“If it can happen to a shrink, I guess nobody is immune. And in a way, Nat, it makes you more human,” a patient told Dr Natalie Cawley during a psychotherapy session, after Cawley disclosed that something similar had happened to her. Cawley, a psychotherapist and counselling psychologist, has both worked and trained within the NHS and private practice. Just About Coping covers her time as a twentysomething trainee therapist undergoing therapy herself, making for an emotional rollercoaster of laughter and tears.

Cawley’s intriguing, humane memoir has an edge on Adam Kay’s 2017 junior-doctor-on-the-frontline saga This Is Going To Hurt, offering enlightenment regarding mental health and illness by way of revealing, even inspirational, nuggets of info. She replaces ego with self-deprecating humour as a coping method, not least when having to deal with her own difficulties. Readers get to meet the patients struggling with self-harm, OCD, addiction and other issues, Cawley explaining to them the possible roots of their struggles and also how she tries her best to calm and help them.

At the crux of this book is a warm demeanour and caring nature, far removed from the detached, Dalek-like coldness of some therapists. Just About Coping also proves that those who work within mental health trying to heal others are not trauma- or heartache-resistant themselves.