Because Ideas Matter...
The faculty and staff of Butler University's College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences presents
Recommended Readings
Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
by Daniel Smith, Simon and Schuster, 2012
Reviewed by Eloise Sureau-Hale
I had never really considered anxiety as a
disorder before. A nuisance? Definitely! A slight annoyance when
dealing with a major event? Sure. I thought of anxiety as a feeling
that makes your legs wobble as you settle to address a large crowd.
Or perhaps that insecure moment in front of the judge before
uttering "I do". But I had not thought of it as a real diagnosable
disorder and certainly not something that could paralyze a person
into inanition.
All this changed when I started reading Monkey Mind: A Memoir of
Anxiety by Daniel Smith. Very candidly, Daniel Smith describes the
nuts and bolts of the disorder. He reveals personal memories of the
various moments in his young life when anxiety took over, and all
he could do was watch in sheer horror as his whole universe
collapsed.
Sharing examples of nail biting frenzies, of his sexual trauma,
of his dealing with an anxious mother, and of working as a
fact-checker at a local newspaper, Daniel Smith does not hide from
the truth. He tells it all with stories that go from burst-out
laughing funny to verge of tears gripping.
Anyone in search of an easy-fix for the disorder will not find
it here. This is not a medical book. This is the recounting of an
experience, of living with anxiety and dealing with it on an
everyday basis.
This book is an eye opener and a great insight on a disorder
that seems to be born out of our very fast and ever changing modern
world.
- Eloise Sureau-Hale is associate professor of French at Butler
University.