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    First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety
    First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety
    First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety
    Audiobook9 hours

    First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety

    Written by Sarah Wilson

    Narrated by Sarah Wilson

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    About this audiobook

    New York Times Bestseller

    ""Probably the best book on living with anxiety that I’ve ever read.” – Mark Manson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

    The Chinese believe that before you can conquer a beast, you must first make it beautiful.

    Sarah Wilson first came across this Chinese proverb in psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir An Unquiet Mind, and it became the key to understanding her own lifelong struggle with anxiety. Wilson, bestselling author, journalist, and entrepreneur has helped over 1.5 million people worldwide to live better, healthier lives through her I Quit Sugar books and program. And all along, she has been managing chronic anxiety.

    In First, We Make the Beast Beautiful, Wilson directs her intense focus and fierce investigating skills onto her lifetime companion, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism of her own experiences.

    Wilson offers readers comfort, humor, companionship, and practical tips for living with the Beast:

    • Cultivate a ""gratitude ritual."" You can't be grateful and anxious at the same time.
    • Eat to curb anxiety. Real food is your best friend.
    • Just breathe. Embrace the healing power of meditation.
    • Make your bed. Every day. Simple outer order creates inner calm.
    • Study fellow fretters to know thyself. Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. all struggled with anxiety.
    • Actively practice missing out. Forget FOMO, curl up on the couch, and order takeout.

    Practical and poetic, wise and funny, First, We Make the Beast Beautiful is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad souls who dance with this condition to embrace it as a part of who they are, and to explore the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 24, 2018
    ISBN9780062847270
    Author

    Sarah Wilson

    Sarah Wilson is the author of the New York Times bestsellers First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Journey Through Anxiety, which redefined the mental health genre, and I Quit Sugar, along with eleven cookbooks that have been published in fifty-two countries. Previously, she was editor of Cosmopolitan Australia, host of MasterChef Australia and founder of iquitsugar.com, an 8-week program that has seen millions worldwide break their sugar addiction. In May 2018, Sarah committed to giving all proceeds from the business to charity. She now builds and enables charity projects that engage humans with one another, and campaigns on mental health, consumerism, and climate issues. Sarah lives in Sydney, Australia, is an obsessive hiker and spent eight years travelling the world with one bag.

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    Reviews for First, We Make the Beast Beautiful

    4/5

    161 ratings12 reviews

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    • 2/5
      Sarah Wilson has some pretty pseudo-scientific ideas about anxiety and sugar, and I don't think she's the healthiest person to be taking advice from. It's clear she has an agenda of keeping good PR, and I don't really see much of her work as authentic. If there's one main issue I have with the book, it's that it utterly lacks credibility. A simple Google search of her name brings up a lot of opinions and earlier projects she's worked with that really rub me the wrong way. Frankly, I think she's got a few good ideas that she gleaned from others, but a majority of what she has to say is personal diatribe that reeks of exaggeration. If it's not exaggerated, my bad, and I would recant my statement. But based on the type of "business of positivity" blog lady image she's cultivating for herself, her words feel like quackery and should be taken with a fistful of salt.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Great book! If you want to understand better how people cope with anxiety or if you actually feel it yourself this book is for you. It's good to know that we can do something about it and that we are not alone.
    • 5/5
      This book is truly wonderful. If you struggle with anxiety, you will almost certainly find yourself relating to this book and feeling at least somewhat better about your experiences.
    • 5/5
      This was an amazing and entertaining memoir / expose on anxiety and OCD and other related mental difficulties. It was so elucidating about my own issues as well as loved ones. I gained a lot of insight from this book. And she's a great narrator.
    • 5/5
      Such a raw description of her feelings and the way she’s handling them. Beautiful prose anda lot of reading recommendations to keep the journey going.
    • 5/5
      The most helpful book on anxiety and OCD that I have ever read. Interesting, helpful, and funny.
    • 5/5
      This is a pretty insightful, personal and well written book which does a great job of demystifying anxiety and what to do about it. I give it 6 stars.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written. An insightful and enlightening perspective on anxiety and pain.
    • 3/5
      This was a frustrating book to try to review. I suppose most books on anxiety are going to be that. The parts that were good were VERY good, and the sections on space and acceptance techniques are some of the most helpful I’ve read. I’m tempted to keep a copy in my collection just for that. Unfortunately the book also meanders into woo, and seems to have a suspicious degrading opinion of psych professionals, which undercuts my ability to recommend this book for the very good parts. If struggle with anxiety and can ignore the woo and shade, it’s worth a read.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I can't give this more than 3 1/2 stars because of the very misleading subtitle. The author, who sounds like a delightful person and has had many professional successes, has been diagnosed as bipolar (she also describes her OCD, self harming and PTSD). She continually interprets episodes of mania and her other issues as anxiety and doesn't seem aware of how extreme some of her behavior is. Along the way, she shares many insights but she also freely acknowledges that she's not in very good shape at all mentally. I really can't recommend this book for anyone living with anxiety, particularly young people or those who are newly diagnosed with anxiety, as they may worry that this is their future. But for those who have a person with mental illness in their lives and who feel confident that this will not trigger them, it certainly makes for a thought-provoking read.
    • 5/5
      This is a really excellent book about living with anxiety.The author is not a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or any other kind of medical professional. She's an author and journalist, and a woman who lives with chronic anxiety. Over a lifetime of dealing with it, she became interested in understanding what it is, where it comes from, and history of treatment for it, including the fads and fashions that affect medical treatment.Some of what she has to say may strike some as borderline woo-woo, but she's very clear about talking to medical professionals knowledgeable on the subject to ensure that known of her advice is safe, and the importance of medical support when you're going off medication.Also, medication is really helpful for some people, and not as helpful to others. She's also really clear about the need to pay attention to how you react, not how other people tell you you should be reacting.A very important aspect of this book is that she talks about the positive aspects of anxiety. No, not kidding. Anxiety can push you to make the projects you're working on better, or alert you to the fact that you're going in the wrong direction altogether. It pushes us to be that little bit more perfectionist. We see evidence of anxiety and depression in other primates--and the primate troops that have some percentage of members so affected have higher survival rates. Why? The anxious and the depressed are hanging out on the edges of the group, paying attention to things the others aren't, and sometimes that's life-saving.No population could survive with only the anxious and the depressed, but having some benefits the whole community.So learn to use your anxiety, and also pay attention to what really helps you cope--medication, meditation, long runs on the beach, or, in my case, a dog who responds to my moods and my needs, and will go as far as pulling me toward an exit if I'm getting over-stimulated by the place where we are.You're not broken; you have different strengths and challenges than most people. Pay attention to what helps you, and be aware of your strengths.Very much recommended!Borrowed from my local library.
    • 3/5
      Started off okay. Then got preachy and went into the realms of think happy thoughts and things will come to you.

      1 person found this helpful