Reader stories

I read the seeking chapter on my lunch break, then went back to see a client an hour later and caught myself doing exactly what the book describes — trying to fix her pain instead of sitting in it with her. That's not something a book usually does to me mid-shift. I've since read Stage 1 twice more, mostly to check I wasn't imagining how directly it named something I recognised in the room but never in myself.

— from an email, a therapist in London

I'd been in and out of therapy for six years trying to name what happens to me when I get overwhelmed. Turns out it has a name, and reading it laid out plainly did more for me in one sitting than a lot of those sessions did. I've gone back to the PEACE section more times than I can count — not because I forget it, but because rereading it feels like someone's still there, reminding me. My therapist actually asked me to send her the framework after I mentioned it, which felt like a strange kind of full circle. I don't think I've told a book “thank you” out loud before, but I did after finishing Stage 2, sitting on my kitchen floor at eleven at night — which is probably more information than anyone asked for.

— left as a comment under a Substack post, Melbourne

My sister sent me the link with no message, just the link. That's how she operates. I almost didn't open it because I assumed it was another book about “healing” that would tell me to journal more. It's not that. I read Stage 3 on a flight and cried in seat 14C, which has never happened to me on a plane in thirty years of flying. I've since bought two more copies for people I love, using the same no-message method my sister used on me.

— from a message on Instagram, name withheld by request

I run a small meditation group, and I've been quietly recommending this instead of the usual reading list for people who've hit their second or third year of practice and feel stuck. Three people in my group have now read it independently of each other and all came back using the same word: relief. Not peace, not insight — relief. That's the word that made me pay attention.

— shared in a Substack comment, a meditation teacher

For years I thought being endlessly available to my mother was love. The relationship-as-mirror chapter asked me one question I couldn't get out of my head afterwards: does this compassion energise you, or deplete you? I'd never once asked myself that. I started setting small boundaries — replying the next day instead of within the hour — and braced for the guilt to prove I was being selfish. It never fully arrived. What arrived instead was that I actually wanted to call her more, now that I wasn't obligated to. Nobody warned me boundaries could feel like that.

— sent by email, a hospice social worker

I've done the “who is aware” question in about four different meditation apps and always felt like I was performing curiosity rather than having it. Something about how this book frames the enquiry — as investigation rather than destabilisation — let me actually sit with the question instead of rushing to answer it. I didn't get an experience out of it. I got quieter. Which apparently was the point, though nobody tells you that going in.

— comment on Substack

I've been meditating for eleven years and leading retreats for four of them, so it was strange to find myself back in the Stage 2 chapter after a divorce I didn't see coming, needing the most basic version of the breathing instructions like I was new to this. I felt embarrassed about it until I reached the section on the spiral path — that returning to old ground isn't failure, it's how integration actually works. I'm not sure a single paragraph has ever let me off the hook quite that gently.

— from an email, a meditation teacher in Bristol