Anxiety: Meditations on the anxious mind

by The School of Life, Alain de Botton (Editor)

Overview

A guide to our anxious minds, offering a pathway to calm, self-compassion, and mental well-being.

We all experience anxiety, but too often we bottle up our anxiousness, ashamed of what others might say, and end up feeling isolated and afraid. But anxiety is normal and deeply human. This book explains why we feel it, how we experience it, and what we can do about it.

With their trademark combination of practicality, philosophy, and wit, The School of Life examines anxiety from a number of angles, providing a clear path forward to a calmer, kinder, compassionate, and more light-hearted future.

• THE SCHOOL OF LIFE'S GUIDE TO NAVIGATING ANXIETY
• TRAUMA, RELATIONSHIPS, OVERTHINKING, SELF-LOATHING: this book explore 19 varieties of anxiety, and the tone is like a pep talk from a trusted friend.
• INCLUDES PRACTICAL SELF-REFLECTION EXERCISES: designed to help calm and unburden the mind.
• ILLUSTRATED WITH FULL COLOR IMAGES THROUGHOUT

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781912891214
Publisher:	The School of Life
Publication date:	11/03/2020
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	283,088
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 7.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

The School of Life is a global organization helping people lead more fulfilled lives. Through our range of books, gifts and stationery we aim to prompt more thoughtful natures and help everyone to find fulfillment.

The School of Life is a resource for exploring self-knowledge, relationships, work, socializing, finding calm, and enjoying culture through content, community, and conversation. You can find us online, in stores and in welcoming spaces around the world offering classes, events, and one-to-one therapy sessions.

The School of Life is a rapidly growing global brand, with over 7 million YouTube subscribers, 389,000 Facebook followers, 174,000 Instagram followers and 166,000 Twitter followers.

The School of Life Press brings together the thinking and ideas of the School of Life creative team under the direction of series editor, Alain de Botton. Their books share a coherent, curated message that speaks with one voice: calm, reassuring, and sane.

Read an Excerpt

Friendship & anxiety

We all require truly good friends; but those among us who suffer from high anxiety need them especially badly, for one of the principal solutions to anxiety is – as we shall see – the company of the right kind of others.

However, we tend too quickly to think we know what we mean by a ‘good friend’. It is easy to confuse the genuine with the ersatz article. Both may show up for dinner, both may seem outwardly kind, both will claim to be loyal – but only one will live up to the true calling of the word ‘friend’ and so stand any chance of sincerely assisting the soul of the anxious.

Here is some of what makes a genuinely good friend:

1. They have suffered

It sounds odd to demand it but it is a fundamental prerequisite that they need to have suffered. Quite a lot. However convenient it would be if people could be born friendly and empathize spontaneously with the pains of others, the awkward truth is that the human mind is too sluggish and selfish an instrument properly to imagine what suffering might look like for someone else until it has been energetically goaded on by its own agonies. Empathy can solely be forged by personal suffering. To be a good friend, one has no option other than to have had close-up, personal experience of terrible times. One needs to have known at least a few of the following: illness (bodily and mental), humiliation, reversal, bullying, financial disaster, public shaming, childhood neglect, isolation, defeat and panic. One needs to have wept all night, raged at oneself and thought one’s very existence an error. Happy people unmarked by life can be many things: a good friend is not one of them.

2. It was their fault

However, suffering on its own is not enough, for it may – at its worst – simply lead to indignant self-righteousness, whereby the sufferer is convinced that it was everyone else’s fault, that they are pure and the world is bad; in other words, to being a prig. The truly kind friend, however, is someone who has been inducted to a more somber, important and painful truth still: the knowledge that a lot of what went wrong was their fault. Part of their calamities came down to their idiocy, their narrow-mindedness, their foolishness. They aren’t focused on hating anyone else, they’ve given up pride and blame. They’ve been a blunderhead and they know it. This is what makes the good friend so sympathetic to your errors and slips. They know from the inside how one can be a decent person and yet still unleash disaster. They don’t believe in their own innocence and nor do they in any way demand yours: they just know from experience how much every one of us stands in need of forgiveness and they’re ready to give it to you in spades.

3. They know the world isn’t fair

One of the fastest ways to turn into a monster is to believe that the world might be fair. If it’s fair, there’s no need to think kindly or imaginatively about the tramp, the prisoner and the outcast. They entirely deserve their fate and damnation. Nor is there any need to be skeptical about what the papers say and who is being lauded as ‘righteous’ or ‘noble'; the established value system is obviously correct – and need only be followed in its entirety. The mob have it right. But the moment one realizes that the world is, in fact, hideously random and unfair, that judgements can be corrupt, that rewards don’t neatly track goodness, then everything at once gets a lot more complicated – and a lot kinder too. Suddenly, the beggar and the outcast might deserve your sympathy and the self-righteous crowd might deserve your skepticism. Good people can end up in trouble. Sinners can be worthy of another chance. The true friend is ready to give unconditional love, because they know the absurdity and cruelty of many of the conditions currently placed on love.

4. They’re beyond ambition

Ambitious people are evidently a huge asset to humanity; they get things done, their self-importance powers history and the progress of society depends on their acute self-regard. When they meet with you for dinner, they’re always subtly keen to let you know how things are advancing for them – and they keep the score, as though the whole of life were a gigantic school exam and there was a big tick waiting for the winners on the other side of death. What these people can’t be, however, is a good friend, for what that means is surrendering on shining in the eyes of an imagined fancy audience. Good friends don’t give a damn about ‘what people think’ anymore (even if they might have done when younger). They’re out of the ‘game’ (probably pushed out of it by their own mistakes), and they don’t go after claps or gongs. What they’re interested in, in the time that remains, is sincere communion. They want to hang around with other broken honest people and, without airs and graces, exchange kindness and support. They care about you because – remarkably, in one of the greatest achievements any human is capable of – they’ve outgrown any shred of preening fascination with themselves.

To summarize, the good friend has been humbled, they’ve given up pride, they’ve messed up – and they’ve drawn all the right conclusions from their troubles: that the only thing that counts is kindness. That’s why they’re going to be so patient with you, that’s why they’ll understand all the things you worry about and that you regret, that’s why they’ll be on hand with compassion, gentleness and plenty of rich dark laughter. If one meets with just one or two such people in a lifetime, one will have been properly blessed and will be a whole lot calmer too.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

1. How could we be anything but …?

2. Anxiety & evolution

3. Anxiety & modern times

4. Basic trust

II. Varieties of anxiety

Trauma & anxiety

Self-Hatred & anxiety

Triggering & anxiety

Diversionary anxiety

Friendship & anxiety

Communion & anxiety

Publicity & anxiety

Parties & anxiety

Panic attacks & anxiety

Plan Bs & anxiety

Love & anxiety

Sex & anxiety

Simplicity & anxiety

Overthinking & anxiety

Stoicism & anxiety

Arrival & anxiety

Happiness & anxiety

III. An ideal life for the anxious

Editorial Reviews

***What readers are saying***

"Anyone with anxiety can use this thought-provoking compilation of ideas to help cope with life's difficulties."

"A very entertaining read and also useful information. Some good exercises to focus the mind."

"Quick, practical, and endlessly re-readable. Wisdom for working with the never-ending anxiety we all know and love. Do yourself a favor and read it."

"What a lovely book! It talks about life difficulties with remarkable calmness and kindness. Very soothing read for me. I'll be probably coming back to it if I feel anxious again."

From the Publisher