British psychologist and TikTok sensation Dr Julie Smith crossed over from online sensation to publishing powerhouse with the release of her book ‘Why Has Nobody Told Me This Before’. Released in 2002 the book spent over 100 weeks in the UK Sunday Times bestseller charts. Now to kick off the New Year, Smith is back with her next book ‘Open When…’, a book that aims to give you the tools you need to navigate life’s tricky situations.
The book is split into three sections focusing on people, yourself and your feelings, each packed with chapters that offer you advice on how to handle various situations. Smith opens every chapter with a letter to the reader before she outlines tools to help you work through a situation. The style in which Smith writes makes this book easy to read and understand. She uses a warm and friendly tone that doesn’t judge, but offers helpful advice.
The book’s first section ‘When it’s hard to be with other people’, finds Smith working through a series of situations such as identifying toxic traits in your ‘friends’, dealing with passive-aggressive people and understanding why winning in an argument shouldn’t always be the goal. Smith clearly outlines how to identify flags in each situation and sets out a practical, and often common sense, way to deal with them. Her solutions aren’t radical but often in the situations she describes, people are so far into the weeds that they don’t see the blindingly obvious.
The second section deals with situations where you make your own life harder, whether that be criticising yourself, struggling with the stress of life or having to keep on going when you’re under immense pressure. For me personally, I found this section of the book the most useful as it relates to my current life situation. Smith is good at forcing you to take a step back from your situation in order to assess and re-evaluate it with a new perspective. Her advice is always given as a suggestion rather than an order, which makes you more receptive to listening to it.
The third and final section of the book deals with feelings. Smith equips the reader with handy ways of managing fear, grief and regret. It’s this section that digs a little deeper than the others, and for some people this could provide a stepping stone to seeking help. Smith does a good job of laying the groundwork in these areas, and there’s a good chance the people who are drawn to this part may need additional help and support to make a real change.
There are a couple of downsides to this book. Firstly, you don’t really need to read it from cover-to-cover because not every chapter will be relevant to you. The book is designed to be picked up as and when you need it, but for some readers the advice offered inside may simply not be applicable to their lives. Secondly, each chapter ends with a recap of the key points. Given that the majority of the chapters are pretty short anyway, this feels a little unnecessary and repetitive.
‘Open When…’ is sure to be a helpful tool for some readers. If you’re a fan of Smith’s previous book, then you’ll no doubt want to get your hands on this one too. There is some really useful advice contained within the book but it’ll depend on what stage of your life you’re at and how your life is, as to how much you’ll need it. Smith has definitely cornered the mental health market and this book will undoubtedly be as big as her first.
Publisher: Michael Joseph Release date: 2nd January 2025 Buy ‘Open When…’ now
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