. We are simply not equipped for the twenty-first century. It’s too hard, too fast, it’s too full of fear; we just don’t have the bandwidth. Evolution did not prepare us for this. It’s hard enough to keep up with who’s bombing whom, so we have no room to understand our emotional landscapes; our hearts bleed because we hear of a beached whale while the next minute we’re baying for the blood of someone who stole the last shopping cart.

•   •   •

The reason I decided to devote myself to this inward journey is because I wanted to find some shelter from the constant hurricanes of depression, which left me depleted and broken. Each episode got longer and deeper. I don’t want to blame my parents but child rearing was not their specialty. Friends would come over and there my mother would be, perched on the lampshade, a vulture with a Viennese accent, waiting for someone to drop a crumb. When they did, she would swoop across the room screaming, “Who brings cookies into a building?” Everyone would run away terrified. It got much, much darker later, but I am not going to talk about that here. My point is that this is the type of background that usually leads to a career as a comedian or a serial killer; I went for the comedy.

•   •   •

Here’s my life story so far:

Ruby Wax was born many, many years ago. She won’t be exact—anywhere from thirty-five to seventy-eight years ago.

Her first word was gargle. Everyone had great hopes.

Her first ambition was to be a mermaid, and when that didn’t work out she decided to be a squirrel. She did this for three years using an old Davy Crockett hat sewn to the back of her pants as a tail. Her dream ended when the tail blew out the window of the car her parents were driving, and they wouldn’t stop for her to collect it. This damaged her, but didn’t stop her.

She then went on to summer camp (Camp Agawak) where she got a special mention in canoeing.

Jump cut.

Many years later, after a calamity called her education, she went to the UK to get away from her parents. (For reasons, see her other book, How Do You Want Me?).

Once in the UK, she got into a drama school and after three years of practicing tongue exercises (to get the English accent she has today) she was accepted into the Royal Shakespeare Company, mainly because they liked what she could do with her tongue.

She began her five years there performing small parts that included:

Whore/Nun (Measure for Measure)

Nonspeaking Spirit (The Tempest)

Waitress with no lines (Antony and Cleopatra)

And many others

She got sick of having no lines so she began to write her own shows in which she played the lead and had the other members of the company play her maidservants and ashtrays.

From that point on, a fellow thespian at the RSC, Alan Rickman, directed and helped mold her career as clearly she was not going to be a successful classical actress. He has said many times he would never work with her again.

She then leaped to fame working in television for the next twenty-five years on her own comedy documentaries and in comedy and interview shows.

She wrote and performed in Girls on Top with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders and Tracey Ullman, which was very popular with gay people, and so she was launched.

Ruby script edited every season of Absolutely Fabulous and also performed in it, the likes of “Menopause Woman” just as an example.

Her own television shows included Wax on Wheels, Don’t Miss Wax, Wax in America, Wax Acts, Wax On . . . All these shows were basically about Ruby and her guests: Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, O.J. Simpson (who tried to knife her with a banana—look on YouTube), Imelda Marcos (who showed Ruby her new stash of shoes and even gave her some), and too many others to name.

She has recently received her master’s degree from Oxford University, graduating in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in September 2013.

Ruby used her research for her dissertation at Oxford to write this book (with a comedy spin), along with her new one-woman show with the same title and her speech for TED Talk Global called “What’s So Funny About Mental Illness?” Thereby killing three birds with one gun.

BACK TO THIS BOOK

So, after some serious breakdowns, I decided to go back to school to study psychotherapy to figure out exactly what they were charging £80 an hour for. I used to leave my shrink knowing exactly who I was, until I got to the tube station and then I’d forget again. Also, as I knew nothing about psychology; therapists could tell me anything, so how could I tell if they were any good? Once, when I was on the couch, I caught the shrink behind me eating a pastrami sandwich, mustard all over his face.

So I went to study psychotherapy. I got a library card and never discussed my previous life again. I thought, “Let’s give something back to the world.” (I probably didn’t but it’s a good line.) I’ve noticed that many women like myself choose to study therapy when they meet the wild surf of menopause; the hormones dry up, and they realize the chances are low they’re ever going to be hit on again, so they find themselves wanting to care for other people or starting a rest home for stray cats.

A few years later, I decided to go further and learn about what I was really interested in: the brain. My thinking was, if I learned how my own engine worked, it might prevent me from getting stuck in the middle of nowhere, shrieking for someone to come and fix me; I would provide my own AAA service. I’d be able to lasso this wild beast of a brain, stop it from churning away over the same ground, keeping me...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: PERIGEE BOOKS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2014
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 039917060X
• ISBN 13: 9780399170607
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 247
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar