It's All Gonna Be Okay
From Mad & Sad to Calm & Confident
It’s All Gonna Be Okay is an accessible self-help book that addresses feelings of anxiety and overwhelm with compassion.
Workshop facilitator Kim Sunderland’s plainspoken self-help guide It’s All Gonna Be Okay is about managing anxiety and mental wellness.
Taking a nonjudgmental, supportive approach to the topic of mental wellness, the book introduces reassuring techniques that are rooted in self-compassion. It begins by examining emotions and their impact on people’s actions. Next come suggestions for managing change and moving past what causes one pain—for example, recognizing one’s reflexive thoughts, listening to the needs of one’s body, and making gratitude a habit. The coping strategies it names are designed to encourage personal growth and foster resiliency.
Its prose conversational, the book takes the stance that emotions should not be labeled as “bad” or “good.” Rather, they are tools for becoming better able to decide what to do. The short, digestible chapters make the often overwhelming subject seem manageable. They build on one another well and feature keen examples, both from Sunderland’s work as a peer support workshop facilitator and from her own life, as where she reflects on the loss of her dog. Indeed, her personal stories help to individuate the book’s otherwise straightforward approach to healthy, mindful living:
I would sometimes go back to bed after finishing a task or phone conversation. I’d climb in, cover up, and chill for a minute. My anxiety was running pretty high in those days. Getting back into bed allowed me a reward of calmness.
Still, while this work is tidy, the chapters are not self-contained; many require backtracking to get their full effect.
Throughout, the book works to instill a sense of hope, self-determination, and empowerment in its audience. However, it is also prone to paraphrasing and quoting other self-help books—ideas that are sometimes refreshed with new metaphors, but that are worn nonetheless, limiting the book’s own contributions to the topic. For example, the image of a “toboggan hill” is made central; emotional turmoil is visualized as sliding down an icy hill on a toboggan. With increased self-understanding of one’s emotional landscapes, the book suggests, a person can equip themselves to identify alternate, less dangerous paths than those traveled before. Such illustrations are artful, though ultimately they’re still rehashing familiar information with an eye toward practical application.
With its reigning emphasis on self-compassion, It’s All Gonna Be Okay is an accessible self-help book that addresses feelings of anxiety and overwhelm alongside bite-sized advice for handling fast-paced challenges and crowded schedules.
Reviewed by
Renée Nicholson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
