A Brief History of Anxiety...Yours and Mine

As someone who is intimately familiar with anxiety, I found this book to be a helpful balm for understanding the condition. It's helpful to see the malady expressed from someone who suffers from it, particularly in its gory detail - not the same as reading a therapist's description of a patient's symptoms. Although the theories on why so many suffer from anxiety and exactly what to do about it is somewhat murky, I think Pearson covers enough ground to give the anxious person a foothold and a starting point toward living with and coping with the condition, and she does so by giving an overview of anxiety from a historical perspective, interjecting insights from literature as well as psychologists and other practitioners, describing the symptoms and offering various actual examples of anxiety driven behavior. This book offers hope, but not the type offered by a cure-all medication, but rather the type that comes from understanding via reflection and introspection.

The author eloquently describes what it is like to live with anxiety. I am so happy she shared her experiences. It's so nice to see someone put into words others can understand the anxiety which rules our lives. Bingo!

I flopped onto the couch with this book and didn't emerge until I'd finished it. As always with Pearson's engaging prose style, it was a pleasure to read. But more, I emerged with new views of anxiety - both tools to deal with my own anxiety and to better understand its source. The blend of anecdote with social research makes for a fascinating read.

Pearson is an author who writes how she thinks. That is, her sentence structure and narrative techniques can get a little confusing because she's literally writing in the way that her anxiety-filled mind operates. Her writing style has almost more to say about her anxiety than her words. Because of that you'll either appreciate or resent the book. Ultimately I think what she has to say about WHY Americans are so anxious is very insightful. And her sense of humor is present throughout. The middle gets a little muddled (that's where the book actually does become a history of anxiety as opposed to quirky stories and self-reflections), but it picks back up. I enjoyed it thoroughly and recommend it to anyone who gets lost in their anxiety from time to time.

I don't actually know Patricia Pearson but have interviewed her twice. I totally loved When She Was Bad and was thus excited to read A Brief History of Anxiety. Overall, I enjoyed the book. Pearson is a creative, lively, and skilled writer who possesses keen wit and intelligence. For such a short book there certainly is a great deal of information available here on the topic of anxiety. It is not the first book I've read on the subject but it offered several insights of which I was not previously aware--such as the differences between American and Chinese socialization which result in lower levels of anxiety in eastern mothers and their offspring. The only reason I could not give the book 5 stars is that I felt that too much of it concerned the author. I did ask her about this and she stated essentially that this is to be expected as it is a memoir. Well, that's true if it's a memoir but I did not know this before cracking the spine. Its title, A Brief History of Anxiety [Yours and Mine], caused me to regard it as being more of a dispassionate study of the psychological condition. Perhaps that was a misassumption on my part alone as its autobiographical nature will be intuited by other readers. If it isn't at least I have illuminated its personal focus here. Regardless, spending time with Pearson's pen is always a good use of time.