Scott Stossel

Anxiety has afflicted me all my life.

— Scott Stossel

To grapple with and understand anxiety is, in some sense, to grapple with and understand the human condition.

— Scott Stossel

I had no trouble with strangers finding out about my anxiety. It was my friends and colleagues I was concerned about.

— Scott Stossel

To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a…

— Scott Stossel

An astonishing portion of my life is built around trying to evade vomiting and preparing for the eventuality that I might.

— Scott Stossel

“But less so than I did before. Not long ago in my own therapy with Dr. W., we moved gingerly into “imaginal”…

— Scott Stossel

“The truth is that anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and…

— Scott Stossel

As recently as 1979, neither panic attacks nor panic disorder officially existed.

— Scott Stossel

Some people say that in stressful situations I can seem unflappable, and I think that's partly because I'm always kind of internally…

— Scott Stossel

People who suffer from anxiety are very good at hiding it. That can often be a contributor to the anxiety because the…

— Scott Stossel

“Studies of the DSM-II found that when two psychiatrists consulted the same patient, they gave the same DSM diagnosis only between 32…

— Scott Stossel

Even as economic and political freedoms have advanced enormously and generated huge benefits for humanity, they've also created a great deal of…

— Scott Stossel

To say that my anxiety is reducible to the ions in my amygdala”—the home of the fight-or-flight reflex—“is as limiting as saying…

— Scott Stossel

There's a vast encyclopedia of fears and phobias, and pretty much any object, experience, situation you can think of, there is someone…

— Scott Stossel

Hugh Grant, who several times has announced that he was thinking of retiring from acting, has said that he suffers from panic…

— Scott Stossel

I wanted to put a human face on anxiety disorders. I thought people who suffer from anxiety might recognize themselves and gain…

— Scott Stossel

There's a book that's critical to understanding anxiety, a 17th-century book, 'The Anatomy of Melancholy,' by Robert Burton. I wanted to write…

— Scott Stossel

“According to recent epidemiological data, the “lifetime incidence” of anxiety disorder is more than 25 percent—which, if true, means that one in…

— Scott Stossel

Jerome Kagan, the Harvard psychologist, only hires people who are anxious, because he thinks they are better and more conscientious workers. I…

— Scott Stossel

“I smile gently while churning inside and thinking about what I’ve learned is a signature characteristic of the phobic personality: “the need…

— Scott Stossel

“Meditation led to decreased density of the amygdala, a physical change that was correlated with subjects’ self-reported stress levels—as their amygdalae got…

— Scott Stossel

I don't want to be in a position that could make me vomit, like air travel. I've purloined airsick bags and stuffed…

— Scott Stossel

It is an irony of medical history that even as Freud's later work would make him the progenitor of modern psychodynamic psychotherapy,…

— Scott Stossel

“But none of these treatments have fundamentally reduced the underlying anxiety that seems woven into my soul and hardwired into my body…

— Scott Stossel

“Some eighty years ago, Freud proposed that anxiety was “a riddle whose solution would be bound to throw a flood of light…

— Scott Stossel

“A study published by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital in 2011 found that subjects who practiced meditation for an average of just…

— Scott Stossel

“While there is substantial evidence that specific phobias—particularly those based on fears that would have been adaptive in the state of nature,…

— Scott Stossel

“But even drugged to the gills, I remained filled with dread about the impending book tour, so I went also to a…

— Scott Stossel

“for the existentialists, what generated anxiety was not the godlessness of the world, per se, but rather the freedom to choose between…

— Scott Stossel

“The truth is that anxiety is at once a function of biology and philosophy, body and mind, instinct and reason, personality and…

— Scott Stossel

I've always been interested in intellectual history and in psychology, and anxiety is obviously something that's been a big part of my…

— Scott Stossel

I am living on the razor's edge between success and failure, adulation and humiliation - between justifying my existence and revealing my…

— Scott Stossel

There is an element in which anxiety co-represents with aspects of my personality I wouldn't want to give up. It allows you…

— Scott Stossel

I have, since the age of about 2, been a twitchy bundle of phobias, fears, and neuroses. And I have, since the…

— Scott Stossel

To say that my anxiety is reducible to the ions in my amygdala is as limiting as saying that my personality or…

— Scott Stossel

The fear of vomiting, which for me is one of the most original and most acute of my fears, is actually fairly…

— Scott Stossel

All the textbooks talk about avoidance as a classic hallmark of anxiety disorder. So you need a therapist who is sympathetic and…

— Scott Stossel

Carly Simon abandoned the stage for seven years after collapsing from nerves before a concert in Pittsburgh in 1981. When she resumed…

— Scott Stossel

Many nights, I would begin the evening fueled by caffeine and nicotine, which I needed to propel me out of torpor and…

— Scott Stossel

When I was 5 and my sister was 3, we went on a family trip, and she ate cheese off the floor…

— Scott Stossel