Happy Never After: Why the Happiness Fairytale is Driving us Mad (and How I Learned to Flip the Script)

Product Description

Jill Stark was living a dream. She had a coveted job as a senior journalist, she was dating a sports star, and she'd just achieved a lifelong ambition by publishing a book, which was rapidly becoming a bestseller. After years of crippling anxiety, striving for the fairytale ending, it finally seemed she'd found her ticket to contentment.

But then it all started to go wrong. Getting everything she'd ever wanted plunged Jill into the darkest period in her life, where she struggled with acute anxiety and fell into a deep depression.

The experience forced her to ask if we've been sold a lie. Could the relentless pursuit of happiness actually be making us miserable? Why, in a western world with more opportunity, choice and wealth than ever before, are so many of us depressed, anxious and medicated?

In this forensic examination of our age of anxiety, Stark explores how we can unplug, keep calm, and find meaning in a frenetic world designed to drive us mad. With humour, insight, and razor-sharp wit, she tells of her own struggles with a lifetime of anxiety against the backdrop of a stressed-out modern world, where many are drowning in a sea of digital distraction and white noise.

We're all looking for answers. We all want the happy ever after. What would happen if we stopped chasing, stayed still, and found calm amid the chaos?Jill Stark was living a dream. She had a coveted job as a senior journalist, she was dating a sports star, and she'd just achieved a lifelong ambition by publishing a book, which was rapidly becoming a bestseller. After years of crippling anxiety, striving for the fairytale ending, it finally seemed she'd found her ticket to contentment.

But then it all started to go wrong. Getting everything she'd ever wanted plunged Jill into the darkest period in her life, where she struggled with acute anxiety and fell into a deep depression.

The experience forced her to ask if we've been sold a lie. Could the relentless pursuit of happiness actually be making us miserable? Why, in a western world with more opportunity, choice and wealth than ever before, are so many of us depressed, anxious and medicated?

In this forensic examination of our age of anxiety, Stark explores how we can unplug, keep calm, and find meaning in a frenetic world designed to drive us mad. With humour, insight, and razor-sharp wit, she tells of her own struggles with a lifetime of anxiety against the backdrop of a stressed-out modern world, where many are drowning in a sea of digital distraction and white noise.

We're all looking for answers. We all want the happy ever after. What would happen if we stopped chasing, stayed still, and found calm amid the chaos?
Jill Stark is an award-winning journalist and author with a career spanning 18 years in both the UK and Australian media. She spent a decade on staff at The Age covering health and social affairs as a senior writer and columnist and now works as a media consultant and freelance writer contributing to ABC Online, SBS Digital and The Saturday Paper.
Her first book, High Sobriety- my year without booze is a best-selling memoir that was long-listed in the Walkley Book of the Year Awards and short-listed in the Kibble Literary Awards. Her second book will be published in 2018.