Sehee writes the Prologue explaining her goal to validate others with dysthymia through her personal story.

Sehee enters therapy and describes her long history of depression, low self-esteem, and social difficulty.

Sehee reveals her father's violence and her family's abusive home life to the psychiatrist during their first session.

The psychiatrist tells Sehee she has constructed an idealized, unattainable self-image that fuels her chronic low self-worth.

The psychiatrist explains that Sehee has cognitive distortions and is externalizing her self-judgment as imagined criticism from others.

Sehee makes a new friend she considers a kindred spirit and cautiously begins pursuing the friendship.

Sehee lashes out at her new friend by calling her 'arrogant' after the friend gives a tepid response to a book recommendation.

Sehee experiences akathisia as a medication side effect and discusses adjusting her treatment with the psychiatrist.

Sehee apologizes to her friend and honestly discloses how her mental health skews her emotional responses.

Sehee confesses a deep fixation on her appearance and admits she silently judges other women for their looks too.

Sehee's social media management role at work is transferred to another team, intensifying her feelings of inadequacy.

Sehee informs her boss she is quitting for mental health reasons and receives a sympathetic, understanding response.

Sehee declares she has hit rock bottom, but the psychiatrist challenges the claim and adjusts her medication.

Sehee reads the finished manuscript of her memoir and struggles not to sink into despair.

Sehee resolves that her goal is to 'love and be loved' and to move through life's cycles of light and dark with more grace.

Baek Sehee begins her memoir by explaining her hope that sharing her story will validate others living with dysthymia, a condition she feels is widely misunderstood. She enters therapy and quickly discloses the abusive household that shaped her chronic low self-esteem, and her psychiatrist begins the work of reframing her distorted self-image. As sessions progress, Sehee forms a meaningful new friendship but undermines it by lashing out when her book recommendation is met with criticism, forcing her to confront her black-and-white thinking in real time. Medication adjustments, body image struggles, and a painful loss of status at work push her into a period of serious regression, culminating in her quitting her job and declaring she has hit rock bottom. Her psychiatrist challenges this framing, and Sehee slowly moves toward a more honest reckoning with her condition. The memoir closes not with a cure but with a resolution: to accept that light and darkness are inseparable and to live by the goal of loving and being loved.

The core journey from first therapy session to hard-won acceptance.

Sehee describes being mercilessly bullied in elementary school and developing a lasting terror of standing out socially.

Sehee discloses her older sister's manipulation, including threatening to withhold school supplies to enforce compliance.

Sehee becomes financially independent as an adult and confronts her sister directly about her years of abusive behavior.

Sehee drinks too much at a bar, lies to a friend for attention, and brings the incident to her next therapy session.

Sehee joins a movie club, preferring it over book clubs to avoid the professional pressure tied to her publishing job.

The psychiatrist points out that Sehee's self-consciousness constantly shifts its comparison parameters in ways that always leave her feeling inferior.

Sehee's medication begins working more effectively, improving her anxiety, though it causes some sleep disruption.

Sehee starts a therapy blog and arranges to get a tattoo with a reader who connects with her writing about mental health.

Sehee enrolls in a fiction writing workshop and discovers that writing helps her process emotions without over-judging herself.

Sehee admits her new romantic partner calls her his ideal woman, but she cannot bring herself to believe him.

Sehee allows her romantic partner to read her writing aloud and is immediately overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy.

Sehee takes an online self-esteem quiz and scores low, though the result is higher than her previous attempt.

The psychiatrist contributes a chapter to the memoir, expressing embarrassment at how dry their transcribed commentary sounds.

Sehee reflects on her mother's habit of saying 'cheer up' and argues that empathy is a far more effective response to depression.

Sehee closes her postscript essays by affirming the importance of solitude, love as a guiding force, and continued self-acceptance.

While the main sessions chart Sehee's formal therapeutic arc, the secondary events reveal the texture of daily life with dysthymia. Her childhood experiences of bullying and her sister's manipulative control over family secrets left her with a deep fear of judgment and a compulsion to perform normalcy. As therapy begins, small social situations such as joining a movie club, drinking too much at a bar, and lying to a friend expose how her depression infiltrates even ordinary interactions. A period of genuine progress sees her starting a therapy blog, enrolling in a fiction workshop, and allowing medication to stabilize her mood, though her relationship with her romantic partner tests her ability to be vulnerable. Appearance anxieties and a bruising self-esteem quiz mark a return of familiar patterns, while her psychiatrist's own contributed chapter adds a rare outside perspective on the therapeutic process. The memoir's closing essays offer Sehee's accumulated wisdom on solitude, love, and self-acceptance, signaling that growth, however uneven, has genuinely occurred.

The supporting moments that quietly shape Sehee's path through depression.

Sehee recalls that even as a child her moods shifted overnight and her depression eventually prevented her from attending university.

The psychiatrist helps Sehee understand that her abusive childhood directly created the conditions for her adult depression and anxiety.

The psychiatrist gives Sehee a large personality survey at the end of their first session to better understand her behavioral patterns.

Sehee describes the Hedgehog's Dilemma: her co-dependent nature drives her toward people she then compulsively pushes away.

Sehee admits she records social gatherings, meetings, and therapy sessions so she can review and judge her own behavior afterward.

Sehee vows to stop obsessing over what other people think of her and to invest instead in her own sense of identity.

Sehee recognizes she equates another person's influence over her tastes with that person's affection for her.

The psychiatrist suggests Sehee shows symptoms of histrionic personality disorder, linked to her need for attention and validation.

Sehee successfully reframes her inner monologue during a draining workplace interaction, choosing empathy over a hostile outburst.

Sehee binge-eats following her work role change and finds herself trapped in a cycle of depression, shame, and self-criticism.

Sehee reads a book discussing the concept of 'free death' and decides the time has come to quit her job.

Sehee decides to travel alone to the temples at Gyeongju, hoping the peaceful setting will help her recover from exhaustion.

The psychiatrist affirms that Sehee's memoir gives a more vivid and humanizing account of therapy than their own clinical session notes.

Sehee realizes her mother's own low self-esteem and hypercriticism directly taught her to judge both herself and others so harshly.

Sehee ends her reflective essays still struggling with authenticity but resolved to feel her emotions rather than surrender to numbness.

The most significant turning points in Sehee's journey are moments of sudden clarity, painful self-recognition, and hard-won reframing. Early revelations establish the foundation: her childhood depression was serious enough to derail her education, her abusive home life is the root of her adult patterns, and the psychiatrist's personality survey begins the formal process of mapping her inner world. Pivotal mid-journey discoveries include recognizing her compulsion to record and review social interactions, understanding that she equates influence with affection, and the psychiatrist naming histrionic personality disorder symptoms in her. A breakthrough moment arrives when Sehee successfully redirects a hostile impulse during a workplace encounter, demonstrating that the psychiatrist's lessons are finally taking hold. The deepest regressions, including binge-eating after losing her work role and reaching her emotional breaking point, paradoxically accelerate her growth by forcing a medication change and a solo journey to find stillness. The memoir's final revelations trace the roots of her self-criticism back to her mother and arrive at the hard-earned understanding that depression is not something to defeat but something to live alongside with increasing skill.