About the Book
Can your life be so functional that it ends up making you crazy?
I guess that depends on how you define the term functional and how you define the term crazy. If functional can be defined as the conventional ideal ... and crazy can be defined as anything else, then who is anyone to judge?
In my line of work, I expected there would be crazy. I'm a therapist, after all. And yet even though I expected crazy, there was one simple fact I never expected.
There are those that are crazy. But then, there are those that are driven crazy. Loaded up on a bus headed to Crazy Town. A bus filled with people whose experiences, traumas, tragedies, and pain convinced them they had a one-way ticket.
But I would not be convinced. For one reason and one reason only:
That just didn't make sense.
When people walk through your door day after day after day expecting you to fix the disorders that brought them there, you first have to find the disorder. But what if your therapist can only find "disorders"?
What if she begins to identify that the disorders you thought you had were actually authentic sensibilities in disguise? Moving you from the back of the bus to the driver's seat?
Compelling you to think that maybe a one-way ticket isn't so bad after all ...
Functional and Crazy is the strange twin of C+F. It's a 40,000 word stand-alone companion best described as the love child between Oliver Sachs and the Bill & Ted movies.
While both are self-help, they take more cues in tone from graphic memoirs like Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and Persepolis than they do from comparable self-help books like The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck and You Are A Badass.
The catalyst for Crazy and Functional was this one question: "Why do my clients consider me so high functioning despite being the conductor of my own crazy train?" Functional and Crazy takes the question to the next level: "What is considered functional, and who makes up those rules?"
And finally through all of my research, media writing and speaking as a therapist, I arrived at this question: "Could it be that the rules of what is defined as functional actually be what makes my clients crazy?"
The books open up larger conversations, such as: Is authenticity reserved for the enlightened, or can it be taught? Does the teacher of authenticity need the wisdom of a guru or the true grit of a rodeo trick rider?
About the Author :
Michelle Manning is a daredevil. Growing up in rodeo has a tendency to do that to a girl. Especially when that growing environment also includes two parents daring enough to loosen the reins on their little hellion who preferred falling off of bucking animals than the playground swing set. One might consider this to be negligent parenting. Michelle considered this to be the most important lesson her parents could teach. When afforded the liberty to make your own mistakes, but more importantly, figure out how to recover from those mistakes, one is also afforded a sense of expertise. However, it would be a misnomer to consider Michelle an expert in anything outside of herself. Her expertise lies within. Preferring the pain of knowledge over the bliss of ignorance, Michelle was always in pursuit to understand herself better, even the parts she didn't like so much. Whether performing stunts on the back of running horses or struggling to recover from the deep-heeled footprint of tragedy on her life, Michelle remained eager to figure out what wasn't working if only to figure out what would next time. Not content to keep such knowledge to herself, Michelle began her professional writing career as an advice columnist for Albuquerque's weekly culture and events magazine. Yet it wasn't the knowledge of Michelle's personal experiences that compelled her to write. It was her role as an observer to other people's experiences. Finding the inner workings of others just as intriguing as her own operating system. A role that evolved into her role as a therapist. Always reluctant to consider herself an expert, Michelle builds her therapeutic knowledge base with questions to better understand what keeps people-primarily her clients-from living an authentic life. Such questions are answered through Michelle's observations. Observations she shares in her commentaries, editorials, and essays based on her work as a therapist. Her published pieces such as Not Every Weapon Has to be a Gun, and What's So Bad About Being a Slut? can be found at michellelmanning.com. In addition to running a successful private practice, Michelle often presents her research in consultation with policy makers and agents of change. She has presented at local and national conferences on the therapeutic value of authentic living, inclusive of sexual orientation and sexual lifestyles. With too much energy to exhaust, she eagerly shares her observations with those equally daring in passion. She has consulted on sex trafficking with former U.S. Attorney Damon Martinez, and she is a member of the New Mexico Advocacy Coalition and the New Mexico Trafficking Task Force. More daring work from Michelle L. Manning can be found at michellelmanning.com. Hi, I'm Carolyn Flynn, and I'm the story catalyst. Story is my abiding love. Nothing makes me braver, more buoyant and more authentically myself than to be in pursuit of story. If you have found me, you must also yearn to write a book that is bold, illuminating and true. You want to write a book that is worthy of a greater conversation. Maybe you know some parts of your story, but not all. Maybe you seek an enduring path to publication, but the ever-shifting terrain of the book business is disorienting. You're daunted by discovering the message and delivering that book. I do the courage walk with authors, and together, we are targeted and joyful, attuning to the passion, vision and purpose of your book. My courage walk I'm a writer, and that's the truest sentence I know. (That's from my TEDx talk. Watch it here.) Others would not call me rich, but I feel like I have a fortune. I write. I'm abundant. I always have the path to my sacred yes, and it's the page. What did it feel like the day you met up with your story idea? Or rather, the day your story found you? The day I met up with my creative inheritance was the October day when seven-year-old daring, curious, delightful me walked into a classroom with orange footprints traveling up the wall. Our teacher told us to write a story: Who invaded our classroom last night? Who walked on this wall? Every neuron in my imagination lit up. The scene was set in motion - ghosts passing through walls, witches streaking across a golden moon, spiders to dangle before my sister's wild-eyed fright. It was pen up, game on. The page was my threshold, and it's the place I return to again and again. You have a story that someone wants to hear. What would it feel like to joyfully write your way to that story? What would it feel like to stir a new conversation, to provoke new thought? What if your way of illuminating the world was through the page? What if story was the path? I believe in the power of story to elevate understanding, whether it's through trade nonfiction, fiction, memoir or personal essay. I'm gratified to say that science believes that, too. The latest neuroscience research shows that we're wired for story, and that we're wired to share. Emerald Saldyt is pursuing a degree in psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Denver.
