Anxiety: Meditations on the Anxious Mind

More than most of us realize, we are deeply anxious; there is so much that worries us across our days and nights, like whether our hopes will come true, whether others will like us, whether the people we care about will be OK, whether we can escape humiliation and grief. Too often, we bottle up our anxieties or try to avoid looking at them directly. But anxiety is deeply normal and, like so much else that troubles our minds, it can be understood and brought under our control. This is a guide to anxiety: why we feel it, how we experience it when it strikes, and what we can do when we come under its influence. Across a series of essays that look at the subject from a number of angles, the tone is helpful, compassionate, and in the best sense practical. We have suffered for too long under the rule of anxiety. Here—at last—is a pathway to a calmer, more compassionate, and more light-hearted future.