I have read another book on anxiety and was completely absorbed by it. The history, literature and science of anxiety is absolutely fascinating.
The author, Scott Stossel does a great job of navigating the readers through these web of information, threading them with his own personal history of anxiety that can be traced back generations. Is anxiety hereditary? Some scientific studies back that theory up, although others attribute it to early childhood attention deficiency, and yet others to chemical makeup (which are often affected by social hierarchies, P. 119). Perhaps they are not mutually exclusive.
Historical figures with fear of public speaking: Cicero, Moses, Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson, Henry James (P. 98-99)
Famous performers with performance anxiety: Horowitz, Barbara Streisand, Carly Simon, Hugh Grant, (P. 100)
Intellectuals with various phobias: Freud (train phobia, hypochondria, etc. P. 22), Darwin (agoraphobia, etc. P. 22), Emily Dickinson (agoraphobia, P. 320), Franz Kafka, Woody Allen, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, Samuel Johnson (hypochondria P. 329)
The author has a first-hand experience with anxiety. His anxieties are so severe, his descriptions make someone like me feel better about my own past with performance anxiety. He also describes his suffering with a bit of humor – an amazing feat of perspective. He is worried about “health; about finances; about work; about the rattle in my car and the dripping in my basement…about everything and nothing. Sometimes this worry gets transmuted into low-grade physical discomfort – stomachaches, headaches, dizziness, pains in my arms and legs – or a general malaise, as though I have mononucleosis or the flu. At various times, I have developed anxiety-induced difficulties breathing, swallowing, even walking.” He also suffers from “a number of specific fears or phobias: To name a few: spaces (claustrophobia); heights (acrophobia); fainting (aesthenophobia); being trapped far from home (a species of agoraphobia); germs (bacillophobia); cheese (turophobia); speaking in public (a subcategory of social phobia); flying (aerophobia); vomiting (emetophotica)…” (P. 6) All of this since he was a very young child.
He has tried: “individual psychotherapy (three decades of it), family therapy, group therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), rational emotive therapy (RET), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), hypnosis, meditation, role-playing, interoceptive exposure therapy, in vivo exposure therapy, supportive-expressive therapy, eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), self-help workbooks, massage therapy, prayer, acupuncture, yoga, Stoic philosophy…And medication. Lots of medication. Thorazine. Imipramine. Desipramine. Chlorpheniramine. Nardil. BuSpar. Prozac. Zoloft. Paxil. Wellbutrin. Effexor. Celexa. Lexapro. Cymbalta. Luvox. Trazodone> Levoxyl. Propranolol. Tranxene. Serax. Centrax. St. John’s wort. Zolpidem. Valium. Librium. Ativan. Zanax. Klonopin.” and alcohol of various kinds. (P. 7)
And he argues for the pervasive nature of anxiety. “According to the National Institue of Mental Helath….nearly one in seven (forty million Americans) are suffering from some kind of anxiety disorder at any given time, accounting for 31 percent of the expenditures on mental health care in the United States….A study published in The American Journal of Psychiatry in 2006 found that Americans lose a collective 321 million days of work because of anxiety and depression each year, costing the economy $50 billion annually.” (P. 8)
Stossel takes his readers through his quest to understand anxiety through five parts: “The Riddle of Anxiety,” “A History of My Nervous Stomach,” “Drugs,” “Nurture Versus Nature,” and “Redemption and Resilience.” Although there seems to be no obvious or immediate cure for anxiety, he ends his massive opus (over 400 pages) on a hopeful note. He quotes a study that focused on American POW’s of Vietnam who did not develop PTSD, despite traumas they endured. “The ten critical psychological elements and characteristics of resilience that Charney has identified are:
- optimism
- altruism
- having a moral compass or set of beliefs that cannot be shattered
- facing fear (or leaving one’s comfort zone)
- having a mission or meaning in life
- practice in meeting and overcoming challenges. (P. 332)”
But the most hopeful note of all is that the author, despite ALL of his anxieties, with anxiety-prone genes, upbringing, etc. he is a successful journalist, and had written this brilliant book with extensive research.
I am finding my research fascinating, and am grateful to have encountered yet another amazing writing in the process.