The key ideas

Sane New World: Taming the Mind

Ruby Wax, 2013

Why does your inner voice never praise you, and why doesn't anxiety switch off even when there is no danger? Comedian Ruby Wax lived with depression for many years, trained in psychotherapy, and then studied the brain and mindfulness at Oxford. Her book uses humor to explain how your head works and gives simple ways to notice in time where your own mind is pulling you.

Who it is for

For anyone worn down by an inner critic, anyone who lives in constant hurry and anxiety, or anyone who knows depression firsthand, from their own life or from someone close to them. And for those who are curious about how their own brain works but find science books too dry.

This remarkable organ in our heads holds infinite wisdom but so few of us know how to use it. It's similar to having a Ferrari except no one gave you the keys.

An interview in sunglasses

It's World Mental Health Day. Comedian Ruby Wax is invited onto BBC radio to talk about depression and about why it's time to stop being ashamed of it. On air she says all the right things, wearing sunglasses. And at that very moment she herself is in the grip of a severe depression. Straight after the broadcast she goes to a clinic.

To make sense of the illness, Wax trained in psychotherapy, and after fifty she went to Oxford. There she studied how the brain works and a method called “mindfulness-based cognitive therapy”.

The author's main idea: we were handed a brain without an instruction manual. It was built for us to survive, not for us to be happy. Wax believes that if you understand how it works, you can learn to steer it. She writes that one in four people goes through a mental disorder, but the book speaks to all four: we all have the same equipment.

You'll learn where the inner critic and anxiety come from, why depression is not a whim, and which techniques help the author stop herself in time.

A voice that never praises anyone

Ruby Wax's mother was afraid of dust. She crawled around the house on all fours with sponges in her hands, shouting: “Who brings footprints into a building?” Ruby's parents had fled Nazi Austria, and the author thinks that is where her mother's fear came from. The panic in her voice, Wax says, has stayed in her daughter's head ever since.

Almost everyone has a similar inner supervisor. Wax asked many people whether they had ever heard an inner voice saying: “Congratulations you've done a wonderful job…” None of them had.

The brain was built for survival, so it notices the bad faster than the good. The hippocampus, the part of the brain that helps us remember, keeps unpleasant experiences close at hand so that next time we get out of the way quickly. And a parent's “don't touch” and “you must” once kept the child away from the electrical socket, but they stay inside us for life.

Say a friend walks past and doesn't say hello. Someone who was encouraged as a child will think: “She must be preoccupied, I'll call her later.” Someone with strict parents will hear a different voice: she has figured out that something is wrong with them.

Wax sees good news in this too: since the voice was learned, you can stop taking it for the truth about yourself.

Read in Livria

About the author

Ruby Wax is an American-British comedian, screenwriter and TV presenter who speaks openly about her depression. She earned a master's degree in mindfulness-based cognitive therapy at Oxford.

All books by this author: Ruby Wax

Terms from the book

  • Prefrontal cortex
  • Depression
  • Hippocampus
  • Adrenaline
  • Cortisol
  • Mindfulness
  • Amygdala
  • BBC: The British public broadcaster, one of the largest in the world.
  • Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy: A method that combines attention exercises with ideas from cognitive therapy. It was created by Mark Williams, John Teasdale and Zindel Segal for people who have already been through depression. Williams was Wax's professor at Oxford.
  • Cotard: Cotard's syndrome is named after the French neurologist Jules Cotard, who described it in the 19th century. A person with this syndrome is convinced they have died or do not exist.
  • Mitzi: An image from the book, not a real person: the name Wax gave to her childhood feeling of loneliness and being unwanted, so that she could look at it from the outside.
  • Tanya: A friend of the author's. Wax describes how Tanya puts labels on her anxious thoughts.

All terms

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