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When I was seventeen, I lost part of myself to a toilet cubicle. A part I don't know if I'll ever get back.
It was a sticky summer afternoon, somewhere in that liminal haze between lunch and the last bell. Double biology. Leaning across the science lab bench marked with the compass carvings of bored hands, I saw the blackboard starting to blur. It fizzed like TV static. I felt tired - way too tired for not having done any PE that day. The teacher was talking about mitochondria. 'They're the powerhouses of cells!' she may or may not have said.
Something weird was happening in my guts. Shit, I thought. I'm going to puke. I knew I shouldn't have had two sausage rolls. The prickling sensation you get behind your ears when you're about to vomit spread all over my head. I didn't recognize it at all. Quickly it became very frightening. Within seconds I was convinced I was about to detonate there on my wooden stool.
This was possession, pure and simple. I wanted to climb out of my skin like a pair of trousers. That's how I can best describe an experience to which words cannot give true descriptive power.
I had no idea that what I'd experienced was a panic attack. Things would change - Jesus Christ how they'd change - but I knew as much about what a 'panic attack' meant then as I did about the structural formula of a carbon atom. Whatever it was that had happened to me earlier that day tore a hot gash in my mind. There was no going back.
What if it happened out of nowhere again somewhere else? What if I couldn't be alone? What if I died next time?
What if.
List of contents
- Unit - PART ONE: SOMETHING'S WRONG
- Chapter - 1: A Tornado in a Toilet Cubicle
- Chapter - 2: 'Two Litres of Pus'
- Chapter - 3: Taking Root
- Chapter - 4: Cracking
- Chapter - 5: Paddling
- Chapter - 6: A Mind on Fire
- Chapter - 7: 'A Total F***er'
- Unit - PART TWO: WHAT IS ANXIETY
- Chapter - 8: A Price Tag on Freedom
- Chapter - 9: Appropriate Responses
- Chapter - 10: Computers in Skin Suits
- Chapter - 11: 'Flavour'
- Chapter - 12: More Than a (Gut) Feeling
- Chapter - 13: Diagnosis: Shame
- Chapter - 14: Giving the Beast a Name
- Unit - PART THREE: WHY DOES ANXIETY HAPPEN?
- Chapter - 15: Blame, Time and Place
- Chapter - 16: Betty
- Chapter - 17: Grey Matters
- Chapter - 18: Grey Matters
- Chapter - 19: Female Hormones: A Bloody Mess
- Chapter - 20: Calming the Tide
- Chapter - 21: Needles, Eggs and Freezers
- Chapter - 22: Blue Curtains
- Chapter - 23: Stigma, Language and How We Codify Things
- Chapter - 24: Words and Pictures: How the Media Feeds Our Heads
- Chapter - 25: Faces and Names
- Chapter - 26: Thinking About What Other People Think
- Unit - PART FOUR: WHAT CAN WE DO?
- Chapter - 27: Drugs, DSM, Dilemmas
- Chapter - 28: Asking For Help: What Do We Get?
- Chapter - 29: Helping Ourselves: Where Do We Start?
- Chapter - 30: Mindfulness: A Mindblowing Industry?
- Chapter - 31: Exercise, Trees and Hippocampi
- Chapter - 32: Pamela
- Chapter - 33: Helping Someone With Anxiety
- Chapter - 34: Future Treatment
- Acknowledgements - i: Acknowledgements
- Section - ii: Bibliography
- Index - iii: Index
About the author
Eleanor Morgan has written and interviewed extensively for the Guardian, the Observer, The Times, the Independent, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and the Believer. She worked as Senior Editor at VICE UK, where she helped to manage the output of an ever-expanding editorial team at one of the fastest-moving media organizations in the world, and has become one of the sharpest, best connected young voices in today's media landscape.
Summary
Anxiety for Beginners offers a vivid insight into the often crippling impact of anxiety disorders, a condition that is frequently invisible, shrouded in shame and misunderstood. It serves as a guide for those who live with anxiety disorders and those who live with them by proxy.
Combining her own experiences (rendered in emotive detail) with extensive research with experts (neuroscientists, psychiatrists, psychologists and fellow sufferers - including some familiar faces), Eleanor Morgan explores not just the roots of her own anxiety, but also investigates what might be contributing to so many of us suffering around the world.
Anxiety for Beginners is, at its heart, a book about acceptance, as Morgan discovers the ways in which people can live a life that is not just manageable but enjoyable, learning to accept anxiety as part of who we are rather than spending a life fighting and being ashamed of it.
Foreword
Anxiety for Beginners offers a vivid insight into the crippling impact of anxiety disorder, a condition that is often invisible and frequently misunderstood.
Additional text
This fusion of memoir and scientific investigation is very accessible. . . with a generous dollop of humanity
