Review by New York Times Review
How did i know my anxiety had gotten the better of me? When I found myself taking meticulous notes on a forthcoming book by Erica Feldmann called hausmagick: Transform Your Home With Witchcraft (HarperOne, $25.99, available in March). The year 2018 hadn't been so great, what with the death of a husband and, possibly, a republic. Maybe 2019 would be better if 1 bought certain purifying elements for my home. The right crystals, sage sticks and - salt? Apparently, you can sprinkle salt around the house after a person with "toxic energy" visits. Attention future dates: If you see me reaching for the shaker as you're leaving, you know things haven't gone well. If my nerves are frayed, 1 take cold comfort in knowing I'm not alone. Whether it's our political situation, the jangling distractions of everyday life or the not-irrational sense that mankind's need to find another planet isn't just a sci-fi plotline, we seem to be in the midst of one massive freakout. Kierkegaard argued that anxiety stemmed from the "dizziness of freedom," the paralysis that comes from infinite choice and possibility. That was in 1844. Imagine what he would have thought about today. But here's some good news: If we're all a little tense, well, there's a book for that. Many books, actually. Several of the ones 1 consulted were so wrongheaded or incomprehensible they made me more nervous. ("Motivation is a Unicom Fart" almost made me hurl in a glittery rainbow arc.) Here are three that worked. Recently a friend told me that he had reached what he calls his vidpoint: the moment you realize you have more movie hours stored on your DVR than you have hours left to live. 1 thought about that friend while reading Matt Haig's notes on a nervous planet (Penguin, paper, $16), a follow-up to his previous book "Reasons to Stay Alive," which chronicled his struggles with anxiety and depression. The core of first-world malaise, he argues, can be summed up by something T S. Eliot observed in "Four Quartets": We are "distracted from distraction by distraction." Here, in clever chapterettes and listicles (he seems to assume we're all too jumpy to read more than a few pages at a time), Haig muses about our anxieties: our fears of aging, of not being rich, of not being beautiful or successful enough. All while being massive consumers of everything. What really sells, he says, is not so much sex as fear. Every day, every minute, we're deluged with images of people who are prettier, richer and having more fun than we are. And then there's the bombardment of news, which is presented in a way to provide "more food for our nightmares." Which is why we must take time to simply turn it all off and go outside. (I'm going to do this just as soon as the Mueller report is delivered.) This isn't exactly a novel concept, and Haig mentions but doesn't explore the science of, say, why staring at the sky or simply being out in nature helps our mental health. But he does have some memorable ways of telling us about it. ("Hello. 1 am the beach_1 have been around for millions of years. 1 was around at the dawn of life itself. And 1 have to tell you something... .1 am entirely indifferent to your body mass index.... 1 am oblivious.") And he has one terrific piece of advice that I'm thinking of sewing on a pillow sampler and giving to my teenage sons: "Never be cool. Never try to be cool. Never worry what the cool people think. Head for the warm people. Life is warmth. You'll be cool when you're dead." I can't help noting, however, that the last time 1 checked Haig's Twitter feed he had posted seven times in two hours. Maybe he's still trying. "Anxiety" is a mild term for what can be a severe mental illness. In fact, anxiety disorders of various degrees are among the most common mental illnesses in America, affecting more than one in five adults. In how not to fall APART: Lessons Learned on the Road From Self-Harm to Self-Care (TarcherPerigee, paper, $16), Maggy Van Eijk starts with a hopeful message: You can have any number of mental health issues and still learn to cope. Van Eijk, who's now the BBC's social media editor, has a history of severe anxiety as well as borderline personality disorder; her arms are scarred from years of cutting. She's also really funny. Here's a partial list of what one of her bad anxiety days can look like: "Waking up in the middle of the night to remember that thing 1 said five years ago was a bit rude. Time to linger on that memory until sunrise! ... Having a bath to try to relax but then remembering the bath is basically an open coffin filled with my own liquid filth.... Seeing a pile of clothes in the dark and thinking it looks like a massive panther, then thinking ... 'What if it is a panther?' " Van Eijk's book is organized around life challenges, and what to remember if they happen to You, Person With Mental Illness. Her explanation of self-harm is particularly touching and helped me to understand why a person might do it. Among the reasons she hasn't done it, she writes, is that "I've been listening to My Chemical Romance all day." Rather, it's about the anger that "refuses to leave my body" if she's upset or about the feeling that "my voice isn't being heard and it has nowhere to go." This is a woman who, after a breakup, had to go to a burn unit after repeatedly putting out a cigarette on her arm, so one tends to listen to her about the distraction/substitution methods she uses to stop hurting herself. And her reasons for doing things as mundane as making lists turn out not to be mundane at all. "Lists," she reminds us, "are a direct link to the future." And if you're someone who has thoughts about having no future, she says, they can at least temporarily steer you away from a terrible decision. If I had a self-destructive young adult in my life, someone in real pain, this is probably the book I'd get her. Like many who have experienced recent loss, 1 tend to bolt upright at 3 in the morning, heart pounding, with one overarching thought: "What now?" Which is why 1 found Claire Bidwell Smith's ANXIETY: The Missing Stage of Grief (Lifelong/Da Capo, $26) both soothing and informative. Smith was 14 and an only child when both of her parents got cancer. If that's not enough of a breeding ground for a lifetime of anxiety attacks, 1 don't know what is. The experience of both parents dying when she was young propelled Smith into hospice work and grief