Audiobooks by Vincent Deary

How We Are

Brought to you by Penguin. We are creatures of habit, living most of our lives automatically, in small worlds of more or less comfortable routine. But sometimes outside forces compel us to adjust, and sometimes we must make changes ourselves. What happens when change disrupts our lives? This book is the first in a trilogy which offers an insight unlike any other into the human mind and heart: how we are, how we break, and how we mend. It is about all of us, humbly figuring out how to live. ©2015 Vincent Deary (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Vincent Deary (Author), Matthew Brenher (Narrator)

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How We Break: Navigating the Wear and Tear of Living

Brought to you by Penguin. An expert, empathetic guide to the science, psychology and physiology of breaking, from the acclaimed author of How We Are What happens when our minds and bodies are pushed beyond their limits? Vincent Deary is a health psychologist who has spent years helping his patients cope with whatever life has thrown at them. In How We Break, he has written a book for all of us who sometimes feel we have reached our breaking point. Drawing on clinical case studies, cutting-edge scientific research, intimate personal stories and references from philosophy, literature and film, How We Break offers a consoling new vision of everyday human struggle. The big traumas in life, Deary points out, are relatively rare. More common is when too many things go wrong at once, or we are exposed to prolonged periods of difficulty or precarity. When the world shrinks to nothing but our daily coping, we become unhappy, worried, hopeless, exhausted. In other words, we break. Breaking, he shows us, happens when the same systems that enable us to navigate through life become dysregulated. But if we understand how the wear and tear of life affects us, then we have a better chance of navigating through times of burnout, stress, fatigue and despair. By equipping us with a better understanding of what happens to us when we're struggling to cope, and making a bold case for the power of rest and recuperation, How We Break helps chart a path through difficult times. ©2024 Vincent Deary (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Vincent Deary (Author), Vincent Deary (Narrator)

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How We Are: Book One of the How to Live Trilogy

The first book in a major new trilogy—one that will help readers everywhere live fuller, more satisfying lives. We live in small worlds. How We Are is an astonishing debut and the first part of the monumental How to Live trilogy, a profound and ambitious work that gets to the heart of what it means to be human: how we are, how we break, and how we mend. This first book explores the power of habit and the difficulty of change. We live most of our lives automatically, in small worlds of comfortable routine—what author Vincent Deary calls Act One. Conscious change requires deliberate effort, so for the most part we avoid it. But inevitably, from within or without, something comes along to disturb our small worlds—some “news from elsewhere.” And with reluctance, we begin the work of adjustment: Act Two. Over decades of psychotherapeutic work, Deary has witnessed the theater of change—how ordinary people get stuck, struggle with new circumstances, and finally transform for the better. He is keenly aware that novelists, poets, philosophers, and theologians have grappled with these experiences for far longer than psychologists. Drawing on his own personal experience and a staggering range of literary, philosophical, and cultural sources, Deary has produced a mesmerizing and universal portrait of the human condition. Part psychologist, part philosopher, part novelist, Deary helps us to see how we can resist being habit machines and make our acts and our lives more fully our own. “Fascinating, jumbled, and often profound…[How We Are] could change lives.”—Daily Mail (London)

Vincent Deary (Author), Matthew Brenher (Narrator)

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