Augusten Burroughs doesn't want to fix you. At least, not in the way those shiny, "manifest your best life" gurus do. When you pick up This Is How: Augusten Burroughs' blunt, jagged, and surprisingly tender take on survival, you aren't getting a hug. You’re getting a bucket of ice water to the face.
It’s been over a decade since this book hit the shelves, yet it remains one of the few pieces of "help" literature that doesn't feel like it was written by a marketing department. Most self-help books are built on a foundation of "you are enough." Burroughs starts from a different premise: maybe you aren't enough right now, and that’s why everything feels like it’s falling apart. Honestly, it’s refreshing.
He’s lived it. If you’ve read Running with Scissors or Dry, you know his life wasn't exactly a Hallmark movie. He grew up in a house where the psychiatrist lived in the backyard and the family ate Kibbles 'n Bits. He battled an alcoholism that nearly turned his brain to mush. So when he tells you how to survive a midlife crisis or how to "be fat," he isn't speaking from a place of academic theory. He’s speaking from the trenches.
Why This Is How Is Not Your Typical Manual
Most people looking for This Is How by Augusten Burroughs are usually tired of being told to think positive. Burroughs hates "positive thinking." He views it as a form of delusion that actually prevents us from solving our problems. If you're standing in a house that's on fire, visualizing a swimming pool isn't going to save your skin. You have to smell the smoke.
The book is structured as a series of short, punchy chapters. Each one tackles a specific misery. How to end a relationship. How to deal with a dying parent. How to get over the fact that you're not a genius. It’s categorized by the problem, not the solution, which feels much more honest to the human experience. We don't wake up thinking, "I need more mindfulness today." We wake up thinking, "I can't stand my job and my partner hasn't touched me in six months."
The Power of Negative Thinking
There is a specific chapter on how to be sick that should be mandatory reading in every hospital. He talks about the pressure to be a "warrior" when you have a chronic illness. Sometimes, you don't want to be a warrior. Sometimes you just want to be a person who is sick and miserable. Burroughs argues that by accepting the misery instead of trying to "brave" our way through it, we actually find a weird kind of peace.
He calls it the "finish line."
When you stop running from the thing you fear most—failure, loneliness, death—you realize you're already there. The monster has caught you. And guess what? You’re still breathing. That is the core philosophy of This Is How. It’s about the resilience that comes after you've lost everything you were afraid of losing.
The Advice That Actually Sticks
Let’s talk about the "How to be Fat" chapter. It’s controversial. People get angry about it because he doesn't tell you to love your curves. He tells you that if you hate being fat, you should stop eating so much. It sounds cruel. It sounds simplistic. But Burroughs isn't trying to be a dietician. He’s trying to strip away the layers of rationalization we use to protect ourselves from the truth.
He applies this same brutal logic to everything.
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- On heartbreak: You aren't "brokenhearted." Your ego is bruised because someone didn't want the gift of you.
- On career: If you haven't succeeded yet, maybe you aren't actually good at what you're doing.
- On confidence: You don't "build" it. You just do the thing you're afraid of until the fear gets bored and leaves.
It’s a very "anti-affirmation" approach. Instead of telling yourself "I am beautiful" in the mirror, Burroughs suggests you look in the mirror and say, "I am exactly what I am." There is a massive difference between those two statements. One is a lie you’re trying to believe; the other is a fact you’re finally accepting.
Living Through the Unbearable
Burroughs is at his best when he talks about the stuff we usually whisper about. Suicide. Grief. The kind of depression that feels like heavy wet wool. He recounts his own experience sitting in a room with a bottle of pills, weighing the options. He doesn't offer a platitude about how "it gets better." Instead, he points out that if you're going to kill yourself tomorrow, you might as well do whatever the hell you want today.
Go to the airport. Buy a ticket to somewhere you’ve never been. Eat a five-course meal. If the end is already written, the middle becomes remarkably free. This perspective shifts the focus from the act of ending life to the radical freedom of having nothing left to lose.
The Language of Survival
The prose in This Is How: Augusten Burroughs is sharp. It’s jagged. It’s also surprisingly funny. You'll be reading about the death of a dog and suddenly find yourself snorting with laughter because he captures the absurdity of grief so perfectly.
He uses short sentences. Like a pulse.
Then he’ll pivot into a long, rambling narrative about a specific memory from his childhood that illustrates a point about why we lie to ourselves. It doesn't feel like a lecture. It feels like a late-night conversation with a friend who has seen some things and isn't impressed by your excuses.
One of the most profound sections deals with "how to feel like a failure." He argues that we spend so much energy trying to avoid failure that we never actually learn how to live within it. Success is a high-pressure environment. Failure is a wide-open field. There’s a lot of room in failure. You can stretch out. You can re-evaluate. You can finally stop performing for an audience that isn't even watching.
Addressing the Critics
Not everyone likes this book. Some psychologists argue that Burroughs is too dismissive of clinical depression or the complexities of trauma. And look, he’s not a doctor. He’s a writer. If you have a chemical imbalance, a book—no matter how well-written—isn't a substitute for medication and therapy.
Burroughs acknowledges his own limitations, though. He’s not writing for the person who needs a clinical intervention; he’s writing for the person who is stuck in the "gray" of life. The person who is functional but miserable. The person who is tired of the "woo-woo" spirituality that dominates the self-help section of the bookstore.
How to Actually Use This Book
If you decide to dive into This Is How, don't read it cover to cover in one sitting. It’s too much. It’s like eating a jar of ghost peppers. You need to take it in small doses.
Find the chapter that mirrors your current crisis. Read it. Then sit with the discomfort. Burroughs often suggests exercises that sound insane at first. He tells you to imagine the worst-case scenario in vivid detail. He tells you to admit out loud the things you're most ashamed of.
The goal isn't to feel "good." The goal is to feel "real."
In 2026, with the world feeling more precarious than ever, this brand of survivalism feels more relevant than the polished "wellness" content we see on social media. We don't need more filtered photos of avocado toast; we need to know how to keep our heads above water when the tide comes in.
Actionable Takeaways for the "Stuck"
If you're looking for the "cliff notes" of Burroughs' philosophy to apply right now, start here:
- Stop searching for your "passion." Most people don't have one single burning passion. They have interests that wax and wane. The pressure to find "The One Thing" is just another way we make ourselves feel inadequate. Just do what's in front of you.
- Describe your life without adjectives. Instead of saying "I have a terrible, soul-crushing job," say "I work 40 hours a week in an office." Removing the emotional weight from your descriptions makes the problems feel like logistics rather than tragedies.
- Accept the "Unfixable." Some things are just broken. Some relationships cannot be mended. Some mistakes cannot be erased. Stop trying to glue the vase back together and just acknowledge that the floor is covered in glass. Once you stop trying to fix it, you can start cleaning it up.
- The "So What?" Method. When you're spiraling about a fear, keep asking "So what?" until you hit the bottom. "I might lose my job." So what? "I won't be able to pay rent." So what? "I'll have to move back with my parents." So what? Eventually, you realize the "bottom" is rarely as fatal as the "spiral."
This Is How is ultimately a book about agency. It's about the terrifying realization that you are the only person who can save you, and the liberating realization that you are, in fact, capable of doing it. It’s not about being happy. It’s about being whole.
If you want to move forward with the principles Burroughs lays out, start by identifying one "truth" you've been avoiding. Write it down on a piece of paper. Don't try to change it. Don't try to "reframe" it into something positive. Just look at it. That act of looking—of truly seeing the mess—is the first step toward actually surviving it.