Birds Are Just Birds

A Comedy About the Self in Costume

For seven years, Tidal Grace ran a grief project so sophisticated it converted every sunset, every cup of coffee, and every Conan O'Brien clip into evidence of the human condition. He watched birds sadly. He moved to three countries. He helped clients find themselves while hiding from himself inside the helping.

Then one morning, lying in bed in Hamburg after the worst therapy session of his life, a pissed-off part of his psyche told the grief to fuck off. His hips started shaking. And the seven-year performance ended, not with a revelation, but with a Tuesday.

The Identity Projects

Birds Are Just Birdsis about the Self's addiction to identity projects: the costumes we build from genuine insights and wear until something shinier comes along. Each chapter traces a different one and shows how real experiences become performances, how performances become personalities, and how the Self never stops auditioning.

• The DP Survivor
• The Contemplative Seeker
• The Grief Connoisseur
• The Good Therapist
• The Almost-Artist
• The Expatriate

Part Memoir. Part Field Guide. Part Confession.

From a seizure on a Montreal floor to a sledgehammer through his own paintings in Leipzig. From Buddhist monks to Mensa meetings. From a Heilpraktiker who Googled him to a bird on a branch that wasn't teaching him anything. The book moves between the personal and the clinical: the lived experience on one side, the psychotherapist's eye on the other.

For anyone who has ever suspected their depth was a costume. For anyone whose personality turned out to be a project. For anyone who has watched a bird and thought it was teaching them something, when it was just looking for worms.

About the Author

Tidal Grace is an Honours-level psychotherapist accredited by the BDP, specialising in depersonalization, trauma, anxiety, and depression. He works with clients worldwide through audio-only online therapy from Hamburg.

Birds Are Just Birds is his third book, following Reclaiming Reality and The Floor Beneath the Floor.