Too Smart to Heal

Escape the exhausting cycle of stress and pain with Too Smart to Heal, an illustrated guide for overthinkers who have tried everything and are finally ready to heal, from the author of Get Out of My Head.

Have you read all the self-help books, tried every mental health hack, and thought your way in circles around your pain, only to end up right where you started? You may be what author Meredith Author calls “too smart to heal.” Arthur knows this mindset intimately. Her problem-solving brain built her successful career, wrote books, and won awards—but for years it couldn’t solve the migraines, nausea, and chronic stress that plagued her. Even when she understood the anxiety at the root of her pain, nothing changed until she found new path forward. This book will help you chart that path yourself.

Too Smart to Heal: An Overthinker’s Path Out of Chronic Stress and Pain meets you exactly where you are: Fed up with endless cycles of pain and ready to try something different. Pairing simple prose with evocative, hand-drawn art, this visually soothing and approachable guide distills current mind-body science—including the vagus nerve, trauma theory, and somatics—and helps you begin the internal journey of healing. You’ll learn to:

• distinguish between the fearful, externally focused voice in your head and the calm, wise voice beneath it
• build resilience without overwhelm
• recognize how painful experiences live on in both body and mind
• develop practical, in-the-moment strategies to finally step out of the endless loop of overthinking

Written by Meredith Arthur, founder of the popular mental health platform Beautiful Voyager and a member of the founding team of the award-winning emotional wellbeing app How We Feel, and illustrated by Sara Strand, also of How We Feel, Too Smart to Heal lives in the space between mystery and practicality, art and reason, beckoning you to release compulsive problem-solving and intellectualizing to start healing from within.   

• "The way out of pain isn't smarter thinking... Meredith Arthur charts a course for the chronically stressed in this operating manual disguised as a jewelry box." 
  James Nestor, New York Times bestselling author of Breath