Summary of Ellen Vora's The Anatomy of Anxiety

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview: #1 We are in an unprecedented global crisis when it comes to mental health.

An estimated one out of every nine people, or eight hundred million people, suffer from a mental health disorder, the most common of which is anxiety.#2 Anxiety has been recognized as far back as 45 BC, when the Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote in the Tusculan Disputations, as translated from the Latin, Affliction, worry and anxiety are called disorders, on account of the analogy between a troubled mind and a diseased body.#3 I have found that giving a diagnostic label can become a straitjacket, narrowly defining people and profoundly shaping their life narratives.

I am more interested in exploring the particulars of each patient's life and habits to start them down a path to recovery.#4 There is a distinction between false and true anxiety.

False anxiety is the body communicating a physiological imbalance, whereas true anxiety is the body communicating an essential message about our lives.

In false anxiety, the stress response transmits signals up to our brain telling us something is not right.