09/06/2021
In this stark debut, Thompson, a trauma psychologist and ultramarathoner, recounts his difficult path from severe depression and substance abuse to sobriety. After meeting his wife at the Burning Man Festival in 1999, the author emigrated from England to San Francisco to marry her. Struggling with the severe depression that he’d lived with since childhood and medicating his pain with a variety of drugs—including crystal meth and cocaine—Thompson checked in to a psychiatric ward in 2005. Later, while in recovery, he channeled his energy into ultra-long-distance running (running anywhere from 50 to 200 miles), opting to let his body’s endorphins lift his spirits and help him rebuild “a feeling of togetherness” with his family. “Ultrarunning can sound like insanity,” he writes. “But ultrarunners understand its mad logic: running for days and nights nonstop brings you right up to the edge of breakdown but also to the opportunity for breakthrough.” This “breakthrough” eventually led Thompson to seek a career in psychology and a career helping others work through the same shame, guilt, and fear that he details here with heart-wrenching clarity. This will beam a ray of hope to those dealing with addiction, as well as their loved ones. Agent: Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary. (Oct.)
J. M. Thompson’s beautifully written Running Is a Kind of Dreaming is a revelation. This remarkable memoir takes the reader on a journey from the abyss—the darkest despair, when all seems lost—to the return to glorious life. This book will inspire and provide hope for the hopeless.” — DAVID SHEFF, author of the New York Times bestseller Beautiful Boy
“This is a beautiful, powerful book with multiple dimensions of exploration and discovery. The painful and joyful moments of the author’s life are skillfully interwoven with the mind-wandering trances of long distance running. With a mastery of psychology and philosophy, along with his rich and varied life, Thompson’s reflections on childhood, family, mental illness, healing and meaning will enrich and challenge any reader. While highly recommended for all, this book will be especially useful for anyone who works in the mental health world or struggles with mental health challenges personally or in their family. This is a reflective, hopeful book.” — BRUCE PERRY, co-author (with Oprah Winfrey) of the #1 New York Times bestseller What Happened to You
"J. M. Thompson's journey through the depths of suicidal depression and addiction is terrifying, arduous, and ultimately exhilarating. Running is a Kind of Dreaming delivers a fascinating exploration of the relation between mind and body, as well as inspiration for those struggling to find light beyond the darkness. A brave and vivid story, poetically told." — SCOTT STOSSEL, author of the New York Times bestseller My Age of Anxiety
"[Thompson] eloquently captures the beauty of communing with nature in details runners will soak up . . . Running is a Kind of Dreaming is a hopeful story of resilience by a man baring his vulnerability as a trauma survivor and who fought his demons." — BRENDA BARRERA, Booklist
“Thompson eloquently captures the beauty of communing with nature in details runners will soak up . . . Running is a Kind of Dreaming is a hopeful story of resilience by a man baring his vulnerability as a trauma survivor and who fought his demons.” — Booklist
Thompson eloquently captures the beauty of communing with nature in details runners will soak up . . . Running is a Kind of Dreaming is a hopeful story of resilience by a man baring his vulnerability as a trauma survivor and who fought his demons.
This is a beautiful, powerful book with multiple dimensions of exploration and discovery. The painful and joyful moments of the author’s life are skillfully interwoven with the mind-wandering trances of long distance running. With a mastery of psychology and philosophy, along with his rich and varied life, Thompson’s reflections on childhood, family, mental illness, healing and meaning will enrich and challenge any reader. While highly recommended for all, this book will be especially useful for anyone who works in the mental health world or struggles with mental health challenges personally or in their family. This is a reflective, hopeful book.”
"J. M. Thompson's journey through the depths of suicidal depression and addiction is terrifying, arduous, and ultimately exhilarating. Running is a Kind of Dreaming delivers a fascinating exploration of the relation between mind and body, as well as inspiration for those struggling to find light beyond the darkness. A brave and vivid story, poetically told."
"[Thompson] eloquently captures the beauty of communing with nature in details runners will soak up . . . Running is a Kind of Dreaming is a hopeful story of resilience by a man baring his vulnerability as a trauma survivor and who fought his demons."
J. M. Thompson’s beautifully written Running Is a Kind of Dreaming is a revelation. This remarkable memoir takes the reader on a journey from the abyss—the darkest despair, when all seems lost—to the return to glorious life. This book will inspire and provide hope for the hopeless.”
Thompson eloquently captures the beauty of communing with nature in details runners will soak up . . . Running is a Kind of Dreaming is a hopeful story of resilience by a man baring his vulnerability as a trauma survivor and who fought his demons.
2021-08-25
In his debut memoir, a clinical psychologist and ultrarunner looks back on an eventful life from the hard-won stability of middle age.
What brings a person to where they are? Anyone can profitably ask this question at any time, but there’s something about being on a 205-mile run that forces the issue. Thompson had completed numerous ultramarathons before attempting a four-day race around Lake Tahoe, his most challenging competition yet. The race presented the author with four days of increasing fatigue and disorientation during which deep self-reflection proved inescapable. “On the surface,” he writes, “an ultramarathon is neither necessary nor reasonable. And yet men and women in the tens of thousands appear compelled to do such things….It follows from the unreasonable nature of an ultramarathon that the ultrarunner’s motive must reside in a domain outside reason: the unconscious mind, the shadows of times forgotten, yet still felt.” In this book, the unconscious becomes conscious, the forgotten is recalled, and feelings become thoughts. Thompson, a staff psychologist at the Department of Veterans Affairs, is out to challenge the norm that “mental health professionals almost never tell their own stories” in what is much less a running book than a psychological self-interrogation. For Thompson, running is one method of treatment—along with therapy and Zen practice—that works for him in learning to face up to his childhood trauma, mental illness, drug abuse, alcohol addiction, and lifelong tendency to run away from difficult experiences. A therapist might grant that revisiting the minute details of childhood serves as a healing process, but readers may be less patient with Thompson’s tireless self-examination, which sometimes crosses into self-indulgence. But if that is the price of the author’s keen insight into the psyche and the profound observations of which he is capable, so be it.
Like a long run, there are difficult stretches along the way, but in the end, they’re worth the reward.
