About

My name is Lauren. I’m 41, enjoying a loving long term relationship, a beautiful son, good friends and a passion for chocolate.

My life is not perfect, but I’m feeling happy despite its imperfections. That’s a wonderful, new feeling. I’m often overwhelmed by gratitude feeling it. 

You see, my life did not start well. When I was 20, my greatest hope was to rebuild myself from scratch, or even better, become someone else. To say that my self esteem was low is an understatement. I hated my own guts. My life and my relationships were so painful that at some stage I thought “I have to find help or I will not make it”. I had no clue what was wrong at the time, but I had a clear understanding that I needed to do something about it if I wanted to save myself.

I did plenty of things to get better. I had years of therapy, with different approaches and more or less competent shrinks. I bought and read compulsively hundreds of self help and recovery books – I still do, though it does not eat up so much of my time these days. I did a lot of introspection, writing, affirmations, dream interpretations, downright wishful thinking, or whatever vaguely promised to change how I was feeling. 

All of this helped a lot, but I wish I could have found more guidance. I wasted a lot of time and money reading junk, or attending therapy sessions with people who had no clue whatsoever. What I really needed was the testimony of someone who walked the same path before, namely, from a disastrous emotional health to a pretty good one. To affirm I could do it too. To show me how. To explain what was happening. I did find some of it, but not enough and not for free.

This is what this blog is about. I am not a therapist, a psychiatrist or a life coach. I have no intention of detailing sophisticated theories about emotional growth, recovery from a difficult childhood, fighting depression or other painful subjects. What I do here is explain what worked for me, what did not, what self help books I found useful, how to spot a good therapist, and what my opinion is on a variety of other subjects linked to recovery, self help, and emotional growth.

My goal is to help you. Keep what you feel is useful and discard the rest. You’re welcome to engage in a discussion if you want to share your own experience. Some of us have been isolated for years, sometimes decades, by our emotional problems. There is no need to stay isolated anymore. Welcome to Selfhelpandrecovery.com.

lauren@selfhelpandrecovery.com