Own Your Self: The Surprising Path beyond Depression, Anxiety, and Fatigue to Reclaiming Your Authenticity, Vitality, and Freedom

New York Times best-selling author presents a radical alternative to psychotropic meds: discerning the meaning in your symptoms and your struggle as a way to reclaim your health and your self.

For years, we've been telling ourselves that our difficult feelings-sadness, rage, shame, intensity, worry-are somehow "not okay." And, all too often, we've relied on the promise of pharmaceuticals to tamp them down. The fact is, though, that these feelings are a vital part of our experience. They are real. And those of us who feel them most strongly are the canaries in the coalmine-sensitive to things that are seriously wrong in the world today. 

In a book that's both provocative and promising, holistic psychiatrist Kelly Brogan, M.D., author of A Mind of Your Own, shows us that we don't have to medicate our mental, emotional, and physical pain away-that the best way out is through. She explodes the mistaken belief that our symptoms-from mood changes to irritability to fogginess and fatigue-are evidence that we are sick or broken. Then she charts a new path to get real, get well, and get free. The journey includes:

  •  Coming to a new appreciation of the meaning behind symptoms, and whether you are a canary in the coal mine
  •  Learning the 2 major risks of medication that most doctors are not trained to disclose
  •  Exploring the 5 reversible physical drivers of so-called mental illness
  •  Starting the process of radical physical healing with inclusive details of Dr. Brogan's history-making 30-day protocol
  •  Taking an emotional inventory of energy drains and toxic relationships
  •  Taking a deeper dive into the spiritual awakening and expansion that comes when you reclaim your real self from conventional medicine
  •  Identifying the most likely places you have given your power away
  •  Understanding what the science has to say about psychedelics as a tool for awakening
  •  Navigating health challenges with curiosity and the proper tools
  •  Guidance, support, and many Travel Tips shared from the trenches!

Our experiences, Dr. Brogan argues, aren't problems or pathologies; they reflect what we need to accept, acknowledge, and transform in order to truly become who we are. Own Your Self is a journey of healing, and also something more: a journey of coming home to ourselves.

Kelly Brogan, M.D., is a holistic psychiatrist, author of the New York Times best-selling book A Mind of Your Own and the children's book A Time for Rain, and co-editor of the landmark textbook Integrative Therapies for Depression. She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College and has a B.S. from M.I.T. in Systems Neuroscience. She is board-certified in psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine, and integrative holistic medicine and is specialized in a root-cause resolution approach to psychiatric syndromes and symptoms. She is a certified KRI Kundalini Yoga teacher and a mother of two.