Book Review: This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can’t by Augusten Burroughs

I hate self-help books. It’s not just because I feel they are basically about taking advantage of other’s misfortune or on the whole useless. No, the real reason I hate them is what the words self-help implies. It always sounds as if you don’t get better after reading the book it’s your fault because you don’t want to help yourself.

Calling a book self-help is like saying to your readers: you can cure yourself if you really want to. Which carries with it the cavil of, if the book doesn’t help you, it’s not the author’s fault; it’s yours because you didn’t really want to be well. Nothing better than making someone who has serious problems feel guilty about them on top of everything else.

I’m a recovered substance abuser, have dealt with post-traumatic stress syndrome brought about by being sexually abused as a child, and live with a chronic pain condition. I’ve had lots of help from two therapists, a yoga teacher and a acupuncturist with the first two issues, and I see a doctor regularly for treatment of the latter. There was, and is, no quick fix and I might never completely heal.

The one thing I never did was consult a self-help book. I read a couple of books by people who had been through things similar to what I had survived, but that was it. They made me realize others in the world had had similar experiences and had found ways to recover.

All of which might make it sound strange I would be interested in Augusten Burroughs’ latest book, This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can’t, being released by Picador Books  April 23 2013. However, in spite of it being promoted as a self-help book, all that I knew and had heard of Burroughs made me suspect it wasn’t going to be anything like the “I can cure you if you do exactly what I tell you to do” crap lining the shelves of every book store in the world. I didn’t even have to get through the first chapter before I knew my suspicion was right: this is not a self-help book at all.

What it is is a book for people interested in really helping themselves instead of looking for some sort of Band Aid that will make them presentable to the world. I knew I my first impression of Burroughs was right when he made the claim that so-called positive affirmations do more harm than good to people with low self-esteem. I’ve never believed standing in front of a mirror telling yourself a lie in the hopes it will convince you to feel better about yourself would benefit anybody.

Burroughs not only agrees with this, he quotes a peer-reviewed scientific study that proved affirmations made people with low self-esteem feel worse about themselves. The only people affirmations actually work for are those who already have a high self-esteem. The rest of us only feel like failures when we can’t live up to the lie the face in the mirror is telling us – which doesn’t do anything for our self-esteem.

Burroughs rips through the New Age gobbledygook pop psychology bullshit that has been permeating the airwaves since some moron said “I’m OK, Your OK” back in the 1970s and passed it off as a cure for what ails us. He shreds jargon with humour and compassion and dispels the myths we have been conditioned to believe about how we’re supposed to feel and what our relationships should be like. Along the way he talks about love, death, illness, dieting, addictions, child parent relations and almost every other hot topic you can think of.

However, don’t come to this book looking for platitudes or expecting to find ten simple steps to a happy life. What you will find are some very simple, basic, common sense truths which might not make you happy, but will certainly make your life better or, at lease more fulfilling. However, be prepared to face another truth, they’re might not be anything wrong with your life at all and dealing with that might even be harder than anything else.

Unlike most people who write one of these books, Burroughs doesn’t have a plan for you to follow. Instead he addresses each of the topics mentioned above individually and head on. He doesn’t mince words or sugar-coat anything when he gives his opinions. Instead, he dissects everything about the subject and lays bare some very simple but breathtaking truths. If you’ve been dieting for 20 years trying to lose 20 pounds, maybe it’s time to question your obsessive behaviour? Or as he puts it: “If you spend twenty years trying to get something and still don’t have it, is it admirable to keep trying. Or did you pass admirable several miles back and it’s getting close to straightjacket time?”

His suggestion of stopping dieting and just eat what you want and accept the results may not be what people want to hear. However, the reality is you’ll be a lot happier and healthier. As he points out, once you allow yourself to eat whatever you want (as long as there are no health issues etc involved) you will first get bored with overindulging and second, your body will take care of itself. The reason, he says, diets don’t work is because we only want them to work, we don’t need them to work. You must want to lose the weight more than you want the comfort you derive from eating.

Of course this applies to almost anything. If you want to stop drinking, if you want to stop smoking, if you want to stop whatever, you must want to more than you want whatever pleasure you derive from the thing you’re trying to stop. It’s in this chapter on dieting he says one of the things which convinced me Burroughs knows what he’s talking about. “If willpower is required to achieve this goal, that’s how you know you don’t want it enough on a deep, organic level. Mechanical failure will eventually occur.” 

I’ve been able to give up drugs and alcohol because I wanted to more than I wanted what they had given me, but I’ve not been able to give up cigarettes. Willpower got me through the first few months a few times, even a couple of years once, but each time the need for the comfort they provided has sent me running back to them.

Burroughs throws truths like this in our faces all through the book. Sometimes it makes it extremely uncomfortable to read because, whether you know it or not, you start looking at yourself in the mirror he holds up. However, what’s wonderful about this book, is you never feel like you’re being judged. It’s filled with humour (I now know the two things you never say to an Italian man about members of his family and they both make my wife laugh until she pees), but most of all you can feel his genuine compassion in every single word. Reading this book is like having a conversation with that friend who has never been afraid to tell you the truth but always does so with love in their heart.

Burroughs doesn’t have any letters before or after his name nor does he make any claims to having some great mystical insights (thankfully) into the mysteries of human behaviour. What he does have is a seemingly innate ability to draw upon personal experiences and observations of other’s behaviour and distill from them carefully thought-out conclusions. Occasionally he backs up what he’s saying by quoting a scientific study, but even without substantiation you can’t help trusting what he says. Best of all, while he’s a firm believer in individuals taking responsibility for their lives, he never once makes you feel inadequate or in any way to blame for your circumstances.

We live in a world of instant gratification. Financial empires have been built around the reducing of human emotions to a commodity sold and packaged on daytime talk shows by modern-day snake oil sales people. Public self-flagellation is not only encouraged, it’s rewarded with Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame. So when someone like Burroughs comes along and says what he has to say many will not want to listen.

Of if they do, won’t like what they hear. However, for those who are willing to listen they won’t find a more understanding and compassionate voice anywhere. No one book will instantly make your life better, and neither will This Is How. However, it will point you in the right direction so you can begin whatever journey you feel you need to take. Which makes it worth its weight in gold.