In this spoken review, family physician Dr. Kate Lindley reflects on John A. King's memoir Deal with It, which chronicles his lived experience with post‑traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Lindley explains that, while her clinical training equips her to diagnose and treat PTSD, the book offered a vivid, human‑centered view of the internal struggle patients endure. She notes the author’s dark humor, the emotionally intense sections that even caused her physiological reactions, and highlights several core themes: the survivor versus victim mindset, the concept of the heart as an emotional memory, and the author’s self‑directed healing through exercise, diet, and reading. Lindley also values the perspective of the author’s partner, Melissa, illustrating the secondary stress on family members. The chapter on forgiveness resonated with her, especially its Christian framing, and she praises the concluding metaphor of moving from a speedboat to a raft as a symbol of shifting life pace. Ultimately, Lindley asserts that the book deepened her empathy, will make her a better doctor, and bridged the gap between her clinical brain and her heart.
Chapters
I've read John's book, Deal with It, and as a family doctor, I found it fascinating because on a clinical level, I have seen, diagnosed, and treated PTSD. But this book gave me another view of PTSD, and that was a human side of PTSD and how the patient deals with it and what are the thoughts running through his or her head. And it was very enlightening for me to see the struggle. Um, I knew the struggle is there, and— but it's different when you see it actually happening inside someone. And this book opened up this whole new, um, aspect of, uh, PTSD for me, and I'm very grateful for that. As I was getting more into the book, there were certain parts that were kind of funny, and you can see that the author has Kind of dark sense of humor, and then the book started getting emotionally more charged and charged. And for me, after I read Do You Know Him, I actually felt as if I was emotionally crashing. The physiologic response of my body was actually I felt nauseous, and it took me a while to recover from that point. One thing that I really liked in this book is that John never saw himself as a victim. He saw himself as a survivor. And as someone who still struggles daily through this issue but continues to wage the battle against it, some of my favorite quotes from the book are, I'm resilient. What the hell is normal anyway? Another one is, a victim already lost his battle. I have just begun to fight. I am not my past. I am my future. But my favorite part of the book actually is where he describes the heart's memory. And one of my favorite lines is, the heart is an emotional memory of what happens in your life. And that is really true because our heart remembers. And when we go through certain events or things that trigger us, our heart will remind us. The fascinating point of this book is seeing John go through this journey of healing. And as a physician, I understand the dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and the whole interaction. But it was really neat to see one man going through all that and struggling and finding his own way to heal. For him, it was exercise and diet and reading and different things, and it's really fascinating to see the struggle that he has gone through and the ways that he has found to deal with that. I also liked reading Melissa's point of view because it gave us an insight in what family members of patients with PTSD go through, and for them, this is a struggle as well, and they need to find The ways to cope with the disease and not show it and put strain on the relationship with the person who has PTSD. I liked reading the chapter on happiness, but for me, my favorite chapter was actually on forgiveness. And that's maybe because I struggled through that as well, and I'm sure we all have struggled, and it shows that we all are human. One of my favorite lines was, the weak can never forgive, Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. At the end of the day, the decision to forgive is the one that we make consciously, and for those of us who believe in Christ, it gives us— it gives it another dimension. Jesus paid it all, and all to him I owe. So it's our decision to leave it in his hands. And then let's not forget the last story. The story was actually really clever. I kind of like the whole idea of the speedboat and raft, and I think most of my life I've traveled in a speedboat, and just in recent years I found that traveling in a raft is a lot more pleasurable and, and better way of experiencing life. So that was a really nice way of closing the book and bringing everything back together. So why did I love this book? And I did love the book. I loved it because although my clinical brain knew all this, my heart needed time to catch up to this. And seeing John struggle on a daily basis and have small victories And getting better has brought another aspect of this disease that is going to make me a better doctor. Sometimes as doctors, we actually detach ourselves a little bit from the situation because we have— that's our coping mechanism. But by reading this book, it has brought another element of PTSD To me that's new and exciting, and I think it's going to make me a better doctor. So I'm very excited, and I honestly can say that I love the book.
