VeeJayCast

VJ’s book is Challenging the Black Dog: A Creative Outlet for Tackling Depression.

(Image from offbeatbrains.com)

I’ve read a good amount of self-help books and articles before, and a lot of them just really feel condescending and unhelpful. My personal theory is that a lot of those books are written by authors that are neurotypical and haven’t actually experienced mental illness. (It would explain why the writing tends to feel harsh, clinical, and sort of patronizing.)

This book is not like that. This book is incredibly honest, and written by someone who not only has depression, but has personally used these exercises and activities to help deal with it. That’s a huge deal!

The writing is genuine and warm, and you can tell that the author has personal experience with what she’s talking about. Even the font it’s printed in is pleasant to look at, and it actually helped me focus on the words better, which is awesome because that’s something I struggle with a lot with ADHD.

The book encourages you to find what works best for you, and says that if you don’t draw (or don’t feel like drawing), you can do other things for the more artistic challenges - sculpture, welding, whatever. I don’t weld or draw, haha, but I bet yarn crafts, embroidery, origami, graphics design, etc., would work well too.

The whole thing kind of reminds me of Wreck This Book, but more constructive than destructive. You’re not wrecking this book, exactly - but you are changing it, coloring in the designs if you want, doing the mazes, drawing and/or writing on all of the pages. It’s not supposed to look the same when you’re done with it, and I like that. You get to turn it into Your Book™, whatever that means for you.

There are doodle and trigger logs, which are an amazing idea, and something I wish I had thought of before, haha. For each month you get a page to doodle on, and another to write down things that have recently triggered you. It’s such a neat way to keep track of how you’re doing each month, and lets you look back and notice patterns both in your art (and maybe your mood), and in what’s been upsetting you.

Some of the activities and questions are tough, but I think that’s a good thing. If it was too easy, it’d be sort of missing the point, so it’s nice to dig deeper. Are some of the activities corny? Sure, but that’s bound to happen. Embrace the corniness, and sit down with the book and a pencil or five, and talk some things out with yourself. Challenging the Black Dog is a great tool for that.

I really liked this book, and highly recommend it. It’s not a replacement for therapy or anything like that, but I believe that it can definitely help, if you let it. For example, if you’re not ready to start therapy yet, or if you can’t go for other reasons, this could be a good option for you! I feel like it was for me.

Well, it appears to be time for another book post that hopefully doesn’t read as awkward as I’m finding it to write. Please, bear with me as I flail around the complexities of trying to do promotional type stuff while longing for the days when writers only had to… well, write.

My last post about the book spoke about a crowd-funding campaign in June (uh, now)… However, I decided not to pursue this avenue, for the sake of my mental (and physical) health, but also for family reasons. Instead, I’ve spent time arranging printing/distribution, corralling endorsements, sending out ARCs, adopting a kitten^ (long story) and continuing to have social media skills that… well, suck.

Rambling aside, onto the announcement I’d like to make:

Challenging the Black Dog: A Creative Outlet for Tackling Depression is now available for Pre-order ( http://bit.ly/BNPreOrders ) through Barnes & Nobel* with an On Sale date of June 25th.

I realize this is mainly useful for people in the US, but Amazon currently doesn’t want to play nice and simply has the book listed as Temporarily Unavailable. I’m in the middle of diving down that rabbit hole of increasingly frustrating insanity, otherwise known as email-tag with different ‘support staff’. I’ll update things if/when they change before the On Sale date.

To recap the book, I’m just going to toss out its blurb below:

Author VJ Cast brings 25 turbulent years of lived experience with mental illness together with creativity, humour and intentional questions to help those struggling with a little-discussed, but widespread issue: youth depression.

Challenging the Black Dog features an eclectic array of exercises based on proven therapy techniques, presents users with a particular type of compassion and understanding and nurtures the exploration of creativity, mindfulness, and self-reflection. Mixed among these engaging prompts are stress-relieving colouring pages and the occasional inspirational quote.

The aim is to provide a safe, private and highly personalizable place for you to get to know your Black Dog. Best of all, the psychologist-guided material allows for the journal to be easily used either as a form of affordable, self-guided therapy in private or in addition to working with other medical interventions, such as psychologists and therapists.

Challenging the Black Dog will help transform you into an active participant in your journey towards recovery and self-discovery. Isn’t it time you started the challenge of leashing your Black Dog and reclaiming control over your psychological well-being?

—–

For the review curious here’s one on Tumblr (thank you @wombat-pop !) and one that’s popped up on Goodreads.

Do you have the memory of a sieve (same here!) or maybe you’re currently entrenched in the miasma of brain fog (gah!)? Perhaps you’d like to have a reminder sent to you when the book goes on sale later this month? Not a problem: simply sign up to the notification newsletter here.

Added bonus: you’ll also get a free printable PDF colouring book and won’t have to worry about your inbox suffering; I’ll just email you with what you want to know.

Even if you don’t suffer from depression yourself, perhaps you have a friend or family member who does… So, please boost this post and its information to help me help them help themselves…

A few seconds of your time can change a life.

-VJ

TL;DR: Challenging the Black Dog, a creative therapy journal for young adults with depression, is available for Pre-Order at B&N*. Please BOOST!

*I noticed there’s also a “10% Off Your Order” deal with the code SUNNYDAYS currently running on the B&N site.

I’m trapped in the midst of re-potty training my own Black Dog + assisting on a Year 7 Science assessment practical experiment + a sick puppers* who gets me up at least 5 times a night to go pee and have pain meds… so, my brain’s experiencing more than a few farts at the moment. I’ll try not to ramble.

Lucifer Likes It

I’ve been a big Supernatural fan since it first aired so you can imagine my elation from getting an email this morning from one of Mark Pellegrino’s reps which had his endorsement for the book!

“Challenging the Black Dog presents a refreshingly original approach to grappling with depression. The exercises here spark a creative process that simultaneously grounds and explores. I wish I had this book in my teens and twenties.”

 Ordering Shenanigans

Amazon is silly playing silly buggers with the ‘temporarily unavailable’ across a range of its sites, but prices are consistent with the RRP. Surprisingly, in the case of Amazon Australia, pre-orders are available. Unsurprisingly, the book is listed above the RRP.

I’ve considered setting up orders via the book site to ship directly from the printers, but it’d honestly be cheaper for buyers in the US to order through B&N (recommended) or one of the other sellers on Amazon (a little more expensive, but they do cheap/free shipping). It also seems to be available for pre-order online via booksamillion.com. For Australians, you can’t pre-order, but I recommend (at this time) Angus&Robertson or Booktopia which should show a change of stock once the On Sale date hits. If you’re in the UK, Waterstones has it listed and you can pre-order.

If you want to be reminded when the book goes on sale because your memory is as shot as mine, sign up here!

 BOOST!

Big thanks to @vaspider + @thebibliosphere for some of the original signal boosts of my post about the book, which got the ball rolling! Also, thank you to everyone else who has been reblogging the post… as someone with anxiety that’s heightened by the need to promote over social media, this means the world to me!

 -V