First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety Hardcover – April 24, 2018

Cri de Coeur is French for cry from the heart. This is how people feel when dealing with anxiety. Sarah Wilson discovered that she had a chemical imbalance while embarking on her quest to understand the genesis of her anxiety. Thus, she authored First, We Make The Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety.And what a quest it’s been! She was diagnosed with childhood anxiety and insomnia at twelve, bulimia in her late teens, OCD afterward, then depression, hypomania, and in her twenties bipolar disorder. She saw three dozen psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and spiritual healers. From the time she was seventeen until twenty-eight, she was medicated with anti-epileptic, anti-anxiety, and anti-psychotic drugs.In her late twenties, she quit all therapy and her prescriptions ran out. She made a choice to live by her own rules and manage her illnesses. This decision came about predominantly because nothing else had worked. Her formula is commitment, do the work, falter, screw up, and start again. She’s returned to therapy, gone back to medication, and then off everything multiple times. I love how open she is about her OCD, Bipolar, and even her suicide attempts. Along the way, she was diagnosed with Hashimoto, an autoimmune disease that affects the thyroid gland. Her goal was to find better ways to live with what she refers to as her ‘mate,’ Anxiety. Instead of living with post-traumatic stress she embraces post-traumatic growth. She encourages the reader to have this perspective if they’re suffering.Pages dedicated to data for various diagnoses and suggested causes, treatments, and management strategies are revealed as you read. She’s forthcoming about other authors and blogs who focus on Anxiety. Naturally, she provides as much information as possible to destigmatize Anxiety. Wilson’s behavior is compulsive but the outcome is positive. Her doctor calls it, ‘Positive neurotic behavior.’My favorite story she tells is when she met His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. She was allotted one question. She asked, “How do I get my mind to shut up?” His response was, “There’s no use. Silly! Impossible to achieve! If you can do it, great. If not, big waste of time.” Days later Sarah realized that even though she had whirring thoughts that trash-talk her soul, his message to her translated in cap-lettered subtext: “YOU’RE OKAY AS YOU ARE!!!”The fretty chatter that unsettled her was suddenly something that didn’t need to be fixed. Instead, she tucks her coping habits gently under her arm and sees where they take her. Taking a deep free breath, she gets on with better things. “I’d like to say this upfront. I write these very words because I’ve come to believe that you can be fretty and chattery in the head and wake at 4am and try really hard at everything. And you can get on with having a great life. I’ve come to believe that the fretting itself can be the very thing that plonks you on the path to a great life.”Her boldness declares the problem could be the notion that there is a problem. Come to find out that her anxious behaviors are so often solutions to her problems. Identifying anxiety is an external start. Continuing with wisdom and voracious learning gave her a deeper understanding of being gentle and kind in the process.Hitting rock bottom is always factored into a successful recovery story. Hers was when a doctor told her she was one week from having heart failure. “I knew I had been granted an opportunity here and that I had to rise to it, soft and full.” She’s been on a synthetic thyroid hormone ever since to manage her Hashimotos. It's not about changing herself, it is about creating ease around who she is.Realizing there’s no guidebook to life, no definitive emotional cures, her approach is unrelenting ferocity with the intention that she deserves a good life. Former Australian of the Year Professor, Patrick McGorry states, “This book is a compendium of hard-won wisdom flowing from a uniquely talented individual… a tour de force.” I couldn’t agree more!Here are some fun facts about New York Times bestselling author Sarah Wilson:• The founder of IQuitSugar.com.• Wild with Sarah Wilson Podcast Series• Was ranked as one of the top 200 most influential, health expert authors in the world in 2017 and 2018.• The editor of Australian Cosmopolitan magazine at twenty-nine, from February 2003 to December 2007.• Is in the Guinness Book of Records staging the World's Biggest Bikini Shoot at Bondi Beach. 1010 Women.Her relentless advocacy for herself will inspire anyone in a similar predicament. Perhaps you too can make the beast beautiful.

I've struggled with anxiety and depression for more than 55 years. Seen my share of shrinks and took my share of meds. I've read lots of books but none of them helped, especially books written by well-meaning people but people who either haven't had the experiences they write about, or don't want to air their laundry out.The title of Wilson's book caught my eye while strolling through our local library, so I checked it out. I didn't get very far into it and realized I stumbled onto something very different (i.e., very good). So good, in fact, that I bought a copy and am re-reading it (this time with a highlighter).The things Wilson struggled with...it's like she wrote the book just for me. I read paragraph after paragraph and would often stop and think, "I always believed I was the only one who thought that!" To find out someone "out there" has the very same odd thoughts as me is enormously reassuring and gives me hope.There are statements near the end of the book that are enlightening (no spoilers!) but only having first read everything before it. Had I skipped ahead, those statements near the end would not have the impact that they do. Four words near the end that have helped me more than anything else I've ever tried. Just four words. So if you buy this book, I encourage you to not skip ahead or around. Let it unfold page-by-page.One more thing. If you're looking for a book written by someone who has it all together, or is an "expert" counselor, this ain't for you. This is a book written by someone whose life at times has been a heartbreaking mess, for people like me whose life has always been a colossal heartbreaking mess. Finally someone gets me.

Wilson’s memoir is engaging, earnest and somewhat frenetic. It is filled with insight, research, grace, near-constant searching and moments of hard-won wisdom. Wilson mentions anxiety, depression, mania and obsessive compulsive disorder. She states that bipolar disorder was diagnosed, but she feels that anxiety is at the root of the debilitating spirals of panic, insomnia and propulsive activity. The label is perhaps not as important as Wilson’s willingness to explore her own dark places in order to find wholeness, solid ground and peace. The journey is circuitous and tangled. Wilson ratchets up and careens down, when seemingly innocuous triggers prompt her anxiety. Her life is depicted as an endless series of painful attempts to corral her fears into a manageable framework that will allow her to live happily. Wilson is buffeted by moods, indecision, frequent travel and a jittery, palpable unease. The book will resonate best with anyone who wrestles with the devastating impact of mental illness. I truly empathize with Wilson’s struggles. She finds meditation, exercise and learning to sit with her discomfort to be invaluable tools for healing, instead of the impulsivity, perpetual change and a pervasive desire to flee whenever anxiety becomes intolerable. Wilson also realizes that age and time give her greater perspective on how to ride out her relentless worry episodes. She finds more balance and self-acceptance, and is able to dwell with her anxiety when it arises, rather than just trying to eradicate it. My issue with the book is in Wilson’s admissions of sometimes deliberately courting her anxiety. She admits to liking the “drama” of it all. It has perhaps become a source of energy and identity that is both as familiar, as it is disabling. At one point, Wilson mentions being awake for several days at a time at the height of her anxiety. Certainly, protracted periods without sleep can bring on mental fragility. If one stays awake as long as Wilson contends, then deterioration of acuity and function would subsequently occur as a result. With significant sleep loss, mental and physical impairment would be expected. Because Wilson’s anxiety is so prevalent, it would seem that a strong desire for rest and calm would squelch any behaviors that exacerbate it. Wilson clearly wants to understand her complicated relationship with anxiety, and she succeeds, but perhaps sometimes it serves her too, for the surge of emotional intensity that it provides. It’s that duality that can make the book frustrating, but still an interesting read.