I'm Fine...And Other Lies

A funny self-help book

I'm Fine...And Other Lies is the first book by the comedian Whitney Cummings, published in 2017. Cummings is a stand-up comic, actor and writer. She co-created the CBS sitcom 2 Broke Girls and created and starred in the NBC sitcom Whitney. She has called this book a funny self-help book. It mixes memoir, comedy and what she learned in years of therapy.

The book grew out of an essay she wrote for Lenny Letter, the newsletter run by Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner. In it she wrote about her codependency. Readers stopped her on the street, some in tears, to say the essay described them. She decided to write the book she wished she had read when she was younger.

The title names her main problem. For years she told everyone she was fine. She was not. She was overworked, anxious, physically sick and close to a breakdown. She says many people, women in particular, are taught to hide what is wrong and to keep everyone else comfortable.

The book is organized as a series of short chapters, each named plainly for its subject, such as the codependence chapter, the eating disorder chapter and the egg freezing chapter. The tone moves between jokes and very serious material.

Codependency: managing everyone's feelings

Cummings explains that she first thought codependency meant spending too much time with a boyfriend. A therapist gave her a different definition. Codependency, she learned, is being unable to tolerate other people's discomfort. A codependent person reacts to others instead of acting on her own needs. She cannot stand up for herself or ask for what she wants.

She recognizes herself in this. She said yes to every request, took on too much work, stayed in draining relationships and tried to fix other people's problems. She describes breaking her shoulder while trying to impress a man. She describes the voice in her head, which spoke to her more cruelly than she would ever let anyone else speak to her.

The word "fine" becomes the book's frame. When you say you are fine, she argues, you are often hiding something.

Where it started

Cummings traces her habits to her childhood. She learned early that being funny got her attention and protected her. When she got a bad bowl haircut as a child, her family mocked her for months in what she calls a family roast. She learned to laugh along. She says the habit of laughing off cruelty slowly wore down her self-esteem.

She also links her career to her codependency. Comedy, she suggests, is partly the work of reading a room and making everyone feel good. She was very good at it. She was much worse at noticing what she herself needed.

The body: eating disorder, pain and image

The book's most painful chapter covers her eating disorder. She describes a struggle with anorexia that lasted about fifteen years. In her teens she restricted food to a few items. Later she began binge eating, sometimes in her sleep, and woke to find wrappers of food she had eaten in the night. She explains how the illness gave her a sense of control and how it hurt her. Reviewers single out this chapter as the most raw in the book.

Other chapters cover her body in a lighter tone. She writes about her breasts and her body image, and about the pressure on women in entertainment to look a certain way. She describes body dysmorphia, the habit of seeing flaws that others do not see. She also describes a surprise diagnosis of scoliosis.

Trauma she did not deal with

Cummings writes briefly and directly about two assaults. An ex-boyfriend nearly raped her, and a stranger attacked her. At the time she did not seek help. She went back to work and told herself she was fine. Years later, a therapist encouraged her to talk about the assault for the first time.

She describes several kinds of treatment. Some therapists did not help. Others did. She tried the Grinberg Method, a body-based practice that encourages people to release grief they have held back, which for her meant crying for the first time about events she had buried. She learned to notice her patterns and to stop.

Work, sexism and comedy

Cummings writes about sexism in stand-up and in Hollywood. She describes hecklers and audiences who treat a woman on stage differently from a man. She reflects on her years as a regular on televised comedy roasts, where she told and received harsh jokes about looks and sex, and how those jokes felt afterward.

She also writes about freezing her eggs, a choice she made to give herself time and options, and about an abortion she had as a teenager.

Stories she could not tell on stage

Some chapters are stories she says she could not tell on stage. Her own pit bull attacked her and nearly tore off her ear, which had to be sewn back on. She describes nearly ending up in prison in Guatemala, and an encounter with drunk men in a Las Vegas hotel hallway that she analyzed for days. She describes performing in the Middle East and a lesson she learned from women there about wearing headscarves, which challenged her assumptions.

The point of these stories is the same. She keeps making the same mistake: putting other people's comfort first, ignoring the warning signs and pretending she is fine.

What she learned

By the end, Cummings does not claim to be cured. She says recovery is ongoing. Alongside therapy, she joined a 12-step program for codependency. She has learned to say no, to tolerate other people's disappointment and to ask for what she needs. She has also learned to notice her perfectionism, which pushed her to overwork for years. She has learned that admitting weakness is not failure. She says reading about vulnerability, including the researcher Brené Brown's work, gave her courage. Her message is that people feel less alone when someone says the true thing out loud.

What the critics say

Reviewers found the book frank, funny and moving in its serious chapters. Some readers say the self-help and codependency sections lean on therapy jargon, and that the book jumps between topics with no clear timeline. Some who expected a light comedy memoir were surprised by how much of it deals with illness and trauma.

Who should read it

Read it if you are a people pleaser, if you say "I'm fine" when you are not, or if you want a funny entry point into codependency and therapy. Readers with eating disorders or trauma should know the book discusses both openly.