Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Dr Eric Goodman, Exisle Publishing, $32.99.
This is a timely book as we all go through the range of feelings and emotions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Your Anxiety Beast and You is a gentler, more considerate approach for people suffering from apprehension.
As the title suggests, it’s about showing compassion.
Clinical psychologist Dr Goodman says we live in challenging times as we ride out the pandemic. Worthy of note is the fact that it’s not just the virus itself that is taxing us.
Anxiety is usually regarded as an emotion that’s the evil villain. Not here. While anxiety can feel like a beast, it is actually your body’s built-in survival system. The book suggests a more empathetic approach for people suffering from unease.
“Even though most of the time anxiety is overzealous and it gets it wrong, we need to have it because the world still is dangerous at times,” says Dr. Goodman. “If we lost the ability to experience anxiety, we would be dead or disabled. We have to have anxiety, and we have to have it for a lifetime. So we want it to be as discerning as it can be. We want it to know that if we need to public speak or fly on an airplane, we want it to learn that these things are not threats. And if we treat them like they are threats, then anxiety is going to do it’s job and try to protect us from it by triggering that fight or flight response.”
We get an understanding of why society stigmatises anxiety and gain a better understanding of your own anxiety beast with humour and compassion. We learn the step-by-step strategies of coping and the physical effects of anxiety on the body.
Despite our anxiety being an overzealous bodyguard, it is helping us through COVID-19 by motivating us to socially distance, washing our hands and trying to avoid contamination. Without anxiety, we’d take more dangerous risks.
Some tips to manage anxiety include limiting news intake; soothe your anxiety daily and spread relaxation activities like yoga and meditation during the day; practise healthy nutrition; and safely reach out to other people.
