Anxiety is a frequent fellow traveler with depression and it complicates an already troubling disease. I’ve recently finished reading Sarah Wilson’s account of her struggle with deep and disabling anxiety. The title, first, we make the beast beautiful, seems puzzling, enigmatic even. What could be beautiful about the severe and crippling anxiety she suffered?
A onetime editor of the Australian edition of Cosmopolitan and author of a book on freeing herself from dependency on sugar, her book details her decades-long fight to come to grips with her anxiety. She lays out the slow process by which she came to understand it, its roots, and how she could cope with the debilitating effects it had on her life.
It’s a wise book, filled with practical suggestions about ways to cope with anxiety. Here, for example, are a few of her ideas:
- Limit checking emails to twice a day
- Decide not to react to any outside requests before 10:00 am
- Leave your phone at home
- Periodically, book yourself into a hotel and undertake self-care for a night
- Like Bill Gates, undertake a “think week” in which you get away from distractions to be with yourself
- Set “out of the office” notifications on your email to reduce interruptions
- Don’t serve as Google for colleagues by answering questions they can answer for themselves by a web search
- Write fewer emails
- Own fewer things
- If you live in an environment that’s too busy for sanity, consider moving somewhere else
Not all of these ideas will fit everyone’s situation, but thinking about them may spur additional thoughts about how the stress level in life can be lowered.
Now to the book’s title. It subtly tells her overarching theme, that anxiety may not be a condition one can ever hope to leave entirely behind, but it is one that a person can learn to live with. In the end, Wilson argues that experiencing deep anxiety, like depression, can be a transformative experience, that one can emerge from it stronger, more whole as a result.
It’s a hopeful message. It won’t work for everyone with traumatic mental illness, of course. But for those willing to undertake the journey, there is promise of a more complete life.
How do you cope with anxiety? If you have suggestions, techniques that work for you, consider sharing them with others in the comments.
Thanks, and good health to you.
Out of Darkness 