First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety

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She includes a couple exercises to help bring yourself down when you're experiencing anxiety. But not too many, because: "I don't plan on filling this book with too many exercises that people like me skim over to get to the meaty theory. I'll just include the ones that suit people like you and me." pg 57, ebook Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world’s most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition, but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life. Anxiety is the thing that takes you down, this anxiety about not knowing what life is about takes you down. But it's also the thing that ultimately takes you to where the answer lies."

There were definitely little moments of inspiration for me in this book, but the majority of the book didn’t feel relatable. The format of the book was confusing and felt extremely scattered most of the time. That said, I think my adult journey, the one I’m sharing in this book you’re holding, began as I left my psychiatrist’s office on that late autumn morning. I remember the soft light. I remember doing a fist-pump as I walked to the tram stop. I was making up my own rules for managing what everyone insisted on calling an illness and I knew I was ready to live them out. I get asked how I did this. I can only say that I chose. I made the decision and then I committed, motivated predominantly by the fact that, frankly, nothing else had worked. I’ve spoken to a lot of functioning neurotics over the years and they tell me the same. You choose. You might not even know why, but you do. You commit. Then you do the work. Sarah Wilson—bestselling author and entrepreneur, intrepid solver of problems and investigator of how to live a better life—has helped over 1.2 million people across the world to quit sugar. She has also been an anxiety sufferer her whole life.The vigilance is exhausting," concedes Wilson. "Sometimes I think, 'Why does it have to be so relentless?' [Managing anxiety] is a 24/7 job.

This might not sound like the most grab a highlighter and mark out the wisdoms premise for a book. But let’s see how it goes.It took almost two years to write this book. During this time I flitted between nine countries and moved house seven times. Anxiety spirals delayed the process regularly. The things Wilson struggled with...it's like she wrote the book just for me. I read paragraph after paragraph and would often stop and think, "I always believed I was the only one who thought that!" To find out someone "out there" has the very same odd thoughts as me is enormously reassuring and gives me hope.

Anxiety is a disconnection with this Something Else. As I say, the doctors and scientists can call it all kinds of things, but I believe it all comes down to this disconnect." pg 44, ebook In First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, Wilson directs her intense focus and fierce investigating skills onto her lifetime companion, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism of her own experiences.Actually, I’ll go a bit further. I’ve come to believe that the fretting itself can be the very thing that plonks you on the path to a great life. The format of the book is nomadic in nature. It meanders through disciplines and between polemic, didactic and memoir. Because this best reflects how I’ve experienced my own journey through the issue.