My Age of Anxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread and the Search for Peace of Mind

After reading this excerpt in The Atlantic, I had to read the book itself. My Age ofAnxiety: Fear, Hope, Dread and the Search for Peace of Mind, by Scott Stossel, is an exhaustive look at the author’s experience with debilitating anxiety. He is trying to understand why he is so anxious and also how best to treat it. He has every reason to be anxious: his genes, his parents, and his own temperament. He describes some harrowing early experiences with separation anxiety and the less–than-sensitive ways his parents dealt with it. But in another chapter, he describes how his own kids, despite a much different family environment, exhibit some of the same phobias. So after a thorough examination of the research, he sees his anxious self as a product of both nature and nurture.

The book seems more positive about treatment than the magazine article. Stossel has been treated by a bunch of different therapists and psychiatrists over the years. Some of the therapeutic choices seem questionable. For example, Stossel’s father, when he needed a therapist, started seeing his son’s longtime psychiatrist. (It’s nearly always a bad idea for people that close to one another to be separate clients of the same psychotherapist.) The author is most positive about his current therapist, a psychologist who has tried to help him understand the sources and meaning of his anxiety, to provide him with concrete skills to reduce and cope with his anxiety, and who is supportive of medication.  This doctor also makes a point of helping the author to look at his strengths and what he has overcome, rather than simply focusing on his deficits.

This book is filled with information about anxiety and its sufferers—I did not know that Charles Darwin suffered from so much anxiety or that Matt Lauer was phobic about vomiting. There is also much about the history of anxiety and how our definitions and diagnoses have shifted based on research and medication; some disorders, such as social phobia, were popularized after medications were developed. But the most interesting parts are the author’s descriptions of his own struggles. It was terrifying for him to feel so much fear at such a young age. It’s impressive that he has been able to accomplish so much despite it.