Sehee’s damaging cognitive distortions take center stage during this next set of chapters as she explores The Impact of Long-Term Depression on Personal and Professional Lives. Sehee describes in detail some of her struggles both at work and in her personal relationships, and is initially unable to see why she finds it so difficult to meaningfully relate to other people without worrying constantly about what they think about her. 

The psychiatrist works to help Sehee to stop thinking in “black and white” extremes (68). Sehee learns that she has unrealistic expectations for both herself and other people, and that she would be better served by understanding that humans are all complex, multi-faceted, and flawed. The psychiatrist hopes this insight will help her to stop judging herself and to treat her friends and coworkers with more grace. Sehee will battle this idea throughout the entire subsequent course of her therapy with mixed results, but it will remain one of her psychiatrist’s most important pieces of wisdom.

Sehee’s formal conventions play an increasingly important role, as her mini-essays crystallize much of what she is trying to take away from her therapeutic sessions. She notes in one essay that while she is grateful for her psychiatrist, she knows that she must begin implementing some of their ideas on her own. This demonstrates her awareness that progress will come not just at the psychiatrist’s urging, but because she develops the ability to become more objective in her self-observation and less tied to her emotional responses to various triggers.

The Non-Linear Nature of the Therapeutic Process becomes apparent at this point in Sehee’s narrative. She experiences moments of happiness and makes meaningful, measurable progress. She is able to think critically about the psychiatrist’s observation that she tends to engage in black-and-white thinking, admitting: “I keep telling myself that people are three-dimensional, but I keep thinking of them as flat” (87). She describes the blog in which she writes about her experience of therapy and the new contacts she has made because of this writing. She is more outgoing and open and enjoys her movie club. Both Sehee and the psychiatrist are proud, and it seems as though she is doing a better job of managing her symptoms and establishing new, healthier behavioral patterns.

The process is not, however, without setbacks. Even as she tries to change the way that she thinks and behaves, she struggles to leave old habits behind. She becomes angry when her new friend responds with less enthusiasm than Sehee would like to a book recommendation. She lashes out in a way that has typified many of her past relationships and then feels shame. It is evident that although Sehee has begun to understand what she needs to change about her own emotional responses, it is not as easy as she hoped it would be to put that understanding to use. However, Sehee also apologizes to this friend and uses the incident as a self-teaching moment. She doesn’t end the friendship over it, which again shows progress and growth. This pattern of making progress only to experience regression will characterize the rest of Sehee’s therapeutic process, and is one of the memoir’s most realistic nods to what it is like to live with depression and anxiety.

This set of chapters also contains several discussions about Sehee’s medication, both its benefits and drawbacks. Sehee’s willingness to speak openly about medication is another of the memoir’s important inclusions. It demystifies the role that medication plays in treating persistent conditions like Sehee’s and additionally destigmatizes the use of medication, in addition to talk therapy, to treat depression. Psychiatric medication has not completely gained widespread acceptance and is still seen by many as unnecessary. Memoirs like I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki that discuss psychiatric medication openly humanize and explain its use and help readers to understand why it can be such an important part of the therapeutic process. For readers who themselves take psychiatric medication, it recognizes and affirms the validity of their choices.