Although Finnish doesn’t have a direct equivalent of English’s “mustn’t grumble”, Lotta Sonninen admits, it has a few equivalents. “Vali vali” comes from “valittaminen”, meaning complaining: but there is also “marina”, “kitinä” and “jupina” (to complain under your breath or through gritted teeth); “urputtaminen” (to complain to someone about something they did); “nillittäminen” (to complain at length); and “avautuminen” (to complain at length with unnecessary frankness). Sonninen is familiar with them all; she has spent years working in the Finnish publishing industry, poring over positivity handbooks designed to get her countrymen through the long dark winters.
“The type of books that crossed my path ask you to find the joy in the little things of life and turn up the silver lining or the bright side,” Sonninen says. “Although one at a time they’re really cute, when there were several of them it started looking a bit comical. So I ended up imagining an antidote.”
The result is The Little Book of Bad Moods, a kind of paint-by-numbers “burn book” to help readers nail their daily frustrations. “List what’s wrong with your kids,” suggests one page, while another asks you to sketch “emojis that need to be punched in the face”, and – best of all – an outline for an “ingratitude diary”.
“It’s kind of inevitable, isn’t it. If something’s taken far enough then the backlash comes,” Sonninen jokes. “After enough positivity, it starts feeling like there’s not enough negativity.”
Sonninen’s book is part of a refreshing new trend in self-help – or, more accurately, anti-self-help. Along with Sophie Hannah’s How to Hold a Grudge, Haemin Sunim’s Love for Imperfect Things and Karen Rinaldi’s forthcoming It’s Great to Suck at Something, these books point out that, actually, there’s nothing much wrong with us. Move over, mindfulness: it’s time for plain old “finefulness”.
A mini trend for dark self-help paved the way for titles sharing the pleasures of self-acceptance. In 2018, Tiffany Watt Smith’s Schadenfreude explored our pleasure at others people’s failures, with Julia Shaw’s Making Evil: The Science Behind Humanity’s Dark Side arriving hot on its heels. Non-fiction on life’s cock-ups and let-downs by Elizabeth Day (How to Fail) and Christina Patterson (The Art of Not Falling Apart) have been instrumental in describing the world beyond perfectionism, further refined in “sweary self-help” (Unf*ck Yourself, Unf*ck Your Brain, How to Make Sh*t Happen and bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.)
There is a rich history behind facing up to our bad moods. Freud himself explained that there was much to gain from turning “hysterical misery” into “common unhappiness”, while Carl Rogers, the founder of humanistic psychology, is often quoted counselling: “When I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” More recently, meditation guru and podcast star Tara Brach concludes her meditation sessions with the question: “Who am I when I am no longer believing something’s wrong?” After years of trying to improve ourselves,cut out our flaws and undergo “judgment detoxes” and the like, we’re finally ready to feel our feelings. (Provided a book can feel them with us, of course).
The Little Book of Bad Moods also makes a change from the cheery boom in journalling and activity books for adults, which have become a profitable new sector over the last 10 years. Adult colouring books came and quickly went a few years ago, but workbooks have stuck around: Fearne Cotton has now published her third, Calm, and even Mind, the mental health charity, has published a couple.
And why not? A 2017 report on “creative health” by the All-Party Parliamentary Group found arts therapies could alleviate anxiety, depression and stress while building resilience and wellbeing. A 2012 study of one “arts on prescription” course showed that participants’ visits to GPs and hospitals fell dramatically afterwards. Journalling is one of the activities available via NHS social prescribing.
Keri Smith’s 2007 book Wreck This Journal was the first of its kind: instructing readers to poke holes through pages, crack the spine, paint with coffee, rip pages out, ball them up, and throw them off the top of a tall building; in 12 years, it has sold 7m copies.
Smith says that before Wreck This Journal, she had been a dedicated self-help reader, but grew disillusioned with attempts to fix or change herself. “At some point I felt like it wasn’t doing anything,” she says. “I realised, ‘I need to stop talking and thinking about these things, and I need to do them.’ It’s really that simple.”
You heard the woman. That ingratitude journal won’t write itself.
• The Little Book of Bad Moods by Lotta Sonninen is published in the UK by Bloomsbury at £5.99. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on orders over £15.
