Book: I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki

[elusivek]

I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki: Conversations with My Psychiatrist
Baek Sehee
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The New York Times bestselling therapy memoir translated by International Booker shortlistee Anton Hur.

PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you?

ME: I don't know, I'm-what's the word-depressed? Do I have to go into detail?

Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her-what to call it?-depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgmental of others. She hides her feelings well at work, but the effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can't be normal. But if she's so hopeless, why can she always summon a desire for her favorite street food: the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like?

Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a twelve-week period, and expanding on each session with her own reflective micro-essays, Baek begins to disentangle the harmful behaviors that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. Part memoir, part self-help book,I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is the first book in a duology to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness.

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I was really looking forward to this book, but apparently it was just transcripts of her (her?) sessions with the therapist. By the end of the book there are essays/paragraphs of different topics. I’m disappointed, sorry to say.

Comments

[dna2]

I've read the book and then I've googled the author and was very sad to learn that she died last year.
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I am very sceptical about belief that therapy sessions help people, but it was quite a learning for me about mind of the person with clinical depression. We all get depressed from time to time, but compared to the author's state of mind my depression fellings are mild and fleeting.