Skip to content
Get the book

Press

Press materials

Front cover of State. Not Situation. On a deep red ground, a cream panel carries the strapline, the subtitle in red italic, and the word STATE set very large in red above NOT SITUATION in black. Under them, in a bracketed box, Your body speaks first, your mind explains second. The author’s name stands at the foot, on the red.
Ivana Budišin, photographed against a dark grey background.

Photograph: Zoe Larusson

Contact

Ivana Budišin

ivana@luxembourgpsychology.com

Review copies, print and digital, are available on request. Extract licensing, interviews and events by arrangement.

Download complete press kitZIP · 2.8 MB

Publication

Title
State. Not Situation.
Subtitle
Why your body decides what a moment means before you do
Author
Ivana Budišin
Foreword
Dr Kristina Herber, Managing Director, AIHE Academic Institute for Higher Education
Publication
15 October 2026
Format
Paperback, 6 × 9 in
Extent
304 pages
ISBN-13
978-2-87996-258-0
Category
Psychology / Cognitive psychology
Language
English. French and German editions to follow.
Legal deposit
Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg

About the book

It is less interested in teaching you to trust your instincts than in showing you what, exactly, you are trusting.

For anyone who has ever been certain about what a situation meant, then discovered that something else was happening. And for readers interested in the psychology of how we notice, interpret and revise the world around us.

Biography

Short
Ivana Budišin is a clinical psychologist living and working in Luxembourg. State. Not Situation. is her first book.
Long
Before psychology, Ivana Budišin worked in design and product design. She later moved into applied psychology and is now a clinical psychologist, with a continuing interest in research and cognitive science. Born in the United States, she has lived in US, Serbia and Luxembourg and is now a Luxembourger. She runs Luxembourg Psychology. State. Not Situation. brings those interests together: how we experience the world, and how we might make that experience easier to understand.

Downloads

The chapters

This book is the

Investigation.

16 cases. Three readings. One question: state or situation?

  1. 00A Day That Should Have Been Fine11
  2. 01The Radar Was Right17
  3. 02Why Sleep Loss Makes Neutral Input Feel Hostile25
  4. 03The Relief That Becomes Itch37
  5. 04The Predictable Cue51
  6. 05Why Evenings Stretch and Mornings Shrink69
  7. 06Why Rest Doesn’t Always Restore81
  8. 07Why You Cannot Start the Thing That Matters97
  9. 08The Open File109
  10. 09Two Nervous Systems Walk Into a Kitchen127
  11. 10The Argument That Was Tuesday143
  12. 11The Thursday That Was Wednesday Night161
  13. 12The Clean Panel179
  14. 13The Time the Body Was Right197
  15. 14Not About Me211
  16. 15The Forecast223

The chapters that follow are organised around three systems that shape how your body’s signals get weighted before your mind builds a story. They are not brain regions or neural pathways. They are a sorting tool, a way to ask three questions when everything feels wrong at once.

Sources and evidence

Each chapter has three parts here: a short note on where the thinking came from, a list of the work the chapter is built on, and a list of the work that limits it, complicates it, or explains the same evidence differently.

Leaving them out would make the argument look tidier than it is.

The Scientific Heartbeat, page 242

Credits

Cover design
Zoe Larusson
Photography
Zoe Larusson
Book design and typesetting
Ivana Budišin
Published by
Budisin Publishing

Back to the book