How We Are

We live in small worlds. Conscious change requires deliberate effort, and so, for the most part, we avoid it. Drawing on personal stories from everyday lives in transition, and a range of literary and cultural references, this book shows us how we can resist being mere habit machines, and make our acts and our lives more fully our own.

Exhilarating, lyrical, consoling... His voice is pleasingly sardonic one of a peer who finds this stuff as difficult and disorientating as the rest of us

A book about human nature. It's crammed with ideas. It makes your head spin, in a good way

Fascinating, profound, wonderfully well-observed... [ How We Are ] could change lives

An honest, self-searching voice, rich in images and characters' stories

Vincent Deary is professor of applied health psychology at Northumbria University, where his research focuses on the development of new psychosocial interventions for people with a variety of health complaints, including cancer survivors and fear of falling in older adults. As a clinician he works in the UK's first trans-diagnostic Fatigue Clinic, to help people for whom fatigue is a disabling symptom. He is the author of How We Are.