My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread, and the Search for Peace of Mind
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.97 (810 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0307390608 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 416 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-05-07 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
We discover the well-known who have struggled with the condition, as well as the afflicted generations of Stossel's own family. Stossel offers an intimate and authoritative history of efforts by scientists, philosophers, and writers to understand anxiety. He also explores how individual sufferers—including himself—have managed and controlled symptoms. Stossel vividly depicts anxiety’s human toll—its crippling impact, its devastating power to paralyze. Revealing anxiety's myriad manifestations and the anguish it causes, he also surveys the countless psychotherapies, medications, and often outlandish treatments that have been developed to relieve it. A Washington Post Notable BookA Seattle Times Best Book of the YearDrawing on his own longstanding battle with anxiety, Scott Stossel presents a moving and revelatory account of a condition that affects some 40 million Americans. By turns erudite and compassionate, amusing and inspirational, My Age of Anxiety is the essential account of a pervasive and too often misunderstood affliction.
Psychotherapy, multiple medications, and alcohol provide incomplete relief. From Booklist *Starred Review* Stossel, editor of the Atlantic magazine, is a very nervous man trying awfully hard not to be. “I’m like Woody Allen trapped in John Calvin,” he confesses. His deft handling of a delicate topic and frustrating illness highlights the existential dread, embarrassment, and desperation associated with severe anxiety yet allows room for resiliency, hope, and transcendence. For a layperson, he has considerable knowledge about prescription anti-anxiety drugs (perhaps based on three decades of using them). Absolutely fearless writing. Tying together notions about anxiety culled from history, philosophy, religion, sports, and literature with current neuropsychiatric research and his extensive personal experience, Stossel’s book is more than an astounding
M. JEFFREY MCMAHON said The Philosophical Debate of Anxiety. First the good news. In Scott Stossel’s excellent book, he points out a major study that people with generalized anxiety disorder have much higher IQs than the average population’s.The rest of the news in this very readable book isn’t so good for anxious depressives like Stossel, a lifelong depressive, worry-wart, and multi-phobe, his worst fear being emetophobia, the fear of throwing up.Stossel exercises a lot of candor discussing his dyspepsia and inner demons as he consults hundreds of sources, firsthand and otherwise, to give us a tour of the many theories behind chronic anxiety wit. Thank you Scott Stossel! Honest, frank, clear. This author is " my-kind-a-guy"!!! He discusses in detail the many meds out there waiting for all of us when we have a twinge of anxiety, depression, fear and makes sense out of it, telling us there is NO magic pill. It's a matter of trying one or all and hoping you find the combo that works. And since I had no idea there were people among us that are so struck down by anxiety every day of their lives, in the way he describes, I was relieved that my little bouts of it, (little by comparison) were all I had to tolerate. The talent that the author brings to the story is his light hand. This is me, more or less Everyone who copes with crippling anxiety will recognize themselves in Mr. Stossel's book. I give copies to other people so they will understand me and why I sometimes self-medicate in ways they think are inappropriate. None of the stuff your shrink offers works, and those of us with extreme anxiety know it. Stossel, being a genuine wordsmith, just explains it more eloquently than most of us could.