“Inspired by her weekly column "Conversations with My Therapist," Scottish journalist Martin takes a captivating look at one woman's adventure in psychotherapy. Heading into her mid-30s, Martin felt as though "time were running out"; with most of her friends married with children, Martin wanted to "love life again rather than feel it is an unbearable uphill struggle." Shortly after this revelation, she committed to one year with a therapist she calls "Dr. J" and began to peel back the "layer of armor" that she had spent her whole life building to protect herself. While most of her therapy time is spent obsessing over past, present and possible future relationships (including her relationship with Dr. J), Martin also explores the effect her therapy has on her everyday life and her relationship with her family. Skillfully dodging the possibility of becoming yet another memoir of unrelenting self-praise, Martin's narrative is shamelessly funny, and she misses no opportunity for self-deprecating humor or cringe-inducing scenes. It's impossible not to root for Martin as she creates her own happy ending.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Glasgow-based journalist Martin charms in her debut memoir of a year in psychotherapy; the book is an expansion of her Grazia magazine column, “Conversations With My Therapist.”
Though not lacking for sharp insight or an emotional arc, her retrospectively self-aware narration is funnier than it is heart-wrenching. As her 35th birthday loomed, Martin couldn’t stop crying. Her married boyfriend had found a younger woman, embarrassing work situations abounded and she was still living in a tiny rented flat. When Prozac, exercise and advice from friends didn’t bring her out of her funk, her sister and her best friend—both therapists—asserted that the “talking cure” was exactly what she needed to uncover the repressed adolescent emotions motivating her self-destructive behavior. She finally surrendered her skepticism and took out a loan for psychotherapy. Martin proves a fine guide to this oft-stereotyped Freudian world. “There was a couch—the famous couch!…A box of tissues lay strategically on the floor,” she writes. “They must be for the really damaged people, I thought, glad and relieved that I wasn’t one of them.” Dr. J, the author’s therapist, says little more than “Hmmm” during the first few sessions, but eventually hits on her patient’s unbecoming emotions, such as jealousy of her baby nephew and fear of real intimacy. Dr. J also identifies formative experiences from Martin’s past: her sister having brain-tumor surgery, her father losing his job, etc. The author begins to see personality traits to which she was previously blind. Romantic tension gives the book more suspense than most memoirs, as Martin moves on from delusional mistakes with her adulterous ex to a comedy of errors with a handsome doctor. Her blunders with him eventually become exasperating, but her wit and vulnerability are so endearing that readers will root for her anyway.

Generous and gutsy. The author convincingly demonstrates how psychotherapy has made a huge difference in her life, while acknowledging that it may not be for everyone.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A journalist’s memoir of one year’s soul-doctoring and her social and romantic escapades outside the treatment room. A cross between HBO’s therapy drama In Treatment and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Thinking I’d loathe it, I found it hilarious and wickedly moreish. Martin portrays herself as selfish and feckless but still comes over as immensely amiable rather than a whining passive-aggressive approval-seeker. It is well known, of course, that a sufficiently intense commitment to navel-gazing can result in something universal. ‘I badly needed new friends,’ she writes. ‘Less successful ones.’ There has been more craft in the making of this book than the surface lets on. The rhythm of its changes in register, for one thing, is handled with lovely comic timing.”
—Steven Poole, The Guardian

“Her [Martin’s] account of the psychic dismemberment she experienced on the therapist’s couch is revealed with the sort of honesty that could strip paint. Witty, successful and completely neurotic, she stumbles into Dr. J’s office for the first of a year of tri-weekly, pre-breakfast sessions. As she confesses, she’s neither a drug addict nor anorexic; apart from frequent crying fits in important meetings, she barely seems to need therapy at all. Which makes what happens all the more alarming and enthralling. Dr. J takes Lorna’s defences – her humour, her constant protestations of niceness and sanity – and systematically breaks them down, revealing deeply buried anger and terror. It sounds appalling and yet the more Lorna confronts, the happier and lighter she becomes. Martin has a gift for screwball comedy and a penchant for drunken confessions that can leave whole parties speechless and cringing. By joining the scrum for the confessional, Martin has achieved something quite different from the customary solipsistic striptease. She has succeeded in challenging the reputation of psychotherapy as an interminable and onanistic experience, catching instead some of the breathless, liberating excitement that accompanies any descent into the deeper reaches of the self.”
—Olivia Laing, The Observer

“Lorna Martin’s account of her year in therapy succeeds on one level simply as a good, girly read…But she has also created something more substantial with the insight she provides into the usually private relationship between therapist and client. The most satisfying moments are those where she conveys the way her own true motives creep up on her. Her obsession with meeting ‘The One’ and her dissatisfaction with life as it really is provides a thought-provoking commentary on modern expectations.”
—Chloe Rhodes, The Daily Telegraph

“Depression is at the root of one of the finest art forms of modern times, the blues. There are, Roy Orbison warbled, ‘Blue teardrops in my heart’. This archetypal blues condition is the theme of Lorna Martin’s memoir Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. As the memoir opens, Martin is a rising journalist on The Observer. She comes across as smart, sexy and sassy. But she keeps bursting into tears. Initially, she ascribes this to a screwed-up personal life. It goes deeper, of course. Her sphinx-like Freudian analyst, Dr J, uncovers Martin’s long-repressed problems. There is a drift to eventual, hard-won control. Martin is a brave and engagingly entertaining survivor.”
—John Sutherland, The Financial Times

“Lorna Martin’s life is a mess – or so she thinks. By most people’s standards the 30-something Glaswegian journalist has very little to worry about: she has a successful career with the Observer, earns a decent living and is perfectly healthy. But she can’t stop crying and, in classic chick-lit style, is struggling to form healthy relationships with men. And she’s a nervous wreck. With a bank loan, Martin embarks on a year-long course of psychotherapy in an attempt to come to terms with herself and her ongoing existential crisis. Woman on the Verge charts her journey through analysis as she unravels the source of her various neuroses and emerges a calmer and more rational person…What lifts Woman on the Verge beyond the tedium of real-life chick-lit is Martin’s lack of self-pity along with her humour and well-paced, fluent and compelling writing. Witty and able to laugh at herself, she is good company for the book’s 300 pages.”
—Pauline Diamond, The.List.Co.UK 

“This humorous account of Martin’s early midlife crisis will resonate with any professional thirtysomething who suddenly realises that they don’t have a partner, kids or a mortgage.”
—Glamour Magazine