First, We Make the Beast Beautiful A New Story about Anxiety

A decent read at first, but after a while, it just felt too long. Too much randomness and jumping through autobiographical parts for my liking. Good message, but I had to skip a few pages to get through.

This took me a long time to read but I picked up some great tips. Sometimes it's good to hear from a fellow anxiety sufferer. Nothing ground breaking but helpful to me.

It took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to finish this book once I picked it up (February). It didn't help that I kind of forgot about it for a few months. I started it for real at the beginning of August and finished it in about 2 weeks. Once I truly got into it, it stuck with me! It was really refreshing to read a book about anxiety and mental health struggles by a person with anxiety and who experiences mental health struggles. She had a lot of good ideas and things that stuck with me, and I liked the overall message of her book. I think this is definitely one that I'll be picking up again and flipping through as I want to reflect!

I really appreciated such a close up look at an individual's experience of life grappling with anxiety and other related issues. I found a lot in her experiences for me to relate to, and a few insights that I thought could be useful, and that I've tried myself and confirmed to be useful. I wasn't sure how to rate this, even though I liked it. I found it was a good mix of personal story, outside perspectives, and review on modern thinking regarding anxiety - but I can see how others could find this confusing and less useful than if the sections were more clearly delineated. I would certainly recommend it if you feel in any way that you have a level of anxiety (especially if it is problematic in areas of your life), or if you know someone who identifies as highly anxious (diagnosed or otherwise). It was also a really interesting insight into Sarah Wilson's life - if you don't know who she is, it doesn't really matter... I barely did, and still found it very interesting.

I rarely leave reviews of anything. Especially books. It’s too easy to not be obtuse about personal preference vs the actual content. That being said. I wanted to leave one here because I read most of the one and two star reviews on this book, and saw that many said this book made them more anxious. I want to say that I understand that. And. Warn anyone about to read this book of a few things. It contains triggers and is scattered (which is frequently exactly how I and many other anxious people think). I found that when reading this in a quiet place I was able to concentrate on it, read slowly, and find large amounts of insight and comfort. When I read it in my living room with my kids running around and me rushing to get to the next page, I couldn’t get anything from it. Don’t go into it expecting it to be a scientific review of facts, or a coping plan. It’s neither but a mix of both along with many anecdotes. To me it was more about how to cope with what anxiety does to your life and how to explain it to others. I had my boyfriend read this after I finished it and he said that he recognized so many things about me that he has never been able to piece together on his own even though we have been together almost ten years and he felt that he had it figured out. Takeaway - it’s not for everyone. But you’re more likely to appreciate it in a calm space where you can focus on what it is trying to tell you.