therapy. "No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear," C. S. Lewis wrote in "A Grief Observed," and Smith understands this observation on the deepest personal level. She goes over techniques for dealing with anxiety, whatever its source. Maybe it's about the guilt you feel when recalling the decisions you've made for a dying loved one; maybe it's about your loneliness; or maybe, as is often the case in full-blown panic attacks, it's because you're convinced that you're next. Smith's words are particularly useful for panic attack sufferers. Once you know that you're not, indeed, dying, she shows you how you can normalize your panic, and how you can look at these episodes with curiosity, not terror, ft's also useful to be reminded that American society isn't one that honors grief. In many other cultures, she explains, quoting a colleague, you have "six or 12 months of a grieving period where the world doesn't expect much of you." Someone give me that one-year-free pass, please. Certainly reading a book or three may not be the answer, and none of these books emphasize, or even discuss, medication as a possible aid. My own thoughts about dealing with severe anxiety? Start with your doctor. And then, for life's more modest challenges, there's always my new goto: A DRINKABLE FEAST: A Cocktail Companion to 1920s Paris (TarcherPerigee, $18), by Philip Greene. 1 have yet to try a Monkey Gland or a Scoff-Law cocktail, but am infinitely calmer after three glasses of vin blanc cassis - and pleased to know it was a Henry Miller favorite. Four ounces of chilled dry white wine, one ounce of chilled creme de cassis, red fruit for garnish. Now breathe. You're welcome. Judith newman is the author, most recently, of "To Siri With Love: A Mother, Her Autistic Son and the Kindness of Machines."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 31, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
He was having a panic attack in the middle of a mall. At 24 years old, Haig had first had an attack the previous month, filled with pain and terror. And now he was crying in the middle of a shopping center, with his girlfriend, Andrea, trying to talk him through it. Years later, Andrea, now Haig's wife, would try to help him again, this time preventing him from getting caught up in a fight on the internet. And soon he would have another bout with anxiety. But as he disconnected from technology to try to recover, Haig began thinking about writing a book to address how to handle the constant demands of modern life. Notes on a Nervous Planet contains lists, imagined conversations, essays, and personal stories that critique the damage that worry about the environment, politics, the news, and everything else that demands our attention on a daily basis wreaks on our ability to live a full life. Haig artfully, powerfully counters these challenges with battle-tested advice from his own hard-won experience.--Bridget Thoreson Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelist and memoirist Haig (Reasons to Stay Alive) relates his experiences suffering from panic attacks and anxiety in this astute mix of selfhelp and memoir. Haig divides the book into small chapters (many less than a page) that delve into a single idea, like paying attention to the basics of good nutrition and sleep, or trying to understand the mind/body connection. Throughout, he asks the reader to consider the bigger picture: "Of course, in the cosmic perspective, the whole of human history has been fast." Wry and selfdeprecating, Haig charms with his lighthearted tone: "We are mysterious. We don't know why we are here. We have to craft our own meaning. The mystery is tantalizing." While the work reads more like a collection of blog posts than a fully fleshedout book, readers will appreciate Haig's approach to living in a playful yet thoughtful way. Switching seamlessly between light and serious, colloquial and formal, Haig's prose reflects his topic, whether it is 24hour news and social media, or weightier topics such as inequality, addiction, and faith, with chapter titles such as "Places I have had panic attacks" and "How to own a smartphone and still be a functioning human being." By challenging readers to rethink their role in the modern world, Haig's book will embolden them to keep learning and pursuing their passions in order to ease anxiety. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
An anxiety-afflicted writer offers thoughtful tools for coping with our anxiety-provoking culture.In this illuminating follow-up to his memoir, Reasons to Stay Alive, novelist and children's author Haig (How to Stop Time, 2018, etc.) continues to explore how the rapid pace of our modern world can adversely affect our psyche. Early on, he asks, "how can we live in a mad world without ourselves going mad?" In bite-sized chapters, the author considers the various issues that plague us, including our increasing addiction to smartphones and social media, the emotional impact of absorbing 24-hour cycles of often grueling international news events, and our collective lack of sleep. Haig recalls his past anxiety attacks and prolonged bouts of serious depression, emotional episodes he addressed in his previous memoir, but here he reflects on the details as a launching pad for confronting these challenges. "In writing this book I have tried to look at the human psychological cost of the world by looking at the only psychology I truly knowmy own," he writes. "I have written about how we as individuals can try to stay sane within a maddening world. The fact that I have had mental illness, though a nightmare in reality, has educated me on the various triggers and torments of the modern world." Haig's solutions align with the current trend of mindfulness exercisesconscious breathing techniques, meditation, walks in nature, etc.but he also expounds on the deeper benefits derived from reading good books and other activities. His prescription is to embrace the best of what modern culture has to offer and attempt to find balance rather than allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by the increasing demands of so much social and technological stimuli. As he notes, "a completely connected world has the potential to go mad, all at once."A somewhat repetitive but often wise and inspiring self-help title strengthened by the author's very personal experiences and acquired insight. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
