One thing I have been using my free trial of Spotify for is listening to audiobooks. The most recent book on anxiety I’ve listened to is Rewire Your Anxious Brain: How to Use the Neuroscience of Fear to End Anxiety, Panic, and Worry by psychologist Catherine Pittman and author Elizabeth Karle.
On Amazon the book is marked “therapist recommended.” Though for me the Spotify algorithm suggested it, I can totally believe therapists would want people with anxiety disorders to have this information.
As always, my reviews are offered with the understanding you’ll make your own damn choices. I blog about my experiences, and hope that’s helpful when it’s time to decide what things are worth your money and energy.
The Neuroscience of Anxiety
This book was even better than Unwinding Anxiety at explaining to me how my brain works. Particularly the two paths that lead to my experience of generalized anxiety disorder: cortex-based and amygdala-based anxiety.
Anxiety that originates in my cortex is borne of obsessive thinking, whereas my amygdala doesn’t bother with that weak-ass thinking stuff and just launches into anxious default override mode at what feels like the slightest provocation. Or even no provocation at all.
Where other aurhors I’ve read haven’t bothered with detailing this distinction, I found it immensely helpful and satisfying to have a “why” to offer myself when some techniques worked better than others at alleviating worry, panic, and anxiety.
Sometimes my anxieties knock politely, and sometimes they bust through a wall like the Kool-Aid Man.
Self-Assesments
At a couple of different points, I thought to myself, “Holy shit, you have been through it, girl.” During one of the self-assessment portions, I realized that I was having panic attacks—not just garden variety anxiety, but rapid heartbeat, dizziness, paralysis, etc—daily for most of 2024. And sometimes these attacks lasted for hours.
That’s why there were no reported changes to my brain tumor on MRIs. Anxiety was a condition I’d been unwittingly nurturing since childhood, and the brain cancer was just more fodder.
I woke up every morning for months in sheer terror. And my oncologist—bless his quite thorough, helpful, and knowledgeable heart—gave me fuel to reinforce the panic with each new biopsy until I became a shell of a human with a soft, fearful middle.
Anxiety Exercises
Knowing why the exercises would help and how I could expect to feel as a result made trying them easier.
For example, I realized that immersion therapy appealed to me for handling my fear of falling. However, by bailing on my standing at the first sign of vertigo, the amygdala wasn’t understanding I was safe.
Instead it was reinforcing what it remembered about protecting my body: don’t move and nobody gets hurt.
The realization that I need to ride out the panic coupled with the requisite mindfulness (internalizing different sensations) gives me hope that I can continue figuring this stuff out through independent study.
Anxiety Medication
The basic information I got about different anxiety meds and how they work has helped me in two ways: I know why I don’t like Xanax, and I’m not fearful of trying something else in the future.
GAD had programmed my brain to freak out over everything, including new medications. Now that my lizard brain understands the meds aren’t going to kill me, my cortex can chill out and stop trying so hard to convince myself meds are not a threat.
(Incidentally, unwinding anxiety is the best metaphor for how this junk is all tangled up in my brain like a trunk full of last year’s Christmas lights. Absolute perfection.)
Overall I found this book helpful, particularly as someone who experiences severe anxiety, disability from anxiety and cancer, and an unceasing desire to understand how things work.
In 2018, I began my doodle art journey with the book One Zentangle a Day by artist Beckah Krahula. I’d seen some videos here and there of people turning meditative patterns into gorgeous art, and I thought to myself it looked like fun—drawing for the pure joy of it. Maybe, I thought, I could learn to Zentangle too.
Enamored with the oddly satisfying doodle art videos I’d watched on YouTube after my adjuvant cancer treatments, I decided to record my daily lessons along the way. I tried new patterns and then put them together. The results were not great at first. As I learned and improved, I realized I was also creating a really thorough review of the book.
So, if after this written review of One Zentangle a Day, you’re still undecided, there are 42 more videos on my YouTube channel to help you.
One Zentangle a Day is great for self-paced learning. The lessons are easy to complete and leave you with a sense of accomplishment each day. Explanations are detailed without being cumbersome, and the examples for using the patterns to create your own art are inspiring.
Structured daily lessons
Detailed text accompanying illustrations
More than 50 patterns
Step-by-step drawing instructions
Inspiring examples
Cons
I might be slightly biased, because it was my first foray into the world of Zentangle, but it seems to me this book has everything. Well, except the pens and paper you need to get started with Zentangle doodle art.
It’s square and doesn’t fit nicely on my bookshelf
Videos
If you don’t mind spoilers, watch the videos in my One Zentangle a Day YouTube playlist. You’ll get a brief glimpse at some of the pages, and a chance to see how I approached the 6-week course.
Bottom line: my review of One Zentangle a Day is glowing, and I highly recommend it. Not only is it a fun way to learn to Zentangle, but it’s a great reference for when you need to go back to a pattern or want some ideas for creating your own Zentangle-inspired art.
Here are some of the Zentangles I created while following the lessons in One Zentangle a Day.
I plan to continue doing Zentangle book reviews as I have time and money. If there’s a book you’d like to see me prioritize, you can leave a comment with your suggestion or gift a book from my wishlist.
I’ve never seen her show, but after reading this book I think I understand why it’s on E!
Last weekend I got my Champaign Public Library card and promptly installed the app for checking out e-books. Eager to get started and see how things worked, I borrowed my first library e-book, Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang.
Now, before you lay into me about how stupid that decision was, a few lame excuses:
I did not recognize Chelsea Handler’s name
Although I’d heard of the show Chelsea Lately somehow, somewhere before, I’d never seen it and was therefore unable to make the connection between Handler and E! until after she mentioned it in her book
I’m a sucker for the words “irreverent humor” in a book review or description
Many first-choice titles already had holds placed on them, and I wanted to devour a book, dammit
Just how much of Handler’s memoir is shtick and how much is factual is hard for me to determine. She seems at times to be genuinely atrocious (for example, joking—or maybe not—about euthanizing her father) until she dedicates an entire self-admiring chapter to the ridiculous lies she gets people to believe.
I suppose as readers we’re supposed to have some philosophical, internal debate about whether or not the whole book is a lie. Or about whether Chelsea Handler, the person, is a lie. But that doesn’t work for me. I know people like this in real life—people who get off on making others wonder if they’re genuine or if they’re not—and they’re tedious, off-putting jerkwads.
Ugh. This is why I don’t watch the programming on E! It turns me into Judgy McJudgerson.
Anyway, the book’s saving grace? It’s short, conversational, and well-edited. So if you’re like me and you get some sense of satisfaction from merely finishing a book, you can mark this sucker “read” in a couple of hours.
What I recommend instead of this book: Here Comes Trouble What I’m reading now: In the Garden of Beasts
