A Brief History of Anxiety (Yours and Mine).

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

Patricia Pearson writes critically acclaimed fiction and non-fiction from her home in Toronto. She has won two National Magazine Awards, a National Author’s Award, and the Arthur Ellis Award, and she was a finalist for a Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour.

Prior to writing books, Pearson worked as a crime journalist. She was surrounded by violence and death for years, an environment that encouraged her to live in a constant state of worry. Eventually, she suffered her second nervous breakdown — the first was precipitated by a breakup in her 20s — and went to convalesce at her sister’s house. She was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and treated medically for it, but found that the drugs dulled her sense of self until she was operating in a near zombie-like state, and her body’s responses to coming off of the drugs were nightmarish in their severity.

In A Brief History of Anxiety, Pearson examines her long history with anxiety in a global and historical context. She observes that North Americans experience more anxiety than any other people in the world because we believe that we need to be in control, yet exist in an uncontrollable world. Contrasted with Nigerians or Mexicans, who accept the hand of fate more easily, North Americans worry more about negative things that may possibly happen. And to keep the uneasiness at bay, North Americans swallow pills.

A Brief History of Anxiety is not a self-help book. Pearson does not offer any step-by-step plans to help other North Americans live a little more lightly, and she admits quite frankly that she continues to live with her fears. Her strength comes from her acceptance of the anxiety and her belief that faith and ritual do more to calm the stormy spirit than any scientific or pharmaceutical approach to the problem. This is an intelligent book written with humour and insight, of great appeal to anxious readers everywhere.