Abstract

What is the difference between fear and excitement and how can you tell them apart? How do the mind and body make emotions? When can anxiety be good? This science-based graphic book addresses these questions and more, revealing just how strange anxiety is, but also how to unravel its mysteries and relieve its effects.

Understanding how anxiety is created by our nervous system trying to protect us, and how our fight-or-flight mechanisms can get stuck, can significantly lessen the fear experienced during anxiety attacks. In this guide, anxiety is explained in an easy-to-understand, engaging graphic format with tips and strategies to relieve its symptoms, and change the mind's habits for a more positive outlook.

Haines pulls together an accessible and friendly narrative with fantastic high level academic footnotes. These twin levels - with Standing's gently humorous graphics - convince. He takes us past some body-brain-mind confusion, to provide understanding of the workings of anxiety in the person.
Dr David O’Flynn, Consultant Psychiatrist, Lambeth & Maudsley Hospitals, South London & Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

Steve Haines has studied Yoga, Shiatsu, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, and Trauma Releasing Exercises and works in healthcare and as a UK registered Chiropractor. Steve is the bestselling author of Pain is Really Strange and Trauma is Really Strange. He lives between London and Geneva. (www.stevehaines.net).

Sophie Standing is a London-based illustrator and designer, specialising in human sciences. Her style combines digital and hand-made, with an emphasis on rich colour, textures and metaphorical concepts.

If you are interested in understanding a bit more about anxiety and the psychology about it, whether it's to help you understand your own illness, what a loved one is going through or just because you want to educate yourself further on the topic then I couldn't recommend this to you enough.
A Beautiful Chaos Blog
For many of us, anxiety and fear are daily visitors to the mind and body - in this brilliant book, Steve Haines gives us freeing tools to unmask these feelings, and possibly even reduce the causes. What he offers is apparently simple yet full of depth, with a touch of light-heartedness.
Jonathan Sattin, Managing Director, triyoga
With great erudition and wit Steve manages to condense philosophical thought, neurological research and psychological thinking into a fabulous tool for re-conceptualising are experience of this bane of modern life - anxiety. Psychoanalysts and others working with people experiencing anxiety will benefit from reflecting on this book and sharing it with their patients.
Dr Peter Nevins, Psychoanalyst and Director of Islington Mind