Book Review: The Angry Therapist

This week, I thought I'd share my views on the book The Angry Therapist: A No BS Guide to Finding and Living Your Own Truth, by a marriage and family therapist named John Kim. John wrote this book because he was sick of the smarmy, indifferent psychotherapy he was getting from therapists who didn't really care about him or his problems. Over the course of many years, he realized he wanted and deserved more from life.

John does CrossFit now and rides his motorcycle to coffee shops, but he wasn't always a badass. There was a time in his life when he was working a job he hated, married to a woman who didn't love him, and generally miserable. Things fell apart after his marriage fell apart, he moved into a rented room in Los Angeles, and he realized he would never make it as a screenwriter - which had been his life's dream.

John entered therapy with a new clinician and realized he wanted to become a therapist himself. He felt that changing lives through treatment would be a lot like the changes he wanted to create as a screenwriter working to transform lives. So he got his degree in marriage and family therapy and realized his life had to change. He wasn't happy being sedentary, weak and pathetic.

He wanted a life worthy of the cinema.

So he made a bunch of new friends that did exciting things like taking motorcycle trips to the desert. He started doing CrossFit and smoking cigars. He started a blog and quickly earned appearances on NPR and other public media. He began to counsel people and quickly built up a following.

I think the title The Angry Therapist is one of the best titles of the century. It sums up the place I had to come to in order to break free from the "care" that my clinicians were providing without ever saying how little they "cared" - the realization that I had to get passionate about defending myself and my right to have a life worth living. It takes so much more than care to change a life - it takes ANGER.

I got riotously ANGRY about the stigma I was experiencing, how I was being treated, and what my life looked like. And like anyone steeped in shadow work, I used that anger to make a change. I started getting involved in advocacy and began to volunteer on campaigns for tenants' rights, mental health rights and other causes. I went back to school and started getting certifications. I took up bodybuilding and started tracking my calories.

I began consulting on stigma, leading workshops at agencies and professional organizations. I stopped therapy. I began to realize that I had to be my own biggest champion and best friend. I had to be passionate and enthusiastic about my work, my personality and my lifestyle - because NO ONE else was going to be. I realized that I had to be my own best advocate.

This represented a tidal shift in attitude for me! This book was a life-changing experience, one that I would recommend to anyone needing a wake-up call. I'd been working my recovery before I read it, but the word ANGER took me to a whole new level of self-empowerment. Read The Angry Therapist and be changed forever!